>> or they are loss of healthcare and health benefit some of this is self-inflicted because of the availability of opioids so it is unmistakable in certain sectors of the united states and is imperative to address how progress doesn't happen by itself. >> i think it is time for the signing unless you have final comments. [applause] >> welcome to tucson arizona hosted by the university of arizona the tv was live

earlier today featuring astronaut scott kelly with military historian and others and now we want to show you first up financial times columnist with a discussion on politics and democracy. >> first of all thanks to the sponsors for today's session those include arizona public media as a local physical

therapist now retired we have one hour for presentation including questions and answers we will save 20 minutes until the end of the session for that microphone is on either side even more people asking questions then we have time for. and h with this session participating in a conversation afterwards outside of the building then he will go to the signing area. you will wait for him a little bit. any book you buy at the festival supports literacy efforts as you know the festival provides thousands and thousands of dollars to improving illiteracy in our

community. how many of you were here last year? look at you. the year before? thirty year? maybe somebody would like to help me outlaw flat. [laughter] you are fans of the festival when i came the line was down the road increasingly popular event as it should be. if you are supporting the festival you would consider being a friend or a sponsor for next year. and this afternoon when you have to go to the dinner theth night before they call themselves the rock bottom remainders they play rock 'n

roll i don't know read from their books. [laughter] please silence your cell phones we don't want interruptions so now it is my pleasure to introduce a great distinguished plan all panel. you are in for a treat first in line is charlie whose book how the right lost its mind making many conservatives i want to make sure you know about these great books i had a chance to read them and they

are well worth the read when i will talk about later it is a little depressing but we need toto be awake. and as you may know as a frequent contributor one of the interviewers is here as well and a contributor to the today show i saw him on bill mars. i think people would agree a insightful conservative sounding the alarm how conservativism lost its traditional values in the white house. and charlie is brutally clear what has happened with

conservativism with very well-established background as a radio host really a voice we need to listen to and the influence in our country and is a principled conservative also we have ed with us called the retreat of western liberalismal i decided not to slit my wrist after reading that book because i wanted to meet him to see if he could encourage us it is a very good gut call as an english journalist from my country of origin f currently financial times chief and the bureau chief in d.c. during the

clinton administration he was a trite or for the secretary of treasury that he was a speechwriter for summers but not the president of harvard. think about that. to go back in time and remember why that is important. one of the previous books one of his book is time to start thinking america in the age of dissent. the dissent as in downward. he says it takes about three hours to read that is right.

man of the world author joe conason dealing with clinton foundation and his work in africa. his investigative reports from the philippines help to topple the regime editor-in-chief of the national memo from the new york observer he was there when jared kushner was there in 2006 and it is possible he could soon be in the witness protection program. [laughter] also the right wing propaganda machine is another of his books also a frequent guest on

msnbc and start the discussion we will start off charlie you should really read this book. [laughter] i think deems the conservative that liberals love to love but charlie has given us a candid description so what is the

anecdote? what is the conservative movementnt do in light of your observations? the movement of a distinguished past many speakers here this weekend talk about as a brand to talk about your book is there an anecdote? >> and it does strike me that the event like this underlies the importance that words and ideas matter and they have consequences and if there is an anecdote it is to restore those norms.

is there an anecdote? we don't know. we were talking about this before hand but then to realize maybe that conservative movement wasn't what i thought it was. what did i miss? what did i ignore believing it was a movement about ideas about celebrity and power and all of that is deeply disillusioning but those words that we could overuse are to recognize that donald trump isn't just the cause i'm sorry i did say his name. but there is a fine jar appear. it all goes to the festival. [laughter] >> just save all the mort lung

--dash valdemort. [laughter] one of the things i have tried to do in this book is not the focuss of what he is doing because you can get mesmerized but what is more concerning what he is doing to us and one of the shocks is to realize the norms of democratic society are much more vulnerable than we ever imagined and it turns out our systems of checks and balances is more of a metaphor than a

strict matter of law and also to go back to some fundamental principles that we americans are not amused to history. there is the talk about the arc of history how that can be twisted if there is an anecdote we cannot be complacent and we need to go back and ask how did we get hereet to a point where politics is lesst about ideas than tribal ideas? how did wewe find ourselves in the post truth era? how do we create the environment for this inpatient populism with celebrities than

actual statesmen and leaders? does anyone have answers to the economic dislocation we aretion experiencing? i think as a conservative to say what exactly what were you doing when this was happening? other than to stoke the culture wars and encourage this binary tribalism and finally how about getting out of the moment of political paralysis? be honest this populist moment without economic dislocation it is also a reaction to political failures of the elite with which at one time i was aligned so there is a step back to begin thinking of

ourselves of citizenry as some sort of ideological identity but if conversations like this could do anything it might encourage the assumption of goodwill that the person sitting next to me wants to destroy america we can get back to that later. in a couple years we will be writing fierce off ed pieces denouncing one another but that moment where there is a then diagram of right and left with not a lot of overlap but what does is really important belief of actual truth that is what a longer answer than you

werere looking for. >> and after the shooting here in tucson we launched an organization and it was worse now than it was then but now i wouldat like to turn to edward after reading his book and i am the internal optimist but i think optimism really helps but in your book you say something that struck me as far closer to collapse to put arsonists in charge of the fire brigade it is a dire

prediction of what charlie said it is definitely true can you expand on the dire prediction? >> that title of the book m is entitled the retreat the publishers went to the word collapse. it implies the possibility can regroup but we need to understand what it is and why that is a of the problem and not the cause. this did not begin 2016.

that the brits use the long cherished right which is just a brilliant headline. and then three or four months later and then america leveled the playing field. [laughter] that the fall of the berlin wall i wasec fortunate enough as my friends drove up the autobahn to berlin to participate and that was with

great pleasure. and this is the endpoint of history and it is the only viable t model the data something that we also believee in. and over the next decade and have 25 fewer democracies in the world than we did at the beginning of the century some of those are former ion lung -- iron curtain and i think what has happened in our countries it is loss of faith in our model first and foremost what gave the model vitality and universal

application is the principle of meritocracy was the old saying goes you can get ahead. and i don't think enough of us believe that anymore. i think what you see that people see is hereditary for those who have reached through the ivy league and through their own efforts the top tier of society can reproduce advantages for those children it is quite understandable i don't think there is any malignant emergence but that a collective result that is becoming more and more hereditary and really that is

the core and if we lose faith in that that which we stop participating and then turn into that political equivalent and for people who actually hate the system so it isn't really a prediction five or ten years from now although it could be a book talk about that democratic recession and it is up to humans. whether we give people of integrity and to uphold the

norms i think the question is in thego hands of human actors. >> before i read your book reading about that current movement signaled byy those programs people are aghast at what they see happening in the white house and so for me there is a sense that and i am all for the election this year will show to those that we use from quite a lot.

>> focusing on the postpresidentialar career in his book he describes the successful efforts of clinton global initiative foundation to address health and economic issues in the developing world and bringing treatment to about 7 million people in africa so this is an example of two former presidents between hw bush and president clinton with bipartisan initiative for countries dealing with disaster. and from what bill gates and others are doing with developing countries is in some way a hopeful sign that

we can take. except through private individuals. and letting people know thattt we care and have a chance to succeed that otherwise goes to democracy? >> first of all i am pleased to be back here again i am happy to be in a panel led by you that steps up after tragedy so thank you. [applause] >> the way that my book is relevant is to remember what

we could do when we tried to do something. president clinton left office under a dark cloud which i discussed at some point in the book but he climbed out of that and one of the ways it was important was when leaders in the developing world including nelson mandela said the aids crisis is going to wipe out generations of africa. with all those infected and left to die by the rest of societyy deciding it would be too expensive to treat people in those countries as costly as it was. and then they rashly agreed

something about it and that meant in the end 12 million people with treatment but what was important not just taken by bill clinton but those that worked with him and other western leaders and george w. bush and those evangelical leaders and conservatives this could not be allowed to happen. one of the darkest marks against the human race of all time and they stepped up to do something about it this isn't something that could be done by the private sector these are government that they took

money from foreign governments, yes they stepped in to say we will help finance this initiative if we can stop the aids crisis and the most important actor in that moment was george w. bush who whatever else you thinkhe of him i have written hard stuff including a whole book, and policies did an incredibly important thing but it showed across partisan lines of state andat private sector with many volunteers that something could be done. in ed's book really he says you have to pay attention to the root of this crisis the

point is to understand where this comes from and start to think about what can be done in the first president bush and president clinton had an immense amount of work after the tsunami they really didn't know each other before that they knew each other a little bit as they threw the first bush out of the white house after only one terms are not a lot of affection there in the beginning but they grew to be great friends. the reason was they saw a panorama of human suffering before them like no one had ever seen the synonymy was hard to understand it was hard

to capture on video. and it just made their differences seem very small. partisan differences seemed petty. with private citizens trying to relieve human suffering and societies and with tremendous success now they are flourishing again making a lot of advances. so it is important to remember we have lots of thingsgs in common and one of them is to try to stop human suffering and take care of our fellow human beings and fellow americans where if we disagree we can figure out what things we can do together.

but we do disagree sharply and we will argue maybe even today but i think it is valuable to realize the democratic liberal faith is to say you can accomplish things and get things done. with that condition that we find ourselves in i think some days i feel my head will explode with all the tweets so myou question i is, as an

interested citizen what could we do with an era of social media where twitter is such the effective weapon to spread falsehoods and attack people on a a personal basis the orange orangutan as 43 million twitter followers that is enormous and the age of social media that is m so dominant that we did not see before what is a citizen to do with no recourse? >> i will try. actually this just relates to the phrase that is very important that is ill liberal

democracy. i just spent the last week at a conference onto maximum -- democracy and set are we o in favor of democracy? because it is not incompatible with authoritarianism or nativism or anti- liberalism which is what we are finding out. so we are in the era where we need to go back to understanding of mutual tolerance of one another of the legitimacy of our opponents values like the victim virtue that is an uncomfortable word for some folks that they become more andnd more important and social media has taken it to a

completely different level. one thing that i would encourages if we could change as a free-market guy the opportunityhe cost, for example it is easier to attack someone youu disagree with but every once in a while will take a courageous stand and if we could provide moralco support. so jeff flake criticizes the president of the united states i guarantee 90% of his social media reaction was from the flying monkeysly and trolls who attack and demonize and if in some small way we can encourage the people to do the right thing because i'm realizing how doesut this country elect this guy?

we are decent people. are we? do we get the government we deserve? i use that phrase a lot thinking maybe we deserve better so social media if it is an instrument to remind people you are not alone in these kinds of positions which may be more optimistic than i am about your question. [laughter] >> it is a different world if i want'd toay talk to my daughts in their 40s i send them attacks they don't call or e-mail and my 5-year-old knows how to exploit our iphones with great ease. what do you say edward?

i don't recall if you talk about the influence of social media there was an argument aboutts diminishing of middle-class leading people to be angry and upset with frustration so can you speak to s that at all and how that plays out? and one example is i never expected the brits to go there but they did and the next morning i learned that millions of brits went on the internet to find out what the five meant but it prevailed as a result of social media. >> i am based out of washington d.c. spending more

of my adult life so i know britain very well. i am hearing things when i go back i am stunned at the changes in those extremes that have happened here there is quite a lot of parallels judges called enemies of the people more to approve the referendum the former prime minister said there should be a second j referendum was called a traitor so that kind of language o is new. we pride ourselves on the fact there hasn't been a violent revolution or civil war since the 1640s inside king's head was cut off by cromwell.

that is a long time. that is relatively stable and ultimately common sense prevails and that is being trashed before our eyes so it is a very unnerving moment what i would say about social media i was really encouraged trying to find a pretext to see your hands up again that was a wonderful site everybody put their hand up they cannot hear the year before. the measure of the health is participation and people getting involved the ultimate of the american creeds people rolling up their sleeves and getting involved in community and running for o things and

that is the measure of the health and that expecting that loss of faith the last ten or 15 years even with the declining membership of parties or trust in institutions. i think it's the best thing individuals can do to get involved and encourage children and grandchildren because i want to take a picture of you with all of your hands up i want to tweet this can i be really cheeky? so will you all be coming

regardless as president will you all be coming next year? look at that. that is a lovely picture. [applause] i will retweet. [laughter] i can only agree with what he just said. that is what i was going to say is that participation is key also not to be intimidated by the flying monkeys. the truth is we now know an awful lot is at stake there is a lot of angry people out there but a tremendous amount of fakery and smoke and mirrors on the internet and don't be intimidated. speak up for your values and

dissipate election result would have v been different in 2016 if in the few counties those same number of people who came out to vote for barack obama showed up again on that side. none of this is impossible to overcome but there is no easy solution it is about what we all do. nothing else. >> we will startst taking questions we have about 20 minutes left in me will go as far as we can with the time that we have. one question i have for all of you how many of you have found yourself gettingha drawn into a jousting match on facebook

with somebody that you with?ee how many of you have unfriended somebody over the last year?an [laughter] i think there is a way to deal with social media that is responsible and helpful i did a battle once and i stopped i thought this is madness that we cannott encourage this. >> how does the noise and the attention is 30% of the base how does the rest of the 70% get the noise and the attention? [applause] >> it is an interesting question i think probably we are still trying to figure out what we thinking? i wrestle with this.

in order to figure out who basically woke up and looked at donald trump then said let's make him the commander-in-chief the role model and the president. so i think that is still part of the processing of what will it take to break the deal? if he does this? we are trying tos find out about the fellow american who we realized in 2016 we don't understand completely even people on my side of the political aisle. and that is the distortion of the lens. and that is completely invisible this is one of the things to realize within fence like this you are not invisible but i think we will

continue being fascinated how much of that 30% will m take if anything will break this cult of personality politics and what are the implications if in fact we are so tribal that doesn't matter the truth or conduct orert character? what if we move beyond that? then you are in the post democratic era that edward was talking about now we realize we have no idea. >> i will say something people may find offensive but i don't think it matters what the 30% think ultimately but the way their best society gets attention a to its perspective is to win politically. you see in the past year victories by the critics of

trump and by democrats and each time that happens our colleagues say what happened? all these women came out. what is going w on? then they go interview some of then and now more are running for office in participating. that is the only way. nothing else. charlie knows this better. you will not change the minds of either side they will change theirir own minds or they won't but what you have to do is your achievement standing up for the values of society will change the conversation. that's all. [applause] >> so now who has unfriended anybody? my advice on twitter if they

are dealing with vitriol do not block them. mute them but don't block them because now they know they have been blocked that is what they want to take a screenshot to disseminate that. if you never listen to m them again and never asked. >> that's good advice. >> we are treated about that many times urging people. >> i think the real causal factor of the mess we are i in investing in enormously wealthy countries having the wealth transferred to the privateiv sector with massive inequality and there is reason from the anger and then giving millions and millions to the wealthy with citizens united

with money in politics. this is a causal factor of the situation we are in and a meritocracy some of the wealth is now hereditary but is that not a foundational reason why you have people so angry today? even those who voted or did not when people do not see any answers and so many people didn't like with the previous government was doing or the trade deal so well transfer is anyo normal aggression or miss causal view. >> i think traditionally americans would be prepared to tolerate high inequality with

great wealth that they perceive they make it fairly so nobody resents the jobs. they may resent some of the wall street figures but not the steve jobs characters and if they believe that if your chances are good through your merit of moving up in life. i think and equality will always bee with us but right now we are at at acute peak inequality we have not seen since the 1920s. you have got to see behavior change on the part of the wealthy and the extreme wealthy some of them like you pointed out citizens united using their a money like the coke brothers who hated trump

and he passed the tax bill now they love him but we do have a problem with very wealthy individuals that they have the whole political system and we have got to ask talk about her own behavior change what we can do as individuals and what they can do is vastly more important so we should pay attention to what their values are. >> i read ed's book it is about the fact that people's expectations in our country have diminished and in large part because of the falling share of income of middle-class people in the smaller chance your children will do better than you. it is simple. you are right.

the fact more and more wealth is transferred to the top less investment into society is a veryte foolish shortsighted way to do things even from the point of view of the wealthy because the country was built and became great at a time income inequality was much less and we invested more as a society to our country off the great public works and highways a bipartisan point of view stretching back to the beginning of the republic in the fact more is siphoned out putting offshore of great wealth is a grave danger to our future no question. >> i don't disagree however one of the lessons of 2016 of

the populist movements around the globe shouldghte be economis are a huge factor in to see the rise of identity politics and what motivates them thinking in economic terms there isn't a complete explanation that fundamentally want to be respected and listened to and treated fairly so the decisive votes ine the 2016 election were blue-collar rule voters from michigan, ohio and my home state of wisconsin. but yet there is no way of

those other factors but don't ignore the way they think of politics in a veryry different way because that strain right now is to encourage people to think of themselves in different ways us versus them that does not relate to economic policies so there is an odd moment president elected on a populist agenda pursuing policies that are indistinguishable if he ran on the t5 agenda. do not make the mistake of assuming there are not a lot of voters in completely different category.re >> just in response he is right but the difference is we had a latent strain of

nativism and racism in our society always. the difference is when people's prospects are diminished acrossac middle-class they are much more vulnerable to those messages and the chance for that to spread when we re-create a society people feel their chances are good and they can get an education and healthcare is secure than they become less full herbal to those ideologies and much more likely to accept other people and they have those chances to. >> i would like the panels reaction i think it is important to remember only ten years ago we elected a very

thoughtful and intelligent wonderful man as president and then reelected him six years ago so what i see across the country is more citizen activism icon fromac new jersey we had a growing larger and larger group of citizens the majority of which were women who protested a sitting congressman who was the chairman of the appropriations committee who had been in congress close to 30 years and what started off as a very small group of people grew larger and larger and more vocal the press started to pay attention and low and behold he decided not to run for reelection and we have wonderful people who have now decided to run.

we see this all across the country and i am very optimistic history will look back to say it was very much anan anomaly and will continue to be the wonderful country at his home -- it has always been. >> that is a great point and a great question but i saw the video of you speaking in ireland recently you addressed this very well in ireland. >> trying to remember what i said. [laughter] im practiced at being tactful it is hard for britt to do when they go over there. [laughter] i share his optimism how the

backlash could play out i think we are at a time of radical uncertainty with the last ten years i have been writing about antiestablishment as him. let the big guy with a muslim name and big ears so there is strange continuity. but the last ten years have not been surprising i think trump was very surprising. the next ten years not predicting anything. it is radically uncertain and very much up to us that's why i share the question the presumption this could be the

anomaly and aberration if we choose to make it so. >> i live in the new york area and with some satisfaction thinking he is alienated from his constituents and the other thing i would observe about that race that one of the things that made him gethi out was when a constituent threatened to run against him a woman who is also a veteran. one thing we seeat in politics now is the mobilization of veterans coming over to the anti- trump side he always wraps himself in the flag he kissedpp at one time and wanted to show his patriotism but

these are real patriots stepping up across the country veterans who have decided enough is enough to show patriotism that there was a time when republicans often would try to send a message they were the only patriots but that will not fly anymore across the country they say that's my flag to and we will defend thiss country's values. >> i take a slightly darker view because there are always two big models that compete in my head the pendulum to swing back and forth jimmy carter and ronald reagan, barack obama, d donald trump but the other image is that every time we do damage to the character

of the nation through discourse it is harder to come back i so it is that radical unpredictability of our times just don't know how badly politics has been ripped so what happens if we do see the collapse in this country of the center-right and centerleft were the angriest voices are driving politics than it becomes much more contentious and we are seeing this from these elections and if that is our fate if we do move into a post factual culture if the environment encourages g us that is my sense right now everything bad that is happening is getting worse

then what is the status of the rule of law after the mueller investigation?tu i don't disagree with a positive assessment but also aware of the potential downside that you don't go through something like this without stating damage. . . . . people in power are changing the rules. gerrymandering, by failing to allow president obama to make his rightful appointment to the supreme court and those kinds of things are creating circumstances where it lets people feel like they really

can't continue to play the game and i'd like you to comment on that. [applause] >> i will tell you the most important example of that right now is the president's attempt to claim that he would not have to testify in the mueller investigation because, and i've written about this both on my web site in us feed, because every president has been subject to subpoena in the criminal investigation when it came up since richard nixon. so, and today trump's attorneys put out the word that while they might come in and talk to mueller. the president might come in and talk to mueller if he agreed to curtail the investigation after 60 days. [laughter] i will tell you right now at no secret sources, he is not going to do that, okay?

nor should hee do that. >> you made chutzpah grade again. [laughter] >> at the danger based on legal precedent donaldld trump shoulde required to answer a subpoena from a duly constituted prosecutor. a [applause] no question about it as a legal matter. >> we go to bake it right away for the next group. i know. >> maybe we can find a place where we can all convene. please give it up for our panel please. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] author and journalist edward luce whose book is "the retreat of western liberis