>> it was for the saturday evening post. that's how old i am, everybody. i got $5 for it. i-frame to check. it was the kind of my hippocratic oath. i swore really. it solve the problem about green eyeshadow journalism or scholar. i chose to do both. they are not mutually depleting. you ride for the public. that you may ride elegant scholarship that you may ride for the public. and you ride for the public as a friend, companions but above all as an authority with impeccable integrity of research and sources. so you want to say, for god sake, boys, makeup already.

enough already. so i've been lucky enough to do that. the american future was born in some sense with this complicated marriage between on the road journalism and reflecting back as he kindly said that's okay because you complete the book. these four subjects on war and immigration and religion and plenty. and the reason none of us really solve the financial meltdown in the magnitude with which it happened. and i plead guilty to that as i was going to make it fit don't and therefore there would have been a fifth chapter called the american money but the bbc ran out of its money. that unfortunately is true. we are now thinking of a film about morals and money which is the story of a crash. i still do think that actually when and if we hope the present

government gets us through, it is part of the most admirable part of obama's project does seem to be about the restoration of america's, sense of obligation. and the miracle of it was, i have to say, i think about election campaign following it around was that he said something about whites at the exception speech in denver. he said you can always make big elections small. he said it's been tried. it works. what he meant by that was the proven success also of course karl rove in 2004 was that it's all very about the great issues affecting america. , and all the fields i talked about. but americans actually want politics to be a branch of entertainment tonight. enough already with the high debates. don't need that.

americans are sort of a juice dish is a very, very patronizing view, the atwater, ed rawlins, karl rove view. it's a view. it's called television appetizing. wow, did it come gloriously on stock in the month of our prevailed last year. it was obama's bats, i think, it was probably hillary is also, but it was especially a bomb is. guess what, america did want to hear about the things which actually mattered to the life and death of the republic. 2005 and 2006 sealed a possibility or at least i think he obama the audacity to actually try and, hey, finish his sentences which hadn't happened in a while. [applause] >> and those of us going around the country, you know, it wasn't just a gradual sense with which

we had all been sold a bill of goods about weapons of mass distraction and relationship in the iraq war and 911 or a nonrelationship. but i remember giving a lecture in norman, oklahoma, a rather wonderful place, and oklahoma city also. that moving, moving memorial. but not someone normally in the democratic side of the column. i remember, i was very struck by it. and not long after it must've been for christmas 2005, not long after katrina. and someone from the military family just described his stomach being churned. it wasn't the kind of you're doing a heckuva job. he said it was the flyers. is that i don't expect our government to do much. he said i agree with ronald reagan, government can sometimes be the problem, not the answer. but i do expect them to get the bodies out in the mud.

we all want, as americans, we want our government to be decent and we want it to work. and i think the sort of sense of alienation from the idea of governance. you know, it also deafened by the relentless rants of the right wing talk shows in which any kind of public service is a form of betrayal of our american credentials that we forgot there was something noble and honorable and important and necessary about the elementary obligations of public service. and that i think, you know, taking a huge risk was obama gambled on in his campaign and indeed gambling. of course, had it actually not been for government than we would be an even deeper and worse and more terminal hole in the actually are. does seem to be actually something lying out there in american history out there wherever you looked it was line,

you know, have to say certainly what franklin roosevelt had to say. what you read in the records about the churches in the 19th century that produced the most important educational programs for their people all through the long miserable years of jim crow and some segregation. but there was line richly in american tradition a sense of not having to apologize for decent government. and this is no guarantee that we are going to get it. there is no guarantee we are going to get it, but at least, you know, the young, my children's generation are poking their head above. my daughter's boyfriend is one of many, and i tell the story right at the end of the book who gave up my fat job in corporate to go into an office of management and budget. is not the worst job in work or the best job at either case having a sense of actually doing

something again for the country. many, many millions of americans felt i think after 911 that there was a real opportunity for the president to actually stir and mobilize the altar as a witch we have seen all in any church bakes a or any pda. it's out there in extraordinarily tough, impassioned sense of what it means to be part of an american community. so was an extraordinarily bad that obama took. he won the bet i think to me appealingly because he was prepared to embrace the power of language. part of the atwater rove assumption which went along with assuming that americans were just turned off by politics. and it turned out that there were 17 million people watched the first debate. but they were really to listen to different kind of language. obama came at them with a kind of extraordinary movement. on the one hand, the language of our grandchildren, the language,

the grammar of the web. which circumnavigated around the old tried-and-true campaign machinery of span. and on the other hand, a brand-new contemporary street mobilizing the kids and the students and mobilizing $10 at the time was a staggering amount of money to the campaign. on the other hand of course what obama brought back into american public life was the beauty of the public rosary. you all know that in the 19th century you had to pass exams to get through high school in many states and in college. i actually gave a phi beta kappa of harvard that was called with a sense of rueful irony in the face of ozzy osbourne. [laughter] >> but there were millions of little ones all over america. abraham lincoln made himself one of them, of course. and of course you know, you say

the power, not just the sort of all mental beauty of fine speaking, but the ability to actually speak persuasive as a speaker was something perceived to be absolutely sort of discounted in the world of campaign spin and take them betook character assassination. but obama sort of delivered at. i mean, the greatest speech of all was march 18. that still remains one of the great speeches that has ever been composed in the history of american politics. and i thought that morning we were filming in monticello, actually when he made that speech. when i heard it i thought he's going down in flames, you know. it's hillary's -- hillary will be the nominee because this was an act of most extraordinarily dead on frontal candor explaining to america the roots of black rage in the church forms they took, as well as a duty to white rage.

in fact, america took. it was a credit to the sophistication of the electorate really. its willingness to face something fresh, to actually face truth even if they are a bit tough about american history. instead of doing him a reparable and irreversible harm it did him immediately an enormous amount of good even though he had to distance himself further because the jeremiah wright inconveniently would not leave well enough alone. would not shut up. that particular point really. [laughter] >> but so i think we have a moment really in which the american future anti-american past are this extraordinary like two wires in a kind of electrical inaction. no, we can't use history billed as a predictor of what will happen next. but you do know whether it's wonderful books about franklin roosevelt, about the depression,

or whether it's about the end of the american century and where do we go from here in our relationship with china and so on. one does know that the richly formed bed of understanding, which history gives us about america, is something we absolutely need as we go on into a difficult future. it was cicero who said, i regret to say plagiarized it from jefferson and lincoln, know not whether they can go because they know not whence they came. and i think whatever we can say about the 44th president that's not a problem for him and with our new campaign to abolish social studies, hey, a whole new light in american history. life before us. at any rate, we know whatever is in store for the american future. it is certain that the end of one particular story, but the beginning of a new and i'm confident to say spirited and noble chapter.

thanks. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. >> i think most of you know how this works. please raise your hand. we will get a microphone to you, and who would like to start us off? >> this gentleman at the back. >> okay. all the way in the back there. >> would you share a few of your

thoughts about the outcome that you see with regard to the tension with regard to building the economy and protecting the environment? >> that's a small subject you asked me. [laughter] >> this is going to be tough. you know, the chapter in called american plenty is about america's expectations really. again, it's right to say this in the city of franklin, of brotherly love. but if you have enough resource list and enough hard work, then the expanse of the american continent of rich in natural mature of also provide for a bonus. because we know even if sarah palen had a wish and we drilled, baby, drilled, the home of alaska we may be able to get 18 months more of oil for our reserves. so i think it wasn't just the $5

a gallon gas prices of last summer and autumn which made americans wean them off suvs and seal the doom of some redundant departments of the droid and dearborn, michigan. it's up to the educators in the white house as he is certainly been out there doing. laying down tougher rules about initiative. it's too sort of educate the public that our economic future in some sense, depends how much short-term pain and it will be an awful lot of pain, mostly in a climate service, the automobile industry, and transitioning to a greener future for us all. we really sort of have no choice. i mean, as extraordinary irony to answer your question, but i hope it's not completely irrelevant. i was in shanghai quite recently and you think the chinese would

all be in global mode quite recently. ones are better now are creditor, as they turn in their bond, the bottom falls out of what left of the american economy. but actually they are not. they are not at all. and they are instead actually not wanting the american model to fail. on the other hand what they don't like is sort of the message that we really have to at least deliver to ourselves. shanghai, and i have been in some beleaguered places in the world, shanghai really takes the cake. it is staggeringly turbulent with the most emphysema ridden pollution of any place i have been in the world. it is the most raw, uncontained discharge of pollutants. and they are storing up all kinds of incredibly expensive and tragic problems for themselves. i'm not saying that america has to look to china. but this is one of the transitions out of the expectation of the easier

abundance into a time where we are stewards of our resources in a more responsible way. this is also an american tradition i have to say. one of the chapters in the book called american plenty is about water. water is really going to be an absolutely incredible major problem for the west in particular, the lake mead is running just about 50% to capacity. i'm not sure what the snowmelt shortfall was this year but i think it was projected to be dire. when we were filming and when i was researching the book i went to a place, not the most improbable place as a mortal of the environmental stewardship which is, las vegas. one of the most impressive people i met andy runner of the south about a water authority. all those slightly over the top lagoons are decorated with a great hotels of las vegas is all recycled water. people are basking by the side

of swimming pools that they better not ask whether water comes from. or they are perfectly purified, but las vegas-based citizens to take up solid and long. you can see trucks driving off people's lawns and backyard and replace them with succulent and cacti and gravel. pays them so much a square-foot. that melroy at the recent complaint about front yard and run off in places like albuquerque and phoenix and los angeles as being particularly wasteful and compounding an already difficult problem, and also intensely irrigated crops like alfalfa, for example. you would need such alfalfa if you didn't do industrial cattle raising. another of our campaigns which are about to start, but we all like you tonight, is actually megabytes and really. neck bison knew what the hell

they were doing. bison basically live on junk that grows. they live on thornton trickles and weeds and don't actually need pastor of any kind, much less alfalfa. and how many of you cooked bison burgers? did for you. aren't they great? and they are not expensive. we can leave this room absolutely dripping with social virtue tonight, really. [laughter] >> that's probably enough of an answer to your question. [inaudible] >> you came to the united states i is in quite a while ago and as an outsider, what was the essence that threw you a "almost drew you here, doyou still findg

and why? why? [laughter] >> that sound battled, darling. intellectual freedom is the answer. it's a very simple quick there were brothers, and from my brother sam and i'm talking about, another store in tightly, but they were let away and. they were actually looked away and lumberjacks rather endearingly, actually. i want to revise that famous monty python song but sort of crossed over with fiddler in the woods actually. [laughter] >> they were lithuanian lumberjacks. there were four brothers, and three of them had the energy to go from london to liverpool and maybe an anti-crossing and settled of course in brooklyn. but my grandfather was too lazy and stayed in london. but what this meant, the reason, the answer to your question is

we had an american family always when i was growing up. by all cocaine in his rather beautiful american air force uniform i remember when i was a kid. we were close to our new york family. we always felt very much like new york was home to me. but in serious, you know, i got tired. i was raising cain which i said you know, i was grateful for the kind of liberty i was given by my family to write. but then i went to teach at oxford and there was a sense of what you would die to end curriculum, that nevermind what you wanted to teach. i was kind of interested in crackpot things to deal with the dutch and cleanliness and real strange and wacky things. and i remember actually standing up and proposing the history of

the family, for example your and it was as though i remember being met with looks of rheumy eyed disbelief as though i uttered some unspeakable profanity. and i thought i've got to get out of your. i think the next day i try to kindle the enthusiasm of one of my undergraduate in something very marginal, say, the russian revolution. and i was met with extremely wicca which reminded me very much of what cousin jack said treat the dog likes of village path and you'll go far wrong. i was sick of being treated that way and i want to sort sort of wiped the smile off their eloquently country gentleman space. what i really wanted was to be able to teach what i wanted, and harvard sort of hired me for a term and, you know, the first thing the department chairman of

harvard, i guess this was 1979, said to be and what would you like to teach? and no one had ever, would you like to teach, you know. staggeringly, trailblazing thing to say. so i was really, you know, a piggy and at harvard. i found the american university much more hospitable to that kind of disciplinary exchange, and i would support around with anthropology and some philosop philosophy. i often ask myself, i have written so many odd books really. landscape of memory and so on, whether or not any ambassador to riches, whether i would have done that if i had stayed in more conventional english university setting. and i am not actually sure i would. >> so it's all americans fault.

[laughter] >> the impression that people get or jewish people get in the united states is that british liberal intellectuals are hostile towards israel, and siding with the palestinians and making the israelis in this terrible drama. and i was wondering. you sort of have a foot in england and a foot in columbia, which is another place where such views are prevalent. >> they are not. stand up when you say that. >> i'm glad to here that. so i'm just wondering if you talk about that a bit.

>> well, you are right in the first part of the question. you did say liberal intellectuals. until recently because i haven't changed paper, wrote a lot for the guardian. in the independent particularly has the kind of extravagantly anti-israeli writings, for example. it's not really just the left. there is of course, you must remember the great conservative romance with purity of the desert. the sense in the kind of romantic conservatism of the last century. i meant the 19th century as well as the 20th. idealized in a way, and the jew if you think about the way we live now for example was representative of in city is metropolitan commercial. so there is kind of a slightly

golf club patronizing snobbery about the jew. elliot picked it up when he came to england. town had it, and again in america but it's very much of european. i think there is a sense of right as well. but there is no doubt you are right that there is a degree of something unhinged hostility toward israel a government policy. i'm not a great admirer of current israeli policy. i am sort of zionist. i believe in the jewish state. i'm a two-state solution person. but hasn't shadowed into without daring to call itself that, a kind of assertive anti-semitism, the answer is yes, in my view. and it's something actually

which friends of mine who are jewish and public intellectuals, phrase slightly makes my blood freeze, but like how jacobsen for example and jonathan freedman are really aware of. and we just launch ourselves over it actually. i refuse to be taking an apologist by the israeli government which is especially unsavory and anti-semitic implications. i think it's worth in britain than in germany for example. it's a british thing which i am so under sort of worried about and i see a growing actually. [inaudible] >> it seems to me a little

ironic that you should be advocating the abolition of social studies in favor -- >> only the name. >> welcome in our high school controversies. on the one hand, you've got the new approach which is social studies or cultural world history. and on the other hand just history. and i thought i was on your side in educating, that you are on my site educating just history. now would you did scribed oxford and cambridge, you seem to be advocating in your own versatility across -- >> something different from high school teaching and university teaching. i think what we really are culturally uninvolved, that's a very strong term to use, unless kids know the story. i mean, i'm with you that there are kids in high school and middle school, but what i mean again is all the time and effort spent in middle school about

learning, about learning. you know, sort of zits one-to-on101.it means chronolog. it means chronology. it means a narrative. it means information. it means not assuming that everything reliable. it can be got from wikipedia. so i think that is the apprenticeship beyond which one can fool around fruitfully i think with disciplinary interests and universities. i hope we are on the same side. >> is there anything peculiar about your approach to history