for our viewers in the united states, fareed zakaria "gps" starts right now. this is "gps, the global public square." welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria. first up on a great show, we'll tackle the three things your mother told you not to talk about with strangers. religion and politics and sex. catholic simple, mormonism, islam, abortion, they are all playing a role in the 2012 election campaign. i have a great panel, including andrew sullivan and john meecham to talk about it. next, david versus goliath. what small nation is talking on the most populous nation in the world? i'll tell you. then the politics of outer space. america won the race to the 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. 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 manner, 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 is 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 134 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 type the liberals pass a bill, i don't care what it involves, they stick criminal sanctions on it. 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 under class 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. as it is mixed up these days in the 2012 elections, and i have a great panel to talk about it. andrew sullivan blogs at the daily beast. he is a frmer editor of the "new republic." john meecham, from rapid dom 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. she moderate rates with john, in fact, a blog called on faith, 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 it's 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 dough clairing us a christian nation. no president can mrauzably talk about his candidacy, his life, his vision for the country, without an illusion to the all mighty, to some kind of 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 mainstream end 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? then to go on and say he is an american. what he is espousing is a 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 total anti- everything this country stands for. >> let me triangulate. 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 bonefieds as an american you should suspicion because there was something darkly not quite american about catholics in the

eyes of many protestant leaders m 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 -- he 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 prelits to try to influence the votes of the people or the -- or the actions of public officials. criticism is fairly widespread of this speech. just a little over a year ago.

the great first -- 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, contracepti contraception. [ woman ] my boyfriend and i were going on vacation, so i used my citi thank you card to pick up some accessories. a new belt. some nylons. and what girl wouldn't need new shoes? we talked about getting a diamond. but with all the thank you points i've been earning... ♪ ...i flew us to the rock i really had in mind. ♪ [ male announcer ] the citi thank you card. earn points you can use for travel on any airline, with no blackout dates.

i have twins, 21 years old. each kid has their own path. they grow up, and they're out having their life. i really started to talk to them about the things that are important that they have to take ownership over. my name's colleen stiles, and my kids and i did our wills on legalzoom. [ shapiro ] we created legalzoom to help you take care of the ones you love. go to legalzoom.com today and complete your will in minutes. at legalzoom.com, we put the law on your side. bayer aspirin... ohh, no no no. i'm not having a heart attack, it's my head. this is made for pain. [ male announcer ] bayer advanced aspirin enters the bloodstream fast, and rushes extra strength relief to the sight of your pain. feel better? yeah...thanks for the tip!

we are back with andrew sullivan, john meecham, sally quinn, and matt frank. in general, sally, it seems as though the argument goes from loofr 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 comb 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 many terms of a politic

strategy. i mean, you have over half the population as women, and they're all using birth control. i don't understand how they think this is going to be a winning argument. >> matthew, i don't feel 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 contra session. it's the obama administration which has prom you will gated a hhs mandate that all insurers, including many religious institutions and employers, cover contraception with no deductibles and no copays, 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 anglecan divine. the founder of rhode island picked it up. the idea of a swaul 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 edge as producing a counter reaction 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 and 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. 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 aabort eefficients, 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 -- 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 thocracy. 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, sally quinn, matt frank, thanks for joining us. up next, what in the world? you oochb see china dominate smaller countries, but there's one small nation with a population of just five million that seems to be playing spoiler. i'll tell you who it is when we come back. [ male announcer ] this one goes out to all the allergy muddlers.

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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 hooen. 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 we're. 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 station its border and stop tibetans from escaping. nepal has complied. china's influence strempz 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 country is norway. you'll remember how in 2010 an independent norwegian panel gave the nobel peace prize to a chinese dissident. despite intense pressure from beijing, they made a decision they thought was right, but he was not allowed to go to oslo to receive his award, so the committee went ahead and presented the prize to an empty chair. beijing was not pleased. it decided to make oslo pay. it suspended talks on a free trade agreement and barred

imports of salmon from norway. the two countries stopped talking. but beijing overstepped its reach. china's economy may be 15 times the size of norway's, but it accounts for less than 2% of norway's exports. the two are 4,000 miles apart, and norway is an oil-rich country that is well run, invests in its people, and is thriving in the global economy. it doesn't need special favors from china. now consider this ironic twist. china wanted to bully norway to do its bidding, but now china wants to join the arctic council, a powerful for forum that controls energy and security around the north pole. to do so it needs the council's eight members to all vote yes. china really wants this membership so it can chart shorter routes to europe and discover new energy sources. guess who could vote no. norway. we always hear the narrative of how china's global cloud is

increasing. it needs to pick its battles carefully and handle them well. as america has learned over the years, size matters, but so do smarts, and we'll be back. up next, we're going to get out of china and get macro, really macro, into matters of time and space. don't miss this. the astro physicist neil degrass tyson joins me when we come back. but their shakes aren't always made for people with diabetes. that's why there's new glucerna hunger smart shakes. they have carb steady, with carbs that digest slowly to help minimize blood sugar spikes. and they have 6 grams of sugars. with 15 grams of protein to help manage hunger... look who's getting smart about her weight. [ male announcer ] new glucerna hunger smart. a smart way to help manage hunger and diabetes.

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i'm candy crowley in washington. fareed zakaria gps will be back in just a second, but first your top stories. back from his trip to cuba, pope benedict xvi started the holy week with a palm sunday mass in st. peters square. during his visit to the communist nation, benedict asked cuban president raul castro to make good friday a holiday. the cuban government yesterday announced that it would grant the pope's request. president obama will hold talks with leaders of mexico and canada at the white house tomorrow. the talks are expected to focus heavily on the violence from mexico's drug war and it will be the last meeting from mexican president felipe cauldron who is not seeking re-election. nobel peace prize lawyer yacht aun saun sue chicago has won a part in the parliament after a

decades long fight for democracy. official results may be available monday morning. the vote is seen as a symbolic victory for many in myanmar who have lived under military rule for nearly half a century. those are your top stories. ""reliable sources" "is at the top of the hour. now back to fareed zakaria "gps." space as star trek reminds us, is the final frontier, but is it of earthbound conflict of a power struggle between the united states and china? that's what my next guest says. neil degrass tyson, the astro physicist spends a lot of time looking and thinking about space. he is the director of the hayden planetarium here in new york. >> thanks, fareed. >> when you wrote this article in "farn affairs," what i was struck by -- >> it made a cover article. >> it was the cover essay. they talked about -- you talked in this article in "foreign affairs" about the fact that we

were withdrawing from space, kind of limiting our ambitions at the very moment that china was amping up its program. are you really worried that we will actually lose the kind of leadership of space? >> well, yes, but more important, there's a lot -- space is like proxy for a lot of what else goes on in society, including your urge to innovate. if you remember in the 1960s and 1970s where it was just expected that invasionovations transforme world. who brings tomorrow into the present, if not the scientists and technologistists and engineers. we had these great ambitions and it was a rather turb lebt decade. the 1960s, the most turbulent since the civil war, for sure, with the civil rights movement and the assassinations, hot war, cold war. the once shining beacon in that period was the moon missions. and everything was possible. it was -- the world fair was in that decade.

that was all about tomorrow. so if you lose your space edge, my deep concern is that you lose everything else about society that enables you to compete economically. of course, we went to the moon because of a military motivation and that's why we stopped going anywhere beyond the moon because we saw that russia was done. they were not going to go to the moon. the dreamers back then were thinking that we went to the moon because we were explorers and if that were the case, of course, we would have continued on to mars. but we didn't. it was obvious in retrospect why we didn't. i would argue that today if we think of china as competition, economic competition, which they surely are, then to pull back on our space ambitions is a direct sort of lever arm on our capacity to compete economically. >> but if -- so one of the things you talk about in that article is that this is part of a general decline in science and engineering and decline of the

kind of sexiness of science, but also the amount of time, energy we're putting into it. my question to you is why should we use this indirect path to science? if we want to fund science, why not fund science? >> that's a common question that always gets asked. what happens is when you approach the world that way, you find a problem, and you say, well, let's put some money to do more what the solution is to that problem. what they amount to are like band-aids on each little problem. today we need more scientists so let's make better science teachers. put a little band-aid there. we need -- we want to keep our jobs. let's make incentives for corporations to not move their manufacturing plant. a little band-aid there. you go around and you put all these band-aids down, and you are ignoring a deeper engine that could be operating that would solve all those problems simultaneously. >> you worry a lot about the fact that people are getting very cost conscience and very -- and really cutting back, and you tell the story about the hubbell

telescope. explain why it's important and what happened. >> well, in that particular case, the hubbell telescope, when it was launched, the mirror had the wrong curvature to it. images were fuzzy. it would be a little while before we could get that repair with corrective optics. what do you do? >> it's up there. in space. >> you got to, like, mount a mission to go work on it. be clever about how you design the corrective because that problem was not anticipated before hubbell was launched. you had to be really clever about what you pulled out and what you swapped in. and so there was some time -- downtime, if you will, where you could get data, but it was kind of fuzzy data. what do you do? you don't want to waste it. so an algorhythm was developed to extract as much information as you possibly can from these fuzzy images of stars, and that exercise, that was shared with a medical doctor who specialized in breast cancer research, and he noted that finding these dots of light in an otherwise sort of

fuzzy environment was exactly what he does visually when he is looking for early detection -- early detection of breast cancer in the mammograms. so they apply this algorhythm, and now he they have early detection of breast cancer doing a better job than the human eye was able to do. you can't script that. that happens all the time. this cross pollenation of fields. innovation in one, stimulating revolutionary changes in another. if you only want to put money to a problem, you can tend to make evolutionary changes, small increments, but the big changes come about when all the -- i'm not saying just through space. you need all the sciences. quick note, all the machines in a hospital that have an on-off switch brought into the service of diagnosing the condition of the human body without cutting you open? they're all based on a principle of physics discovered by a physicist who had no interest in medicine. from the x-ray machine, one of the earliest of these diagnostic tools, to the entire department of radiology, to --

>> it's all about light waves. >> that and energy out of the atom. with mri, the cat skins. physicists just doing physics. if you say i want to be healthier, let's put more money in the medical community. no, you have to put money everywhere, but in the school system and in the culture of society, what drives ambitions? there's nothing that drives ambitions the way nasa does and today's nasa portfolio taps biologists because we're looking for mars, life on mars, chemists and physicists and electrical engineers, mechanical engineers. all the traditional stem fields that science technology engineering and math fields are stoked when you dream big in agencies such as nasa, and it's not that much money. right now it's a half a penny on your tax dollar. i say double it. to a penny. then we go to mars in a big way in short-term. it becomes a big visible project. school kids know about it, and who is that first astronaut class. today in middle school today,

why not -- i got an idea. let's select them now, and then we all contract and see how they're eating well or getting through grades. that's tomorrow's mercury 7. >> what would we learnwhat is your hope about the mars mission? this is -- i mean, part of it is symbolic, but part of it you think there's a lot to learn by going to mars. >> as a scientist i want to go to mars and back toas resides and the moon because i'm a scientist, but i can tell you i'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space. nasa was created in a geopolitical climate. we were spooked by sputnik. sputnik itself was a hollowed out intercontinental ballistic missile. with a radio transmitter. everybody said it's going beep. the military knew the implication of this. the space station itself, the initial impetus was russia is building their own space station. i don't have a problem with geopolitical arguments for going into space. let all the reasons reveal themselves.

tourism. let the private sector. go take care of that. i don't have any problems with that, and scientists, send me to mars. >> would you go? >> i would so go to mars. to low earth orbit, no. i'm boldly going where hundreds have gone before. no. if you are going to go where nobody has gone before, sign me up. i'll bring my whole family and sign me up. >> neil degrass tyson, a pleasure to have you on. >> thanks for having me. >> we will be back. >> go ask a woman in a white working class neighborhood why she isn't married, even though she has a child, and she will say to you very quickly she'll say why should i marry those losers? ♪ ♪ wow... ♪ [ 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.

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my next guest is the author of what some are calling the most important book of the year. charles murray's "coming apart" is about the divide between america's upper class elite and the white working class. he has a track record of writing controversial books. he also authored the bell curve eight years ago about the role of intelligence in american society. he joins me now. welcome. so the simple picture i think that you are providing is a kind of divide between an upper middle class and the working white population and the divide goes along the lines of, first of all, success and such, but

almost behavior characteristics, moral characteristics, the upper class tend to be married, work hard, and increasingly what do you find about the working class, or the poor? >> that it has moved away from those things. fareed, the important thing is that it didn't used to be that way. i'm not saying that 50 years ago there were no classes. we had rich people, and we had poor people, but take marriage as a classic example. in 1960 working class, which i'm defining as high school education working in a low skill job or blue collar skill job. 83% of them were married ages 30 to 49, okay? it was the norm. for the upper middle class, it was in the 90s. it was a little bit higher, but not much. as of 2010 you're down to 48% of white working class adults who are married. that's a phenomenal change within 50 years.

in an absolutely crucial social institution. >> the upper class? >> they're at 94%. there was a little decline up there, but not much. you've had a divergence on this. you've also had a divergence on industriousness. crucial american value whereby in 1960 it was taken for granted by all adult males they were supposed to work. they were either working or they were looking for work. that was true among the working class and the upper middle class. as of 2008 before the recession set in, that was up to about one out of eight white working class adult males wasn't even looking for work. they were out of the labor force. >> when i look at america, particularly in compare ton so other places, it seems still a place where the values that you value are very strong. i mean, this is a country in which politicians have to take pains to point out that they are married, have good family lives, they love their country, they

are regular people. as you know, it's not true in many other countries in the world. nobody campaigns with their wives. you know, don't you still think that if the issue is one of the signals we as a society are transmitting, we're still sending a signal that what we value or the virtues that you due skreeb. >> i think what you have to do to get a sense of what's gone on in the white working class is the little amthropological participation. i have a chapter in "coming apart" which draws an excellent dissertation that did that, and you don't have to dig very deep to hear stories about the kinds of cultural breakdown i'm talking about. you go ask a woman in a white working class neighborhood why she isn't married even though she has a child, and she will say to you very quickly she'll say why should i marry those losers? the guys here may be nice guys, but they can't hold on to a job.

they can't be relied upon. that kind of statement and other statements of social disorganization don't have to be pride out of people. they reflect day to day life in growing chunks of working class america. >> your solution which, again, has been somewhat controversial, has been karicatured as get rid of all the welfare state programs and have the upper class go into the ghettos and lecture the poor whites on the need for better morals. >> well, may i say, first, that the caricature of the solution is indeed a caricature, and i don't say anything like that. i'm saying we have a cultural problem here, and i only going to be changed by changing the culture. changing the culture is a very evenescent thing. what i say about what the upper middle class should do is start preaching what it practices. right now you have the upper

middle class engaged in marriage, behaving by and large honestly. they're more religious than the working class even though that's declined than the upper middle class as well, and they work like crazy. they're very industrious. they are also extremely nonjudgmental. for example, there is no way in polite society to talk about the problem of the single parent family in any way that says, you know, actually the two-parent family is a better family structure for raising children. a significantly better structure, and we know this from a whole lot of data. you can't say that. because people then feel, well, i'm being mean to single women who are trying very hard to raise their children. well, and there are lots of single women who are doing a good job of raising their children, but as a statistical phenomenon, births to single women are really problematic. you can't say that given the

culture. we got to have some ways you can start to say that without demonizing women, but we've got to have ways of once again having norms that support the kind of civic culture that america has had. preaching what you practice does not mean going into the slums with a bull horn. it does mean starting to say that there are ways of living a satisfying life that have not only worked for me, but are fundamentally sound institutions for living a satisfying life. changing that culture does not lend itself to prescriptive measures. writing a book is the only thing i can do to push it along. >> charles murray, pleasure to have you. >> i enjoyed it. thank you. >> we will be back. c'mon dad!

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at meineke i have options... like oil changes starting at $19.95. my money. my choice. my meineke. april is upon us, and that brings me to my question of the week from the gps challenge. in earlier times april 1st signified what holiday? i promise you this isn't an april fool's joke. is it, a, new year's day, b, st. crispen's day, c, u.s. election day, or d -- stay tuned and

we'll tell you the correct answer. go to cnn.com/fareed for more of the gps challenge and lots of insight and analysis. also, you can follow us on twitter and facebook and if you miss a show, go to itunes where you can get the audio podcast for free and you can now buy the video podcast. this week's book of the week is from my guest from earlier john meecham. it is his first book "franklin and winston, an intimate portrait of an epic friendship." they had a lot in common, but they were also quite different. they did work together to win the second world war. it's a beautiful portrait of a friendship of politics and is written beautifully. really worth reading. now, for the last look. calcutta, the city of joy, is best remembered in black and white as the one-time capital of the british raj. it's a city also associated with the color red. after all, it was ruled by the communist party for 34 years. last year they were voted out.

in its place is a pop list leader who is promising a new city with new policies. well, forget about black and white or red. she wants to paint the city blue. yes, literally. all the official buildings of calcutta are to be painted blue. even the iconic yellow taxis, highway dividers. her party says it's because they see blue as the color of optimism. it's the color of the sky. i think it's probably much simpler than that. it is the opposite of red in a sense. the next time you worry about how polarized america is, divided into red and blue states, it could be worse. just think of calcutta. the correct answer to our gps challenge question was, a, until the 16th century new year's day was celebrated on april 1st, with spring symbolizing the new year. they were on to something i think much better than the frigid cold temperatures we usually get on january 1st. thanks to all of you forei