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are delighted. to pose questions such as the fundamental question that os has put before the nation and indeed the entire world, people of good faith, how do we live together with our deepest differences? there are a lot of differences. how can we live together with those differences? how can we live peacefully together? differences can make as pretty uncomfortable, no matter what our background is, no matter how open-minded we maybe, differences can bother us. we didn't hear things we not only don't like, but the we very deeply disagree with. we hear things that make us

angry. to take action. with what we're reading or what we are hearing and spoken on television and social media, we're very concerned about what we are hearing and how do we live peacefully with those differences. and what this book is exploring. the call for a global public square, religious freedom and the making of the world safe for democracy. join me again in welcoming os guinness. [applause] >> host: to begin the conversation let me begin with a very flattering review of the book by professor thomas pharma of georgetown, renown leader in

the world of religious freedom, and tribute to your notebook says this. one of the foremost religious liberty thinkers of our time, os guinness sets forth a soaring gold for this book, establishing a vision of religious freedom, civil freedom that accommodates competing truth claims about who man is and why he exists. os, help us understand what you mean by hassle freedom. >> guest: the term is from roger williams, sold liberty was his great thing. for me it is the right to reach, to hold, exercise, to change, and to share what you believe based on the dictates of

conscience. that is easy to say that you can see all sorts of faults views. for example there were several american leaders a while back to talk about freedom of worship and that is quite inadequate. every dictator allows freedom of worship, what goes on in your head when your mouth shut between your two years. that is not free exercise as madison put out. or you can see in much of our world today where religion is despised and dismissed, religious liberty is discounted. there are many people whose a religious liberty is not for everyone. freedom of conscience and fought and religion is for secular world views too, for everybody whether super natural or naturalistic. >> we frequently delved into the history of the american republic

and in one intriguing treatment of that founding era, you reminded me that in this country we frequently referred to mr. jefferson's metaphor, his letter to the danbury baptists in 1802 of the wall of separation between church and state and yet in your book, this is page 138, you know that whatever he personally believed, mr. jefferson, or did not believe, as the president of the united states, and i'm going to close, he was a regular attendee at the largest church service in the united states. under the roof of the u.s. capitol. he also invited baptists and episcopalians to hold worship services including holy communion in the executive branch buildings. helped us understand this. take us back in time. was mr. jefferson simply not

practicing what he was preaching? help us. what was mr. jefferson up to? >> guest: he is much misunderstood today and people argue about him. the term goes back to roger williams, the first president to open a wall of separation but as he used it it was to protect the faith community, not the state. the key thing is the disestablish month of religion is actually at the heart of the uniqueness of america. what the founders did was to disestablish the church institutionally, but never excluded fade from public life. that distinctive way of doing it really held until the everson case in 1947 when you have the idea of strict separation or separation is some. all religion should be excluded from public life today.

you have the new atheists' saying strict separation, who are agreeing that we should exclude religion because it is divisive, violent and so on and so on. interesting legal strong this critique of that comes from europe which is the most secular continent and atheist philosophers. and the great -- insists to exclude religious voices of any sort is highly liberal. sadly in this country you have a number of liberal liberals who are trying to exclude all religion and they have distorted jefferson's view. as you said he went to church, he invited the baptists, episcopalians, even had church services in the white house and the treasury including communion and you can't get more specifically sacred than that. he was not a strict separation is like many of his followers

today. >> host: but why? the political reasons for it but were there any other reasons that we know of that jefferson would say this is an activity, mainly religious worship that want to support? >> guest: at the time he was heading to church and even alan stop command said wire you going to church? you don't believe. he says in defect as the chief magistrate of the land i want to support something which is profoundly important and you concede all the framers would have agreed with that and you can see the northwest ordinances and so on. they really understood. in my previous book i call this the bowlen triangle of freedom. freedom requires virtue, virtue requires faith of some sort, face of any sort, and like the recycling it goes round and round. of the framers agreed on that, evangelicals like john jay and

patrick henry, orthodox christian b. beavers like george mason, people who were deists like jefferson and freethinkers like thomas paine. but in place of faith and public life it was almost universal agreement. >> host: what was the value that they saw? you describe the golden triangle. what was the value the founding generation saw weathered they were believers are skeptics or non believers? >> guest: there was no formal established religion. that is what they denied from the european experience. that was the radical nature of it. take john adams. he is openly jiri about an entire society of atheists, freedom of conscience, absolutely but a society of atheists he was cheery about because where would the average is come from? the grounding of honesty, loyalty, patriotism? what is it that is the highest

inspiration of any virtue? what is the solid teaching of the content of what bridge to is? also what assumption when people are not virgin was? in almost all cases that is somewhat lacking in a secular world view and very strong for example in jewish and christian world views. but not established. >> host: let's come to the current era. in your book, before we go global, this is after all "the global public square" 11, so there is truly a worldwide perspective os guinness is bringing to bear but you identify in pretty strong language what you see as violations of full freedom. right here at home in the united states. one institution that comes under harsh criticism is vanderbilt, pages 101-104 you take them to task.

why are you so upset about that? >> guest: not just them. they have been followed by most recently you probably followed the university of california's entire system. they have, quote, derecognized religious groups. they said a religious group, not just christians but jews, muslims, all sorts of religious groups, they cannot have their beliefs as a requirement for membership. i don't have the quotation in front of me but when one group asked to be recognized, of the christian groups, things like the amount of time someone had been in the group and their loyalty to the group and so on and four criteria, they had an allegiance to jesus christ and the administration sent it back and that was the only thing they struck out. if you do that, we have muslims and members of other societies?

you could go on the line. if you think of it is absolutely absurd but a clear violation of people's free exercise to choose as leaders of their group, all the groups welcome everybody, they welcomed everybody but as leaders of the group they did insist that the leaders of the group believed, that was a simple matter of religious freedom. >> host: the supreme court had a case several years ago involving the hastings law school, part of the university of california system. this is an issue the audience will want to be aware of and the implications. i would like to go down to the culture and pick up in the 1980s with richard john newhouse's book called the naked public square, the idea of eliminating religious references and religious discourse in the public arena. get it out of the ad or a.

in the 1990s stephen carter of yale law school, author of a best-selling book called the culture of disbelief, had a very intriguing subtitle, how america law and politics trivializes religion. professor carter was arguing we can preserve separation values, the separation of church and state while embracing, not trivializing, the face of literally millions of americans. what is it at work in our culture? what lies beyond what is going on on different campuses and more broadly in the culture? >> guest: two dueling visions. and very mild versions of it. and the french, much more strict

out of the french revolution, turkey, ataturk or the french system, and very severe versions of that, the republic of china where people are oppressed and persecuted and killed for their religious faith, especially christians and muslims. at the other end you have what i call the sacred public square dealing with naked bulblet square where some religion or another is underestablish a monopoly of everyone else to some extent is second class or worse. the mildest version of sacred public square is the church of england which in many ways is on its last legs. and stronger versions, very strong ones like iran or saudi arabia where people are in peril of their lives under that system. so steven and i would argue for a civil public square where everybody is free to enter and

engage public life, religious, secular, christian, jewish, muslim, and colleges, etc. but within a clear understanding of what is just and free for everybody else too. what is a right for one person is a right for another person and the responsibility of both. so i would argue for this notion of a civil public square over against the sacred public square and over again certainly the naked public square. why did the latter coming? you have this mixture of an aggressive secularism. 20 years ago when i was an undergrad -- 40 years ago when i was an undergraduate -- it seems like 20 years -- the secularization theory was dominant. the world gets more modern, the world gets less religious. now that is totally wrong factually. everyone agrees there is an explosion of religion around the

world. religion is furiously alive but this time countered by of very aggressive secularism. the combination between secularism, richard dawkins, christopher hichens, that type of secularism combined with the strict separation is some -- they are not atheists but because of their experience in europe, they want something stricter but that combination is very powerful because it is the dominant thing in the american universities and through the university's in the media so that is one end of the bull and by would argue against both extremes and the other extreme and christians have fought

unwisely and treated backlash against themselves. >> host: what are those movements? >> guest: my broad critique of the christian right is it politicized the faith. by that i mean they were left wing in the 1920s, they trusted politics to do more than politics can do. politics is often downstream from the source of many of the problems which can't be fixed politically. newhouse used to say the first thing to say about politics is politics is not the first thing. it is important or we can't trusted to do what it can do. the second thing they have done is a christian mistake, in nineteenth century language they tried to do the lord's work but in the world's way. for instance jesus told his followers to the of their enemy. much of the christian right is known for its stereotyping and demonizing and things like this.

sadly you can see today one of the greatest defections from the christian faith and all american history among the millennials and the younger generation and they are not just turning against the christian right, they are turning against the faith itself because they are so turned off by the ugliness that they have seen. >> host: there is an oddity in our nation, it would seem to me, because of our experience in the civil rights movement, the lifetime of not our students here but certainly faculty members and staffers, we live through this and we remember dr. king very vividly not by seeing him in some video tape from yesteryear, we lived with him, we saw him and we read his letter from birmingham jail to his fellow clergypersons, deeply christian when he was lifting up, so why should there be, why

is their hostility to religion in the public square when it was so efficacious, it would seem, in the civil rights movement? and when we go back -- william wilberforce, the great abolitionist movement of the nineteenth century, the great evangelical movement, the reform movement working on manners, as wilberforce put it, trying to improve the social loss of the poor in society. in light of that social reform and civil rights reform movements, why should there be any hostility at all? >> guest: it is partly ignorance and partly frank prejudice. howard a religion poisons everything. that is absolute rubbish. if you look civilization, we know the errors of the church, the inquisition and so on. but take the gifts of the

christian gospel, the rise of philanthropy, giving, caring, hospices, hospitals, uniquely western and came out of the caring of the church and the parables of jesus but take the reform movements, you mentioned the recent one is, go back to the banning of infanticide. road and throwing out unwanted babies in rubbish dumps in the morning. christians went out, picked up the babies and looks after them. and these huge tended cities where the hungry or orphans or leper's or wherever, like a shopping mall of people caring for the needs of all sorts and then the conquistadores and sullen and the ones you mentioned like wilberforce and all sorts of other people like elizabeth fry, until the current generation almost all the great

reform movements were inspired by jesus and led by people who are openly his followers. that is true today, you have a movement of movements, secularist groups, muslim groups, buddhist groups, all sorts of groups, but it is absolutely ridiculous to ignore the extraordinary role of the church. take the health care mandate, no group in history has done more than the roman catholic church, by granting them and curtailing their freedom, what they're doing very simply, anyone who understands civil society, they are killing the goose that laid the golden egg and now they're trying to do this with foreign policy and eventually they go out and there is no golden egg in the morning because they killed the goose that has done this. it is foolish as well as

incredibly ignorant. >> host: applause for another book, rodney stock, the faculty has written a magnificent book in title of the triumph of christianity, part of the narrative is what was happening in imperial rome with the christian community coming alongside, treating women with dignity, caring for infants that had been left to die. >> host: >> guest: in his earlier book rise of christianity and all sorts of thing, has done a huge amount accounted that ignorance. >> host: religious freedom in the world, you opened that door. not simply talking about religious freedom but throughout the book you make it clear that what you are talking about in terms of sold freedom building on roger williams great teaching

and insight, freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief. take us on the globetrotting trip, anything you would add to what you said earlier in terms of religious freedom in the world today? >> guest: white me start by saying why is so urgent. as the world is globalizing and becomes more interconnected many of the huge issues in the environment, technology, nuclear issues and so on are coming together, the younger generation, the crunch generation, converging issues and the underlying many of these issues, how do we live with our deep differences? the fact is the explosion of diversity in the world, in my background in sociology people say everyone is now everywhere. that is a little exaggerated but the media, travel, migration,

never has there been such diversity in more parts of the world than there is today, then you take things like the internet. for a public square was very precious to us, going back to the address in athens below the acropolis. it was awful physical place, the forum in rome, capitol hill, westminster and so on but senate shifted from being a physical place to being a metaphor, op-ed pages in the new york times, that was the public square, but now, take things like the responses to the danish cartoon, reagan's book. in the age of the internet, went on speaking to the world, we can be heard by the world and the world can organize its response so the idea of public squares become more urgent than ever and will lead to the gatt deal oppression in countries like china or the sectarian violence we see in the middle east war in

nigeria or pakistan, this issue is global the urgent, not a pollyanna. as i see it you have the united states, which for 2-1/3 centuries, the true remedy. however as a european i am still european it is the most nearly perfect solution in history so the framers got raise badly wrong at the beginning, religious liberty almost nearly right from the beginning, america's record is better than almost any great country. 50 years of culture warring since the early cases, america is squandering her heritage. not only is that, but failing to be a leader demonstrating how to do it at a time when the whole world wants to know how to do it. europe is a long way behind and

parts of the world in the middle east or even further off. in th, os dirksen senate office building 9 mentioned reforms, the rise of the university's,

oxford, you could take the rise of modern science and of course the human rights revolution. all of these are distinctive and many of them, indirect or direct gifts of the gospel. they were discussing those but clearly our western civilization as a lot to the greeks, philosophy, science, drama, all sorts of things. we of great deal to the romans. americans love rome, we love the greeks more than the romans but romans gave us dominance and you can see how capitol hill and the senate and many other things, the deepest things of all leo to the hebrews and the whole notion of the understanding of god and his character and ethics and humans made in the image of god and all sorts of things. you can see we are deliberately cutting off those routes.

when i was a student i knew bertrand russell, great atheist, great secular humanist. he would argue you don't need the christian faith. humans have dignity. but now you can see 40 years later many of the leading atheist thinkers are undermining of the notion of human dignity. one article, the stupidity of dignity, the uselessness of dignity so you can see we are a cut civilization, one example, you can take the notion of freedom itself, religious freedom but in many of these areas we are a cut fire civilization. i was reading a book this afternoon, we are living off of the with of an empty bottle. someone else, we are living in huge bankruptcy beyond our means. so there will be consequences of

a cut flower civilization. >> host: what is the solution? what do we need to do? you are a great diagnostician. what is to be done? >> guest: which problem arbor talking about? first of all, by this book. >> guest: religious freedom is what the book is about. i hope it will contribute to our reaffirmation of a huge discussion of the primacy of religious freedom but practically what can be done? first america needs to restore civic education. everyone outside america understand your motto, the door of the pseudonym, is your greatest achievement. you took amazing diversity and forged one people but you have to have -- you can see since the 1960s there has been the

devaluation of civic education, americanism. increasingly organized. i sometimes -- groups of ceos business leaders, churches and universities, and i ask people to give me the top ten things, anyone can write down two or three. things like the rule of law, equal opportunity, freedom of conscience, put all ten down. they should be true of every american regardless of the country they come from and regardless of their ethnic background, regardless of their religion. if they are not restored america is in trouble. >> host: this audience will remember that recently of little over a year ago, justice sandra day o'connor was here lifting up that very concern, the collapse

of civic education, we were happy -- to work with public schools, baylor law school, school of education, dean and the heart is here to focus in a very deep way on how we can in fact bring back the civic education in a deep and powerful way. the state of texas has never abandoned the idea of civic education. we continue to require it in public schools and we are happy here at baylor for 60 years we have required all undergraduates to take a course in the american constitutional tradition and the rule of law. so what justice o'connor and justice prior would call and justice david souter speaking apocalyptic terms as well, the collapse of civic education in the united states. that is one remedial steps that

we could all work toward taking. and another area is immigration. >> host: >> guest: and lived in d.c. nearly 30 years, immigration debate going on, control of borders, economic, this that and the other. i never heard of a single person in the debate mention civic education. america needs transmission of values in every generation two ways. one is education, the older generation, the younger generation, public schools, the second is immigration, people come in they now how americans live, it means to be american and sell on. not just better job opportunities, something about being an american is very important. others have said this but it is almost lacking in the washington debate. >> host: we are going to return to the global public square, a gentle reminder you are invited to enter the antara and write

your questions will check will be picked up, national press club style. what i want to turn to is a recurring theme in your book, os, when you talk about the universal declaration of human rights right after world war ii, provide a little background on that. you have this recurring rhetorical question, what does it say of us and our times that the universal declaration of human rights could not be passed today? could you remind us all the universal declaration, what it means, what it meant and why you have such a gloomy view of why it could pass muster today? >> guest: most human rights people agree with that. there was an interesting convergence of great thinkers like charles malek, activists like eleanor roosevelt, these

great thinkers and activists did what they did against the backdrop of the world tour of the nazi death camps and was that convergence people realized the extraordinary degradation of the jewish people and the holocaust and so on. we don't have that today. since then, you can see there was no communist china then. one of the leading thinkers who was behind it was one of the nationalist chinese. the communists would be opposed to it. saudi arabia was the one that sustained, the only one, that sustained on the declaration of freedom of conscience. today they would be openly opposed and almost all muslim nations would be opposed. we have to face perfect that the west has lost its moral authority in the world and some of its power relative to the

rest of the global world so it is unthinkable to do it today. my concern in the book is article 18 so you take the beginning of this -- >> guest: freedom of conscience is a magnificent, simple statement that puts the whole thing. then you take the early -- the current administration, some of the early talk, freedom of worship, absolutely inadequate in the light of article 18 and article 18 has everything to the first amendment. people representing america should have done their own heritage loan haven't reflected in this great article. i personally would love to see a reaffirmation of article 18, religious freedom and accordion like an accordion. you can shut and accordion and call it at musical instrument and you can say religious freedom, leave it there but when you unpack it like an accordion

coming out, you get music and when you say it is the right to reach, polk, practice, share, for example, take a lot of the liberal opposition to proselytism. sharing faith is at the very heart of persuasion and there is no argument against proselytism that doesn't also undermine the broker suasion or the final one, to change belief and you can see that is a capital offense in muslim countries. we should be standing for the simple but profound truths in their fullness. >> host: article 18 of the declaration contemplates one's right to change one's religion, which now in some countries would be a capital offense as you say. let's move into your global remedy which is the charter,

which you had no small hand in drafting. the global charter of conscience, possible blueprint for living with our deepest differences globally. tell us about the charter which is in the book, it is an appendix to the boat, its background and its purpose. >> guest: those of us who are behind it is very realistic, it would never be put before the united nations today. whether it is published in brussels, gave an impassioned speech and lifted any level you can bet very major opponents in and said the american leadership on a crucial issue. there were no utopian hopes that would treat the world in five minute. was an attempt to reinject the debate about religious freedom.

not this wishy-washy stuff that is going on now. a robust tough-minded debate on religious freedom and to see it restored to its place as the primer, you take the three basic political rights, there is no hierarchy, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly or association for, they are interlocking. equally, freedom of speech assumes freedom of conscience. not just talk about the weather of the you are free to, you are there to be free to talk about things that matter to use it freely because you are bound by the dictates of your conscience. you all know this is a good baptist heritage at baylor, but sadly in many parts of the country it slid.

>> guest: slipped. >> host: professor tom far who are mentioned at the outset makes an argument that political leaders, not talking about the culture but the leaders who perhaps are mirroring the culture are entirely overlooking the need for global effort or fight to support religious liberty. he says this and he was a career foreign service officer and had many diplomatic posts before he entered the academy at georgetown university. he said political leaders see religious freedom as an entirely private matter with you legitimate, keyword, public purposes and in no sense necessary to individuals and societies. do you agree? talking about the culture, political leaders. >> host: they you agree? >> guest: absolutely.

you can look positively and see how countries that had religious freedom for everybody, one of the keys to a thriving robust civil society or you can look at it negatively, countries that have religious freedom go a long way towards lessening sectarian conflict and violence and so on so it is an incredibly important factor that goes beyond religion. the trouble is today many thinkers in the west are tone deaf. they simply don't pick up the music. >> host: great sociologists. >> guest: the greatest sociologists began to nietzsche himself admits that to think once you can't hear is therefore not there, is an acoustic allusion. they can hear things that frequency we don't. they were saying many people insist that their secularist

world view, god the supernatural, that is all there is so their tone deaf, don't pick of the music by which most people orchestrate their lives. you can see sectors of society, one of the most secular parts of america is the state department and not matalin mary but madeleine albright said that, she said she had -- >> host: former secretary of state. >> guest: distinguished. 100 economic experts but only one person in the state department who knew much about religious freedom and the fact is it is the primary motivating factor of most of the world. most of the world is religious. sam harris, the end of faith, that is utopia. that is totally -- >> host: faith is at a dead end? >> guest: and disappear.

anthropological, sociologically, there is no solid argument that faith will disappear. as of follower of jesus there are many faiths in the world some of which have practices that are evil, the fact that they are there doesn't mean we disagree with them but they are there. that is why freedom of conscience is so important. >> host: one of the things you can help us understand is in tolerance. you quote in "the global public square," the chairman of the bbc, chancellor of your alma mater, oxford, rather impressive figure, chris patten says, former governor of hong kong, it is curious, this is the chancellor of oxford, it is curious that atheists have proved to be so in tolerant of

those who have faith. why? >> guest: back to darrell roger williams, he has a wonderful saying, those under the hatches behave differently, he is talking about the seventeenth century terms, those under the hatches behave differently when they are at the helm. they are aware of all the ways they have been discriminated against and victimized and oppressed and many of those under the hatches were. when they are at the helm they do the same thing themselves. rather than thinking of what is just and free for everybody and you can see that happening strongly today. distinguished member of the current white house talking of homosexual rights talks of as the 0 sum game. any clash with this in its way has to go. that is a kind of militant in

tolerance. from john locke on words, the enlightenment tradition is like the word tolerance. roger williams is right, not the best word. tolerance always has a power equation in it. a majority tolerates the minority, the government tolerates the people, the king, raise the subject, has the power equation whereas freedom of conscience is inherent as an absolute right in humans so freedom of conscience is a better word but one of the problems is it flip-flops into the opposite very quickly becomes in tolerant and you can watch how political correctness is part of this inclusive and very tolerant, except for the people they don't tolerate and they are extremely intolerant. >> host: what would the global shortage of adopted? what has happened with the global charter that you have

been so instrumental in? >> guest: mainly in european countries. what i said earlier, america has this incredible tradition of religious freedom, the squandering it today. europe has completely different problem. many of the seeds of the best principles are there back in history but they never followed in europe so roger williams, and englishmen, founder of rhode island, it flourished here in england. if you look at europe today, trouble is europe is sick, forgive me, as a distinguished lawyer and judge, europe is thick with articles, conventions, laws everywhere. as great european thinkers point out, you need not only law, unique -- >> host: a great term. repeated. >> guest: you need the habits of the heart.

he gets that from montesquieu, you need only structures of law but the spirit of liberty in every generation. in europe today the gap between all these incredible loss and the average person is total. they happen to clue what religious freedom means including sadly many of the leaders in brussels and leaders in my own country, england. the gap between these laws and the way people actually practice is extreme. in europe we tried to launch a discussion. it has got to get down to the habits of a heart. parents to children, teachers to students, etc.. it has got to become a living spirit in every generation. or it won't work. >> host: a great american judge of the 20th century rose a small book based on a speech that he gave to celebrate the fourth of

july and one american liberty mint and he called it the spirit of liberty. justice montesquieu's great work was the spirit of the law, not just the text but the spirit of the laws. several people during the course of the day including at a reception little while ago. talk to me about the middle east. and in light of each day brings news, today was no act section. what is unfolding in the middle east, egypt, syria is on everyone's laps. a few research center has reported that the world's highest levels of government restrictions on religious release and practices are found in the middle east and north africa. one of the issues now before the president of the united states, the congress of the united states, the american people is what should we be doing in that

part of the world? share with us if you have views on foreign policy but as a european observer of america, what should we be doing in that part of the world? >> guest: let me back a little bit. i quote somewhere in one of them books, a famous remark of bismarck, what would be the decisive factor for the 20th-century, 1898 i believe. he said surprising his friend the fact that americans speak english. that would be the decisive factor in this century and he was right. you ask -- >> host: what did he mean? >> guest: what he meant by that was the world power than was britain and within 20 years it declined and faded and the vacuum was filled not by the victor in some european conflict, germany, france or whatever but by the united

states and what became the american century. if you ask today there's no one factor in the twenty-first but there are three vital factors and what is interesting to me is they all touch on religion. the first one is the one you are raising. can and will islam modernize peacefully? come back to that. the second great one, which faith will replace marxism in china? everyone in china knows the parties in power, the ideology is hollow. will it be nationalism, materialism, confucianism, authoritarianism, buddhism or i've heard it argued in the chinese academy it could in 20 years the the christian faith that is the majority faith in china. enormously significant which for the world and china, but the third phase is the one you touched on earlier, question we touched on earlier, will the west several or recover its

roots? take up the first one again. what is happening as i understand it is you see islam engaging with modernity and it is brought out the challenge of sunni and shiite and more modernizers and retrenching and so on and probably next 20 or 30 years the middle east will be a convulsion of this islamic reaction to modernity. the 20th century showed we brits and the french across the channel did a lousy job understanding the middle east and we understand at a lot better than many american diplomats understand it. you have got to stick into the or that's nest with great care. you can see a lot of my american friends in washington didn't

even know where iraq was until george w. declared war on it. we need to a much greater understanding of islam, middle eastern culture, and this engagement with modernity is likely to be and how little comparatively we can do to shaded in strong ways. >> host: reflections on syria and what the u.s. should do. >> guest: again to go back, if the reports are right, the president made a huge mistake in his cairo speech to insist that the muslim brotherhood were invited to the front row and the leadership of the country refused to come because of that. there was an incredibly naive view of the power of islam in that speech engine volt policy towards islam since then. when it came as we saw, the

democratic election caused the problems that have come their. when you come to syria, maybe when kofi annan had tried so hard two years ago that is when we should have put our shoulder behind his efforts and we didn't and now it has got to the place he does nothing, he looks weak, he does something, probably looks rash, maybe carries off a remark and the russians have him off the hook. i don't know. personally i was opposed to a strike for the sorts of reasons that i mentioned. >> host: join me in saying thank you to os guinness. [applause] >> host: who know invites questions from the audience. this is national press club washington d.c. style land the

provost is here to pose the question that you in turn are to report the questions you are opposing for our distinguished guests. >> in an era where complicated serious issues are reduced to sound bites on which arguments are premised how do we move toward a modern public agora that can deal with these issues? >> guest: great question. the technological factors exacerbating the instability are enormous. take sound bites or you take direct mail studies have shown you put 20 letters through direct mail and examine the words underlined in red or green, they are almost always appealing to their hatred or fear or whatever. or you take something like the blogs where you have anonymous screen names and wherever you have the anonymity, very quickly be send to barbaric discourse.

civic education today, and work overtime to restore civility and show people what debate with respect really means. those were christians who were told to speak the truth with respect so that should underlie everything we contribute in the public square. it is a massive problem. >> speaking of modern agora and national press club i got a question on my phone. what encouragement would you give pastors for involvement in protection of religious liberty for everyone? >> guest: baptist pastors have a great tradition in this area. i would say like this. if you look the 1830s, on the one hand the religion is the

first of the american institutions. it is that decisive. he also shows how pastors didn't preach politics on the pulpit. in other words they preached the scriptures but their influence in direct from the bottom up and lay people live in society and it was influential. with the rise of the christian right to the pulpit has often been politicized, telling their people how to vote and so on. that is a sign of weakness, not strength. pastors should unashamedly preach the scriptures, the entire word of god and encourage laypeople to live with that in every inch of their lives, and open, free, democratic public as voters so it is an enormous shame that evangelicals simply don't vote. that is a crying shame.

i am not suggesting pastor's politicized, preach the scriptures and trust laypeople to live without the whole of their lives. >> what is the prospect for expanded religious liberty in china? >> guest: i go back to china every couple of years and are often speak on religious liberty because china knows, they have incredible diversity but how do they achieve harmony? the president says we are a yemeni is -- harmonious society and i say to people who quote that you have diversity and harmony but you don't have what it takes which is liberty, diversity, liberty and still have harmony. 4 that you need religious freedom. everyone knows in china that the communist party is trying to to

keep the lid on a pot which is boiling and the influence of free-market capitalism and the influence of cellphones and technology are bringing in all sorts of impulses towards freedom which they have to recognize to keep their control. one of the ways they have to face it, they need to introduce religious freedom. that undermines the way they have conducted things and you have a country that has killed more of its citizens than any country in the whole of history. it would be a tough thing but there are a number of voice is beginning to raise religious freedom in china the way you have a number of muslim voices raising in the middle east. i won't mention the country but i was talking to a muslim leader recently who had written a book on freedom of conscience which he had published anonymously, in another muslim country where he

was free to do so hoping the book would go to his own country and it is dangerous but hopefully as people like us speak and we reinforce and support them freedom of conscience will spread. >> tomorrow is the twelfth anniversary of the september 11th attacks. what is the lasting impact of these attacks on the community of faith? >> guest: you can look at all sorts of areas, the community as a whole. on the community of faith, sadly it has given people a view of religion as negative, religion tied in with terrorism and so on. it is has fed the kind of christopher hichens how religion poisons everything, that type of argument.

and alarmist view of islam. there is a huge difference between islam and islamat ism. a simple fact that when muslims are of minority in a situation where the majority is different the great majority of them go along with the ways of the country whether it is the united states or france. much of the christian fear and alarm is some -- alarmism, have no fear, you can see 9/11 created a huge sense of fear and alarmism in the christian community which has stopped the natural impulse to love them, reach out to them, share the faith with them and so on. one of the main implications in the last year, freedom always undermined its of three waste.

it becomes license, this is the one that has happened since 9/11, freedom loving people love security and safety so they have so much security they lose freedom. think of what the nsa is following now. the third is freedom loving people value freedom so much they will fight for it in any way because it is the supreme value even in ways that contradict freedom. ..

>> i just think many of you are distinguished professors who have made an extraordinary contribution in this area. but you are already doing it. but it might be worth thinking about the whole notion. kind of like this. i wrote the book, this one. because there are masses of good studies. no shortage of studies. and we have hundreds of good activists and others standing against persecution and etc. around the world. there is no shortage of academic studies. but we are missing is a

constructive vision of a better way. >> so this is part of ensuring of what such a vision we have. the academic credentials and your great heritage of religious freedom to make such a contribution. a constructive vision of a better way. that is what oz guinness, when he won in china, living his life in the uk and now for the last 30 years in the united states. his call has been both sides of the atlantic and now for the entire globe to come to terms with living with her deepest differences.

a lot of us have learned better mothers and fathers needs, the golden rule. do unto others as you would have them do unto you. one other things that os is saying in this very important book is the need to respect one another. and to respect these different voices and to welcome these different voices into the conversation. it is choosing to ignore this and getting along in a world filled increasingly with the differences that are so abundantly manifested with their ability to communicate and to travel. >> so i close by saying that and

other is a great voice that echoes what it happens to give in to swell. not 2012, but to 12. fundamental human right. and you have brought in that to consciousness and not just worship. or john jay, the great founder and to deny that blessings of liberty to others involves an inconsistency not to be excused. and inexcusable inconsistency. later this year, collaboratively with georgetown university,

baylor university will be participating in a global conference in rome that will mark the fact that constantine in the year 313 declared as a matter of imperial law that every person in the empire should have a right to freedom of conscience. we were moved to roger william and what is part of this and ancient texts and a great enduring value, our values so that we can look ahead in the 21st century to achieve global public square. join me in thanking doctor os. >> thank you. >> go ahead and take a bow.

[applause] >> take it out. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> we would like to hear from you. twitter.com/booktv. >> there are parallels to the way that you talk about the evolution of edison finally perfecting the incandescent light in weight we often talk about the evolution of computing as well. you have actually spelled some of these out and i just want to get you to talk about this. first of all you talk about and debunk that most progress stems from that there is a eureka moment, a flash of brilliance and the innovation happens in that isolation and not so much in the ecosystem.

all three of those things you take on early in the book. say that that is not what really happened and it's not true in edison's time. can you talk about what you learned? >> i think people long for that great eureka moment story. and it is accessible to people and it is a lot more complicated to understand the ideas in the competition this sort of the battle over the marketplace. it is much easier to think of these great ideas as being passed down as a sort of mount rushmore of technological creativity. in the case of edison and the light of all, how did it happen? >> first of all edison entered late into the search for a working incandescent bulb and there were five or six other rival makers who held this ahead of edison, crucial patents ahead of him. all of them recognize that the key elements are the carbon filament and edison was entering

into a crowded field and he learned a lot from the mistakes and successes of his rivals and many suggested that he stole a lot a lot of their ideas. a lot of battling over the patents. >> who else was involved at the time? >> competitively trying to achieve the same things that edison was trying to achieve? >> another fascinating character is hiring maxim known for that done. and he beat him to some crucial practices about how to treat the filament for edison. >> in newcastle, england, also was working for years on developing a working lightbulb. and he actually went into the field. his house at a nearby mansion and he set up an outdoor streetlight outside of the shop and had a patent six months before and there were many people converging on a big test

of this was in powers of the electrical exposition. and edison won the day when he arrived with us. he was there with five other people who also had working incandescent lighting systems at the same time. >> were they all aware that others might be aware today of each other's work? >> yes. >> and there are at least a dozen. the first person to identify the possibility was sir humphrey davy and 1810. once he did this, people were trying to demonstrate this for years and neighborly converse in the 1870s. but for more than a half a century, people were trying to create the incandescent light. >> what if you discover about the way that edison felt about these other incremental stages of progress that others were making? >> i think that i suspect like many other inventors that he had

a real sense of rivalry and he announced quite arrogantly that when he entered the field he had figured this out in way that nobody else had. in his first big breakthrough was to suggest that they were all wrong because they were trying to create eight carbon filament bulb that he was going to create. when he announced this, people weren't so convinced and edison was convinced that he could do this and he thought surely he could. six months later, he said i will go back to the rest of the crowd. >> as we get into the discussion of technology, let's talk a little bit about a really wonderful phrase that you have early in the book, which is that edison invented a whole new style of invention, that he had invented the modern way of this. >> that's right. that's exactly right, to create a research and development

laboratory. he often was very critical of college education and was part of proud of the fact that he was largely self-taught. but he knew enough to go out and hire university trained mathematicians and people who understood the latest to help them in this project. he also had a to hire technicians who could realize his ideas. he needed someone who was able to realize various ideas that they wanted to experiment with. so it really was the entire team working very collaboratively intensively and edison was the guiding intellect and many of them knew a lot more about their particular specialty and edison was one who the one who set the agenda and also was the one who had to negotiate with the capitalist to get the money to pay for what turned out to be a very expensive research and development process.

and he promised that he was going to come up with a minor invention every 10 days in an amazing breakthrough every six months. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. for the last 15 years, but tv has covered the annual national book awards ceremony. in 2002, three of robert caro's biography, master of the senate, was awarded the national book award for nonfiction. the pulitzer prize for a biography or autobiography went to david mccullen in 2002 for his book on john adams. the general fiction went to samantha power for a problem from hell. she was on but tv in 2002. >> my book is an effort to understand how is it that how many individuals discover this, if pressed, would even say when asked to design in turn define

what never again means, not should genocide happen, which is someone that could interpret, or that we would stand idly by and watch this happen. so there are individuals in the u.s. government in this room and in this room who believe that they should be active in the face of genocide. yet when it confronts us in the real-time, when we see the early signs and the kinds of numbers and intent, the alarm bells did not go off and if they do, we feel disempowered within the bureaucracy or outside of it that we do not summon reserves outreach and retrospective remorse that is available to us. >> booktv continues with more nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. >> the book tells a story.

it tells a story of a nuclear weapons accident in damascus, arkansas. it occurred in 1980. argues that story in that narrative as a way of looking at the management. really since the first nuclear device was invented in 1945. i hope to remind readers that these weapons are out there. they are still capable of being used and there is probably no more important thing that our government does then manage them. because these are the most dangerous machines ever built. and i think the subject has fallen off the road quite a bit since the end of the cold world were. >> words the do not want to hear together, nuclear weapons and accidental detonation. eric schlosser on command and control on sunday night at 9:00 o'clock on afterwards. part of booktv booktv on c-span2. also this month, the online book club is reading this town.

get involved and post your comments 24/7 on facebook and twitter. >> next on booktv, doctor sanjay basu reports on the correlation between health and economic issues and talks about the rising rates of things like heart disease and suicide and hiv as a result of government cuts and social and health spending. this is about 40 minutes. [applause] >> thank you. thank you for coming. i'm going to talk for about 30 minutes or so about some data. but i will present to you is data discussing why we might think about the recession, not just in terms of stock markets and economic growth and debts and deficits. but in terms of our health and the public health more genuinely. to do so i will present what