1200-page books. these are the three books they have a lot of. and they have individual titles as well. those who have my tour booklet, we take 10,000 people a year to europe. the economy sucks but we're going to still take 8,000 people this year and i just -- you know, we just weather the storms and i've noticed -- it might be interesting to you if you're selling tours what's not selling we've got 6,000 people sold already for next year and we'll be just fine. i mean, if people overreact to this in a lot of ways but what's not selling is the introductory tours. and what is really selling very well are the advanced tours. turkey, the basque countries, the people who return so my -- what i derive from that is, certain people are hell bent are traveling and they're going to put off whatever to travel because that's part of their lifestyle, other people have never traveled but it's a little scary right now and they'll wait there are a lot of people still

traveling but that's sort of the scenario. those who picked up the maps, that's just the way to locate all my favorite destinations. i had 20 maps left and rather than make y'all not get them, i rewarded the people who came first by giving them a copy of a map for those who came later. the first 20 books that are bought over there get a free map, okay, so that gives you that europe map. if you're curious about my business it's explained in this packet, this newsletter and then this blog -- i'm just so old when i do a blog i go backwards and put it in print and the most important thing is my journal from this iran experience and you all got that in your packages so i guess the routine is, i stay here and sign books or whatever and thank you very much. it's great to see you. [applause] >> rick steves is the author of many travel guides for europe and host travel shows on public television and public radio. mr. steves also writes a weekly

syndicated column for the "chicago tribune." for more, visit big -- rick steves.com.

>> there's lots more books and authors every weekend on book tv. our website has the entire schedule and great new features including streaming video, archives that are easy to search and simple ways to share your favorite programs. booktv.org. >> in her new book abigail thernstron says the 1965 voting acts right was official but in its current form is harmful to minorities. she said by creating majority black congressional districts in southern states, the candidates elected have limited appeal for the general electorate. from the american enterprise institute here in washington, she's joined by richard pildes of new york university law and michael carvin. this is about two hours. >> thank you very much for joining us at today's event. i'm henry olson. i'm vice president at the american enterprise institute and director of its national research initiative. the nri is an entity with aei

that financially supports original research and writing on questions of domestic public policy. and is the proud sponsor of the book that's the subject of today's event. voting rights and wrongs, the elusive quest for racially fair elections available for purchase at www.aei.org, i might add. the five most important words in american political history are all men are created equal. ultimately, virtually every political question is how to apply these words to the question at hand and every one of those applications requires americans to answer three questions. who are men? what does it mean to be created equal? and does being created equal imply an inequality of fact in light of the circumstances and the question at hand. nowhere can we see this more clearly than our long-standing national discussions on race. as abraham lincoln so aptly said during the 1860 presidential

election, the slavery question revolves solely around the question whether black skinned human beings were men within the declaration's promise. the century that followed saw a myriad of political discussions and debates that culminate in the civil rights revolution that essentially asked whether one could be said to be created equal if one were the subject of legal and social discrimination, exclusion and ostizism because of the color of their skin and today's debates on affirmative action and debate policy answer this question in the last trilogy namely whether being created equal is really being equal if one sees the distribution of economic, political and social goods in this country being distributed not on the basis of a rough portion of different race groups and ethnic groups of the proportion. dr. abigail thernstrum has

worked on these questions. sometimes in conjunction with her husband steven and sometimes on her own. she has written and analyzed the most emotional topics in today's political debate including affirmative action, education, and the subject of today's book and event, voting rights. of these perhaps voting rights is the most important because our experiment in republican self-government ultimately rests on the idea that all men, all people can participate equally in the political and electoral life of our country that determine what we do and who we are. what that means, what it is -- what is meant by equal participation is a much thornier question than is commonly understood and it is that thorny question which the doctor works to untangle in her book and will start to elucidate today.

she's an adjunct scholar at aei and a member of the board of advisors at the u.s. election commission. she was a senior fellow from 1993 to 2009 and a member of the massachusetts state board of education for more than a decade. in 2007, she was awarded a bradley prize by the bradley foundation for outstanding intellectual achievement. her previous study of the voting rights act, whose votes act published by harvard university press won four awards including the american bar association's certificate of merit. she is the co-author with her husband steven of no excuses, closing the racial gap and learning and america in black and white, one nation indivisible. following her presentation, we'll be joined by two experts in voting rights law, first professor richard peldes who is the professor of constitutional law at the new york university school of law will speak. he's one of the nation's leading scholars of public law and a

specialist in legal issues affecting democracy. he is widely considered to be one of the nation's leading scholars on the voting rights act and is the coeditor of the future of the voting rights act published bit russell sage foundation fliers of which are available at the front desk at the check-in. he is also the -- written for the "new york times," "the wall street journal," the new republic and similar publications and has also served as counsel in election litigation to the puerto rico electoral commission and is a federal court appointed expert on the voting rights litigation. concluding our discussion is michael card -- carvin and has argued numerous cases before the supreme court including decisions limiting the justice's department to create majority/minority districts and upholding the ban on racial preferences in california. prior to joining jones day he

served at the justice department as special assistant to the attorney general and as deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division. please join me in giving a warm welcome to dr. abigail thernstrum. [applause] >> provided i'm not too short for this. i'd rather be here if i'm not too short and i think that this book is going to be in my line of sight. well, thanks, henry, that was a lovely, gracious introduction. thanks to everybody at aei who has made this book possible. and thanks as well to michael carvin and rick pildes. these are two incredibly eminent men who have busy schedules and for whom i have the deepest intellectual admiration and they made time to come here so i feel very indebted. well, what a terrific time to be

talking about minority voting rights. not only do we have an enormously important supreme court decision on the constitutionality of the most radical provision in the 1965 voting rights act sure to be announced by the end of this month. but more importantly, the election of barack obama marked the close of an era. and the welcomed beginning of a new one. what everyone thinks of his politics, his stunning success with 43% of the white vote and record high turnout by minority voters is a historic turning point. integration was the aim of the civil rights movement in the 1950s, much of the 1960s and by the ultimate test, american politics is now integrated. blacks have been a major political force for decades.

and now an african-american man has reached the highest peak. when the 1965 voting rights act was passed it was inconceivable that americans would elect a black president four decades older. i am old enough to remember the sit-ins in the winter of 1960 and '61. i picketed woolworths as a harvard graduate student in those days. the state of race relations that i have witnessed in my own lifetime is unparalleled in the history of any other nation. the passage of the voting rights act marked the death knell of the jim crow south. it was one of the great moments in the history of american democracy. >> thank you.

>> and actually if there was a glass of water around, i would love to have it. i got a scratchy voice. the voting rights act is the crown jewel of federal civil rights law. but the enforcement of the statute today arguably serves as a break on the political aspirations and a barrier on black political aspirations and a barrier to greater political integration. most black legislators are elected in majority black districts created to meet the demands of the statute. while the country has moved steadily, if unevenly towards racial integration, the law has created a black legislative class generally inexperienced in putting together biracial

coalitions, elected from districts in which there are no political pressures to move to the center. black representatives tend to be too isolated from mainstream politics and are on the sidelines of american political life. precisely the opposite of what the statute intended and precisely the opposite of what is needed today. representative james clyburn is the distinguished house majority whip with a great history. and yet one cannot imagine him winning statewide office in south carolina moving up, say, to the u.s. senate. too few aspiring or incumbent black politicians try to one in majority white settings, identity politics is their skill. furthermore, those majority black districts do not mobilize

black voters as is sometimes said. they tend to depress black turnout due to the absence of competition. the enforcement of the 1965 voting rights act still rests on the assumption that blacks need those safe black districts in order to win public office. with a barack obama as president, america is ready for a voting rights act premised on the belief that racial animus is a marginal element in american politics. moreover, the voting rights problems that are now of greatest concern bear no relationship to those that plagued the south in 1965. we have entered a new era which calls for new law. as henry ellison said, minority

voting rights is not a new topic for me. 22 years ago i wrote a book called "whose votes count" published by harvard university press. in subsequent years as he said i continued to write on race but i set aside the whole question of minority voting rights. i returned to it now because i still believe as i did in 1987 that no race-related topic is more important. if race continues to be the american dilemma, and i think it surely does, then a democratic government and minority representation is front and center as we continue to put behind us our very ugly racial history. we are awash in questions to which congress, courts and the justice department have given no satisfactory answers in the 44

years they have been interpreting, enforcing and refashioning the 1965 statute. we want racial equality in the american polity, blacks free to form coalitions and choose candidates in the same manner as other citizens. but how do we know when we have realized that aim? i tried in "whose votes count" to grapple with racial equality in american politics, how we know it when we see it and i try once again in voting rights and wrongs. it's not simply an updated version of my earlier work. it's a continuation of the same argument of additional new material from the last two decades. yes, there is continuity. but they also differ the two works in important respects. my thinking has changed over

time. in "whose votes count" i did not argue as many charged that ballots in black hands simple enfranchisement would have suffice to create true political equality. while the framers of the 1965 act had expected southern resistance to enfranchisement. imagine keeping blacks away from the polls. they had not anticipated states like mississippi try to keep blacks out of elected office by changing the rules of the political game. i understand then and i believe more -- believe more firmly today that only overwhelming federal power would have destroyed the jim crow south. more federal power than was contemplated than the original

1965 act was needed. some states in the south were clearly determined to maintain the racial caste system in which whites were entitled to govern. and in 1969 the supreme court expanded the definition of discriminatory voting practices to include devices like county-wide voting that diluted the impact of the black vote. it was the first great turning point in a radical refashioning of the statute but the decision had been forced upon the court by southern racist in which i fully acknowledge. it requires racially suspect jurisdictions they're identified by a statistical trigger this. this event changes in the

justice department or the seldom-used district court to submit them for preclearance that is for preapproval before they go into effect. section 5 is a prophylactic measure, a means of stopping racist mischief before it starts. most of the covered jurisdiction is texas and arizona, 3 boroughs in new york city and california and elsewhere, places of no history of black disenfranchisement or hispanic disenfranchisement felt by southern blacks. and all these distributions covered the burden of proving that the submitted changes are not motivated by racial enmisis on the jurisdiction itself, a city that has submitted a change in voting procedure for

preclearance has to prove a negative, an absence of discrimination. when a state or other jurisdiction fails to prove to the satisfaction of the justice department that a new districting plan cannot be suspected of discrimination, suspicion being sufficient to condemn a plan, that jurisdiction must go back to the drawing board. the justice department generally insists that maps contained as many majority/minority districts, safe black districts as it is possible to draw. in my earlier work, i stressed the high cost of race-based districting to make sure black votes were not diluted. to make sure they carried sufficient weight to elect black candidates. enforcement of the statute became infused with racial

sorting and racial stereotyping. all blacks were assumed to be alike and different than whites who are also viewed as all alike. those who enforced the statutes saw minorities and whites as separate nations in affect with our nation. separate nations that required separate political space. and yet special arrangements that provide privilege protection for minority candidates are a serious distortion of a democratic system in which ethnic groups have no collective rights to representation. the cost of race-driven maps still impresses me. at the end of the day, true political equality demands not group rights to representation but a system that recognizes citizens as individuals with fluid identities free to emphasize their racial or ethnic heritage as they wish and to

coalesce in any manner they might choose. rights are individual in america. our liberty depends on that belief. the 14th amendment it should be recalled stops states from denying the equal protection of the law to any person not to any group. but in writing this book, i came to believe that a certain amount of temporary and limited race-conscious districting was essentially to integrating legislative bodies from school boards to county councils, to state legislators and congressional delegations from the south. black candidates needed protection from white competition in settings in which most whites were unwilling to vote for black candidates.

the racial attitudes that had sustained the segregated south did not disappear overnight. that context was an important precondition. and it should not have been assumed that blacks always lose elections as a consequence of racial hostility, as the consequence of racial hostility. partisan and other normal political factors defeat candidates of every color. the creation of race-based districts in the region of historic disfranchisement was analogous to high tariffs that help the infant steal industry get started. they gave the black political industry an opportunity to get on its feet before facing the full force of equal competition. today, african-americans are on their feet and playing a decisive role in the outcome of many elections.

no democrat since lyndon johnson would have become president without the nonwhite vote. political bargaining over districting maps is intrical to self-government. the voting rights act was built on legitimate distrust of such bargaining in the south. but for how long should that distrust have continued? the answer -- the question has no clear answer. some have argued only through the early '80s a round of redistricting and the early map-drawing of the early 1990s justice department intervention or threatened intervention was at least partly responsible for the 14 new majority black congressional districts that were created all but two in the south. that produced a jump in the number of southern blacks in the u.s. house of representatives

from 5 to 17. the importance of those gains cannot be lightly dismissed. as uncomfortable as i am with what chief justice john roberts has called all this divvying up, all this racial sorting. many conservatives dismiss the importance of descriptive representation. blacks representing blacks. but the history of legislatures in the south in which only whites sat made the presence of blacks both symbolically and substantively important. racially integrated legislative settings worked to change racial attitudes, most southern whites had little or no experience working with blacks as equal and undoubtedly saw skin color as telling in terms of talent and competence. when blacks became legislative

colleagues, their presence inhibited the expression of racist sentiments. conversations in the public arena changed. i've suggested that a certain degree of race conscious districting was necessary but i do not defend what are often called bug splat districts, districts that have also been described by federal courts as rorshach ink blot tests. the justice department was totally indifferent to supreme court decisions interpreting section 5 and that assumed black candidates were entirely dependent on the creation of districting -- districts that were at least 65% majority minority despite the fact that black legislators in georgia and elsewhere came to think otherwise.

the department wanted districting maps that provided minority representation roughly proportionate to the minority population and assumed that all black voters had the same political interest. the result was jergerrymandered districts they moved from the central city and the suburbs and did not think of themselves as part of the community from which they had worked so hard to escape. in addition, what is sometimes called a max black districting was a product of a justice department that labeled maps as driven by intentional discrimination if a civil rights group had come up with an allegedly better plan. if a state's legislative black caucus had submitted the state's supported plan that was not necessarily considered relevant. minority legislators, the

assistant attorney for civil rights explained in 1993 may have a host of political and thus unacceptable reasons for going along with a state's redistricting map. he had greater trust, he made clear, in advocacy groups such as the aclu and the naacp and he saw the motives of such group as pure. in contrast, to those of black state legislators. by 1993 when the assistant attorney -- assistant attorney general for civil rights gave this speech the creation of numerous majority black districts would have been the natural result of demography, of residential patterns in addition as time went on black legislators had become important political players in the districting process. they would have successfully insisted on a number of safe black districts. the legislative coatas upon

which the justice department would have considered was completely unjustified. state redistricting committees on which blacks serve do not generally draw tortured race-driven districts. they accommodate the interests to all who sit around the table. extreme racial jerry man derring was a result of a lawful justice department imposing its own agenda on states. the justice department along with the civil rights community assumed in a racially fair society there would be proportional representation not only on legislative bodies but also on places of employment, schools, every other corner of american life. and, yet, statistical disparities between groups are evident everywhere. the standard of proportionality and fact rests on a profound misconception on the natural distribution of racial and ethnic groups across the