governor moonbeam brown. [laughter] when we need jobs in california why is he giving them to china? especially when working conditions are so bad in china? >> absolutely. his idea to create jobs is to create car business that employs 200 people in the united states and three at -- theoretically tens of thousands in china to undermine a great american industry to create 200 jobs because we only count on one side of the ledger the jobs created we don't count the others. the famous'' what is seen is not seen and so we don't see the destruction this continual focus on the short-term job creation creates instead of half playing the economic landscape of long-term prosperity. >> thank you very much for a

and informative talk. [applause] >> good evening. welcome to the commonwealth club of california where you are in the no. i am the political reporter of kcbs radio in your moderator for the program. find is on the internet at commonwealth club.org and download the apple for

information and a broadcast of past programs. you can find me on twitter. it is now my pleasure to introduce george packer a staff writer for "the new yorker" and author of the new block "the unwinding" an inner history of the new america." born here in the bay area and raised in palo alto a child of silicon valley before it was called back. served in the peace corps then became a journalist and author written for "the new york times" magazine, mother jones, "harper's" and a staff writer at "the new yorker" 10 years ago. he has ridden 10 novels and the award winning off-broadway play cover the iraq war and about the assassins gates and reported from africa, the middle east and all over america and chosen as a guggenheim fellow in 2001 has taught at harvard tin -- chardins colombia and we now welcome

george packer. [applause] >> thank you last year and a think the assassins gate came out so it is wonderful to be back at the commonwealth club and a special welcome to my extended family here in the front row. when i announced where did the book, from in one way it did come from iraq oddly enough although this book is very much focused on america. then i was covering iraq for "the new yorker" my initial sense of why everything was imploding was to blame individual leaders. we know who they are they were gross failures on the part of everyone in the highest position of responsibility but over time iraq came to see more and more like a failure of

american institution no matter how much money and effort and talent and good will be through at that country, it seemed to unveil the thing that was partly because it was an impossible job also because institutions responsible from the highest government agencies to use the military that were all there is in one capacity with the for-profit world what allowed us to rebuild europe after world war ii something was lost in recent years but then to call them the 2008 election and institutions

were collapsing everywhere you look. those lending institutions general motors, chrysler, it was an apocalyptic cents the killers that upheld the post war order that it created the most successful middle-class democracy in history seemed to be coming undone and that struck me as a very big story worth telling but how do you tell a story like that? there are a lot of folks out there about the decline of the middle-class and income inequality and the collapse of our old media institutions and, political polarization in washington the rise of big money in

corporate power on capitol hill i did not write another what is wrong with america and how to fix it. that i have to admit i don't have the answer. but i thought what i could add to a growing sense is a narrative a picture of the country the way a big novel would through the stories of individuals for be the way i approach the world so way i think about how to describe the world. so i began to go around the country to find those individuals to tell the larger story of the end of

the deal that used to exist if you do your part and were carr there is a place for you even a better place for your children a dream of upward mobility and equal opportunity for all. and what we have seen over the past generation is period covered by a "the unwinding" is the freeing of our social contract and until now it can hardly be said to exist any longer. a big ambitious subject i try to find those and i will read the prologue then to talk a little more about a. no one can say when the unwinding began when the coil that held americans

together in this stifling grip first gave way the and when he began it countless times in countless ways and at some moment as the country, always the same country crosses a line of history that is irretrievably different. if you report around 1960 or after you spend your adult life in the vertigo of the unwinding. you watch structures in place before your birth collapse across the landscape. the forms of carolina the factories of the valley and the florida subdivision in california schools and other things harder to see but no less vital to support the order of everyday life. of manners and morals, the

wind and the norms that made the institution is useful in the leaders abandoned their posts in the roosevelt republic that rain for almost half a century came undone the void was filled by the force of life. >> these two pages give you a map of whole book i just introduced all the characters and themes in that little overture. the ohio girl in this 61398 -- is a woman who grew up in youngstown ohio when it was a steel town and watched the steel mill does a pillar of almost every replaced by nothing will most of the collapse of the city was even faster and more breathtaking van day trait and with this absence she

had to raise three kids on her own by getting one of the last good factory jobs in the auto plants part that was shipped overseas as so many others were and in midlife faced with the need to continue to survive she remade herself as a community organizer just in time for the election of barack obama 2008. washington guy is a political operative who attached to his aspirations and ambitions to joe biden and worked for him for years and gradually became disillusioned with by dan and to some extent with government and became a lobbyist which just about everyone who goes to washington and the being and made a fortune then lost half of it in a financial crisis of 2008 it is the watershed event for the whole character event it moves to the process and

then in the face of that he re-entered government as the chief of sat -- chief of staff with a single aim to make wall street pay and imposing discipline on the banks bringing the of wrongdoers with the fraud brought to justice of course, none of which happened but it for him was a matter of self-respect to recognize he was part of a corrupt system to try to make a good. they also have profiles of a number of well-known americans, celebrities from in cambridge in politics to oprah winfrey, robert rubin rubin, alice waters, they represent the the to many of whom came from the same of skier background but in most

cases they were rising up through institutions that no longer were working as they should white colin powell or robert rubin and did not understand until it was too late they were part of the problem and institutions were looking to undermine the additions they thought they had but others are more institution breakers that is the role that the e. lee plays today they got where they were to break serve rules jay z is one of the subjects his whole career from drug dealer to empire builder and corporate rap star is the story of don't wait in line, don't hold

down a job and finished school because that is a sucker's game the way is the mafia boards made it too tough and want to win it is the on justification. the north carolina boy clutching a bible is ian price, of sun of fire and brimstone preacher his family farmed tobacco and he gripped with the ambition to be in on japan nor he drove like with andrew carnegie and henry ford those are the americans have the deep rooted this in history that is very evident when you travel to the piedmont region but he created it trait -- a chain of truck stops between north carolina and virginia with fast food

restaurants while the countryside was collapsing wal-mart and multinational oil companies almost made it possible for him to compete and tobacco was dying as an industry and so was it textiles and by the time he tried to make it as the entrepreneur were there rule south was beginning to look a lot like the core of the city's with rampant drug abuse with multiple generations on public assistance. unemployment and a despair saddling in. price had a vision how he could recent -- resuscitate that around him he had a series of the epiphany been a man from a religious area

his vision was a revival of the countryside through what was right at hand that was a waste oil from all the fast-food joints that is to say by a diesel to become a bio desalt watching for newer. i will be a little passage that katchis price at the cusp of this transition from a truck stop of entrepreneur to johnny appleseed was biofuel but you can see i had a tremendous amount of material man silicon valley, wall street, a washington, the power centers also be forgotten and left behind places like the rest bell and rural south.

the exurbs of tampa bay i had to retell the stories the structure takes you through 30 years of american history but it is not the the big generation but the history of their lives that is always being pushed and acted upon by what is happening in places like wall street and washington so it is history from the ground up under the influence of the forces that gradually and do the contract of america together that they grew up with. i will end with this passage from the middle of the book that comes just before the financial crisis which is a

reckoning for price when the truck stop business fails and all the other characters in the book a two-lane asphalt road white oak and dash in the shadows of the trees year by year collapsing on a self the roof slopes inward nearby a a white house was empty windows at the roadside smothered while of fire scorched on the outside wall still advertised crash. farther along an a big ranch house stood in the golden sunlight of a field another bent and a gentle hill in the deep woods than the abandoned house in the

clearing the roads straightened and flattened where the struggles faced each other a walgreen's across from the mcdonald's show against bp and then fade fast scrapyard with twisted metal next door to what is methodically gutted been sold off. then downtown the of main street the ted condo studio government benefits office a nameless corner store for rented to pedestrians a dollar general come on the aside the country opened up with a road passing fields weeds, dirt, then a presidential development with look-alike houses

played out across a tobacco farmer and beyond the subdivision isolated on acres of grass behind a split rail fence the chateau of a celebrity nascar driver. the landscape that was returned to where he planned to live out his life was very old and new as particular as anything in america also a generic. in his imagination it had become a nightmare so wrong he called the sinful and he hated to spend more than any casual visitor or critic could be you saw a dream of redemption so unlikely in glorious it could only fill the mind's eye of a visionary. . .

he would see beyond the surface of the land to a hitten truth.

some nights he sat up late on his front porch with a class of jack, and listened to the trucks heading south on 220 carrying crates of live chicken to the slaughter houses. always under cover of darkness like the vast and shameful trafficking. chickens pumped full of hormones that left them too big to walk. and he thought how the same chickens might return from their destination as peace -- pieces of meat up the hill from the house. it would be drown in the bubbling fryers by employees whose hate tried of the job would leak to the cooked food. the food would be served up and eaten by customers who ends up in the hospital with diabetes or heart failure. a burden to the public. and later he would see them riding around the walmart in electric carts because they were too heavy to walk the aisles of a super center, just like

hormone-fed chickens. [applause] so that is dean's nightmare vision of one of the most beautiful part of the country, and it's his quest, which is both self-interested, because he wants to make his fortune, and also a sign of deep commitment to his neck of the woods, and really to an idea of america that he still hold. to revive it with what he calms this new green economy. he calls it that in all innocence as if know one used the phrase. no one told him about it. he didn't have an organization behind him, a newspaper, a business association, or a community college. that's true of all the characters in the book. they are on their own figuring thing out for them.

what he figures put to he can get can -- the entire state will be revived. will be like silicon valley. that's how he used to talk about. he saw himself, i saw this, you know, in all respect for dean. as a kind of steve jobs of biodiesel. that's what he's doing today. this -- in each of these stories, dean, tammy thomas, jeff they all make mistakes. they screw up in big ways. they go bankrupt. they make stupid investment, their marriages break up. they have too many children without a father to support them. they get involved in dirty businesses, but they never let go of the idea that there is something more important than simply surviving. and that america still stands

for that something. the question is whether their investment in the american dream is reciprocated. if the american dream is still invested in people like them. the book takes you through their stories and others while moving between power centers and back waters, celebritieses, and obscure people as this period of unwinding move from the path, the late '70s and until the moment we're living in now, and that is what i try to do in writing this book. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> thank you to george from the new yorker. author of the book "the unwinding".

this is about the writing of this book. how long did it take? how did you pick the people? how did you find the people who you profiled? >> qlea. this book was unlike anything i have written. it took about three years -- two years of reporting, and then nine months in which the reporting kind of continued because i really hadn't finished. i knew i had to start writing. the writing was a sprint. i'm still exhausted from it. i didn't have a master plan. this was the terrifying thing. i had intingts like who was an interesting person? thirty seconds on the phone with dean price and i told him stop talking. i'm coming down. don't waste it on the phone. i heard the same story 100 times from him. he was always exciting. it sounded like he was telling

it for the first time. the e. -- eepiphany. i stayed at his house. he let me drive around north carolina on the lonely quest. it was rivetting to see this one man sort of up against the multinationals, the big box stories, the indifference of bureaucrat, the poverty of the region. the skepticism of his own mother. he kept tat in this begin essentially american way. that was an easy one. of course i wanted to tell his story. it fit to well with the larger theme. jeff, the washington operative, i met while working on a new yorker piece about insider trading. he was a source for me. he mentioned he had been a long time washingtoned inner who end up in the lobbiests. and suddenly -- i need the washington part of this story. and i was always looking for the

character who would allow me to tell the story in imminent terms. i didn't want to tell the big story how money took over in washington. we've heard it. and the thought of having to asimilarble all the research and data to do it again would seem pointless. to tell it through one man's life, that kind of excited my literary instijts. and tammy thomas i went out to find. i wanted to find a woman in the -- who was doing something to turn around her community. >> so you found the people. you visited them again and again. it seem like you spoke with their family and friend and on the ground reporting. >> emergence journalism. >> your approach. when you read the book it seems more like a novel. literary non-fiction. mutting it together and writing it that way.

to get rid of the first person. you will not find i referring to me anywhere in the book. i try to get rid of it in the acknowledgment. it was awkward. i had to put it in. [laughter] the decision to get rid of i meant that had i to tell the entire story through character. there was no direct commenting, explaining, arguing, bringing in my own experience which are the tools i've always used in the past. that put me much closer to the terrain of a novel. a novel. and the third person with a lot of points of view. how to structure was the moment of panic. i had done two years of hard-work and i had no idea how it would hang together, and was really in a state of crisis. i had come up with a --

which i then got rid of because i assumed it would never work. she reminded me it was to use the great trilogy of u.s.a., which is about the first three decades of the 20th century in america and which moves from protagonist to portrait of woodrow wilson, and john d. rockefeller and jpmorgan and duncan. and through these kind of mishmash of headline and song and different moment along the way. i didn't think i could do that. i didn't think the had the whole story of the people that would allow me to go to thirty or 35 years. i got a lot from them. spending weeks with people you pick thing up along the way in odd moments, and that became the structure to move through american history in these

parallel tracks from different part of the country and to cut back and forth, which means how to sequence them. how long can i leave dean price after introducing him before the reader forget about him. come to the conclusion as to whether the unwinding is necessarily making america a worse place or in some way in the better? >> ting moved in two direction at once. behave greater freedom than we've had. more choice or apps. and more people who can use them. i mean, the circle of inclusion

has widened. you can be a gay boy scout, which you couldn't when i was a kid. that's a good thing. but that gay boy scout probably goes to a crappy public school. and at the same time that we've oup ofis widening of freedom ang americans until today we're at the point where it makes the period of the great combat -- we have as clay of celebrities. they marry each other, they sit on each ore's boards. they support each other and they blurp each other's books. they live like olympics god and the countrymen are left at the bottom of the mountain to watch them in ah. awe. t hard say is the trade-off twort?

i would say the trade has been freedom, we have more freedom and less security than we did thirty years ago. if equal opportunity really is disappearing as a fact. not as a -- more americans in theory have opportunity. few uer americans in fact do. the place you're born, the family you're born in to. where you go school really going to determine to a large degree where you end up. it wasn't true i was growing up. not nearly as much. to me that's the end of some crucial part of the american dream. because without equal opportunity we become a class society. a strait fied society, and i hate seeing that happen. so i don't know one balance. i do know one balance. i fear for the future that my kids are going grow up in to because everything is pushing us away from each other.

even internet is pushing us away from each other. we are connected virtually, but i think physically it actually -- it put us to niches. some people think the internet is the answer to everything i talk about in. we have a new peer-networking-based society. and i think peer networks can be useful for things like, you know, amazon reviews, and wikipedia, and kick starter although wikipedia actually has a few things wrong in my biography. no surprise. [laughter] but i don't think it has the answers to the basic questions of justice and fairness we face. so i'm -- i don't have the magic here is the reform we need. i'm sure we'll get there.

it's when i graduated from high school prop 13 passed in california that year, which i think is a signal event in beginning to dissolve the glue that held together public institutions. another thing that happened in '78, is that throughout the '70s with all the economic upheaval at that time businesses began to feel they could no longer afford to play ball with government and labor the way they had throughout the post war era of business labor and cooperation. they began to spend money on lobbying in washington on big way. there were a few billses that came out. the bill were defeated including

a labor law reform bill, because business lobbied so heavily against them, and douglas phrase, the head of the uaw then, quit president carter's business labor counsel and wrote an interesting letter of resignation, which i actually quote in one of these mashups from 1978. he said in his letter, the letter of industry commerce and finance in the united states have broken and discarded the fragile, unwritten impact previously existing during a past period of growth and progress. today we -- imagine there's going to be a business labor government counsel to solve problems of automation, and unemployment and things. i think everyone is essentially pursuing it. there was a time when the sectors exercised a certain amount of restraint because they knew if you pushed too hard in

pursuing your own narrow interest, you might going destroy the thing that hold society together. i think you can look at the late '70s and say that's when it happened. >> we are the same age. there's a tendency to are manhattan -- are manhattan size -- were those really good the old days? [laughter] >> you know, i wouldn't want to go back to a time when whole classes of americans were disfranchised. there was no lipitor -- length of time when tv, the best show on tv was the "mary tyler moore show" there a lot of good things about life today. one is in my pocket. i'm a slave to it. i bow down for it. it has power. but i don't see why these things could not have coincided with a

maintenance of a basic contract among americans that held the country together rather than turning everyone in to a free agent an entrepreneur. which is sort of where we are today. dean price is a figure of the present. to him, it's all about entrepreneurship, and making his own way. except no one ever makes their own way. there's always some government program or scientific research, which of course, created silicon valley. there's always some bureaucratic structure that creates sort of the boundary in which people can operate so no one is able to abuse their power. i see it through eroding and collapsing around us. i don't see why we can't have gay boy scout and good public schools. why can't we have sphwhoat. --

both? >> are there any institutions that survive or even gaining strength? is the internet an institution? [laughter] , i mean, the internet is a thing we have created it would sort of be like saying, you know, air travel is gaining strength. i don't see. maybe they are out there. i would love to hear from audience members and others who think i have missed some phenomena happening in america but it's too early to see it. it's going to replace them. in my own world of journalism two things are happening. one, is that newspapers and tv news networks are dying. the l.a. times might owned by the coke brothers in a few months. you know, there are a few holdout. thank god the new yorker is one

of them and may continue, but there was a value to having strong independent news organizations that were professional. there was a level of confidence and expertise that was expected. as that died we have facebook, twitter, social media which is a powerful tool more and more people can use. power is defused and everyone is their own news organization. we have the new thing called citizens journalists, which there's a chapter in the book about andrew breitbart which is ironically called "citizens journalist" anybody can be a citizens journalists. it's fun. do we talk about brain surgeons? to me it suggests -- length of time -- [laughter] a kind of contempt for what i do. if anyone can do it it's not that hard.

better get out of the away and let them take over. i see as a trade-off that might not be with it. >> it's not brain surgeon. it's -- >> it's not brain surgery, but it's not tweeting either. >> exactly. >> i want to remind for the radio audience. economic and social shift he said are harming the fabric of america. at least in some way. one of the audience -- you mentioned prop 13 and the good school system and seen what element remain. >> it's been privatized. >> that's what i wanted to ask you. there's been talk for years about repealing prop 13 or modifying it. a different thing to approach in california. essentially the parents of -- [inaudible] do you see that changing? that's --

>> l.a. year didn't california pass an initiative to raise taxes for funding public schools? >> yeah. >> yeah and, you know, i almost put in the 2012 mashup. because it seemed like the perfect bookend to 1978 and prop 13. after this long and really misguided foray in to low tax, small government let 1,000 flowers bloom and wilt. [laughter] we had gone wake up to the fact you can't be a successful society and economy without responsibilities to match your rights. so that may be a sign that, you know, there's a new sobriety and a new maturity about the public. every time i see taking step that way. i see apple doing everything it

can to avoid paying corporate taxes and calling itself a revolutionary lifestyle that thinks different. i don't see a trend in the single direction, and when i began this book had the working title of decline and renewal. i thought 2008 was a hinge year. along the line of 1932 and 1980, when a whole historical trend was going to move in the direction with the financial crisis, the election of obama. you know, it's been a disappointment, and i don't put all the blame on the president. i think the -- i keep coming back to the constitution. they are broken. and one even very wise and able man is never going to be to be fix them. to put them to use. >> there is talk in california

amending prop 13 in term how business go the property tax without touching the residential side. but what you said leads me to another question from the audience bhap is your take on the fact that many ultra wealthy prefer personal philanthropy. >> right. right. and that's in the prologue i wrote that in the place of the institutions we have celebrities . instead of the public health system. opera winfrey is there instead of a vibrant publishing and book culture. lesson for being, you know, generous, but when it's personalized that way, it becomes arbitrary and

capricious, and it masks self-interest that are always at work. i wrote a piece a couple of weeks about the politic of silicon valley and came to the startling conclusion it's another industry with its own interest. which apparently made some people unhappy in silicon valley. i thought it was a pretty obvious truth. [laughter] [applause] i guess not here. so it's a return to what we saw at the start of the century. ..

five. >> with the successful sectors i like silicon valley better than i like wall street but it is creating jobs for working or middle-class families. but you can adjust to okay.

just to be well enough you fall and drop 11 of the chapters of the book a blue-collar worker bee cave 20 our per week $8 per hour produce stockard know where you can raise a family on that that is the most dramatic change. >> also the ability to join a union. >> a and you would have a place that you could step into instead of having a to recreate yourself every few years matt.

one of the main characters of the book, peter who founded a powell and lives in separate cisco is a libertarian i found interesting because he moves into directions at once really is a believer to forget about the old tired structure the life is individuals and you live under talents that he it minutes the tech revolution did not coincide with middle-class decline that the typhoon is the overrated gadget that the silicon valley billionaires' that will talk is a very

interesting character. >> what about the tax code that has been the ability to achieve the american dream of course, when reagan became president there was a dramatic regressive change in the tax coded may be shared need to be because the taxes on the upper bracket were near 80 percent somehow those for still very prosperous. the 70's changed everything because suddenly business could not compete compete, globalization became an, an inflation ate away and their reaction is we have to protect our interests. perhaps there was a natural reaction what is strange and

disturbing one certain -- once the taboo was broken you should not do everything to do you care to pay the lease tax is possible then complain there are not enough educated engineers in this country, if you are a co that is just fire 20% of the work force you should not have the board that will give you a big pay raise for doing that. the they make is seeing you are ra a sucker that did not need this course correction but it seems once it began there was no stopping it then everyone has to break it at the poker table so

then it was a little window or a loophole that much bigger places started to come in. but to be more philanthropic started to give money away is that the sign of something? that is the scion of the plutocracy. it does not look good to die with all your money. [laughter] i admire buffett nor for calling for the end of the carry interest exemption and the calling and others to give their wealth also a fundamental sacrifice that i

think's that's a good pattern for others to follow >>host: the pitcher of politics in washington did we trusted the one in government? >> i have a positive portrait of elizabeth warren [applause] schaede may well disappoint us it worries me to see her joy in the least democratic body in the senate. [laughter] and to know what senators become because i have interviewed quite a few, what i liked about her if she does not talk with the blink and the nod as if to say we all know we're in the same group but basically we understand each other she is played spoken and seems

actively hawse style to the institution that caused so much damage she reminds me of my grandfather who was a populist congressmen from alabama she reminds me of politicians and is a prairie populist that has pretty much died out but there she is so i watch with a certain amount of hope. >>host: is there any going back? >> not in the same way. kim we have the new deal back? probably not.

does that mean nothing like a reassertion of public power? no. the constant shifting back and forth of public-interest and private interests now we have gone so far in that direction that there is a sense of things being broken that we need that sec that can prevent the stock market to become the electronic casino that only the wealthy and the most cost sophisticated investors could stand a chance for ordinary americans and becomes a place of high frequency trading and if you are out there with your 20

year-old stocks you will be left behind. there is no reason why the old idea the accountability cannot be revived but to look back to the roosevelt republican as a model to think about the future we all have our bias then maybe we figure it out. and then to sustain itself little logger. to sake of the tea party as they are both in my book with the leader in tampa who becomes a political leader than a chapter on occupy

wall street. both a populist reaction to the sense that the ec to have failed in those institutions no longer serve broader concerns and that diagnosis i think is accurate and will stay with us. to occupy a was a need more than a movement. to articulate a feeling that was widely held and i spent a lot of time as a karate park once it ended it was against structure a and it was part of the unwinding it wanted everything to be leveled with new leaders and i know they can policy that will get far but it did

through new media today articulate something that is real the tea party has more of a basis in local politics but it also came and went pretty fast. from a movie in the direction of socialism, libertarianism, a totally different directions , you cannot have both but one of the main characters of the celebrity is robert rubin and example of a complete failure in the end because he was well paid by a bank to require massive infusions of taxpayer money and nearly brought down the rest of the economy with that.

people just think our a meritocracy may be raped. maybe there is a sense the people who seem to be the most qualified really don't know what they're doing. i talking to people who said that very clear they they don't know any better than i do. that no nesting in ignorance are exalted i believe in experts and institutions that you move up as you get better. but it leaf they should be fake or rigged but it seems that is the way it is. >>host: what is one of the most important things we can do to be equitable? >> that is the question i fear the most. >>host: wait until the next line.

[laughter] this book does the in with the 10 and prescriptions to make america a better place i did not want to destroy what i had done to leave with a bogus set of policies so all i want to do is painted portrait naked as panoramic as i could at the same time hoping the narrative is one way that we understand ourselves who we are and how things that seem to be happening in different places this is something holding it together an a common story that ties wall street to rural north carolina and youngstown to silicon valley that is my

best inadequate answer to that question. >>host: why don't we see these things happening in the moment what is going wrong or how to stop it? >>guest: we are to close it is all around us and it is our life we take things for granted. you become paralyzed if you think critically too much but there is a broad sense in america even if the stock market is that the record doubles we have not had any real economic dynamism or real progress for a long time. americans are restless and have an idea of the country that is beyond gdp and

quarterly earnings and who won the last cycle. there is something essential in the fabric and it is on the walls the declaration is on one wall the "gettysburg address" is on another and a '' from robert e. lee is on the table so you haven't covered. [laughter] may be a believer but to go longer feel comfortable that is what it is about. he came up to my house he actually met instead of my house a couple weeks ago that was crazy for me that these people cannot of my head but he gave me a framed quotation of the people, by

the people, for the people the perfect gift without irony and i know this means something to you. >> we have reached the end of our program if you have suggestions of how to fix things. [laughter] to whom should we turn? >> the lesson i learned when you think nothing is happening something is always happening and often in the most unlooked for places where there is no one paying attention while people are focused on the latest filibuster. that is happening in this book. is very local it is very fragmented. people are or get a fee if responding to what they see

their own communities and coming up cliff improvised answers that have resourcefulness for flat to the is hopeful i don't see it as part of a larger social pattern may be that is for another writer but i do think it is happening in maybe the duty of the beach of us to think about that to require where we stand and may not come from washington >>host: so let george get to sit tight -- to the table to sign the books. thinks leo george packer author of "the unwinding." [applause] we also think our audience here on the radio in internet he will autograph

the books for sale in the lab the. this is the meeting from the commonwealth club the place we were in the know, this meeting is adjourned. [inaudible conversations] >> when did the wes slave trade start? >>guest: the u.s. was involved in this the track on ashley slave trade from the moment we began as a colony of britain's. indeed one of the interesting thing is is in the constitutional convention was a compromise between the states that had slaves and those that did it

the constitution said the federal congress could not take any action until 18 '08 against the slave trade. the first moment it could president jefferson sent legislation to congress that band participation of the slave trade by the u.s. ships and persons and congress passed that we provided the slave trade which is a long time of course, slavery ended but the issues were seen as different even southerners were in support of beginning the slave trade. >>host: why southerners? >> a lot of reasons one is that it was perceived as the more intimate part of the traffic also the economic self-interest that they already owned slaves and the environment was such the mortality was not as high as like cuba or brazil with they did not live for very

long but here if they were well treated as they could become a they would've for a decent life span so they sought it as increasing the value of them slaves that they already own to so that limits the ability of the neighbors to buy more. >>host: you have a chart in your book i would use the word importation? correct? >> what is this spike? >> there is right before 18 '08 because everybody new as soon as the clock turned that congress would be in the slave trade. >>host: the other part of the books is the international human rights law when did that start to become a part of this discussion?

>> around the turn of the 19th century people think international human rights law is a tire of the product of the 20th century that people say right after world war tarot the holocaust happened as news of the cave now much happened after world war to the nuremberg trials similar trials in the far east and the u.n. was founded the universal declaration of human rights this is when they started to look a human-rights issues but i say actually it was earlier in connection with the slave trade international law was first used for human rights purpose. sobering countries like the u.s. and britain was another that it be and the slave trade and began to spread that this was no longer practice they want to to

participate you was perceived as file the natural rights that underpinned the u.s. revolution of france that says we told the truth to be self-evident all manner created equal in doubt with certain unalienable rights so there was a tension between that and the existence of slavery but those ideas were spreading through the atlantic world and also a religious revival movements those that were active politically and perceived slavery to be morally wrong so as they became more active they would put pressure on the government we have to stop the slave trade because it was the international problem all those engaged in travels of the ocean were gauged it wasn't something just one country could stop even if the u.s. said beebe

and the slave trade were britain said they will lead it would not be enough because spain, portugal, france, and the other countries would still pick up the slack to pick up this glaves to transport them so it quickly became apparent in order to eradicate this practice there would have to be international cooperation. said there was pressure on government the british government was receptive and they began to lobby other governments to enter into treaties to prohibit the slave trade at first they were what we might call cheap talk that it is from we want to ban the slave trade but they had no enforcement mechanism but pretty quickly the tide turned and they said is this enough so the british government began pushing for enforcement measures as they

create a treaty that not only banned the slave trade to create the international court mower than was a tree before the tribunal this was to promote the human rights objectives it if the ship was caught it would be brought before one of the international courts if they found that it was covered by the treaty and there was a treaty between britain and spain and the slaves would be free the ship would be auctioned the money would be split between the captain and the governments involved so these international courts heard 600 cases and 380,000 slaves of of the ships.

>>host: post 18 '08? what was the name of these international courts? >> they had different names there were a bunch of bilateral treaties spain, portugal, brazil where the initial countries essentially joined during the civil war called the knicks commission or the next court because they involve judges in different countries of british and brazilian for example, if they could not agree they would toss a coin to pick a third judge to help decide the case. >> as i was exploring this i eighth looked through a lot of the county records a when you look at the colonial county records period often you have the name of the president or the professor

listed with the taxable property to be the enslaved person or two or three students brought their slaves to school? so if you think about it. with part of that taxable property what you often have in the case of princeton or harvard you have the president's name the save as the college but with that of common knowledge of the local area they're kind of inseparable in the way.

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