interesting dichotomy, that he is a liberal pragmatist, he's not a lib call theologian. he will, he will push on liberal issues -- more government, using government to help people, this sort of thing -- but he's not interested in running off a cliff in frustration and futility. so there's a point where he will hold up and say, well, if we can get half of what we want or whatever, let's do that and not just try to be too ideological about it. now, i happen to think that's right. but how that's manifested is a big question that we're going to have, and i think we're going to see a lot of that on the regulation. the more he does with the regulation, the more i think a lot of conservatives are going to just be furious that he's sort of defying the will of the people as they see it and going around congress and that sort of thing. and so that's going to really stir up the pot. and, you know, he's, obama, i

think, at heart is really not a confrontational guy, and so that's, that's a big question for the next two years, how much will he -- is he willing to confront the republicans and draw these stark lines or not? and just one final point on that, i was reminded of this whole notion of obama as a guy who does not like confrontation during his vacation in hawaii. a lot of people think of him as a chicago creature, you know, the arm twisting, tough politics from chicago. but he was brought up this his younger years in the hawaii which is a whole different atmosphere. something called the aloha spirit. everybody needs to get along. and he was really deeply affected by this. he talks about it to his friends all the time, and a lot of people at the white house say, well, when he goes to hawaii, he's not going on vacation, he's going home. and he's getting refreshed with this whole idea of all these people living in the these islands in the middle of the pacific, and they have to get along because there's no other

place for them to go. that's, at least, how they define it there. .. not sort of fire in spine there. that is another saying that will be tested. i have interviewed obama a number of times and you get the sense he is a reasonable guy and maybe he is going to have to stand up and say no a few times

to be taken seriously in negotiation. >> after the lame-duck this last month didn't some republicans feel they had gotten snookered by obama? that he gave up some but got a lot. >> he did but the feeling is they did get all the tax cuts which is a big goal. so whatever conservative objections to the s.t.a.r.t. treaty weber overwhelmed and a lot of that is blamed on the experience fading very quickly and people think 2012 is what we are focused on now. some people thought that conservatives could have gotten

more from obama. a lot of liberals thought he was too quick to compromise. >> the idea is isaiah x at you say not x, and maybe not x. the president when he negotiated the past deal volunteered social security, volunteered cutting into the social security payroll tax. and what they consider, that democrats overproduced. they do not want to begin cutting into the viability of social security, not that the president was enrolled in to doing it, in a sense. they need a term other than roles. >> it is true.

there is a sacred relic of the democratic party, venerated by all democrats of social security. one thing about my students in my american government class, i see the eyes glaze over. here you have arizona and other states basically challenging federal immigration policy by passing laws that clearly even the most flexible reading of the constitution says is purely in the realm of the federal government. >> we have been talking about the dynamic between three federal grants of government. a lot of states, congress isn't going to fix on that. to have this legislation in

arizona which outlaws hiring illegal aliens in a way that doesn't quite fit the federal scheme. you also have it in global warming. a number of states have gone ahead on regulating climate change in industry where congress hasn't yet acted. it is a constant issue before the supreme court. it does seem -- it is hard to make it come alive but it is very important dynamic. the supreme court hasn't really got a clear position on it. it almost depends, what is the state going ahead and doing and

if we like that, is ok and if we don't it is not okay. when states start doing wacky liberal things like medical marijuana or the right to die and all of a sudden justices who are in favor of state sovereignty and suddenly find a reason to oppose it because they don't like what those particular states are doing. it is a shifting scenario that is hard to predict. >> let's bring the audience in on that. questions for our panelists. [inaudible] >> -- take a while for supreme court to go on the health care

bill, maintain what we already talked about. [inaudible] >> that is a good question. if you ask a justice that question he or she would say we don't pay attention to public opinion. but of course that is not true. they live in the world and read newspapers. public opinion will be a factor. there is an issue like that that is so complex you could find reasons to say yes to uphold it and turn it down. it is not like a clear black-and-white issue. how do you choose one or the other? public opinion will be a factor. if for example in the next six months the public starts to like the health care reform and say we are getting these benefits,

don't take them away, that will be a factor that the court would consider. they would not say it but they will. >> i want to ask about the panel's and how you think about obama preparing to deal with gingrich. >> between john boehner and obama? the new speaker and obama? what you are hearing is a lot of talk that john boehner is not as hard a case as newt gingrich. he doesn't want to be as up front. you are seeing a lot of coverage of that. he is not calling all the

attention to himself. he is a more humble speaker. obama is going to try to use what some people in the white house are calling a charm offensive with john boehner and some of these other people. that is an overstatement of what is going to happen but john boehner is a golfer. so you will see obama ask him to play golf. he will ask people to camp david. maybe this is a superficial. he is a good golfer. that is a good distinction to make. we might not seem many shots. i think you will see him try to use the personal dimensions of the white house and his personality which obama has not done a lot of. and liberals or the media for that matter, you will see more

of a personal relationship and smooth a lot of rough sharp edges but on the policy i don't see that making much of a difference. in this end they go back to their beliefs and caucuses and their politics. so you might have a little more court reality in public. it is not generally realized that clinton and gingrich got along very well privately. they actually saw a lot of common traits in each other. very smart sort of intellectual, they knew or thought they knew something about everything. that sort of thing. in public they did not come across that way. >> there are some areas where they could agree, much to the discomfort of parts of their party's. education is one of those. i have been astonished that the

bush administration could put through an education plan in a party that campaign to eliminate the department of education, put through a plan that gave a strong role the federal government. very controversial strong role the federal government. what does president obama do? he takes the superintendent from the bush years and make some education secretary and then precisely the same set of assumptions that accountability is good and testimony is good and we need to hold feet to the fire of schools that are not performing and teachers not performing and teachers' unions that are not performing. and the republican congress and obama education cracking down. appalling fought that could happen.

>> the incredible percentage of the national association, they delegated -- >> it is a huge part of the democratic base, unions and teachers' unions in particular and the fact that the president would be considering these does not fit any model that i know of. >> question? yes, you? >> talk about immigration allow immigrants a under certain circumstances, a popular issue of debate. >> i don't know. reporters are not supposed to have -- i think it is kind of a

dead letter now. it won't pass. it probably would be constitutional. >> defect is reporters are different from columnists who write opinion pieces. if you deal in the way that dale and tony call them as you see him and call it straight and not inject your own opinion in do the reporting that you do.

[inaudible] >> how do you think the midterm election will affect the 2012 presidency and do you sank over the next two years there may be any surprises that come out of washington that will be changed by the government? >> the midterms will have more of an effect on republicans than democrats. there's a lot of chatter in the democratic party about obama being nominated. the only real challenge he would face is not from anything except anti-war liberals because when i get the sense that there is no person who could carry the banner effectively and generate enough emotion and response to make the challenge worthwhile except in the anti-war left so a

lot will depend on what happens in afghanistan this summer, the rate of withdrawal and what will happen in iraq. a lot of people are increasingly upset that obama is adopting bush policies stay in iraq and afghanistan. that will be the only place i can see a challenge and i don't think that is going to happen. i don't think it will be that different. the midterms will not make that much difference for obama. everyone expects him to run again. on the republican side it has an impact because you have this tea party factor. a lot of presidential candidates are seeing is a power that tee party had in some places and are worried about getting outflanked to the right. that is the concern. you can fill out a dozen names

and who might run. the conventional wisdom is in republican presidential politics there are slots, avenues that candidates run in to get the nomination. there is the person at the top of the latter. the entitlement candidate who ran before, that person's turn like bob dole or ronald reagan and this very common feeling in the party. so there is the person whose turn is and the fiscal conservative wing and social conservative wing and a business type outsider. it may not be that way but that is the way a lot of republicans think of it. you have these people take on these roles and get the nomination through those different ways. most of the time the entitlement candidate becomes a nominee but that may not happen this time.

a lot of candidates are paying close attention to this tea party conservative resurgence in the party and that is going to be a big story. >> i love your question because all elections in a way set up the next one weather it is the next president who is not the last one. the pattern we have seen in the past. what is interesting about these is what happened with the state house and the governor. because suddenly you have tremendous republican gains in state houses and in legislatures. it is a republican legislator who will decide how to redistrict. the census was a big boost to stake that vote republican but that is misleading because if you look with in those states, those states have big cities. the big cities often vote

democratic. who gets to cart it up? you create your new districts. districts that will help republicans and you carve up the state's that lose states, lose seats. you take them away in a way that disadvantages democrats more than it helps republicans. those are political questions but so much of what has happened in the elections, the result is gerrymandered districts. you look at them on a map and you know that no rational reason the district should look like this. some are not even contiguous any more. as a result typically the most are not competitive at all. i remember being astonished to run across an essay or a speech that richard strauss who is a long time honored writer of public best known writing for the monitor for 70 years.

he had two voice is. in the monitor his voice was very balanced. historical, looking forward, looking back. it is fun to read what he wrote in both the news. he wrote a speech in the mid 60s and said how appalling it was that the house was so gerrymandered that it was not competitive. in any given election 0 mort 10 half of the seats were competitive. if it is 35 of 345 you think very competitive election. look how much has changed. so who gets to decide where the district are? fact that republican legislatures and republican governors when the census had advantage republicans states that is a big issue. not as personal as some of the

political campaigns are. it is structural. that is why i like your question. it has a lot to do with what politics in the next we can use like. >> you mentioned obama as being soft. some people say boring. and his enthusiasm for this election changed his support level. >> that is an interesting question. we have been following this in a very impressive way. some people fink that obama is boring. i have interviewed him four times. you hear this from a lot of his friends and people around him.

obama is not a backslapping storytelling sort of personable kind of guy in person. in the campaign he seemed to be this tremendously charismatic figure bad as people are learning to deal with him in private he is very -- apologies to ross, professorial. he is very methodical and disciplined. if you interview him i wouldn't say he is dull but he takes his time explaining things in a very careful way. he will come back at a question. most presidents i have interviewed and i have covered five now don't come back to questions. they want to leave and move on. he will say you ask me something ten years ago and i would like to speak further on that. and he will go on. you see this in news conferences, the links of his answers frustrates a lot of white house reporters because he only calls 12 or 13 reporters in

an hour because his dancers are so long. a lot of people interpret that as dull or monotonous or whatever. he is really trying to explain himself. i don't think he is trying to stall. he wants people to learn what he wants to say and usually if a president who gets 20 questions, this is a little more than half so that causes of feelings and the press getting to enough people but what this means in policy terms is people wonder if obama is reaching out enough in a personal way to them. you hear this from people who talk to him from associates who he wants to get something from. not like he will say how is your family? or finding something to bond

with a person with. he doesn't do that. last time i interviewed him when i walked in, instead of asking about common experience he might have had with any other president has done in my experience, he said i have been for only brief. fire away. that is how we got through the interview. that is the way he is. last question. >> how much influence do the people on the 2012 election compared -- these things republicans can win with the tea party candidate, form among

them. >> anybody. >> there are mixed results. sharon angle in nevada and other places, you can lose as a key party candidate even if you win the republican nomination but there's a lot of concern as i said earlier that among republicans they will be challenged. just a challenge in a primary care is a lot of them. 30% sensitivity to ted purdy activism and conservative activists. that is a big impact not only in rhetoric about legislation. >> you will not see real cuts between now and then. who will they be? with the striking teachers or firemen or police? or public-sector backlash and will there be sympathy for that?

people who are unemployed or underemployed. and some of these have usually union suspects. to counter what they say. hard to predict what they look like. unemployed, underemployed. and not necessarily supporting the typical tea party agenda. >> i thank all three of you. [applause]

>> the value to you and tony, they have touched the bonds, spent time and they know them on a personal basis. and understanding what is going on. and the famous presentation. [inaudible] >> look what i brought with me. [applause] >> i appreciate your time on behalf of the washington center.

thank you for spending your morning with us. >> the one hundred twelfth congress convenes at noon on wednesday. ohio republican john data will be elected speaker and members will vote on rules for the next two years. the senate is live on c-span2 and will have a live quorum to bring all senators to the floor for swearing in of the newly elected senators. richmond will be the new representative for the we see and have second district which includes most of new orleans. he was born in 1973 and has been state representative since 2,000. north dakota's new senator is john hogan, former bank executive and his family live in bismarck where he was born in 1957. he succeeds byron dorgan who

retired. >> every weekend on c-span3 experience american history tv. 48 hours of people at the events telling the american story. historic speeches and eyewitness accounts of the events that shaped our nation. visit historical sites and college campuses as professors and leading historians delve into america's past. american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-spannumber 3. >> the live events to tell you about on c-span. the inauguration of florida's new governor rick scott will be live from tallahassee and one eastern. at 2:00 the heritage foundation hosts republican senator lamar alexander of tennessee for discussion on how the filibuster is used in the senate. >> good morning.

as you know, if this is the panel on the causes of conflict. >> before and make a few introductory remarks i would like to introduce our distinguished guests. to my immediate right is professor michael scharf, that john and baker professor of law and director of the frederick cox international center at?aul

following him as professor paul robinson, professor of international affairs at the university of ottawa. tarkr him is lieutenant colonel john stark from mount summit, mt indiana, and currently professor of military science at princeton university. and graduate at west point. jeffrey helsing is the dean at the conflict management and peace building at the united states institute of peace. he oversees much of the ov development purda. finally, we have major carlos teixiera.

he is in the artillery branch. all of these distinguished guests are going to be talking about the causes of conflict and the possible resolutions to accomplish. my name is jimmy piven. as someone who studies the history of ideas, i find a confounding how the history of humanity is one soak replete with a violent predatce. toward the end of "hamlet," we see an army marching over a client of verot ground. "what can the purpose of such bloodshed be?" it is attempting to sympathize

that history is a madhouse. we have 14,600 recorded wars in human history. how do we explain that? sometimes, we have very simplistic answers, a cliche answers. some shed light. sen dunite -- some do night. these all seem to make sense. given that history, is it enough to explain our proclivity toward violence? does it explain how soldiers could abandoned babies or force fathers to rape father's? does it explain the belief that what is so evil about the west is that there is a free mixing

of they sexes. does it explain the counts of being they talk about in survivor? there seems to be an incredible access. there is so much to conflict we need to unearth. there are many theories of violence. some see it as the expression of human nature coming out. some talk about the psychological need for enemies and allies. a buddhist philosopher friend of mine talked about the inner

that motivate us to attack others. research can talk about humiliation or even the fear of death that can inspire otherwise seemingly ordinary people to harm those deemed different. i am going to open this up to the group.how do we explain conflct? what can we do about it? >> would you like us to go to any particular order? . am happy to jump in greta i came to this issue years ago when i was attorney adviser at the u.s. department of state.

i've worked on the legal issues involving the breakup. those led to a terrible ethnic outbursts, religious fighting and genocide. they decided to create a responsible.for those i remember the day i was in the courtroom watching as the chief presiding judge, if you had been an american, a former civil rights attorney, and she along with two others where presiding. she looked out at the u.n. and said "i do not understand its." the expert says, "let me try to help you. where are you confused?"

she said, "this was a country that had the best level of inter religious marriage of any country in the world, even the united states. the ethnic groups got along so well it was showcased recently in the winter olympics. all of a sudden there is a conflict. people kill each other and they know people are killing. they are killing their neighbors. they do it. how could it happen?" the u.n. experts look better and thought she had to explain it in a way the judge from the u.s. will understand. she said, "picture what would happen in the united states if all of the newspapers and all of the radio stations and all of the television stations were all controlled by the government and that the government started to beam the broadcast to the

population 24-hours, seven days a week stating that -- let's just say a right. there's a thin line between civilization and barbarism. what keeps us on the right side of the line is government and free press. and when the government takes over the free press, control all but the information that is going out and when the government becomes controlled by people whose politics indicate

that to maintain power it would be useful to find some kind of an enemy. this happens all over the place. that's the ingredient for mass ethnic violence, or genocide and for conflict. so to answer one of your -- to answer your question, at least with one respect, how does genocide occur, how does this mass ethnic racial or religious violence occurred, we know the ingredients. those ingredients were proven in that case. they were proven a couple years later by the rwanda tribunal in tanzania. they have been proven just a daily now in the cambodia tribunal, which is finishing its second trial now in cambodia. so we are learning quite a bit about it. one of the scary lessons is if we don't have it free press, the government can unleash the worst of humankind. and that will lead us down this terrible road.

>> i have to look down at it. i think conflict per se is a natural part of any human society because different people have different interests. so we'll always be in conflict with one another. the question is really why people choose to resolve conflicts with force but as an individual level that is fairly explicable. if you can't eat any other way it's an easy way to do. collectively though it's hard to explain because collectively it rarely makes sense. it could cost benefit analysis. very, very few wars make profit, collectively. even if you achieved your collective goals you normally do so at a price which is not worth it. and very often you don't have a collective go anyway. so from a purely sort of collection rationality, perspective it doesn't make

sense of human activity. but it can make sense for certain individuals or groups. so collectively it is not profitable undertaking, certain people believe it that some people profit from it. and the problem therefore is one of destruction. it's about power is in the hands of certain people and and and balanced way and also that elite to make the decisions tend to think in a certain way which is not always to my personal point of view the american sociologist steve wright mills once said the problem of u.s. foreign policy, was that they were into what he called crackpot realism. that's to say they think they are realists and that they understand how it operates. as a result their realism is completely cracked.

but unless you think like that, you won't get a job or be taken serious. you are not considered a serious person. so, you know, it's not just people tend to like blame george bush or whatever, but it's not just george bush or whatever. there's a way of thinking within the establishment which is not easily broken. and are, even though something has collectively stupid comp it happens anyway. that's one problem and we just heard about the magic of the press was controlled by the government. it is even in democracies surprisingly controlled. united states has a grand total of about 100 foreign correspondents. that so many u.s. journalists are based overseas. about 100. they are in london, paris, tokyo, beijing. nowadays in baghdad and kabul. that's basically it. so the way the press, the modern

right stories, company press releases. and they read the routers for the ubi or whatever. and he plagiarized. because they have to do by five minutes time. and there's fewer and fewer journalists in corporation. they have to get that quicker and quicker. basically a copy. that's what each of a different newspapers you'll find pretty much the same store in all of them. so it is remarkably easy to manipulate the press even in a democratic country. you can see us in the buildup to the iraq war. you keep churning out stories about weapons of mass destruction, so we're not even as an into that now in our society as we would like to imagine. another point which prevents us

analyzing things rationally, collectively, psychological of individuals and groups, we are not very good as human beings at making rational judgment. weekend to analyze risk extremely badly. we become extremely terrified by act of terrorism, for instance. where we are a million times more likely to be killed in a car crash. you think you can control them and terrorism you can't. so you overreact to danger. that's just one of many type. psychologist can probably give us more. whole bunch of other psychological things that mean we don't really acted irrationally. and as a result we think that resorting to violence help us when, in fact, like it was picking it doesn't. >> okay, i guess it's my turn.

being in uniform at the peace summit, might seem that i am the adversary of war but i assure you that i have an interest in peace that probably at least hand in hand with my colleagues here, maybe on because i have been stationed in iraq and i wear a bracelet of my comrades names who have died in combat. and i feel very strongly that this event and things like his are very healing for the country. i appreciate the young people that have come here, the veterans, scholars. it's a very great group of americans, and also international guests. this is really great because you all here, thank you for inviting me, shannon. i will give you three ways of thinking about the causes of conflict that are not mine. i am at heart a soldier. i am an armor officer. i grew up not far from here. i could probably relate to your lives, except i grew up in the '70s and '80s with a dose of sports and ronald reagan cold war patriotism, and joined the

military so that i could go to college for free. you may not have had to do that i don't know if all of you have scholarships, but i grew up in a trailer park in indiana, so i thought the military was a very enticing way to pay for my education. it has continue to educate me, sent me to ohio state to get a ph.d and i have taught at west point, history, and i taught at princeton that i'm teaching now they're a history course. i look at the world like a story but also a soldier. there are three ways to look at this problem from my perspective that are very useful. one is very simple. there's a friend of mine who teaches anthropology. he's writing a book right now about the causes of conflict. he looks at human beings as one of many species on the planet that engage in conflict, organize conflict, or something that looks like war. and gets together and wage war on each other, believe it or not aid do it.

what makes americans -- humans different? we deliberate about it. we have philosophies about it. we talk about it. we vote on a. then we do it even if it may or may not look like it's the only option. we still don't sometimes. this may not give you hope for humans if we are looking like ants and eight. however, there is examples in the study we can look at the vikings in the 800, 900, the ninth, 10th century. they were very violate peoples. and now you could not imagine norway and sweden going to war with each other or a bunch of guys rolling out and about and raging on the coast of england. it wouldn't happen. so there is hope, and instead is how do we get to that where everyone can be like denmark. that may not be the only example. i think that study is interesting, but there's to others ways of looking at it that i consider more important,

because people are using them to justify conflicts not as a hope to stop it. that clash of cultures theories, daniel huntington, is the idea that we're all kind of, we grow their own culture, you guys here in ohio and you like the browns and you don't like war, but your culture is threatened by somebody else somewhere else who grows up doing something different with a different religion, or different thought process. they are scared of us invading them with ebay, coca-cola and mcdonald's. so we develop fears and we fight each other. that theory is not so hopeful, and we will probably be fighting each other forever. it is based in culture. it is not based in our species. a third theory which i happen to like which are penalties are here, very western oriented, the

end of history and the last man, by a harvard scholar, and his idea is that world history is the nice tour that ends with democracy, and that democracy is the genie that was let out of the bottle. overtime there's been a growth of the number of democracies. democracies don't fight each other. democracies in the negotiating in figure out a way to resolve conflict without fighting. and even if iran and north korea and hugo chavez came up with a lot of nuclear weapons, or obama went insane and bomb the whole world and almost killed everyone, the people that came out of the caves would want democracy because it's such a great system and we have proven it, and it will succeed again. this is a theory. now, the end of history is we have reached the pinnacle of human development, the last man part of is there's always going to be somewhere someone else who

wants to restore history and cause conflict because they don't like this result. i tend to like that theory and i think that is what we are seeing with terrorism. people who do not like the result of democracy. but i'm very biased that i am very patriotic and they do believe that democracy is the worst system of government in the world except for all the rest. you may have heard that before. but the clash of cultures is still alive, and we are a species which does have the instinct to fight each other. it's very complicated. those answers will not satisfy you and give you something simple to go home and write these three treestand and that's soldier wars. but that's the way that i look at it. thanks. >> i'm going to try to build on a couple of things that i've heard, and also throw a few other ideas out for consideration. the first thing that jumped at me, jumped out at me when i

heard the moderator was he interchanged to proclivities. a proclivity to conflict and a proclivity to violence. i would agree with the first but not the second. i don't think there is a human proclivity to violence. i think there is a proclivity to conflict. our challenge is to manage conflict in ways that we don't need to use violence. and, in fact, most human beings don't resort to violence. the problem you have is that out of the theater that colonel stark talked about, we oftentimes have those that do engage in violence. but that's not most people. in fact, the biggest problem has less to do with those who commit violence than those who are enablers of violence, or those who are bystanders while violence occurs.

and what's critical is to develop institutions, to develop prophecies both globally and locally that enable people to deal with their differences, disagreements, conflicts, without resorting to violence. that's one of the strengths of mature, deep-rooted democracy. is that they create institutions, laws, procedures, that allow for the peaceful resolution of this agreement. democracy itself, if you think about it, think about the election process we are going to in this country and will culminate in the election next tuesday, there are a lot of conflict. and it's a conflict of ideas, a conflict about parties, a conflict of visions. they key is to develop ways in

which you deal with those conflicts in peaceful ways. to promote democracy in societies that don't have those institutions to promote elections before you have the strong rule of law, to promote elections for competition before people have the confidence that it's not a winner take all, one shot chance that political power, you're going to have conflict. many of you may not have been in, in this room for the previous session, but an interesting activity took place, which was an activity to send messages of hope and peace all around the world via the use of flags. just had a blessing that was articulated for 192 countries. but what was interesting about it from the standpoint of

conflict is that there were three flags that were in this ceremony, tibet, taiwan and palestinians, that actually simply holding up with those flags in some areas are actually conflict inducing. one could also say, well, why weren't the flags of kyrgyzstan or mindanao or chechnya also included? in other words, what choices are made about nationality, self-determination, who has a right to become a nation or not? so one of the things that i think is really critical to think about in terms of conflict is that identity is a critical component of conflict because we don't see, as we did in much of the 20th century, we don't see states and actually soldiers in

uniform fighting most of the conflicts in the world today they are and i certainly respect the names on colonel stark's bracelet, but we are now in a world where actually few soldiers in a relative sense lose their lives in ward. 90% of the casualties are civilians. [inaudible] >> absolutely. partly what we need to focus on is the impact of violence on people who themselves are not hard, are not engage in violence, to respond to violent means. because what we have done, we have seen the world of will -- of what we might call conflict entrepreneurs. people who benefit from conflict. the ethnic cleansing in bosnia was really the result of those

elite who are looking for political power, and who are profiting from resources, the distribution of resources, the distribution of power. and they were fomenting fear and hatred. and what's remarkable, if you look at most conflicts, is that even in the midst of that kind of fear, hatred, the demonizing the other, most people aren't engaged in the violence. most people are actually just scared. they are bystanders. or they may be enablers. they may help provide public support for those who are carrying out the violence because they simply believe it's -- have not been, then those

people will do it to us. so one of the things that it's incumbent upon the international community is to help develop institutions means of dealing with inequities. and equities of distribution of resources, but also and equities of access. and when you think about it, that if you're in bosnia, part of the concern was that those other guys were going to gain control of just resources of such as money or minerals or arms, but also who's going to control education? what about access to health care? what about access to one's livelihood, job? if you don't have a system that is equitable, minorities will

feel that come in fact, they can't provide for basic needs. and one has to look at these structural causes of conflict that in can be exploited by conflict entrepreneurs, fear mongers, unscrupulous political leadership. and so it's important to address causes that are linked together, and not just focus on, well, human beings are just violate and, therefore, we have to find ways of keeping people apart, or find ways of in a sense dealing with the hobbesian world that we live in. i think we need to think much more about, i suppose, a more lockean view of the world in which that as human beings we

can find ways of preventing, managing and reducing the negative consequences of conflict. too often we look just at failures, but there are successes. let me just mention two very briefly. one, the crimean war or not the crimean war of the 19th century, but the crimean war that actually didn't happen after the breakup of the soviet union in which two nuclear armed countries, russia and ukraine, in fact had a great deal of conflict over the disposition of the crimea, partly because there was a majority of ethnic russians in a territory that came under ukrainian sovereignty. there was a lot of effort put into keeping a lid on conflicts and tensions in crimea in the

mid 1990s. through institutions like the organization of security cooperation in europe, through diplomacy, through working with local leaders, russian and ukrainian, and the crimea. by therefore surely we don't talk much about that. we don't teach about this in political science or international affairs at you think about another interesting example. the country of mali, in which after, there were violent conflicts, some of them were identity-based, tribal, that there was the future of mali was in significant jeopardy, even though you had in the 1990s and end that is officially to conflict, you had a peace agreement. you have political arrangement, violence was still percolating.

and through a series of conflict resolutions, and mediation effort at the local level, that actually percolate upwards and got embraced i the larger political process in mali, mali has actually had peaceful transitions of government, changes in power. and has developed conflict management techniques that is, in fact, much more prevalent throughout much of the society. again, violence that was prevented, the case that is not studied and not todd pierce i think we have to be very wary of just being cynical and pessimistic. and just say we have a proclivity to violence and that's what we have to focus on. what we also have to focus on is developing strong institutions of peace building at the global as well as at the local level.

>> well, i guess it's my turn. good morning for all. i would like to say that it's a great honor to be here, and i thank for invitation, and i think you to be here with us. well, i think that my colleagues pointed a lot of good points about the prospectus of law, social aspect, political aspects, economic aspects. i just wish to point some psychological aspects, that will not be an answer, but surely it will be another questions that will be pointed. altogether with those points.

i think that sigmund freud, when he wrote civilization and culture, he said something that any man could not kill the beast. he had inside himself. so there is a piece of nature that lies behind any social conflict. we have in latin enough reason that means man is a wolf of man himself. i think there is yet very main question. this may be regional duty of our civilization, and at the same time that's why we are a species

that thinks, because we can just form this duty and thoughts are also into evolution, also into mercy. social phenomena is not only in mind, only by reason. there is much of the motion. there is much of symbolism in it. if you, to our uniforms you will see for example, mine that is green, it is green because it of course reminds us, and you can see our badges that are signs of our ranks. you see the medals that

symbolize things we have done, and that is good. but also many times they are a kind of scar in our own scheme. because we pay a price many times, simple price for that. so we can hit this from many veterans here, and we do this with pride. we do this because we all pay orders and because we want to protect our society and ourselves. the conflicts will arise out of this on the reflection of these stations that our social

structure suffers. that we, ourselves, are the society. so i think that there is really a kind of aggressive instinct to survive, not to survive as a body, but to survive as a culture, survive as economic system, survive as political system. i would remind another writer that i like very much. he wrote a very interesting book called liquid military. -- mode energy. and his writing he says that during last century we have something like solid monteverdi

-- he means solid because he tells us that he values the culture at that time, was much more reasonable for those people that it might be now. or beef what was right was right and that was done. so decisions were very easy to do. remembering world war ii, it was very easy to choose a site to be with the good guys or the bad guys. and afterwards, we have seen myriad of great improvement. we were given a cold war bauman also tells us that in our present century we leave a kind

of "liquid modernity" because our values are not so stable. they are always changing. we cannot keep them always the same way. and why does this happens? maybe because we have some deficiency to understand the order, we have deficiency to understand diversity. and in our society we have many choices to do. it's easy to remind that last century we didn't have human choices of employment. you would be a doctor, an engineer, a cleric, but know this, can you imagine the diversity of jobs we have.

and yet we have plenty of unemployment at last century when somebody had bicycle, a motorcycle, a car, a house, that was almost lifetime of morphing. nowadays we want to change it every time. we must buy every new model car we can, and we borrow for those and we are getting stuck in borrowing money. so behind all this liquid values that are unavailable, we are just a little bit lost. we are just getting something that society may protect us enough because we have so much to choose.

i think that violence, that animal that freud said that lives with us, when we feel insecure we are not so able to sit here, this beast. on the other hand, i think that this moment is a very good moment for our evolution as people, as nations. because it forces us to change values among ourselves, among our governments, among our leads. so that we can understand better each other and understand ourselves. so that we can be really responsible for our choices, for our cooperation.

in these summits i have observed some testimonies that it is possible, for example, when i have seen the activities of ethnic -- profound hurts from the veterans. i just thought we are citizens of the society, even civilian. i think we have to hours to discuss, violence is not on the battlefield. violence is in our cities. violence is in our lives. we must remember about the violence against children, against women.

and economic violence. we must heal maybe ourselves. and again i think that sigmund freud, again, something important, that we must treat ourselves, and in treating ourselves we will treat our society. and getting to know each other, getting to hear each other, it would be easier. [applause] >> well, we have about 15 minutes before we open it up to the floor for questions. so i would like to do is ask our distinguished panel of you

questions based on what they said. and i found it all extremely fascinating and somewhat perplexing. and at first i would like to address what colonel teixeira said. if indeed we have this beast inside of us, it certainly behooves us to recognize that it is us and not only the other to it behooves us to examine ourselves and our proclivity and violent and so forth. and yet i have to ask this question. what is the nature of the so-called peace? yes, we have it but what is it? the other animal -- the other pl weight in a. doctor scharf referred to hobbes. and when hobbs has life is nasty solitary, prudish and short, not that hobbits are brutal and

short, but life is brutal and short, why is this the case? why are we so brutal? hobbes himself talks at least in part about fear, fear of death, the fear of not knowing what happens. after we expire. and some of you also dwelt upon the. doctor stork also talked about the conflict of civilizations. and i fear as well. doctor helsing mentioned fear and the demonization, the hatred. and i wonder where did these come from. what inspires the terror and the anxiety and the hatred and the demonization? and i'm reminded of some experiments that friends of mine have done, where they enacted

what they called mortality settings and options. they subliminally scared people with reminders of their own death. and they could motivate people, for example, to be sadistic to each other without the person realizing they were being sadistic to each other. can you imagine, you have these guys experiment in short order chef with a given an impression they put twice as much hot sauce and in the foods of those they believe to be in different ethnic groups, without realizing. even on a very banal ordinary level. more recently they did experiments where they gave inductions and even democratic minded people who thought bush was insane started to support bush's ideas because fear acted on them that way. so i ask, what is it is human nature, what is this beast on what is the nature of that beast? what is the complex

psychological architecture of humanity that distinguishes us from the answer, the line that dr. starr to mention because i suspect that we are as dr. teixeira said, symbolic animals. spirit i can jump in here. the whole discussion of what humans are naturally violent, there's a lot of literature to do it very controversial. you will get many zoologist who say certain types of animals are in nearly violent, for good evolutionary reasons. there are others who would say no and you get into discussions with chimpanzees are one of those. one of those genetically the same as chimpanzees but allegedly less violence. perhaps they're not actually. it depends who you read and all the rest of the. one thing we can say certainly that men are more violent than

women. this is a natural phenomena. close association with hormonal balances. i think it is very clear. however, it's not just a natural phenomenon. it's also a cultural one. it's how, for instance, how masculinity is interpreted. notches the fact that men are naturally more violent. it's sort of a historical process which goes something like this. but historically a society was prone to threats and, therefore, to protect itself needed people who are strong, courageous and good with weapons. so it encourages people to be strong, courageous and good with weapons by giving them honors. and people try to be strong, courageous and good with weapons, how do they prove that? they have to fight some of your so the process is a way of protecting, and ends up threatening it.

so it creates a cultural thought -- cultural phenomena by where honor and status are linked with strength at one thing we do not a human nature, humans are very naturally concerned with status. some interesting research done with monkeys and british civil servant as well. which your health is directly related to your status. not well. with wealth there's no reason to be healthy. it's your status that matters. you can do experiments with monkeys that you can move around and you can show them according to their level in the pack they have different levels of stress hormones. the height of your are less stress hormone jabar. which means actually having status is crucial. you really naturally care about. there is an inherent drive to

get status. that is part of the human nature. why is status associated with violence and competition? that cultural process which means that showing strength is what it's all about. and, therefore, the problem is that society make particularly deletes, you know, who make decisions feel that they must appear to be strong, and for some interesting things with lbj. allegedly it took down -- that's why we're in big not. he told his biographer that he had dreams, people shouting at him, week, wiggling, counter to him via time was about his masculinity. that is in part a natural phenomenon, but it's also a cultural one because we have associated power and strength

and honor. so culturally the way to eliminate war is to disassociate honor and strength and were fighting. and also democracy is necessary in a way to do that because a democracy can promote what people care about. one which psychologist said, a psychologist, a politician, the one thing we all have in common is the desire for applause. free markets and wealth, alternative avenues for which you can satisfy this desire. and as a result, eventually of the long-term we will become more peaceful but i also think it we are run by women it would be more peaceful.

>> i like that idea. what is -- what does the rest of the panel had to say about this? >> let me chime in. i do think that often war is caused by the elite and by the leadership. it's interesting how often countries will say we don't have anything against the united states, iraq said, we just hate president bush. and i think we said some things probably about ahmadinejad or chavez and some of the other leaders. the one thing that really distinguishes us from the animal kingdom is that we have systems of justice. this is something that we are starting to build up so that we have mechanisms to deter and make war less likely, and to be more costly to those who are committing them. so we have seen now in the last

20 years the proliferation of the international criminal tribunal, starting out with the tribunal i told you about before, the rwanda tribunal, the cambodia tribunal. does not a permanent international criminal court. the idea of these tribunals is they create a historic record so that as the famous american historian once said, if we don't remember the lessons of the past and the mistakes of the past, we will continue to be making those mistakes in the future. that was a terrible paraphrase, but you get the idea. also the idea the international criminal tribunals is that they avoid collective guilt. so that you don't have an example, nazi germany rose up because of the collective punishment that was instituted on germany after world war i and in a massive reparations. you have justice for the victims so they don't need to take into their own hands and have the agility is him. and there is evidence of growing

that where there is a reasonable likelihood that people will be prosecuted for these kinds of crimes that there is deterrence. so famously adolf hitler said in 1939 on the eve of the invasion of poland when he was going to ask his troops to commit total war and they were saying we are not sure we want to do that, we are afraid we will be held a candle. he said what are you talking about? let's look at world war i to look at what the turks and armenians, about a million of them were massacred. nobody has ever been held accountable for that and he said the famous quote who after all today remembers the fate of the armenians? and, therefore, his troops could launch their total war with impunity. those days are gone. we are now in an era where you see so many kinds of trials and so much discussion of international criminal accountability, an and parliames producing been into tv shows. just last week that simpson, the cartoons are shown in every country in work and every

language in the world had an episode where crusty the clown, one of the characters, was hauled before the international criminal court not for crimes because he many, but crimes against human. the idea is that everybody is learning about international criminal law and becoming pervasive. i think that this may be one of the ingredients that fights against human instinct and the human compulsions that always go to war. >> i'll give it a stab. in my clash of civilizations, clash of cultures, education is really the best hope that civilizations have to learn about each other and to do exchange programs. i would encourage all of the young people to consider that one of the great things about military life as i've been able to do that. believe it or not. i was in tanzania this pass them in civilian clothes with a group of army cadets who were doing an exchange program to learn what it's like to live in a third world country.

i've traveled to the ukraine and evaluated their training system. so they could have a chance to join nato, which they have not done. not yet. and i've done something similar in poland, and they did join. doing those things opens your eyes to other cultures in a way that reading about it or talking about it just doesn't do. so if you have an exchange student visiting you i would encourage you to get to know them, ask them if you can crash on their floor. do something like that. that will help in this clash of cultures but even if it's a culture that is a lot like ours. the first place i went with sweden because i did that with my exchange student at its not that much different from the united states that it was enough different to make me want to see more different cultures but i think that something very important to the future of ending conflicts. but in the end of history, example, when you have the last man, that guy who is left outside of the democratic system

has lost his honor. and this goes back to your point. i really believe that's very important to you gave a solution and i think it's worth repeating. you must have a society with systems that generates economic possibility and political possibility, societal norm that people have a chance to advance and have a chance to have dignity and honor. some of the civilizations and cultures that are out there that is very limited compared to ours, or compared, maybe we shouldn't compare to ours. maybe they need something different, but they have a limited sense of how you can honorably and with dignity advance your position and your status which we have established some people believe is very important to so maybe the military isn't the way of a war against the culture that has no chance, then to establish dignity. may be counterproductive because now their only chance of honor is to win the war, and the war will go on for ever. and that maybe when we see the

war on terror, one possibility that we consider. there needs to be other organizations, and there's ways to combat conflicts, the best ways are probably not military. and i recognize that as a soldier. there's nothing more that i would want them for the department of state to go to iraq in the -- iraq and afghanistan and in those conflict in a way that makes those people joined the community of nations in a way that would they can have dignity and honor. maybe they won't have expansion teams in the nfl and open mcdonald's in every corner, starbucks. maybe that's not the answer, but some of the organization besides the military can probably negotiate that path better. so i encourage you to think of those throughout as well. pass it back to you. >> that was beautiful. i'm reminded century talked about on her so much, several thousand years ago you had in the middle east is saying because you are not bow down to me i'm going to destroy your

balance. there's an element of dignity persist to this day. sympathetic to what you think i would like to hear a few final comments from dr. teixeira, especially since dr. helsing has the courage to actually teach policy and arab american relations and work with people in the middle east. and i think that's something we should learn from. i sympathize with your perspective on the importance of a lock-in perspective on healing. >> i actually sort of agree with a lot of what professor scharf says, and i think we are moving more to those content solutions at the international level. i think we all need support and the world needs support more effort. i would argue that hatred is

often constructive and hatred issues and manipulate. and that education is one of the crucial tools to actually underlining, demonizing of the other, and that there are ways in which one can, through education, provide for opening minds to more pluralistic perspectives on the world. that simply because you are different, that i am, does not mean you are a threat to be. and how do you get those values? and it's difficult. since you mentioned the middle east, there's an interesting controversy going on in israel right now, and it's related to the use of a textbook, a textbook that i actually

recently in our institution help provide support for over the last 10 years. it's a palestinian-israeli textbook developed by joint, jointly by palestinian-israeli teachers. and the story is that was meant to look at history of the last century. they initially tried to create a common narrative, and they couldn't do it. they really were, they were just so many differences between the israeli and palestinian perspective. so what they decide to do was create a textbook that had on the left margin the palestinian narrative and on the right margin is when he is when he noted that they have a blank space in the middle for students to write notes, find pairs of common interest, et cetera. ..

>> palestinian from gaza. they live with the conflict probably more than any other is really community on a daily or ongoing basis. a teacher decided to use this book in the classroom. the israeli ministry of education has now forbidden that this teacher and the principal called up the talent leave and were taken to tax. you cannot use this. one of the things that is

interesting about it, and many of the students were saying, what are they afraid of? they don't think we can think for ourselves? some of the think we will be brain washed into adopting the palestinian narrative, but what is interesting is that in this us versus them dynamics the deputy minister of education told the israeli head of this textbook, a person who conceived of this and developed it, he said that actually because the israeli standpoint, they were not concerned about all of a sudden that the textbook was adopted that israel used with the somehow become overly sympathetic to palestinians and adopt the palestinian narrative of history. their concern was that israel used would begin to challenge the israeli narrative of history.

acknowledging stinson this country with their own textbooks, that history is something to be controlled, constructed, manipulated. we all have narrative and we all have myth. oftentimes those are used to demonize the other, glorify ourselves. they are about heroic deeds. and so therefore, to allow the challenge of our own narrative, of our on meth creates -- weakens us versus them. that is why education is often times overlooked as an aspect of how we can reduce conflict and build the peace. there is one other thing i can also say. there is a scholar at the university -- i think he is still at the university of illinois. originally he was from india.

he did a number of studies of hindu muslim communities in india and wanted to find out why some of them evolved into ethnic violence while others did not. and his conclusion was that it wasn't enough simply to have muslim hindu interaction, sort of playing soccer together or having dialogue together. in fact, what was necessary it was actually these communities coming together over a common problem that they had to solve collectively and to leverage of the. a common problem was other building something, reconstructing something, dealing with an environmental issue, is touch record where they have work together and had to solve problems together there were almost always going to have in place relationship mechanisms of working together that help

them in almost all cases prevent violence from erupting, even though in the larger political sphere there may have been increased tension, there may have been incidents elsewhere that led to rioting in other communities, but those communities where these patterns existed, that didn't happen. so that when people work with each other and their identities are no longer us, them, hindu, muslim, but their identity bridges their collective as a community, when they come together as people of a common community and see themselves in that sort of identity for, when people work together as teachers across ethnic lines or when they work together as has been the case in israel and palestine,

environmentalist's, hydrologists who have actually come together with some interesting, and solutions to deal with water issues, environmental threats, except truck in which they can work across communities and not be sort of prevented from finding interesting solutions to common problems because of political dynamics. and i think more and more we can find ways of sort of creating or breaking down those a disease that in the sense fuel violence and lead to the exploitation of differences and find ways that people can, in fact, work together and develop patterns of cooperation and collaboration. it can often transcend the narrative of myth, the hatred

exploited by conflict and entrepreneurs. >> well, what would be this? i would give it a name. i would call it fear. fear would bring inside of us. and i think that this fear is fed by our insecurity feelings. and i am sure that weekend caulker that. by education, we control it by that token, by working together in our communities of people, states commendations. we can't do it if you wish and

we must do it beginning with our children. i remind a ceremony that was held here before. that is why the children were here. they are hope. they are our future. we must invest them. this idea is in the ideals. we must remind ourselves that this beast is, of course, something, but it makes part of us. we must control its. again, i believe that education is a very strong instrument to do that. if we put into education the sense of the necessity of

responsibility, the sense of love for the other and forgiveness for ourselves. i am sure we are human and we make mistakes. but always we can we can try to forgive. look to be forgiven. >> can i come back and wanting? >> you are a little bit over. possibly you could work it into some of the answers when the audience has questions. okay. i apologize for cutting you off. we only have about half an hour, maybe a little more intense and questions. i would like to encourage anybody who wants to a query the panel to form a civilized line before the microphone and please address them.

[inaudible conversations] >> thank you very much, first of all, for a very interesting discussion so far. i wanted to raise two points that i would like to hear your response about. first of all, i should say my name is mcallen, and i worked closely with the cleveland peace action which is an affiliate of the national organization. we recently had a speaker, that i wondered if you had heard about. his name is paul should help. he is the director of the nuclear age peace center. he has written a number of books. he graduated from west point, by the way, and has been an active

soldier. he makes the point that we can overcome using war as a mechanism for resolving conflict if we make it change in how we view this the way we did, say, with slavery. he uses that as an example, that for hundreds and thousands of years it was thought that slavery was a natural thing and it took a great change in the world view to change that. he feels that that can be done, and he has a lot of examples of how cooperation and other positive traits of built into human society. i wondered if you had heard about his work and what you think of that. the other point i wanted to raise is that it seems to me there is a i guess what i would

call the elephant in the living room that i feel nobody has addressed at this point. that has to do with the strategic competition for national power and resources that often underlies governments, groups making more and conflict and the other part of that that is very disturbing to me has to do with the u.s. will because it seems to me in the last 20 years there has been a concerted effort by those we have defined as neocons to change american belief significantly and successfully that we should be the world superpower, that we use military force much more

often and aggressively in response to issues of round the world, and that we use it preemptively and there is this sort of american exceptional as some that our values and ways of doing things should prevail and are the answer for everybody. so, to meet, and for many of us this is a huge cause of conflict in the world that has been calling on, whether democratic or republican administrations. they keep. >> a case western reserve university that question. five gonzales. >> i would like to respond to the first question which is how do we change the view of war. it is like slavery. everybody considers it a crime instead of something that is a relic. the international community try to do that by endorsing the germans for the war of

aggression charge and held them responsible for that. but after nuremberg of the international tribunals have not included within their statured the crime of aggression. decompress it for war crimes, humanity and genocide, but not for waging an aggressive war, not for attacking and country when you don't have any right to do so. the international criminal world, the new permanent international criminal court has been debating whether or not to add it to statute. i went down representing a non-governmental organizations this summer were all the countries in the world gathered, including the united states command at the end of a two week session they decided to add to the international criminal court statute the crime of aggression. that will kick in in seven years. the idea, and with everyone was saying was, we tried to start to do it at nuremberg. we have to turn waging an

aggressive war into something that is so despised it is like slavery. >> does the united states recognize? [inaudible question] >> gabba. [inaudible question] >> chino, the bush administration used to oppose the international criminal court. that changed at the end of the bush a ministration. at that point they started to embrace the court. the united states sent the largest delegation, 32 people from the state department, justice department, defense department. they were very engaged in these negotiations. instead of picking up their marbles and walking away, like they had done in 1988 they gave a press statement where they said, we can live with what has arisen from the spirit we feel comfortable with this, and we see ourselves having a better relationship with the

international criminal court. i do think there is cause for optimism. >> i was strongly support what was said about the importance of criminalizing the waging of aggressive war. at nuremberg the american said it would be the worst of all war crimes. i think that is absolutely right. if i could put your two questions together, the accessibility of war and u.s. exceptional doesn't, this is not just for neocons. could promote american power. it is an exceptional way of doing it. deeply, deeply entrenched within the entire defense and security

community but the united kingdom and many other countries. people will often say what a disaster. the idea of it, he didn't have a right. almost no one opposes it. the go to the think tanks in washington. the new american security, the american enterprise institute or any. maybe the kid of institute. if and then they would have moral qualms. the idea that something is inherently wrong is not one that takes up the ball. i would recommend reading books. very good critiques about how this is something which is deeply, deeply entrenched within the foreign policy community. i don't know how you can change that except by keeping on writing, protesting, acting, and

hopefully people will eventually learn. we will take a very long time. all of you can do is try. >> in my time at the german general staff we've wrestled with this problem. the only american student there representing the entire history of the u.s. armed forces. at the time it was invaded iraq. that is when i was there. i have to think about these same questions. some of the conclusions i could agree with my german colleagues, we approach the problems from very different sides. the germans learned from history that having an army would eventually lead to using it in an improper way and therefore using it outside our borders was inherently wrong. the american dream of history, if you don't have an army ready to defend your country you will end up with pearl harbor, nine / 11, career, or some other situation that is unacceptable and you end up with a longer war

with more men dying. that is probably not every american's view, but the people who were in charge, they fall into those categories on the opposite sides. what roosevelt would have called old europe and the american and global alliance on the other side. these products of history are hard to change. that will probably take a new dynamic, another situation where we are united with our allies in another way. then by danish friend stood up and surprised me with the comment, america is looking for security, and this exceptional lesson is not the way to get it. you just making yourself a target. what about giving up some of your sovereignty to gain security? i do not believe that most americans who are either in charge or are in the military can agree on who to give that 72. you deserves it? would be a really want to give it -- use say the international

community to be there are people out there who do not agree with our way of life. they have their own problems. have not figured them out. to do we give it to? do we give it to the germans? they're trying to give it away. everyone is trying to give it to someone else. someone has to act. because of our history going back to the american revolution there is this trend of thinking that america needs to be able to the defendant's cell. this is the trend, a very populist idea. it may not be among the elite educated, but it is probably more than 50 percent of the people who vote. they do choose. so now i'm back to it needs to

be a paradigm shift, something outrageous. godzilla needs to attack the earth, and we will give up our sovereignty to the you and so that they can develop the super weapon death star to destroy the italian invaders, this kind of think, something that bizarre would probably be required. >> i think the question is one that could be addressed. i would really like to divert attention -- devote attention to it. i must apologize with the amount of time that we can dedicate, but i think this is very important. thank you. >> i am michael failed. so we are naturally violent animals. if we are able to reach a point where external violence is no longer an issue it adds to the stick a piece, one could say.

by innocence destroying a large part of human nature what do we really accomplished? >> well, we learn that we must be able to learn from it. if we do such a thing it is because we have a choice. by making mistakes we can learn a lot. i think at this moment is a moment for learning. the believe that the want to reduce any kind of absolute filter throughout these questions, but we can learn from ourselves much that will compose

us to do the right choice in the next time. and i think that is a bit of democracy system. we must be responsible for our choices, and we must be educated so that we can do the right choices. but always we are responsible for that. >> i'm not sure i fully understand your implication, but i would certainly say that there is that difference between dealing with violence and conflict. conflict can create opportunities. conflict is not necessarily a bad they. it is how he menace as conflicts. i would challenge you to consider, if you think about political economic or social change, in most cases

non-violent means of achieving change has been more productive and lasted. so by lives, if you accept that violence is an inherent and positive part of the human condition. maybe your question ex cents, but my way of thinking and that of many others is that the violence impedes social political and economic change. so it is important to try and find ways in which violence can be produced and ultimately eliminated in no way that one can still as a people, as a planet continue to develop and create positive change.

>> okay. let's take the next question. >> so you talked about -- you talked about capitalism as a way for, i guess, minted channel their masculinity in to achieving things, i guess. to me it seems like that is just -- that is still aggression. it is still a form of aggression to exploit, you know, the lower prices. i was wondering why you think that is a less detrimental alternative to war with another state. >> i think it depends upon your attitude. on the whole it works better

than other economic systems. i was just didn't in the soviet union many years ago. in no, it is not a very good system, to be honest. it does lead to exploiting, but it is better than something else. ultimately channel in your desire into building a new company and getting rich is ultimately better for society and going around killing people. that is basically what i am trying to say. you can channel it into your local sports team or whatever. the more -- someone's book about choices. the more choices to give people and the more avenues in which they can vent their natural competitive instincts the more people will be able to fulfill that side of their nature without actually killing. that is my basic point.

i think as a capitalist society we generate more of those choices. >> a number of the people on this panel seemed to suggest that there were a number of ways of displacing aggression and violence into very been the -- and all activities. this is why you could say that civilization was a sublimation of cruelty. why we could talk about the banality of evil, the ease with which we can't inflate what does not appear to necessarily be violence and others without being culpable. why i was recommending to some of our panel members last let this book by my friend walter davis, dexedrine kingdom, the american psyche. he makes the case that we have this predilection to disgorge our own psychological depth to us to project on others and inflict or violence on them. whereas, we need to be excruciatingly aggressive toward

our own predilections to violence and to stop suffering and inflecting ourselves, which is all too seductive. that's my $0.2. less anybody has any other comments. okay. >> my name is nina. i come from mumbai, india. i appreciate the point made about the structural and political causes. i am basically speaking on the india pakistan issue, the political causes. i find in my own country the military budget increasing, and that is true even for other nations. why have these nations states not been interested in their measures. i think that i don't find it increasing.

only the non state actors which keep talking about peace. but when hatred is constructed either through educational or socialization systems i think people are required to, you know -- but i mean, take this. we can talk about peace. my question is, can we ever achieve sustainable peace? the topic of the panel discussion is with challenges to sustainable peace. >> i guess i will take a shot at that. we had a conference about a week ago looking back at the irish good friday peace accord, now ten years old. that was a situation where for 30 years nobody thought that these two factions were ever going to be able to sit down at the piece table and have a sustainable peace. what helped in that case was the exhausted themselves over time.

mediation from the outside, mostly from the u.s. states. ultimately they used what i thought was most fascinating, it power-sharing equation that seems to not only have worked for them, but that is now being exported about the world and injected into the peace negotiations. said the idea is that if you can come up with a mathematical formula so that factions can feel the lack of fear, that they can feel secure, that they can feel they will have representation through this power-sharing equation, that that might be an ingredient for a long piece. and so, you know, that is a model. don't know whether it will work. there are a lot of other places that are on the brink of war. i want to bring the attention to the audience and the tv audience to what is calling on right now between north sedan and south

saddam. both countries are army to the hilt. in january to restore to be a referendum of independence. there was and arbitration that decided the south sedan gets the oil fields that were of the border. everything is right to five ripe for major internal violence. this is a place where the united states has to do much more to head it off or otherwise win this is being shown in ruins will be remembered as worse than anything we've seen in recent years. much worse than what is going on in darfur. >> that points out. an interesting parallel. as you mentioned, the united states, china has significant investments in oil resources. but cashmere suffers from the fact that there are other agendas involved. in some cases the conflict may

be exacerbated by this specific neighborhood one is in. what is happening not just in kashmir, but the pakistan aid-afghan, and then the american and western agenda with respect to that border, it spills over into and creates in some cases obstacles to confidence-building measures that might be possible between pakistan and india, but because there are other competing agendas that oftentimes get shunted aside. therefore, again, the international community. i would say in terms of the united states. there is very strong global. if we don't see global that is a function of cooperation and

collaboration among parties, countries that have the capacity to influence the agenda of others. you know, one of the speakers previously talked about american exceptional as some and america becoming the world's superpower. so there are some that would argue that, in fact, the united states attempt to do so actually is long past. it met its waterloo, if you will, in a rock. not because the united states couldn't show itself to be a military superpower and easily militarily in the regime of saddam hussein, but in fact, it was what came after, the inability of the u.s. and the international community then to have other robust tools, diplomatic, economic, that could help create opportunities for peaceful change of political

transformation. that is with the international community lacks today. even though we may be making incremental progress on international law such as the icc, the inability to actually coalesce around those is a real problem. you see, you know, china is becoming hit a significant superpower, but not diplomatically politically or militarily, but economically. the united states has tremendous military capacity, but its economic and diplomatic power is weakening. that is a recipe for a weaker international community, not a stronger international community. so one has to look at the context in all of these things. northern ireland is an interesting example because the

outside powers could also come together to help facilitate that process. where you don't have that in combination with the powers inside the conflict is very difficult to create sustainable peace. >> i just say one thing very quickly on the spirit of course sustainable peace his paw to fund possible. sustainable peace in europe, if you look at global statistics on conflict you will see the magnitude of conflict worldwide is a mess of the lower than it was 20 years ago. it is true. the world is substantially more peaceful than it was. it will take time. i am something of a marxist. prosperity spread spirited pilots will become more and more

isolated. >> i also agree with you. the trend is getting better. >> i think there is a shift in the kind of collaborative among nations. i think that it will take some time, but we will arrive in international, much more stable and peaceful. we learn how to cooperate, to do each nation can achieve a sustainable peace. so it is among other nations and people of our world, if we cannot do so we won't be prepared to live in peace. >> and glad things are getting better. here i was worried about the

hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in iraq. [applauding] >> i appreciate the optimism. >> he said my name. i'm an academic. i am going to take off my academic hat and talk as a human if that is all right. that is what i have been hearing. i have a human optimist. i think that war is inevitable as long as we think and believe it is inevitable. i think you have been talking about proclivity for violence. it was more of a proclivity for conflict, but i think the humans also have a proclivity for peace. in not mentioning that. i have worked in many countries around the world. i traveled the world running competitions. thirty countries. eastern countries. one thing i've always noticed was at the beginning of these

competitions we all meet up, either students or farmers or different kinds of people. there is a kind of cultural politeness and veneer. but these people under incredible pressure, and the tv cameras and everything else. within a couple of days the cultural the near would collapse. they would be crying and shouting. i've really got to look forward to this. watch the cultural the near collapse. we are all just people together. there is no difference. with the difference between cultures. that is, to me, very interesting. you talk about the beast within. at think there is another beast within a. piece is probably the wrong word. it's probably a little bit corny, but everybody has humidity inside them. even your terrorist killer. if you can't target properly everybody has this love for

spirituality. rather than trying to suppress other proclivities' we should be trying to bring these out. that is just my personal opinion. [applauding] >> i wanted to ask a question. we did discuss help humanity has a proclivity to conflict. i was wondering if we have a proclivity to conflict, but not violence, how you all think that inclination toward violence, how and when we have been talking a lot about sigmund freud and other more what i would say it old school psychology. i would like to say maybe from the perspective of more developmental psychology, identity using crisis proposes that as adolescents the crisis

identity forms opportunities for youth to become violent. foreign culture eventually leading to that clash of culture with the general was talking about. i wonder where you all thought that violence into the picture. >> well, i agree with your speech. maybe we kind of shift. we are getting to the very mature society. so we have to overcome. maybe we are just trying to pull our way out of this identity crisis. again, i remember the moment when he says that the post with

trinity gives us great possibility of choices. this causes fear. i agree also with the previous speech. i agree that we were talking, what about the numbers, death. but if there is such a thing it is because there is life. life must be pleasurable. of course we always must to remember the errors as in psychology. we must remind every day the errors side of energy must be praised every day. when we wake up, when we meet our friends, or wife, our

children. we must remember that any people in any culture will have this right to have this pressure. they are not different from us. even though it can seem the little bit different. so this issue that we must educate our sons about diversity, i think that would be key to achieve more smiling word. more just. there will be problems. there will be knowledge, economics to solve this problem. we cannot distrust the things that we have built until this time. so our institutions, our

development, but they need our support, but also need that we participate with it. we make our choices and as individuals we make our part on it. >> that they the taurus is really important. the idea of the beast inside of us is only one in the the spectrum. you have camp humanity in new. it ranges from the most noble heroic thing that you can imagine, the most altruistic he meant all the way through to a neutral, to the beast. i would encourage everyone to used especially, be assured that you can make a difference. it is not that you are just an actor waiting for the newspaper to come out to tell you that we are going to war or something

else terrible as happened. it may be something small that you do. go home and help cure the brother with his homework. something that simple. you will move someone from the beast tour the noble altruistic heroic ideal, whatever that is in your culture and home. you can have an impact. in fact, almost nothing else will have an impact. reading books, getting smart, traveling the world, those things are great. it is the attraction with of the he lives and having the example in your young that will make you a better person and will make this kind of thing solvable. probably will not be my generation and i doubt if it will be the u.s. army that solves the problem of sustainable peace. we can control the oceans with world aircraft carriers, but we cannot stop someone from hitting his in another country. we can't do it. we really can't control the ocean either. somewhere there is some pirate letting his book right now, and

we can't get there fast enough. you as an individual should go out like a swarm of humidity and be positive and make the world better. that is the only thing that will work. i guarantee that will work. [applauding] >> no, i think this was an excellent question. my concern is, how do we cultivate what you are talking about, especially since what you are saying suggests from a psychological developmental perspective that certain elements can be encoded in the process? that is why he have attachment tourists and even more recently, the neurobiology. the violence a realization. it is very sinister stuff. and so i hope that you can take what they have said and apply it

toward the development of a psychology of cultivating. sorry to have interrupted you. >> i agree with everything that has been said. i'll just share one piece of advice. very interesting. the sociologists who studied violent passages in children. the parents have to log every violent action that they have spotted. but teenagers would be the most violent, but it turned out not to be. children are most violent between two and four. always hitting each other. and then after for it dropped off dramatically, except in some kid spirit and some kids had never drops off and all. what they found was if it doesn't drop off at age for it never does. a lot of educational efforts are going into teenagers.

if you think about individual conflict and violence, you have to nip it in the blood at age two with three. some real educational policy issues. >> the local law just at nyu talks about how fear can be encoded. that also has a rather sinister implication if we are talking about violence. it has become biologically ingrained. i don't want to preclude the possibility of the cultivation of arrows to the mean that our panelists discussed because i think there quite profound. i have to apologize for not being able to take every question because i know the people who are coming up to ask questions. actually, our panelists have to run to the airport. we don't want them to miss the planes. my apology to you. i encourage you test your questions to the remaining

panelists afterwards and certainly communicate by e-mail or any other means dividend want to make you feel neglected. i am afraid we have run at a time. again, my apologies. to take the distinguished panelists for coming from great distances and joining us. but this together. it is fantastic. take you for coming. [applauding] [inaudible conversations] >> today in florida republican rick scott takes the oath of office becoming the state's 45th governor. live coverage from tallahassee starts at noon eastern on our companion network c-span. the senate's use of the filibuster is expected to be up for debate as the new congress convenes this week.

lamar alexander's speech at the heritage foundation event on the filibuster. live coverage of that event starts at 2:00 p.m. eastern also on c-span. >> the 112th congress devil's and wednesday with the swearing-in of members, election of a new house speaker and a book on new house rules. watch live on washington journal, interviews with members to my, reporters, and your calls right up to win the house gavels in. >> look for a real air of the day's events starting at 8:00 eastern on c-span. >> up next from the muslim public affairs council in los angeles a conversation on muslim american added to the and race relations. topics include the tea party movement, young muslims, and the rise of bullying. this is just under two hours.

[inaudible conversations] >> good morning, everybody. with the peace and blessings of god be upon all of you. take you all for joining us for our tenth annual convention. this year is unlike any other year that we have that with the convention. we are trying an innovative, new format in response to the requests, suggestions, and recommendations of previous attendees. we are very excited about the day that we have planned. before we get started with that program, and not tell you more about what is coming up. i would like to introduce our southern california government relations director it will be offering a brief recitation from the holy tron. >> make peace in god's blessings be upon you all. i will be deciding from chapter

five, verse 48. [speaking in native tongue] [speaking in native tongue] [speaking in native tongue]

[speaking in native tongue] >> i seek refuge with got from satan. it to the we since the scripture in truth confirming the scripture that came before it and guarding it in safety. so judge between them by what god has revealed an apollo not there vague desires diverging from the truth that has come to the. to reach a minute, have we prescribed a lot and open way. if god had so willed he would have made you a single people. his plan is to test you with what he has given new. strife in the base of all virtues. the goal of you wall is to god. it is he that will show you the truth of matters in which he

disputes. that speaks the truth. >> so, it is our tenth annual convention. for ten years we have been gathering together as a community to hold this convening, which means that we have been making an attempt over the years to bring our community together in addition to our interfaith allies domestic partners, government partners plan beyond. in order to hold much needed conversations about the timely and often controversial issues of the day. they aren't backing not only the muslim american community, but america at large degree of always operated on the belief that we must have a vibrant, candid conversations along both of those channels simultaneously we must find ways to use those to conversations because they are inherently related. for that reason today we are

conducting our convention in a unique format. we are having to back-to-back roundtable sessions. you see the first one collected in front of us here already on to timely, timely subjects. we have expanded the links of these subjects in order to allow for a rich, candid, and open conversation to take place between our panelists and also with you here in our audience and beyond. first, we are being recorded here today by c-span. the proceedings will be aired before the end of the year, within the next two weeks. you can refer friends and family and context that. beyond that we are doing a live web cast. our folks here at the table are right now taking questions and comments from people, not just about the country, but the world. i have been told of ready that we have people who are locked in

from eight different countries and at least 13 states. so the conversation takes place within this term and beyond. and so part of what will happen today is in addition to the questions you submit to our panelists and those offered by our moderator, we will be taking questions from the web cast and around the world today. so with that, i want to talk a little bit about why we selected our theme for this year, which is the struggle for america's conscience. in light of all that has taken place this year. if you close your eyes and think back to what a roller-coaster of the year it has been for the muslim community in america at large, we have been through some struggles that involve race, religion, identity, challenges of integration, questions of whether we will be an exclusive or inclusive country, questions of immigration, radicalization, the future of our country,

congress, the two-party system, a new party, and beyond. not to mention, issues of round the economy and ongoing questions of round jobs and beyond. these issues are impacting all of us on different levels. that is precisely why we are here. we cherish the pluralism, the diversity of our country, and the place that each of us have in creating a vibrant and healthy and serious debate. and that is what today is. wind or too long conversations. so with that i will turn it over to the president who will moderate our first session. we will begin with our one housekeeping item. if you can keep these center aisles clear because of the cameras in the back. use the side aisles as you are moving around. water stations are in the back. so with that will turn it over.

>> take you very much. take you all for joining us for this very important conversation the conversation is entitled the state of our union. religion and american entity. for some decades we have seen various efforts of groups to raise issues that are considered to be revolutionary intellectually and politically. there was the movement of barry goldwater. there was licking riches movement with the contract for america. there have been a number of groups associated with ronald reagan that have talked about bringing in more fiscal responsibility for our country. lately there has been the tea party movement that really our panelists can talk a little bit about. the question that arises is of note and interest to us today.

and in particular the concern over having an african-american president and the response to it. there is an interesting poll that we were discussing before hour session commenced today that 40 percent of people on the right believe that the president is a muslim. this kind of perception that is out there has in some ways driven to the sentiment that our country is under attack and there is the theme of its time to take our country back. another issue is the sense that there is discrimination against the majority. therefore the woman, african-american woman who inspired based on statements that were attributed to her that were later retracted and an apology was given by the

secretary of agriculture. and also there is the sp 1070 case in arizona that involves emigration and really the kind of scrutiny and a kind of measure that is invasive in terms of people's private lives and the identity. and so this kind of xenophobia is affecting all of us. we have said that the muslim public affairs council that it is just part of the chain of xenophobia in america. it is an american problem, not a muslim problem. for that reason we have the symbol this very distinguished panel to have a conversation about the issues of race, identity, and pluralism. where is our pluralism today? are we seeing something we have never seen in our country? is part of the process in terms of integration, pluralism in

america in -- throughout american history. but that i would like to introduce our panel is studying for my far right, but disciplined not politically of the far right. ..

>> next to him is fernando guerra. fernando and i actually had the privilege of going to the vatican together on an interfaith trip sometime back in the '90s. he is the director for the center for the study of los angeles. and followed demographic shifts polling, public opinions, and as a pollster i believe for some political groups. to my left is reem salahi. she as a civil rights attorney, as does the post-9/11 discrimination cases in coordination with the aclu. and is also involved with a number of young muslim groups

throughout southern california and has been a speaker in many islamic centers on that issue in terms of sentiment coming from young muslim-americans. to her left is pastor bob roberts. he is the founding pastor of the northwood church in dallas-fort worth. and coming from an evangelical background, bob roberts has been at the forefront of dialogue with muslims, both here in the united states and abroad. and, finally, we have reverend madison shockley. madison also i think, we got to know each other after the 92 undressed. >> he forgot. >> before that with the goal for in terms of the peace coalition that we're working on back in the early '90s. i think 1990 and 1991. madison is the pastor of pilgrim united church of christ in

carlsbad, california. is also the board of directors of the in 1580 services in san diego county. now i have made my introduction of our panelists very brief. if you would like to know more about them you can always google the names and when we google, find out not only what we want to say about herself but what our political opponents want to say about us. so have at it. as i said this is going to be a conversation, and then we will have a brief conversation here on stage and then we will turn to you and people on the web who can also ask questions. to continue the conversation. i want to start with fernando. iin terms of the tea party movement there seems to be of concern of antiwhite discrimination that muslims and african-americans, latino and asian americans are getting preferential treatment and, therefore, there's a strong

grievance that is driving a lot of what's happening to the tea party movement. and interesting to note, two of the more far to the right if you will candidates in nevada, new jersey lost but it's still a phenomenon. can we describe what is happening politically in terms of public sentiment that is driving some of these use from the tea party movement? >> it's not unusual that you have economic dislocation when you have fast movements of population, immigration, migration exist in the united states. people get displaced and they become uncomfortable with what is happening and you look, return to a romanticized past. and a romanticized that past as being economically very well off, socially stable. they associate that with white christian america. nothing could be further from the truth. people are very selective in terms of how they view america. america has always been diverse

in terms of clearly the native americans. but even if you take a look here in los angeles which at one time was one of the widest cities ever, enumerated in the census figures also started by very diverse ovulation. the original census of 1781 were of african, european, i'm obviously north american origin and all those types of measures. but there is that response but interestingly enough, the narrative in the past election, especially as we take a look of the result of the tremendous republican victories that occurred in house, a lot of that attributed to the tea party. the second narrative was how that incredible wave stopped really in the western states. nevada, colorado, the state of washington, all elected or reelected democratic senators with many expected that a republican might win. and then, of course, the whole

california story, we are not a single tea party candidate for a partisan office one in california. and as a matter of fact, democrats overwhelmingly won. and as contrast you mention newt gingrich and the contract for america in 1994, very similar ways. in 1994 you have to recall that the republicans in california captured four of the seventh statewide offices, including the gubernatorial election. they capture several congressional offices. they captured the state assembly and also passed proposition 187 pick so many people compare 2010 and 1994 as very similar. and internationally that at the same level in california nothing could be further from the truth. california was very different. and why is california different? it's the diversity and the degree to which we are comfortable with it.

even to the extent that i've been talking about polling. i've been tracking polling at the city of los angeles, the state of california and nationally. but even whites in california, including republicans, are much more tolerant of different groups, specifically latinos, african-americans in terms of winning public office, than ever before. because they are comfortable and they are aware of the situation in california, as the country becomes more accountable without i believe you will have less movement than the tea party tends to try to create that environment. the tea party was a significant player, but i would come in terms of some of the analysis that i've done, i would not attribute any to republican victory to the tea party. in other words, i believe that many republicans would have won those seats that tea party republicans one, whether it's

kentucky or different places. as a matter fact one could attribute the loss, for instance, delaware or in nevada where clearly the democratic -- republican should have one and probably would have won had they not dominated tea party activists are so the tea party i think heard, actually prevented the republicans from capturing more seats than they would have had to just the typical like a 1994 type of an election. i will stop there for the moment. >> angela, fernando gave an excellent analysis of what's happening politically. what's happening at the grassroots level? what's the sentiment of berries groups in response to some of these sentiments that are coming from these groups? >> i want to remind everyone that went in a place and time where we understand discrimination and racism to manifest itself at three very

distinct levels, the individual level, at the institutional level, and then at the structural level. so at the grassroots, on the individual level, for example, we do a lot of education. we believe that that's the only vehicle really. and we focus a lot on children because they are the future, do not sound cliché, but, in fact, that is where we put a lot of our energy. we work with school districts. you know, there is a skill doing conflict resolution work here it is not just understanding the concepts. our mission is to displaced the power of violence in society. that's a huge mission. what does that even mean?

it's no longer a time where groups are coupled with organizing. the problem can only really be addressed if white people begin to educate white people. i mean, they are the social and cultural distance is not as great. great, you can go to other parts of the country and other parts of the world to try to set things right, try doing it in your own backyard. try doing it in your own family. okay? so these are challenges we are starting to put out, you know, conflict resolution, listening, really listening. not just with your ears but your whole being. is the heart is soft skill that you're going to ever learn. we work with police officers. we work with gang involved youth. we work with school both at the teacher level and the student level. we will work with parents who are at a loss about what to do when their child comes home and made fun of are humiliated or

bullied. we are trying constantly to do innovations in this state. but people are not easily able to embrace change. change was what you saw the rallying cry to be a few years ago. and, of course, change is really difficult. people don't really want it. i used to use an example. in new york they changed some of the area codes for phone numbers. it created such a disruption that it made front page of the "new york times." if people can't even deal with every code change is, how are they going to be dealing with the changes in their community with cultural changes, with political shifts, with a new voice emerging? so we just heard that the dream act wasn't passed this week the senate rejected it after the congress, the house passed it.

the lives of so many young people, through no fault of their own, are put in this really, you know, great state. and how are they going to negotiate those waters? they are not empowered to do so in a political way. they are not empowered to do so, you know, through their position economically leveraging thinks. but they will continue to organize. those voices will not be silenced. they will continue to be heard. and more and more, i think there will be a groundswell. as far as the tea party is concerned, i think it's very important that we learn from what happened here. because this is a ramp up to 2012. there's going to be a huge challenge to the current administration for all of the reasons you're discussing here over the next day. that ramp up began more than a year ago when we were running up to this year's election. the demographic data data coming out this year, along with the experiences, now we have

identified who the players are in the tea party, who are going to mobilize nationally. we have identify what the messages are. we have identified what the infrastructure looks like. there is a lot of work going on right now, and 2012 is for those of you who follow the chinese calendar and you don't have to believe it, just thousands of years old and billions of human beings that have come up with this, but in 2012 we're talking about the year of the dragon. it's a significant year. next year is the year of the rapid. you know what rabbits are like. that's what the energy will be next year. but the year of the dragon, 2012. >> well out with rabbits, dragons and demographics, let's turn to texas. bob, you're from texas. do you see the same thing coming from your neck of the woods? or is it a different assessment

altogether? >> i think most people know that texas is an overwhelmingly democratic state. and so as a result of that we have liberal views. [laughter] >> no, i would say i don't think you can position the current conversation in the world around democrats and republicans and conservatives and liberals. that's a previous generations way of defining the world, that frankly i belong to. when i look at people like rashad and reem coming to the forefront, i honestly believe the world where energy is a radically different world. so as a result of that, continue to try to define our culture in our world just in those two terms is not going to cut it. i'm not a researcher like you are, fernando, but i work with young pastors in america. we start many churches. i work with young people that

are volunteering all over the world come engaging the world. and the recent president obama was elected is because young mighty evangelicals are one of the groups that help them in the office but it was just a democratic party turning out. had there not been evangelicals that were behind him that were supporting him, that were promoting him can't he never would have i believe made it to office. i believe that we know that the world is shifting. it's a scary world. change is right around the world, and we don't have the right templates or paradigms for understanding the current world that we face. so as a result of that you will see a lot of tea party. i don't know what it will be in the democratic party, the muslim party. i don't know what you'll see multiple parties and i think you'll see the rise in the next few years i've even third parties of people that are trying to figure out how to take the 21st century and make it work. a lot of the leaders, if you

read, one of the magazines i just read talk about the baby boomers are now in early retirement so what would it look like for the busters, gen xers and millennials that are coming along? i think that there's a sense in texas that we feel because of the metropolitan areas in dallas fort worth, senator austin and houston, it's no longer much like people would perceive the statewide a. dallas-fort worth, 44% of population are new americans. new america. they are over 229 which is spoken indelicate 1975 there was one mosque. today there are 43 mosques in the metroplex. multiple tables. in my committee on, suburbs i think we have a lot. we have a jewish temple, churches, a synagogue. it's all present, and not as one goes to those. i think the world that we're living in right now has shifted. we are all connected, and the

biggest bomb if we don't know how to talk to one another. there's no privacy anymore which i think it's a wonderful thing in one sense because it forces all of us have one conversation. and what and use it is incredible true. we don't know how to talk among our own tribe. i bring greetings to my cousins that are muslims. i love you guys. come to know you over the last several years from around the world, but my biggest challenge that is not loving muslims or jews orbiters or anyone else. my biggest challenge is not getting crucified by my own tribe. for loving people of a different tribe. and i have met muslims and they say the same thing. it's interesting to the largest mosque, the largest synagogue at our church came together. you have to understand i'm an evangelical. i don't know if you as to what that means but its more conservative christian. it's not a big thing for me line and we'll churches to reach out to other groups. but for conservative evangelical

church it is. me and the rabbi brought our congregations together in january. not just us but our congregation. we all went to the synagogue. eight kosher desert and we took to inhibit the next day we did the exact same thing at the mosque. sunday we did the exact same thing at our church. it was a pretty incredible experience. but what we also learned from that is our biggest challenge was her own tribes, from the rabbi, the imam. to myself it was fascinated as your im as an evangelical, a passion deliver up religious freedom, writing blogs, supporting the mosque being built, while the imam is saying let's realize where we are. let's be patient every other religious group. we were arguing one of the cases with one another tribes without realizing that.

so i just think what's making it complicated is everything is present. everything. we are connected. so if i want to do what muslims think about me all i have to do is go to the muslim website. if i want to see what muslims want, i'll have to to do is google and you can google christian commission and you can do anything you want about anybody. the problem is we have a lot of smart people. they don't know how to speak with one voice in a global conversation in a clear way where people can understand them. that is what is not happening. >> thank you, bob. [applause] >> madison, how does it look from your lens in terms of these kinds of issues, in terms of what's happening in the progressive field? >> i first want to commend you for having this conference and

for this panel, and for those who have gathered. this is the kind of conversation that needs to take place not just here but throughout this country. spent it takes muslims to bring these people together. >> thank you very much. what pastor roberts you said, the problem right now is that there's no place to have a conversation. there is no common ground. there is no common language, words mean different things to different people. and most importantly, there's no common set of facts that can adjudicate that conversation. everyone is operating under their own set of facts. i'm in a unique cross-cultural position, a black pastor of a predominant white anglo congregation. we are getting more diverse but it is probably 85% white. and a very wide part of california. so excuse me, fernando.

it doesn't look as diverse from where i sit in north county san diego. north county san diego we have escondido that oppose the mosque being built there. would have housing laws that would prevent landlords from renting to undocumented persons it was overturned but was passed in the city. we have these california where they are harassing daily, assuming everyone has a good is undocumented and it makes it hard to live. there's a kind of paranoia just in the air about people who are different. it is shocking to me having moved from los angeles, a whole different atmosphere to north county san diego. and when i listened to my members who are for the most part very liberal progressives people, and they are brother and sister and cousin, literally, to members of the tea party. and that's what so enlightening to see that even among the white

community that is not a place for a conversation. and they get all these e-mails with all this madness and craziness. and they simply sometimes just shut down the conversation within their own families. when i move there in 2004, in may, the first holiday came around, i got a number of my members who are coming to me after the election in which bush was reelected. they said, oh, i have to go to thanksgiving. i can't stand. what do you mean you can't stand thanksgiving? i have to talk to my right wing brother-in-law at dinner that day. and so, this is simply continued. but i think in this moment what's important about the title of the conference about the colleges of america and this panel, american identity, you nailed it. do not neglect in this talk within the tea party and beyond about american exceptionalism.

that drives their worldview. and american exceptionalism has taken a beating in the last four or five years. and the major beating it has taken was the election of president barack obama. who refused in their terms to accede to this political ideology, this political theology of american exceptionalism. so when he refused to their understanding of that, and then you get the statistics that you mentioned earlier, a lot of overlap that 40% of republicans are right wingers or whomever you that president obama was not born in the united states, and, therefore, is not the legitimate president of the united states because electing him was a major psychic shift in this country. detest the president serves not only as the executive, but also as the head of state and,

therefore, the symbol of the nation. and they were frankly used to looking at a white male as the symbol of our nation that holds it all together. so everything underneath can be going wrong, while it all gets settled out because the white man at the top. but when that was changed and that image was changed, profound i believe psychological harm was done to many who clung to that ideology. and so now you have set in a kind of mass hysteria that the president is not the elected, elected president, that he is a muslim. and as well at the same time a radical christian, formerly belonging to my denominatdenomination, united church of christ. and there is no way to engage people in a reasonable fashion about how we move forward. so the mosque, or the islamic center in new york, why that was such a controversy was because

of the feeling of impetus that those to adhere to american exceptionalism had. nine 9/11 was the first strike. it was an exposure of americans vulnerability. we had this image that the rest of the robust subject to these things, but we were not. so, therefore, the strike on 9/11 exposed vulnerability. and if it does to do anything about it is what's driving this madness. so the idea that in muslim congregation codirected building of what they call ground zero, whether of impetus has failed to erect their own monument. so i think a bit different think of the monument of 9/11 had already been constructed. but that is assigned to them of this rise of islam. and they see it, even though muslims are such an infinitesimal portion of

society, they see it as a threat because the person at the very top, the president of the united states in their mind, is a secret muslim who has this conspiracy of cooperation with international islam to take over the united states. and so everything connected to that poses this disproportionate threat to anything and everything they do. that's what it doesn't have to be at ground zero but it can be in chattanooga, tennessee. the sad thing about mass hysteria is that it's not subject to medication or other typical treatments are under. treatments. [applause] >> rashad, you've traveled throughout the world. europe has a different structure from the united states. but some people feel like we are

approaching the way europe is structured in terms of having the power, by the few, the exceptional. and the rest of us are visitors. tell us a little bit about the structure in europe, how it relates to the united states, and how you see it changing here in america. >> before i do that i would just back up a little bit and say that in our work with grading partnerships with people all of the world, including muslims, we are focusing on moving forward in a way that emphasizes what we share in common, emphasizes our similarities with the mutual respect going back to his landmark address in cairo. and it's not focused so much on differences that we have politically, racially, ethnically or when we talk about these issues, we are costly saying is that when you look at

muslim communities, you look at muslims, we should understand that muslim people share the same fundamental concerns, share the same fundamental aspirations as everyone else. so we engage in these conversations the first topic of discussion should necessarily be issues of security, or you know the controversies of the day regarding the building of a mosque. because on a day-to-day basis what muslims are worried about our jobs just like everyone else. they're worried about education, for themselves, their families. they're worried about taking care of and supporting their families. they're worried about health care for their families. that's not only to in the united states but around the world. in our work in partnering with muslim communities and other communities, it's important that we work in a way which creates initiatives and partnerships and

entrepreneurship studio with issues like the economy, for example. and science and technology and health care in other areas as well. that's not to say that there aren't very important political issues that have been sources of tension between the nazis in muslim commuters around the world but it's important we realize those are the only issues by which we engage muslim communities. and i think far too long when people think of muslim communities around the world think of muslims emulate those hot button issues come to my good someone to take a step back for us and say that our approach is different, it's to engage people they so what we all share. of course, there are real issues. there are real concerns. and those are the issues that tend to get the bulk of the headlines. more so than grading partnerships than maternal and child health and the eradication of polio, or entrepreneurship. and there's no doubt that the concerns are real but t