i think you'll find some of those features fascinating. i certainly did. >> i want to cut it short because these gentlemen have books to sell and even though you don't have your cookbook, this is a great book. let's give him a hand, everybody. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> in your new book going red who were the $2 million that you talk about in this book speak with the 2 million voters voters referred to voters in seven key counties in seven swing states that republicans won in 2004 but lost in 2008 and 2012.

we are looking at bellwether counties and places like florida, virginia, ohio, north carolina, new hampshire, colorado and wisconsin which is an interesting case because republicans have not quite one wisconsin yet but because of some of the changes that occurred over the last few years and wisconsin i think they had a good opportunity. the idea is to find those voters are because they teach you in this book is the reason why republicans went local and state elections but can't when presidential election is because they have lost touch with the voters are. the national level has lost touch on the local level. >> host: us go to hamilton county ohio, cincinnati base, who are some of the voters that republicans have lost and how can they get them back? >> guest: hamilton county is interesting case because it's the only county that had a net population loss over the last two decades. all the rest of the the

challenges are more about population growth, people coming in from other parts of the country carrying made what you call their native political elections within. hambleton down is when people have left and has had a pretty significant population decrease over the last 30-40 years. that people who are left other people who did not economic mobility to have those options to be. you are talking about blue-collar workers, people who work hard, don't work necessarily in high-priced jobs, working with her hands, working to put food on the table. republicans have an opportunity to make a case for economic liberty based on knowing who the particular are inhibited in what the particular issues are. the problem that you have with republican party, and hamilton i should mention by the way was at 1.1 of the most republican counties in a very republican state. even when ohio would

occasionally vote for a democrat with bill clinton, hamilton county was very republican and it was a very red county and over the last two presidential elections they voted for barack obama, the became a very blue county. one of the reasons is that republicans will message to the economy by using an ideological philosophical argument that what i say is 30,000-foot level. free markets more regulation but that's all. they don't talk about the fact that for instant in cincinnati the epa is requiring the city to separate their sewage from the storm drain system the very expensive to do something different in other cities around countries as well. is older city that had a merged system and often separated out. cincinnati put together a plan

to comply with epa. the epa accepted it and after that they discovered they could do it for 40% less and still meet all the epa goals. the epa refused to open issue. as a result you people who are going to hundreds of dollars a year in extra utility costs in a city where people don't have that kind of disposal and, just because the epa will not go back and reopen the process and allow cincinnati to do it less expensively more efficiently. if you're going to talk about regulation stifling local economies, as a presidential candidate you should know about this issue with the metropolitan water district and watch it is costing them hundreds of millions of dollars more than it should. if you talk about that, that takes the economic argument much more personal. there's much greater economic connection. that's what barack obama did in 2008 and 2012.

he learned about these communities through this fabulous network of people that he rolled out across the country your window talk about issues like the economy and making government work better, they would look to these local issues, get ambassador to talk about this essay these are the types of things i'm going to fix when i become president. that's one of the reasons why people have such an emotional connection to vote for barack obama in 2008 and what is sustained for 2012. >> host: this teacher looked at and pick are all essentially must win for the republicans to win the presidency. florida, wisconsin, ohio, colorado. what is wisconsin a special case? >> guest: republicans are not one wisconsin except in future landslide election victories. for instance, ronald reagan one wisconsin twice in his election to normally this is a state that stays pretty blue.

scott walker got elected in 2010 and put in place at 10 reform, a very divisive issue in wisconsin but it made a lot of dividends. in fact, one study that just came out in late february showed that the state and local governments have saved about $5 million over five years thanks to the act 10 reforms. they were able to stay away from layoffs, able to use money wisely. that's the type of message republican talk about when they talk about trimming government and trimming regulations and making things work more efficiently. so there's an opening for the republican message that's scott walker and wisconsin republican have opened up. that's better than colorado, better than new hampshire. new hampshire is for electoral college votes come usually considered a pretty important

day for both parties twin because it i says something abot the reach of an absolute message. if republicans could take wisconsin out of the democrats column and put in their column, they think it's feasible to do that, then that resets the whole midwest and rust belt for republicans in the way in winning wisconsin would show that strength throughout that entire region. that we difficult for democrats to counter. >> host: ed morrissey, what is your day job? >> guest: i work at hot air.com. i did a twice a week podcast on politics and culture, and also i write columns for the times in for the week. >> host: in this election season has any of the candidates done what you're suggesting in "going red"? >> guest: if you take a look at the primaries, the primary races so far, i think ted cruz has been a good job of getting on the ground in iowa especially but also in texas.

he knows texas very well, his home state. apparently oklahoma as well. we are doing a lot of things about his organization that didn't make me think he's on the right track in terms of what we are talking about, with exception of iowa which is kind of a purple state. oklahoma and texas are red states and so we don't necessarily know how he is polling in swing voters in the states. it's a fractured primary. you're working within republican party, primaries, it's not a great analog necessary but the organizational level is therefore ted cruz. i think marco rubio's organization is pretty well. donald trump is the variable. if the republican party in 2008 and 2012 were at the 30,000-foot level, donald trump is at the 40,000 level. very punchy concepts only and doesn't necessarily offer detailed substance behind that he just talks with this is my

commitment, i'm going to make this work, i'm going to win, i'm going to make history and people are responding to that in the primaries. it's interesting to see how that worked out if donald trump is the nominee, as a switch to a ground game of the type that is described in "going red" or does he state that 40,000-foot level and see if he can bring in people who just sheer messaging and celebrity status alone. and interesting guest. >> host: ed morrissey's new book is called "going red: the two million voters who will elect the next president--and how conservatives can win them." this is booktv on c-span2. >> host: reza aslan is joining us. his most recent book is "zealot the life and times of jesus of nazareth." professor, since the last time we saw you on our in depth program a couple years ago, we have a new pope, there's been a rise in isis and more people are identifying as atheists than ever before.

what's your take on those topics? >> guest: first of all i'm a big fan of the pool. i'm a product of a jesuit education, and the men and you are going to have a jesuit pope i knew that things were going to be different. if anybody is familiar with the history of the catholic church and the four genocide of the jesuits have been in the church for centuries, i think you knew this was going to be a revolution moment. he has not failed to live up to the expectation. what i would say quickly about this pope is his learned a veryy valuable lesson from his predecessor, pope benedict. and that is that you can't really reform the vatican. the vatican is just too unwieldy for it to be reformed, but you can reform the church.and i i think pope francis has really learned if you just simply stop

with the bureaucracy, stop trying to overturn the bureaucracy and instead began to appeal to the world billion or so catholics through action, faith, particularly which he released a couple days ago profound statement about transforming priests from as he kind of put it as from arbiters of morality, those were there to sort of signal doctor ayres into people who are there, and have the freedom to actually approach situation and individualistic basis, sympathy, not looking for some kind of hard and fast rule. the catholic church under pope francis will be revolutionary. >> host: isis. >> guest: isis, of course, is

phenomenon we're trying to figure out. >> host: is it a religious movement? >> guest: well, insofar as as anyone who calls themselves muslim is a muslim, yes, isis is a muslim this tee bait whether it is or is not muslim is kind of silly. if you say you're acting in the name of islam, we should probably just take your word for it. but to think that in and of itself creates some sort of generalization i think is quite silly. the fact of the matter is that isis may be muslim but so are the vast majority of its victims. by the tens of thousands. isis may be muslim but so are the people who are fighting against isis. people on the ground who are risking their lives battling this cancer. they're monday him, too, so if isis is muslim and their victims are muslim and the people fighting them are muslims, this done really say anything all that generalizing about islam

itself. >> host: more good more people are identifying as athiests. >> guest: it's true, more people are nying is a athiest. in fact there's been a doubling of athiest numbers, but let's just be clear. that's now two and a half percent of the united states. so, yes there has been a surge of people identifying as athiests but it's still in ridiculously small amounts. when it comes to the united states of america, which is a country that form a -- is 71% christian. so we're still deeply influenced by christianity in this country. no way to get around that. >> host: reza aslan is our guest help has appeared on booktv's in-depth program where we spent three hours talking with him and taking your phone calls, talking bit his books, his most recent book is "the life and times of

jesus of nazareth." zealot it's called. 202-748-8 01 in the mountain and pacific time zones. we'll begin taking the calls in just a minute. reza aslan is a creative writing professor at the university of california riverside. where were you on that day of the shooting in san bernardino? >> guest: i was actually in haiti. i was shooting an episode of my new cnn show, "believer," a spiritual adventure series where i go around and take part in religious rituals in various communities that lends to opening up different worlds, different beliefs and it was obviously quite a shock it was so close to the home and the place where i work. we need to get to a point where

we recognize that the united states is not immune to the appeal of these organizations, like al qaeda and assist, but there are muslims in the u.s. in absolutely infinite -- a small percentage of them but they do exist who feel at though their identity is under a certain sense of crisis and who are looking to these groups who are expressing their grievances sometimes in horrifically violent way. we're nowhere near to problem europe has. let's be clear. we have had 3,000 or so europeans who have left to join isis, and almost zero -- very close to zero of them in america, and i will also say that this overwhelming focus

that we have on islamic terrorism -- and islamic extremism in the united states is absurdly exaggerated and more dangerously, think, hides the truth. the department of homeland security, the fbi, and 74% of every single law enforcement agency in the united states all say that the greatest threat to americans is right-wing extremism, right-wing terrorists. they have killed far, far more than americans since the attack's of 9/11 than islamic terrorists have. you're more likely in this donee to be shot by a todd than to be killed by an islamic terrorist at awful as the san bernardino shootings were, as horrific as that experience was, that was 355th mass shooting in america in 2015, and that year, last year, ended with 372 mass shootings.

so, yes, we are under threat of terrorism is in done toronto, this is not islamic terror simple. >> host: your new series, believer, and when does it premiere? >> guest: on cnn in 2017. >> host: bob is calling in from overland park, kansas. bob go ahead with your question or comment. >> greetings, people. you're a national treasure. my question is, and it centers around my perception of the dawn of the millennium we were very worried about the y2k virus in our computers. would assert that the true y2k virus was religion and the form of virus that infects the human operating system. so, one of the things i've always been interested in is the political assertions that were made at the council when they

made the determination that christ had been physically reborn and had come back from the dead. we have, upon discoveries of the libraries in 1935, conflicting accounts of that, when their recollections of the resurrect was more in the form of persons' dreams, recollections of christ's teachings as opposed to a physical, it was more of a memory. >> host: let's hear from our guest. >> guest: great question. you're a national treasure. i wouldn't necessarily call religion a virus since it's been around since the dawn of human evolution. we can go back, with material evidence, at least 100,000 years ago, but now a new group of scientists who call themselves cognitive anthropologists say we could go back as late as 400,000

years ago and see signs, very clear expressions of religious impulse in human beings. so, if it's a virus, it's one that has been there from the dawn of our evolution. secondly, i think you're absolutely right about the creed and the way that it calcified a particular kind of theology when it -- or christology when it comes to christian beliefs, but -- even the gospels themselves indicate a wide variety of beliefs about what the resurrection meant, how it was to be understood. remember next gospel of mark, the very first gospel there, is no resolution, the tomb is simply empty, and the gospel which end's chapter 15, verse 8, says a young man in white told the women to tell the disciples that jesus would meet them in jerusalem and that's the end.

bit the time you gut to math hutu and luke you have the community trying to say what does the resurrection mean? was jesus a ghost? we have a story in which jesus eats fish and bread. so he can't be a ghost. but was he physically -- did he have a physical body? we have a story in which the disciples are sitting around in a room and jesus suddenly pops in as though he is a ghost. so even in those gospels of the earliest moment of the formation of christianity, seems to be an enormous diversity of belief about what the resurrection actually meant. but you're right it wasn't until around the nicine period that became calcified. >> host: jacob, you're next. go ahead. >> caller: hi. good afternoon. my question for you is: what were the beliefs and traditions

that affected jesus and his preaching and actions. thank you? >> guest: wow, i love that question. i never get to talk about that. it is a religion that was born in ancient persia, before it was even persia. probably i would say around 1100bc. that's give or take. so before abraham, i would say. the prophet is wildly rather as the first mon ethe is particularly created prophet. created the concept of heaven and hell and the concept of angels and demons. these things did not really exist before he began to speak about them and he talk about how human morality is what decides where you go in your afterlife.

if you have good thoughts good, words -- deeds, that's the formula, then you will go to a good place in your afterlife, heaven. if you have bad thoughts, bad words, bad deeds, then you go to a bad place. this was revolutionary. now, the reason it is so important is because it backs the religion of the empire. cyrus the great was the persian king who defeated the babylonian empire and set the jews free from their babylonian captivity. sent them back to the holy land, gave them the money to rebuild their temple. and so the jews post the babylonian compile, post 6th 6th century bc -- were heavily influenced by this. that how they accommodate these notions. for instance, the best example

of this is the concept of the devil or satan. you read the hebrew verses saidan is nothings an evil character, no. the adversary of man himself part of god's court and is know at the satan with a lower case s. but he is one of god's messengers. god send him out to do his bidding. by the time you get to the new testament this is a completely different satan. a satan with a capital s. this is not man's adversary, he is an evil being. that shows you the influence of -- if were to be glib i would say christianity is what happens when you combine soastrium and judaism. >> george is next. we're listening.

>> caller: i have a couple of questions regarding how christianity reconciles jesus as god. one point in the gospels jesus says, the father knows the time of the final judgment, the final coming, but i don't. and then, again, -- i went to church today -- in the gospel today, several times after the resurrection, jesus appears to the disciples and others but they don't recognize him. i've never heard, well, what did he look like? what form did he take? >> guest: well, that's actually very much connected to the first conversation we had, that, yes, post resurrection, are certain resurrection narratives in which jesus appears kind of ghostly. the disciples don't recognize i him. he changes the way he locks. suddenly breaks the bread and they do recognize him. just as there were an enormous

amount of ideas and controversy among the early clips about what the resurrection actually meant there, was an equal amount about whether jesus himself was god or what his relationship was with the father. you see this again in the gospels. on again, the gospel of mark. at no point in the gospel of mark does jesus eve identify himself is a god in matthew and luke there are verses that can be interpret as though jesus perhaps is equating himself with god, because of the powers that he possesses. he acts by the finger of god, he says, and if he has the finger of god, maybe he is saying he himself is god in some form, and then you get to the gospel of john, the last of the gospels, and jesus is barely human. he is pure god. he says, i am the -- i and the father are one. this slow evolution is a perfect example of this conversation

that was taking place in the early christian community over what the relationship between jesus and god was. again, as with the resurrection, that conversation came to an end at nycia when the doctrine of the trinity, father, son, and holy spirit, one substance, three forms, became the creed of christianity, and all those other creeds, including the aryan movement, which believed that jesus was just a man. the gnosty cs who say jesus has no human attributes and what you saw was an illusion to a human being but he was pure god. those views were violently suppressed and what we now forward as the trinity became the founding dock christian of christianity. >> host: ten minutes left. jim in mercer island, washington, you're on the air go ahead.

>> caller: thank you, peter. good to talk to you again. i call hi it a couple years agod your three-hour program. it was just wonderful. one question i have is i know you came to u.s.a., he became a christian. i think he became aa fundamentalist christian if i recall.i'm i'm wondering why and what was the motivation for you to go back to islam? do you prefer i guess you doyo prefer islam over christianity and why? i will hang up and listen to your question.questi >> guest: thank you for the question. it's true. i was born and raised a muslim the will to a cultural muslim. my family was not very religious at all. marxist athiest who hated everything about religion. when we came to the united states, this was a time of severe anti-muslim settlement, the early 80s, the height of the iran hostage crisis, and we

kind of scrubbed our lives of any kind of outward signs of religiosity but i've always been deeply fascinated by religion and a deeply spiritual kid. has to too with my child images of revolutionary iran. i was seven years old and i experienced what it meant to have an entire country transformed in the name of religion, and that never left me. and so i had an abiding interest in religion and spirituality but no way to kind of live that out, at least not in my family. when i was 15 i went with some friends to an evangelical youth camp in northern california. heard the gospel story for in the first time. never heard anything like this before. it was a transformative experience for me medley converted to a particularly conservative brand of chinnity. then when i went to the university i decided to study the new test. for a living, and it was there

under the tattoolage of my jesuit professors i discovered the historical jesus, the jesus that becomes the central figure in "sell -- zealot" and that transform the with a i thought about christianout but was still desirous for some kind of spiritual edification, and i started learning more and more about what religion truly is. i think this is the core of your question, and i'm -- that's why i'm so glad you asked it. i think we have to understand that religion is not faith. these are two different things. faith is subjective, is individualistic, it's mysterious, it's impossible to express. religion, how too you expect it? that's it. religion is a language. a language made up of symbols and metaphors but a language that lets people express to themselves and the other people

the experience of faith, of transscene dense, -- transcendence so to me it doesn't matter what language you choose, whether you're speaking french or german your saying the same thing. english or mandarin you're saying the same thing, so i choose whether you choose the symbols of christianity or buddhism or islam, you're still expressing the same sentiment, just in a different language. and so i think it's important to choose a language. that's all. i am a muslim because i think there are symbols and metaphorses of islam make more sense to me. i'm not a muslim because i think it's more right that kinect or more correct thaninnity. don't think that way. i just think that the language that it uses to describe the experience of the divine, the relationship between creator and creation, that language works

for me. the buddha once said if you want to draw water, you don't dig six one-foot wells you. dig one six-foot well. islam is my six-foot well but i also recognize, as the buddha did, the water i'm drawing from is the water that everybody is drawing from. >> host: a couple of viewers our discussion with rezas a lan online. just two quick quotes from "zealot. "." the common depiction of jesus has a peacemaker who loved his enemies and turned the other cheek has been built mostly on his portrayal as an apolitical preacher with interest in or for that matter knowledge of the politically turbulent world in which he lived.

that picture of jesus has already been shown to be a complete fabrication that jesus of history had a far more complex attitude toward violence. kim in pennsylvania, please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: hi. well, you sort of answered -- i wanted to know a brief summary of what your book was about, but if he could goo into more detail why your book is different from other scholarly books on jesus. >> guest: sure. sure. >> host: can you, tim. >> guest: my book is' the world in which jesus lived. this incredibly turbulent, apocalyptic era in the first century, an era in which the jus were living under the boost of an imperial roman occupation that controlled every aspect of their lives, including their religion, and the way in which

he jews over that first century repeatedly rebelled against the roman rule, and how jesus fits into it. the quote peter read is a perfect example. jesus lived in an era in which it would have been impossible not to be aware of what was going on. the political and religious and economic turmoil that had affected the life of every jew in judea and -- and to stand up and say a. the messiah, the ancestors or king david people and here to re-establish the kingdom of david on earth, that's a political statement. this book is not about who jesus was, whether he was god or the son of god or the messiah. just makes a very simple argument that whatever else jesus was, whatever else he was, he was also man, and as a man he lived in a specific time and place.

his teachings were addressed to very specific social ills. his actions were in response to very specific religious and political leaders that whatever else he was, he was a product of his world. and so if you really want to know who jesus was, and how to understand his message, you've got to begin by understanding his world. >> host: joe in phoenix, arizona, one minute left go ahead. >> caller: quickly. i applaud your comments on the pope-especially amortis lucretia, being a divorce evidence catholic. it's astounding mitchell question is regarding president obama. should he be labeled correctly that he is not calling the terrorists islamic terrorists? >> guest: i like what seth myer said about this. this isn't hogwarts and president obama is not harry potter.

simply calling it islamic terrorism doesn't magically make it go away. the president's argument is that isis sees itself as the representation of all muslims which is absurd, and by calling them islamic terrorists, we are just feeding that isis narrative. that's a pretty good argument. however, as i said earlier in this conversation, isis is muslim for the simple fact they call themselves muslims. just because isis is muslim doesn't mean that islam is isis. that's where we get tripped up. to say that these actions, which are so beyond the pale of anything that could conceivably be called normative islam, they have anything to do with representing the ideas, view us, actions and thoughts of the world's 1.6 billion muslims, that i think is just ridiculous. >> host: reza aslan you're speaking at the "los angeles times" festival of books but your wife is also speaking. >> guest: jess car cofound over

kiva, the world's first peer to per platform. check it out. and lets you loan $25 to a person in africa. 9 .5 payback rate. fastest growing nonprofit in the world. she is my hero. >> host: she has written a book. >> guest: her book is called cleric water, brick. and it's -- clay, water, brick. no just about the experience of creating kiva. it's about how to think about poverty, how to think about the poor, not as the poor burt as entrepreneurs who don't have the >> here's a look at some books that are being published this week.