.. in not cool but greg got filled presents his thoughts on a myriad of issues from the government to media.

look for these titles in bookstores this coming week on booktv and booktv.org. >> now booktv's college series continues with interviews from the catholic university of america. her besser john kenneth white sits down with book tv to talk about his book "barack obama's america". in the book are besser white looks at the demographic changes in the west since the 1980s. this is about 20 minutes. >> the book is called "barack obama's america" how new conceptions of race family and religion ended the reagan era. catholic university professor john kenneth white is the author. professor lets begin. tell us about the cover of the book. >> the cover was done by an artist in ann arbor michigan and i had nothing to do with the cover but it works so well for the book because it is the photographs of people who

attended obama rallies in 2008. you have a mixture of white, black, hispanic men, women you name it. there's even a couple of pictures in there i think of al gore. you have to really search for them. it describes visually the changes in the demography of the united states that led to barack obama's election. the picture of obama is actually one that was taken on election night of 2008. >> host: professor one of the first things you say in this book is this is a book about discomfort. what do you mean? >> guest: i think the changes that are taking place in the united states create a certain level of discomfort among some americans. we certainly see with the tea party. they are uncomfortable at the demographic changes that are taking place in the united states. they are uncomfortable with the changes in family relationships.

they are uncomfortable about homosexuahomosexua ls and relationships and marriage and so for that i think americans have understood that these changes that have taken place in the country are here to stay but for some americans that creates this discomfort because there is a sense of loss, a loss of what america used to be, a loss of that 1950s america, a loss of a time when rules to put it lightly were clear about you know marriage and family and work. just even on the work side of it, the loss of control that americans have. what i mean by that is in the 50s or 60's if you worked for a company you worked for them for 25 years and you got the gold watch when he retired. now we have americans transitioning from one job to another to another so all of these changes i think create a

certain level of discomfort. >> host: what about on the liberal side? what is the discomfort? >> guest:i think some of that discomfort is, there really isn't a discomfort when you come to things like marriage for example although when the book was done president obama back in 2008 in 2009 was not a supporter of marriage. he was uncomfortable with the subject. it was something he avoided until the election of 2012. i think that discomfort is receding. i think there is still an unease among liberals about what about the nature of family in the united states today? we have kids being brought up a why single moms or by single dads or by grandparents and so forth and i think there is a longing or stability in relationships. i don't sense that there is a discomfort in terms of say well

these relationships are wrong. i think there's discomfort on the conservative side of it as i mentioned but i think there is still this kind of unease as we grapple with these changes that are taking place in the country. >> host: you also write there are similarities between ronald reagan and barack obama's election. >> guest: there are because a couple of things. first ronald reagan's election really signaled a significant change in american politics in years ago i wrote a book called the new politics of old values. what ronald reagan emphasized were family work neighborhood peace and freedom. reagan put the democrats on the defensive. one in four democrats voted for ronald reagan in 1980 and 1984 and reagan's election begins a republican ascension to the

presidency. reagan's america was really about on young, on poor middle-aged middle and americans gravitating to ronald reagan who wanted this restoration of order if you will. the person who understood that the best ironically is a rock obama. obama actually wrote once about reagan's election and reagan's the field that it was an appeal for order. a obama noted that he had seen the military bases in hawaii in the men and women in their crisp uniforms and so forth. he thought that was an essential part of reagan's appeal. he is quite right about that actually. what has happened now is when i was a teenager there was a book called the real majority and the real majority was described as being unyong, i'm poor and i'm

black so i grew up thinking that's the real majority in the united states. you know that's the lack drift that it lacks presidents. their real majority today is the real minority because white and middle income middle-class middle-aged suburbanites, that's a real minority now in american politics as these demographic changes have taken place. so the old rules about politics and how you elect presidents in what you need to do to win elections and who is going to be part of that new majority coalition. all of that has been completely up-ended now by obama's election and the shifts in demography in the country really point to that. that old book the real majority had as saying that demography is destiny and it was true back in

1970 when the book was written. i think it's equally true now. >> host: so when you look at our changing demographics in the u.s., what do you see and what issue -- what do you portend politically? >> guest: the big changes in demography our first deal with race and that would be a big subject by itself that but whites will be a minority in the united states by 2050, maybe even earlier. some think it might happen soon as 2042 but certainly in the lifetime of my daughter who is 16. she will live in an america where she will be a minority and by the way as i write that's true increasingly in the public schools that she attends and so forth. we see hispanics by 2030 being a third of the american electorate that is a huge shift in american politics and when you look at

the elections of 2008 and 2012 you see those shifts already coming into play. hispanics were 10% of the electorate of 2012. that is a big jump when they were less than 1% of the electorate back in 1980 when reagan was elected. in 2008 the electorate was 74% white. in 2012 it was 72% white and that number continues to go down both of those numbers were the lowest ever at that point when they were recorded in the history of the exit polls. we can probably look at an election in and 2016 where we may find 70% of the electorate is white. they can go to states like california and texas or florida would he another big state where we are talking about majority minority state's and we can project that out in time and see

more and more how were country is changing. when you change that dramatically changes how we think about race. you know way back in the 60s and 70's we thought about race in very simple terms of white or black although was never that simple. now when we think of race we can think of it as a kind of slippery slope. newt gingrich was a leader in changing federal forums so people could list more than one race on a form and in the 2010 census people could list more than one race so in 19 different racial categories of the census. so how people define themselves, what race is has become a very slick or a slope in american politics.

>> host: republican candidates tend to win the majority of the white vote and lose big time african-american and hispanics. >> guest: right, and this is a lesson that republicans, i'm frustrated as i think if you talk to a republican establish figure think of rnc chairs like ed gillespie now running for the senate in virginia, ken melvin the rnc chair under lush. other than that said repeatedly that the republican party relies on white voters to win and they don't have enough white voters to win. their problem is not white voters sitting at home and not coming out and voting republican. there problem is reaching out to nonwhites and the numbers, especially among hispanics and african-americans have been disastrous for the republican

party reticulated among hispanics. romney got 27% of the hispanic vote in 2012. that's a disaster and that is down from the percentage the mccain got in 2008. and the republican party has to do a couple of key things it seems to me. one is they have to deal with the immigration issue. they have to deal with it in a way that gets it off the table so that they can then come to hispanic voters and talk to them about economic growth, talk to them about low taxes, talk to them about starting a business, talk to them about the american dream but if you can convey to voters that you don't like them and you don't want them to be here and you don't wish that they would be here and some of the party have said you know we ought to go back on the bus from whence you came. we are certainly not going to

take up this issue. i think that is a huge mistake in politics. so i don't feel hispanics as out of the reach of republicans. i think it's the republican party that has done the job and fortunately of pushing hispanics away and basically saying we don't need hispanics in order to win. well they do need hispanics in order to win. it's the same thing with african-americans. again there hasn't been a consistent outreach that says guess we have a message for african-americans in we are going to communicate that honor great dealer daily basis. there have been some republicans in the past like jack kempe is a good example that said yes we need to do this and i'm going to try to do this are so simply and regularly. at that has not been done? >> host: you have seen. sooner history politically that

are similar to today? >> guest: i think if you go back to the 1890s to early 1920s that point in time we had more immigrants to the united states than we ever had before in our history but by the way since 1965 that number of immigrants to the country has vastly exceeded what we think of as the great immigration. what happened, it's so ironic what happened in 1924. the republican president and the republican congress passed legislation basically cutting off the flow of immigration from ireland and especially from eastern central and southern europe and that legislation passed. immigration slowed. republicans were seen as the anti-immigrant party. it can allow you to win elections in the short term but in the long-term it's a long-term disaster for the party

and it took them a long time basically to make inroads among immigrants. they were able to do that in the 1940s to some extent particularly in the 1950s where the republicans were able to take lithuanians for example, others and say okay we have a message. we have a strong foreign-policy message or or an anti-communist party. that worked very well especially among immigrants that came from behind the iron curtain. for example who still had relatives there and that was by the way a big reason why john kennedy was nominated by the democrats in 1960 was to win back some of those ethnic immigrant second-generation voters. post company what is the role of religion in today's politics? >> guest: is a huge revolution. i looked at race family religion

and big stories by themselves. what has happened in the united states is important. i guess on the religious side what i would say is that we are moving away from an institutional attachment to religion. that is we define ourselves as religious people by attending mass are going to synagogue or going to the church of your choice regularly. we have seen those numbers declined and occasionally their increases. there was one after 9/11 but then not dropped off very rapidly. where i see it is the location of religion shifting from the church to the person. the person who says i can pray. a person that says i believe in god. we are still a very religious

country. we have overwhelming belief in god belief in heaven, belief in hell. belief in the power of prayer would be another example. we are not a secular country in the sense that religion is an important that is where individuals are basically setting the stage in the tone and even in smaller groups within the catholic church in the last 20 years or so there has been a movement among some parishes to have small faith communities and prayer groups where people come in and tell their story. i see that as a big shift and it's a also from a less dogmatic approach. in other words where those in authority will say will these

are the rules and you have to obey them. it's not so much that as it is where those in authority are basically sing to people come join our church for the following reasons. these are the things that you will get out of it. this is the community that you can belong to. one of the great it feels of mega-churches is they are for a one-stop shop. it's not just okay come and, tell story. we are a hines 50 in church and we are not going to judge you. you can get babysitting and here is place where you can send your kids to school in that sort of thing. i think that is an enormous appeal. the problem with religion and the whole discussion of that it today is that it tends to be caricatured. that is okay if you don't go to church on a regular basis you are a secular humanist or at

cafeteria catholic. you don't believe in god and you don't obey the rules whatever it is and those that don't know sees those that do go as being too dogmatic into structured and both of these characters i think are complicated. it is again a big shift in terms of how religious institutions cope with the shifts in religion. we also have new religions coming into play and what i mean by that we have a dramatic rise of muslim americans now equaling jewish americans in the country according to the best data that we have. you know we have other -- we have more of buddhas but that's like from nothing to something but not a huge number there. it's a much more diverse and variegated picture than it has been in the past.

>> host: you teach catholic. >> guest: i teach political parties, no great surprise in either area. >> host: in a sense what is barack obama's america? >> guest: it is an america that is much more diverse racially. it is then a miracle where the old nuclear family structure a mom, a dad in kids has been torn apart and reassembled every which way. it is an america that is still religious buds the vocation of religion is centered in the person rather than the institution. >> host: 's john kenneth white besser catholic university university in his most recent book "barack obama's america" and also the coeditor of the vote called the american dream in the 21st century. thank you professor for joining us on book booktv. >> guest: thank you. >> you michael kimmage talked to

booktv about his book "the conservative turn" about the impact of lionel trilling and whittaker chambers on the conservative movement. >> host: professor michael kimmage who was lionel trilling? >> guest: lionel trilling was the preeminent critic of the 1940s, 50s and 60's. he was born to a family of jewish immigrants from poland educated in new york of the schools and spend his education professor and a life at columbia university. he was a literary critic of the kind that one can hardly imagine today in the sense that he had an enormous readership at the highest level of esteem from his colleagues and from fellow scholars and writers but also was able to engage a very large public. he was also associated with the word liberalism in ways that are quite complicated which in part

meant by the 1940s and affiliation with the democratic party and was once invited to the kennedy white house. a sympathetic intellectual picture but the connection ran deeper. he was concerned with wayne gauged in his koran trying to determine what larose and trying to argue for it trying to make a case for it not and political forms but let arrear he cultural forms. >> host: what do you mean? >> guest: he was never somebody to write about party politics are never somebody to write about politics. it was a sensibility and attitude of cultural posture in the thinking of the enlightenment in the 18th century carried forward by poets and philosophers and writers in the 19th century and very much a part of the 20th century. it was sick disposition, skeptical, secular in its kasich outlines, highly invested in the

life of the mind and the life of books in pluralist a position that contains multiple points of view and doesn't commit itself by me to any single point of view. >> host: who was whittaker chambers? >> guest: whittaker chambers was -- if they were not quite friends associates at the same university that he was born into a different world. his family was protestant and a declining middle class family when he was born into it and he made his way from that family to columbia university where he rather quickly entered into radical political circles and joined the communist party without graduating from there. the story is rather long and complicated. he was in and out of the party in the 1920s and by 1932 after publishing for short stories was asked to rejoin the party not as

an open member but as a spy for the soviet union. this he was until roughly 1937 and with all kinds of disputes about who he knew and when and what he did. he was affiliated with various espionage circles in washington d.c. in the mid-1930s. he was affiliated with a man named alger hiss who was a high-ranking government figure somebody who was socially intimate with the roosevelts and the state department and areas of government. i 1939 chambers is broken with soviet communism and has become an anti-communist conservative. he perceives the 1940s to write for looses media empire where he is a star journalist editor for national news. as things start to heat up on matters of domestic anti-communism and calmness and after the second world war in 1946 and 47 he enters the public

domain who accuses alger hiss at the not calmness. this becomes one of the major cases of the cold war. this was more handsome and better spoken. he was better connected and he seemed to be awfully evasive and vague on many of the basic issues. chambers was always described as rumpled, overweight. there were allegations of homosexuality in the air at the time of the case so he fell to many viewers to be a man on the margins. chambers you could say when the case in the sense that he was convicted not for espionage but for perjury and sent to jail and lost his government position ever to regain it. in the 1950s chambers gave his version of the case in his autobiography witness which is among the most significant books

of the post-war conservative movement, the bible for william f. but junior for ronald reagan and john wayne and many others who were conservative in the post-war years. that is i would argue his most significant roles in early instigator as a conservative intellectual movement who participates in the founding of national review in the 1950s and he dies in 1961. his career politically speaking is vastly more important lionel trilling. >> host: did lionel trilling and whittaker chambers remain friends and in contact? >> guest: in contact yes. even when chambers was a spy the two of them had lunch at a vegetarian restaurant in new york city and were aware of each other. after the early 1920s they were not really friends but in 1947 the moment that his case is beginning in public life trilling publishes a novel called the middle of the journey and it's clear the one of the

figures in the book is based on whittaker chambers. chambers appears in the public sphere at the exact same moment in trilling uses chambers as a symbol for the 1930s as a symbol for the infatuation with communism and also as a lens for looking at american society. where are things going to go and what direction will the travel? the most interesting historical point you can attach to this novel is trilling sees a new conservatism on the rise 15 or so years before the candidacy of barry goldwater decades before the career of ronald reagan and at trilling sees a 1947 conservatism on the horizon and attaches that conservatism to the figure of whittaker chambers so an intriguing connection to be sure. >> host: what was lionel trilling's involvement with the communist party? >> guest: you is never a member of the communist party but there was a time of in 1932

roughly when he was emotionally invested in it political destiny of the soviet union. it was not a matter of public access. he didn't write anything on behalf of the communist party but felt this emotional affiliation and that you can sense and is book reviews and writings at the time. as many in his generation heirs of right with that. he is self-critical and critical of the party and goes through period of extended disillusionment from 1932 to 1941 and 42. he is reluctant with the second world war to endorse american involvement because he feels that might be free assertion of american capitalism so in 1939 he is deeply in the radical orbit. by the end of the second world war he is approaching an establishment with a liberal voice.

for him and his career the most political progression that he experienced. >> host: michael kimmage in your book titled "the conservative turn" what you mean by that? >> guest: "the conservative turn" is something i feel largely true for the time period. it's a two-part process in the first part of the process which is embodied by both other faces a deep engagement with soviet communism not just with the left and progressivism but with the actual structure that you can call the soviet union and soviet communism and then there is a recording from that which is something you see across the 1930s. it happens in many different ways with different consequences. one can write about this only with a history of the left to be sure but it felt in researching the subject i'm in the most crucial consequences was the uptick of enthusiasm for conservatism broadly construed

,-com,-com ma a kind of atonement as it were for the sense of radical youth. so a new kind of conservatism becomes possible. it's different in these tube via graphical cases. chambers it's a need to rediscover the links of western civilization through the conservative political party. that is not what he he felt the repugnant party was in the 40s and 50s but he hoped that was what the republican party would he come. for trilling it's a balancing act. liberals think conservatives and to prevent themselves from going off the rails that they had in the 30s and they had to balance themselves with this kind of conservatism and that would keep them healthy and stable. in both cases you see a new connection to conservatism and that is one that is going to play itself out not just in the 40s and 50s but across the whole second half of the 20 century in the united states. >> host: you mentioned lionel

trilling was a supporter of jfk. >> guest: he was a card-carrying democrat from the moment he de-converted from socialism to his death in 1975. he never voted for a republican and conservative insensibility was often felt to be by his radical critics in the 60s and 70's he was never a political conservative outrage they had. >> host: but he wasn't necessarily favored the left. >> guest: no one especially as time went on. the seat of the conflict is in the late 1940s when trilling has a young precocious -- writing a lot of poetry and studying with the master lionel trilling and this is allen ginsburg who is corresponding extensively with trilling and more of a relationship really but the relationship would fall apart in the 50s as ginsburg became a voice for radical youth in ways that he couldn't endorse

and was very suspicious of what trilling was. by the 60s there was a battle almost between radical students on the one hand and not only trilling but for festers like trilling and on the campus of columbia university university where trilling was a professor he symbolized the old guard and symbolize the commitment to high culture that was no longer in fashion. he symbolized a political temporizing in the eyes of the radical youth and was no longer accessible and also a white male spirit that is a criticism through the 1970s and after the 1970s as to who trilling was. an unsustainable set up cultural commitments. that is a crucial part of the last chapter of his life. >> host: michael kimmage why did you read this book and was a come from? >> guest: it began when i read the novel and felt that it

really captures something crucial about american political life. there are patterns in the book that link the 20th century into something very organic, the liberal impulse the conservative impulse earnest book. i wanted to puzzle that out in the course of my research but beyond that what i wanted to do was to write a book that engages the liberal and conservative audience and the pairing of these two figures is so useful. a significant figure in the left in the other is a crucial figure on the right and yet they are bound together in so many ways. they studied the same places and they read the same books and preoccupied by many the same professions -- professions. that to me became the agenda of the vote to get those similarity to cross as much as anything else in through that to engage

the various factions of our political culture. >> host: to did conservatism change after world war ii? what was american conservative thought in the 19th century and the earliest early 20 century? >> guest: conservative thought in the 20s and 30s was inchoate. it was fragmentary. it was often rather unrealistic to look at it from the vantage point of the second half of the 20 century. there was a hope of returning to medieval times in american culture associated with henry adams and others. there was often a rage against technology and the modern city and the machine age associated with ts elliott in the burgeoning libertarian movement but not linked to the

sentimentsentiment s. there is a reluctancreluctanc e on the part of conservatives by 1945 and conservative selection was to translate their ideas into politics. that started to change in 1945. whittaker chambers is emblematic of that change. he was wonderfully trained by his years in the economist party to link ideas to movements and initiatives and deep brought and others rocked that strategic way of thinking to conservatism. for example when he argues in the 1950s with william f. utley junior the republicans chamber says we have to use the republicans party. we don't think eisenhower's a conservative. there is a huge distance to travel the ford comes to his conservative party. we have to be pragmatic and realistic and we have to work through the gradual mechanics of social change. that spirit is quite new. after goldwater becomes the spirit conservative movement and we could argue he comes a

political fact in the larger culture at the 40s and 50s were seen as transition. >> host: what do you teach at catholic university? >> guest: i teach 20 century american history and a little bit of literature and a little but of great books do that. >> host: is this your first book? >> guest: yes. >> host: "the conservative turn" and michael kimmage is the author. here is the cover. next from booktv's trip to tallahassee florida we take a tour of the claude pepper library. >> located in the claude pepper museum just outside of the

claude pepper library. claude pepper was a first in the united states senator and a congressman from the state of florida. in his early days in the senate he was her stay proponent of the wage and hour bill which established fair minimum wage for american workers. he was also a proponent of the lend lease act which allowed the united states to send arms and matériel to the iolite nations and then fighting the axis powers at the beginning of the second world war. he was also instrumental in social security reform in the early 30s. he was branded a warmonger by isolationist politicians and was hung in effigy outside of the halls of the capitol building in 1941 by the congress of american mothers. they were convinced that he along with the other senators who were pushing for an american involvement in the second world war were going to inevitably send their sons off to war which an orchard lee did happen.

claude feuded as something necessary given the rapid expansion of the nazi regime and the japanese in the pacific. claude was one of the more vocal opponents for involvement in the war so that made him a target but he was one who was always open to criticisms and in fact capped the effigy in his office for the remainder of the time that he was in the senate and up until many years ago was still with the collection. it has since disappeared over the last decade. the library is here and according to legend claude had dinner one evening with former president bernard slider and english professor. initially his plans were to donate his papers to the franklin delano roosevelt library museum only because he

had a close association in the senate. president slider in professor stanley impress upon him that he would have his own stand-alone museum and library. he had a connection to the local area in his law office located in perry florida. his wife mildred is buried here in tallahassee and on his way up to his sessions in congress he would stop off in tallahassee to spend time with her. he had many connections to tallahassee and so that coupled with the fact that he was head his own stand-alone museum and library sort of appeal to his ego a little bit honestly and he decided to donate his papers to florida state. apart from the museum which is the first thing visitors see

when they walk and we do have a reading room. when we go into the reading room we have some materials from the senate and congressional days. we are currently in the claude pepper meeting room. this is our space for researchers to come and view the collection as well as the other political collections housed here at the pepper library. right now i'm going to start by showing a few items from the collection that were created by senator pepper in conjunction with its this workings with some former u.s. presidents and his time in the senate and house. we are going to start with abe box from series 431. this is his memoirs series. we have got some telegrams that he sent to the united states senate while he was on a foreign relations trip to germany. when he was over he noticed with some alarm the rapidity and

rapid growth that the nazi regime was going through. here are the telegrams. all sent urging the united states to enter the war. this is from pepper to the united states senate. on both sides of the once of the once proud atlantic are to be one of plain common sense is obvious. we can help in the following ways. one we must give planes and more of planes, guns and more guns and if necessary what is harder still our men. claude was very aware of the fact that our involvement in the united states involvement in the second world war was a matter of not if but when. he was one of those who saw the writing on the wall very early and the growth of the american industrial military complex in order to prepare for the conflict that was coming. next i'm going to pull one of

the items that along to claude when he was then united states congress. this was his charm bracelet with two pepper shakers on it. political cartoonists throughout his career claude was depicted says they pepper shaker. the inscription reads claude pepper salt of the earth, pepper for spice. he kept that close to him at all times. thirdly we have god a letter written to claude by franklin delano roosevelt banking claude for his unyielding sub port during his administration. this letter was sent to claude i fdr thanking him for his support of the roosevelt administration and policies. claude had supported the new deal. this was drafted in warm springs

georgia. that was where fdr would go to seek treatment for his polio. the letter was dated april 9, 1945. this was a little less than a week before president roosevelt passed away so this was very special these for claude because he was so very close to roosevelt. he was a strong proponent of him. now i am going to pull some correspondence between president roosevelt and senator pepper. initially when claude was a young senator he gained the attention of roosevelt. he spoke as a freshman senator which up until that point was a precedent that had not been made. typically senators wait until their sophomore year to eke on the floor of the senate but claude opted to speak as a

freshly minted senator coming out in strong support of fdr's policies. this caught the attention of president roosevelt and keyed in on claude's oratory skills and sort of cultivated a relationship that would essentially put claude in a position to be his mouth piece to speak to the southeast. this is a teletype dated august 3 ,-com,-com ma 1940. i want to send you this note to tell you my appreciation for all you have done. your support during these past few months has meant a lot to me. i am sure you know this even without my telling you. to those who are listening on the radio it was like a refreshing breeze. thank you very much. i hope to see you soon. as ever yours franklin roosevelt. here we have an original print

of a political cartoon done by len gruden. the caption reads a slight case of indigestion. too much pepper in the alphabet soup. as i mentioned before claude was often depicted in political cartoons as a pepper shaker. here we have adolf hitler said leo for a bowl of alphabet soup. this was a time in response to claude support and his advocacy of the allies in their struggle against the axis nation. he also got a little bit later on this would then from quads house days early on a print from the memorial service at president john f. kennedy. claude was very devoted to president kennedy and his spouse the forward-thinking ideals that claude identified with as a young senator so he was very sad

as the entire nation was with the president -- the passing of kennedy. it was a letter from president kennedy thanking him for his board. dear claude i do want to take a few minutes to expressed you my deep appreciation for your kind and helpful remarks with regard to my recent stay of the union message. i am particularly appreciative they are strong support in behalf of medical care for the aged under social security and their federal aid to education program. i'm grateful for your comments regarding latin america and their approach to it. during the many years in congress people of florida and the nation had an outstanding and valiant fighter on behalf of the public interest that i hope someday you'll consider the possibility of returning to public office. this was shortly before he made his congressional hit for the 13th district out of miami. in closing me i express my act gratitude for your invaluable help in my campaign last fall.

with kind regards john f. kennedy. claude was important in american scene for well over 40 years. very active in the senate and the house and was a proponent of legislation that would help the american men and women. the museum and library were very important because it gives researchers and those students who are not familiar with aggressive politician a glimpse into his life and allows everyone to see the scope of his work and appreciate what he did during his time in office.

>> julia angwin talks about the way that government private businessebusinesse s and criminals collect their private data. due to the pervasiveness of the dragnet system we live in today. this is just under an hour. >> ladies and gentlemen walk him to the national constitution center. it's such a pleasure to see you here. i am jeffrey rosen the president of this wonderful institution. the national constitution center is the only institution in america charted by congress to disseminate information about the u.s. constitution on a nonpartisan basis and as part of this wonderful mandate we have three goals with the museum of we the people and not covert displaying a rare copy of the bill of rights.

we are center for civic education in america's town hall the one place that summons all sides of the constitutional debates that rapid american society and allow citizens to make up their own minds. in the past weeks in the coming months we have had such a remarkable and exciting variety of town hall programs. just last week we had a debate between alan dershowitz and others about whether the president has the constitutional power to target and kill american citizens of broad and the vote initially was no but after rousing speech by dershowitz the audience changes its mind to yes. tomorrow the great discussion on whether our constitution is broken and in the spring we are handing out our latest spring mailer. i'm so excited about this dizzying array of programs from justice john paul stevens and one of his few appearances to lynne cheney on james madison to several books about the 50th

anniversary of the civil rights act and the history of the second amendment that the constitutional center. it is constitutional heaven every day of the weekend we are so proud to share with you. finally i will say if you look at our new redesigned web site site -- web site as well as our weekly webcast can be found on our homepage and i hope you will enjoy it as much as we have enjoyed presenting it. ladies and gentlemen out of all the topics i'm privileged to discuss at the constitutional center there is none that i'm more excited about than privacy and no author i have been more looking forward to meeting in person and talking with them julia angwin. we are fellow soldiers in the privacy trenches for many years and as journalists we have written about privacy and there's no reporter in america from whom i have learned more than juliet. your pathbreaking reports in "the wall street journal" and elsewhere about the tangible harms of on line tracking and

especially the details about how much precisely is being collected and what is being done with it are unparalleled. you are finalists for the pulitzer prize in 2012 because of your incredible wall street journal series on the subject which revealed for the first time something that many of us didn't know which is among other harms people are charged different prices on line based on the profiles and the faceless algorithms create about us without our knowledge or consent. let me introduce julia properly and list some of her other many great achievements. she is currently a journalist at the wonderful independent news organization propublica and reporter for "the wall street journal". was a finalist for the pulitzer prize in 2113 she was on the team have reporters that won the pulitzer in 2003 for her coverage of corporate corruption

and the author of stealing myspace the battle to control the most popular web site in america. i'm so thrilled to have julia here to discuss her latest book "dragnet nation" a quest for privacy, security and freedom in a world of relentless surveillance. will come julia. >> thank you. [applause] >> we have so much discussed and i'm going to start with the obvious question. what surprised you the most about how much companies in the government know about you? >> thanks for having me here and i'm a huge fan of your work as well and a great introduction. thank you. it might look "dragnet nation" i decided to take the privacy investigations a step further by investigating myself. what is known about me and what can i protect? i sought my data from as many places as i could find which actually worked few places. i identified 200 data brokers but only a dozen would let me

see my files. there is no lower crying at but even in that small set of files it was shocking how long some of them were and how right some of them were. some companies were completely wrong. one company said i never completed college and i was a single mother and had poverty level income and another web site happened to be true. other files were detailed and had every address going back to the number on my dorm room in college which i had honestly forgotten. and every member of my family associated to me and all sorts of purchases i had made including fairly recently. so on the whole they knew a lot about me and occasionally they knew all sorts of wrong things about me. i couldn't decide which one outrage anymore. >> the depth of your searches

surprised me and actually freaked me out. >> google searches were incredibly shocking to me. they had stolen my searches. when i started to look at my searches i realized how revealing they were. there were far more revealing that might address is because it was a map of error single day. i would wake up in the morning and look at the weather and google something about something with my kids school being open and what article i was researching and start shopping for on line kids clothing. you could see my mind making as little leaps and the idea that there was a wreck of the mental madness that goes on really deserved me. >> we will talk about the alternatives and how you coped with them but there was more that struck me. you got your tsa records and found the description of why you were going abroad for her a

reporting trip was reported to private companies. >> this was shocking. i went to customs and border patrol and i said give me record of might border passes. it's one of the records that you can obtain fairly easily. that is a relative standard. it was incredibly comprehensive and what i learned from it was "the wall street journal" where i was working used a travel agency which used a system that basically automatically sent some of the internal communications i had with my boss. i had to fill out an on line form about why was i tattling. just by the virtue of no one paying any attention all the communications were swept into government files. when i brought this to the wall street journal they understandably flipped out because advanced knowledge of

where reporters are going and what story is something they probably don't want the government to have. they stopped working with that. will agency for period of time until they got it fixed and it took quite a bit of time. this is one of the any problems of the stated age we live in right now. if i asked "the wall street journal" they would say it's secure and right here but they didn't know. >> the amount of inaccuracies and which is seemed hard to get a sense of a control in a handle on just how much is out there. >> i am sure i don't have a handle on it. i probably see a thin layer on the top of what is not about me. most companies don't have to share it or even if they do share it for examples facebook let me download and archival but they had on me. what i saw was less than what they have because his file had

everyone who had deleted his friends and so it caps this ghostly record of things he thought were gone where is the one i saw was a more sanitized version. >> we are going to to discuss and a little bit the statute took to protect your privacy but before you that i want to talk through a question we both get. people say what is the harm? nothing to hide nothing to fear. i'm not doing anything wrong, why should i care? the great virtue in one of the many great virtues of the book is you illuminate those harms and give us examples of people who were harmed in different ways. let's start with government surveillance and you talk a lot about a lot about edward snowden and the prison program and the governments collecting the metadata and the telephone numbers that we dial as well as intercepting contact of some

conversations. i'm not a terrorist why should i worry? usually i get them. it was a pleasure for me to be able to pass that. you must be a terrorist yourself >> exactly. it's interesting we have this conversation because it's worth noting in europe there is no need to justify this. privacy is considered a human right and it's just given. putting that aside this is the u.s.. the thing that i think is the biggest harm from government surveillance actually is that it leads us to be less free with our speech. i write about this guy and might look who is surveilled by the f. ti. he and his friend are both teenage young men in santa clara and his friend had written as sassy post on the social network called read it. he basically said i don't know why the tsa is so crazy and

airports. i could just go to the mall and bobbitt note problem which is actually true but it may be unwise to say. he said it saw a couple of weeks later this guy and his friend were shopping and his friends saw something on his car. the fbi had put this on his car to surveilled him. he later found out that was because of his friends comment. this is already a disturbing story but i found disturbing what happened afterwards. after they found that they were being surveilled by the fbi their friendship fell apart. he didn't want to be friends with a guy who might put him in danger and he became incrediblincredibl y circumspect in his actions. he doesn't feel free to talk about anything subversive. he is muslim-american and he now uses a different name as he feels like it's less prevalent and he is still detained every

time he comes across international borders. he doesn't feel he has the same free-speech rights that are central part of our country. >> you argue powerfully in the chapter that is not privacy or free speech that is at stake. as you say the supreme court has not unsympathetic to claims that mass surveillance violates free speech.