because men don't like you. i was writing top commentary about paris hilton. the response automatically was you are too angry for me to take seriously even when i was covering up the anger with jokes and the general good cheer. >> afterwards airs saturday at 10:00 p.m. and sundays at 9:00 p.m. eastern and pacific on book tv on c-span2. all previous afterwards are available to watch online at the book tv.org. >> i have a disgruntled microphone. so, i think i will hold it.

well, good evening. i'm charlie copeland the president of the intercollegiate studies institute. in a minute you will hear from chérie harter, president of the trinity form and i'm honored we are jointly posting this program this evening. members of the community believe in a simple axiom and that is think, live free, think, live free. the trinity form believes that distraction, instability, polarization and pathology of our age stems from the lack of spiritual and character formation and leaders. there are few opportunities to grapple with, reflect on and discuss what matters most. in other words, organizations believe deeply that an informed

citizenry, that informed leaders are well read, intellectually curious and deep thinking. we build, grow and maintain a community of college related constituents, students, faculty, alumni, we want to discuss and engage in the big ideas. what makes a society flourish and prosper? what makes a person hope why does a society in which the rules are above the rulers difference? as i specifically focus on higher education, last year we had over 1250 faculty advised student meetings equaling over 30,000 educational interactions between our faculty and students. we had 155 separate independent lectures and

debates, six regional weekend conferences, six oh liberty fund conferences, 60 student newspapers accessed over thousands of students as well as made national news on shows like tucker carlson, "usa today", national review, dallas morning news and numerous others and our honors conference is considered the gold standard in developing conservative intellectual thought among college students. a de facto minor in conservativism where we discuss russell curtis a conservative mind, richard weaver's idea of consequences among other types. the purpose of these activities is to take today's college intellectual leaders and allow them to develop their own perspectives around the these foundational ideas and how they can be applied today. i'm fond of saying, for

instance. if positive were easy to solve we would have solved it already. the principles that drove the success of the western world and brought the rest of the world along with it have been the most successful ideas and addressing those fundamental contractible problems like poverty. though problems suffered by humans and humanity are constantly shifting. foundational ideas in constant sharpening and review and discussions like this evening's are just a step in that ongoing process. on your chairs you will see promotional handout for intercollegiate studies institute upcoming dinner for western civilization to be held in washington dc, thursday october 15. early that afternoon we are hosting a forum on freedom where we will discuss the freedoms that drove success of

western world and america. i do hope that you will be able to come and if not i hope you will consider supporting isi in any way you can. as i said, we are on the college and university and it's an unfriendly, uncaring place for those who don't wholeheartedly buy into the identity politics of the current age. we directly confront this and support the extremely bright young leaders who have the audacity to question campus dogma. you can help assure that we develop the next generation of conservative leaders. in short, you can help save america. you can help save the west and indeed you can help save the world and that's not bad for a day's work.

with that, i would like to introduce chérie harder, president of the trinity forum. prior to joining in 2008 , ms. harder served in the white house as special assistant to the president and director of policy and project for first lady laura bush. earlier in her career she served as policy adviser to the senate majority leader bill frisk advising the leader on social issues and serving as a liaison and outreach director to outside groups. from 2001 to may 2005 senior counsel to the chairman of the national endowment for humanities where she helped the chairman designer launch we the people initiative to enhance the study, teaching study and understanding of american history. chérie? [applause]. >> thank you for that kind introduction and welcome to all of you tonight's evening

conversation on identity and dignity. on behalf of all of us it's a pleasure and honor to partner with you. i appreciate all the work you've done, charlie, and you josh as well to make this a reality. we are grateful to the support for tonight's event from the democracy fund which ensures our political-- to withstand challenges and deliver on its promise to the mecca people and we are delighted to president, joe goldman, has joined us along with several members, staff including margaret, laura, martin, jessica, thank you so much for joining us. i also want to give a special shout out to the senate pages who have joined us. i understand around 18 out of 30 of the pages in the u.s. senate are here tonight and we are delighted to have you, so welcome. as well as thank you to each of you for making

it out. it's never fun or easy to fight rush hour traffic and we are delighted and honored you are here with us tonight. we also know there are many people who want to be here, but could not make it so if you have friends who are among that number fear not, we are live streaming tonight's event. let them know now and we will also have video up at our website and user channel along with photos and eclipse on facebook. i will also be live tweeting the event tonight as well as #identity in dignity to follow along there as well. it's also a pleasure to see so many new faces in the audience, so for those of you that are not familiar with the trinity forum we work to provide space and resources for leaders to engage in life's greatest questions in the context of faith and we do this by providing a reading of which draw

upon classics works of literature to explore the enduring question of life and connect the timeless wisdom of the humanities with the timely issues of the day as well as sponsoring programs like this one tonight to connect leading thinkers with thinking leaders and engaging those big questions of life and ultimately coming to better know the author of the answers. as we have noted that evening conversations before it's been said the big questions of life essentially boil down to three. what is a good person? what is the good life? what is a just society? wrestling with each of those questions is profoundly influenced by our identity. on once-- on what we base our digital algae and dignity and the obligations, commitments and relationships that flow from that understanding. for much of history the

constraints of everyday existence largely defined one. one was born in a village where one was likely to die, perform the same work and worship in the same way as one's parents, marry someone chosen by your family, be with the same people throughout your life. choice was limited, but once sounds of self was uncomplicated. technology, economic opportunity in the freedoms that attend liberal democracy has opened up extraordinary choices, opportunities and options for all of us. our sense of identity is no longer fixed, but open and often fluid. has our mobility and autonomy grows the power and influence of some of the institutions over as and historically that institutional moral and religious authority mediating institutions of the civil society have in some ways waned in their authority or their influence.

the commitments, obligations and relationships that once bonded us to each other and helped define who and whose we are weakened. for many, the disappearance of strong communities, moral authority and stable institutions has led not to a blissful freedom, but a profound sense of alienation. such isolation has interned fueled on an individual level, a search to be part of a group and our societal level a marked increase populism and tribalism and various identity groups seek recognition power. in his provocative new book our speaker tonight argues the tribalism and identity politics that's arisen for request for it is-- dignity and respect is actually undermining the stability of the liberal democratic order that makes human rights, religious freedom and freedom in general possible. the increasing politicalization of our

identities and the inevitable result of that if we perceive our own identities to be deft, lens itself to an apocalyptic politics were compromise is seen as an attack on self-worth and accommodation of self negation. is so, is it possible to construct or to recover a sense of individual identity that recognize and grounds our identity in something other than tribalism, shared interest or resentment? and can cultivate a shared identity built around common ideals, a face that encompasses an inclusive and unifying vision of what it means to be an american? these are important questions and challenging ones that it's hard to imagine a scholar who can engage them with more intellectual courage, thoughtfulness and sober wisdom that our speaker tonight, doctor francis fukuyama.

francis is a political scientists, political economist and best-selling author who also serves distinguishing-- a senior fellow at stanford university for international studies as well as the director of the center of democracy development in the rule of law. he previously taught at the school of advanced international studies at john hopkins as well as george bashan university of public policy, served as a researcher at the rand corporation deputy direction of the state department policy planning staff and in addition to his latest book which we invited him to address tonight he's the author of political order and political decay, the origins of political order perhaps his most famous, the end of history in the last man, trust and america to crossroads. he's a council member of international forum for democratic studies. advisory council of the democracy fund and alumni of harvard university where he

received his phd. after francis fukuyama's talk responding to him will be ryan streeter. is the director of economic policy studies at ati. previously serving as executive director at the center for politics and government as well as serving as the special assistant to the president for policy for president george w. bush and policy advisor for mayor steven goldman in indianapolis. he's the author of transforming charity towards a results oriented social sector, the editor of religion and public square of the 21st century and the co-author of the soul of civil society and has been widely published and publications as-- such as the "washington post", "wall street journal" and national review appeared directly after frank's talk ryan will offer a brief response to be followed by a moderated conversation between our two speakers.

frank, welcome. [applause]. .. and donald trump's election in november of 2016. i think both of these events are connected to a broader series of developments around the world which are often times referred to as as a rise of a kind of

global, and which a democratic leaders that are legitimately elected but they pursue policies that oftentimes economically populist more importantly i believe the institutional basis for modern democracy. democracy not simply matter of election. it is matter of a rule of law, checks and balances, constitutional constraints that limit executive power in a low functioning democracy at the places like hungary and poland in turkey you had elected leaders that have gutted their judiciaries, eliminated any kind of hostile opposition press that would hold them accountable, we can their impersonal bureaucracies and basically cleared away obstacles to the own kind of personal rule. i hate to report that i believe something like that is afoot in the united states as well, what

would you have a president the seem to not appreciate the importance of some of these checks and balances institutions and has been doing a lot i think in a similar vein to weaken then. i think this represents a broader movement, and what i've been trying to do over the last couple of years is to really understand the sources of this populism and why we're in this current situation. so the usual explanation is an economic one where globalization is seen properly to have vastly expanded the output of goods and services in the global economy. everybody has gotten a lot richer, but that wealth has not been evenly distributed. i think anyone that takes a a basic trade three-course would understand that although everybody gets richer in the world, not every individual and every country gets richer, and in particular, less educated workers in rich countries have

been losing employment and opportunities to rising middle classes in places like china, india, bangladesh and so forth. and so there's been a stagnation in middle-class wages in the united states, and britain, and other developed countries basically no increases in per capita income really for a very extended time. that obviously has generated a lot of backlash and unhappiness and a feeling that the elites that were responsible for creating this liberal world order are very much out of touch. however, the subject of my book is not that because i think that actually there is a cultural and identity dimension to what has happened that oftentimes is not appreciated as one of the drivers of this. so what is "identity"? this is a word that only came into use with the psychologist erik erikson in the 1950s, and the term identity politics

really only committed circulation really in the '70s, '80s, \90{l1}s{l0}\'90{l1}s{l0} associated with a certain type of politics in developed democracies like that of the trinity. as i try to explain in the book this is actually not a recent phenomenon and that it's very deeply embedded in the western tradition. i go back to plato book for or socrates is what is a human being? there's a desiring part that want things. there's a calculating rational part but isn't there another part that he labels, a greek word is sometimes translated as spiritedness. this part of the soul demands recognition of one's inherent dignity that in addition to food and drink we want other people to respect us, to value us at a certain rate, and it would look at that, that recognition, we get angry. because it is recognition, it is

inherently political. it draws us into the public square because we want other people to recognize us. this is an old concept. i think in the modern world it has developed in different ways because the concept of dignity is shifted. for plato dignity only was due to warriors, and aristocratic class after class that risked their lives but in the course of development western civilization christi christianity played a very important role in shifting the concept of dignity not to a certain limited class of warriors but to all human beings insofar as they have the capacity for moral choice. it is the human moral agency the stands at the root of christian dignity and becomes a universal characteristic. if you ask why would anyone think that all human beings are equal? they are equal in this capacity for moral choice. this idea, the seda seat of thd

the with the court dignity insofar as we are equally free to choose takes a secular form. in the writings of writers, german idealists, i believe it is actually at the basis of modern human rights and our understanding of rights as defined in the american constitution. in what sense does thomas jefferson assert that all men are created equal. it really does have to do with the fact that we are equal agents and, therefore, equally entitled to participate in the process of self-government. now, i guess the final component of the modern sense of identity is that we deeply believe that we have a self that is inside us and that that doesn't necessarily correspond to the external social world. the external social world may despise us or not recognize us, and the mother aspect of this is that we believe -- modern aspect

-- that insight is and that doesn't assist correspond to the external social world. the external social world action may despise recognize us and that modern aspect of this is that we believe that authentic inner self is morally more valuable than the other roles. that look down on us in between the authentic inner self and those extra and rules. it is next to the rules that have to change and that leads you into a kind of revolution understanding of the relationship between individuals and the. [witnesses were sworn in] society. so that's the basic kind of the theoretical background but it manifest itself in politics. in 2011 the was a vegetable seller in tunisia who had a vegetable cart that was confiscated by the police. he went to the governor's office and said can i have my cart

back? nobody would even talk to them so we doused himself in gasoline, killed himself and that is what triggered the arab spring. it triggered the arab spring because throughout that region the people that lived in these dictatorships identified with his situation. the government was so unwilling to even give him an answer, you know, they could've said you did something illegal. that's why we took your cart. they wouldn't even to give them the minimum amount of respect that human deserves, and they said that's basically the condition of all of us, egypt, libya, in syria, and all of these other countries, we did encampments and governments that do not recognize our personhood. a lot of the color revolutions that occurred in georgia, ukraine, of the parts of the world against dictatorships, there was a revolution of dignity that took place in ukraine in 2013-14. the word dignity was important

because the young ukrainians that were out in district protesting against viktor yanukovych did not want to be dragged back into this russian system we had to be kind of personally connected to the rulers if you're going to get hit. they wanted to live in a modern society like that of the european union that would recognize people on a more impersonal basis. dignity, , it's not like this is something, this isn't where the cultural practice for just certain kinds of cultures or regions. this is at the basis of our democracy. our democracy recognizes us i getting this right. it gives us the right to speech, to association, to religious belief and ultimately to the exercise of agency through the vote. through the franchise. that is the respect which we recognize as equal individuals in a democratic society. the problem is that kind of universal recognition that is

the basis of a liberal democracy oftentimes isn't enough for everybody. and particularly when you can take democracy for granted, you begin to seek other forms of recognition. the first alternative to this liberal universal form of recognition was nationalism. a nationalist believes he or she is a member of a cultural community that should be represented in politics. all of the germans living across central and eastern europe ought to be unified under a single german government, or the serbs living in the empire had a right to the own republic and it is that pressures to change boundaries based on this assertion of group identity that drove the conflict that only resulted in the world wars of the first half of the 20th century. my own view is that a lot of the young men that go off to fight

for the islamic state and al-qaeda in the middle east are actually not driven by genuine religious piety. what they are driven by is an identity problem, especially those european muslims who have rejected the traditional islam of the parents and grandparents but they are really not fully accepted by the european society where their living in rotterdam or in paris or whatever, and then a muslim preacher comes along, a baghdadi or or and osama bin laden and said you're a member of the muslim community that is great and glorious, has a great history, it is being oppressed. muslims are being killed and disregard all around the world. you need to have agency that come to syria to fight back. that's why they grow long beards, pick up an ak-47 and engage in that kind of violent conflict.

so these are two examples of identity that lead to very bad political results. they lead to violence, and so identity that only drives democracy but it also drives these forms of politics. now we get to what's going on in liberal democracies, answer if you think about the united states, and now this this is ae common use of the word identity, i want to point out that this concept is very broad and it really does apply to a lot of the stuff that's going on outside the united states in other countries around the world, this assertion of identity, all right? so when the united states i think a history of his runs roughly as follows, that in the 1960s you saw the rise of the number of very important social movements. it begins with the civil rights movement for african-americans, feminist movement, the lgbt movement, the movement on behalf of the disabled, native americans. all of these groups had, in fact, the, were invisible to

mainstream american society. they were disregarded. their rights were not respected. in some cases, african-americans, the rights were legally subordinated to those what people. what they demand was the quality. quality. they demanded and equality of respect, and so identity politics in america begins with a very just and important striving for a quality and especially this equality of respect. and i think you look at the history of the democratic party and the united states and also a lot of the parties on the left in europe, there is a transformation in the way that they see themselves and the way they see the project. his earlier it had been focused very heavily on the working class. in europe a lot of those parties were marxists and so they cared about the revolution and so forth, but they were seeking as

their main political base this broad working class, most of whom were members of the dominant ethnic group in your society, and that was true in the democratic party as well where like 80% of rural whites in the south voted for roosevelt in the 1936 election. as the left began to shift towards this more identity-based coalition, based on the specific grievances of particular groups, a lot of these white working-class voters begin to drift over and vote for conservative parties, and so this is been a shift that's been going on in the united states for some time. in europe a lot of former communist voters in france now vote for the national front, for similar sorts of reasons because the left has seen its outlook. in this identity space where they feel they don't have a

role. this is the part that gets a little bit tricky because i want to be very careful to say that the impulse leading to identity politics is a matter of justice. it is a perfectly legitimate thing for groups that are treated badly because they are members of groups to push back against them, and the injustice suffered african-americans and women and gays and lesbians at all of these other groups is not the same. their list experiences are different and, therefore, the remedies are going to be different. that aspect of it becomes i think is understandable and a kind of natural outcome. where identity politics has gone off the rails, comes in a couple of different areas. when the group begins to emphasize the way that it is different as opposed to the ways that it is similar in some who wants to join the larger community, that poses a problem because not every group identity

is necessarily compatible with the kind of universal values of which a liberal democracy is based. is the most serious i think a lot of european countries where you have muslim groups that express homophobia, anti-semitism, subordination of women from the sorts of cultural values that are not compatible with the kind of individual agency that we believe people in a modern democracy deserve. it becomes problematic when i given characteristic with which you were born comes to the find what you think about politics, about coulter, even about sports and things like that because, in fact, the premise of a democracy is that we are individuals that can make up our minds about important public policy issues and we should not be limited by some of the conditions of our birth. quite frankly i think the

identity politics as it evolved on the left has now stimulated and identity politics on the right. some of the more extreme versions of this in the alt-right and white nationalism and so forth, again it's hard to say but i believe embedded by our president, has not been healthy for the united states because a lot of those people would like to drag the united states back into a more ethnic understanding of american identity which is something that i had actually thought we had gotten past in the time come in the wake of the civil rights movement. and so in general i think that we have a little bit of this disease that afflicts other countries around the world where people are not disagreeing over policy issues, higher taxes or more regulation, less regulation, whatever. they are lining up with these

identity groups into which they are born, and that makes democracy much harder to sustain. the solution to this, we can talk about and an hour discussn further, but i think there is a clear set of things that can be done. one of them really has to do with a focus on national identity. so national identity is oftentimes disparaged because it is associate with the kind of out of control aggressive ethnonationalism of the early 20th century. but national identity doesn't have to be that, and it could be something i've labeled -- meaning it is based on a set of ideas and, in fact, i think the way that american national identity evolved had gotten to the point by the end of the civil rights era when what it meant to be an american is not to be of a certain race or ethnicity or religion. what it means to be an american is to believe in the u.s. constitution, in the rule of

law, and the principle of equality embodied in the declaration of independence. and if you signed up to those beliefs that didn't matter where you came from, you would be considered an american. conversely, if you don't like those principles, you can be un-american in a way you can't be un-german and japanese or on something when with identity id on your ethnicity. and so that's an important achievement and i think that we need to emphasize that. i think that the specific identities will continue to assert themselves but i do think that we need to focus on rebuilding a sense of national identity that is creedal based on these ideas that are accessible to the diverse de facto diverse society that we live in today and that we need to emphasize those integrative aspects of identity. that's the nice thing about

identity. it doesn't have to be fixed. it doesn't have to based on biology. it can be shared by leaders, shipped by schools, by education, by the way we talk about our shared history and our shared values. i think that's an important task that lies ahead of us, civic education i think is appallingly under, you know, underdone in our school system. if you look at the statistics in the number of high school graduating high school seniors that can name the three branches of government or can name even one of the bill of rights, one of the rights that's guaranteed by the bill of rights, it's really shocking. you are not going to defend constitutional government if you start out with that kind of, with the kind of a knowledge base. there are other things we can say about immigration policy. i've got lots of opinions about that because that's surely the policy issue that is the most neuralgia in terms of the identity issues because people feel with a high level of

immigration that has been taking place and a sense of national identity is being changed in ways over which we really don't have control. i will save that for the discussion. i'm sort of went on longer and i'm supposed to, but thank you very much for listening, and i look forward to the commentary. [applause] >> thank you for the words. thank you to the trinity forum and isi for organizing this, to organizations that are always great. thank you for having me. for those of you who don't know much about me, i'm the person about whom you said, and some guy is responding when you got the email that said francis fukuyama was come to speak at the national press club. it's great to be with you. this topic of identity is one

that in general has been of interest to me for a long time and i've wondered for a long time why it is that we all walk around with an included choose for ourselves but that were defensive of it some of the extent of earnings. our parents chose her names and sometimes you might even have that members of your parents come he might not even get along with the transfer of wealth that if someone says something negative about your name, what kind of defensive about that. there's this way in which we get enraptured by a local sports teams. if you have your favorite football, hockey, baseball team you can be and the funk for an entire day when the loose in the playoffs but nobody on the team even knows you. you have the sense of attachment to this kennedy that's very strong and do something fundamental, something very fundamental to we are as human beings that we have this deep sense of connection to communities and that our identities are wrapped up in those communities. that's the first of 2. i wanted to bring up in response to the

remarks and to his book. sociological phenomenon of our tribal district predispositions which i think is grading framework within which our identity politics are becoming so divisive and poisonous today. not all identity politics are bad. with experience changes in workplace behavior. we've experienced changes and the way police has done many of which flow from responses to the call and cry for justice and respect the inherent dignity of specific groups of people. what's especially damaging today is the way in which our identity politics has become tribal. and we really more joiners and we are splitters, and we join these abstract tribes in ways that could have a car particularly threatening them for the ongoing project of american democracy. it's the proliferation of abstract tribalism a lot of talk about here and think about what to do about it. in 1752 the scottish writer

wrote his emergence of modern times about politics of principle, parties of principle, in contrast to parties of interest. if you're in a seafaring town route on a farm or politics are very much rooted in the way of life that you have but he noticed this thing going on in modern politics that he called parts of principle. he didn't have the term ideology. he noted that the way in which emotions were stirred by abstract ideas and abstract ideas was something that was particularly powerful. will go join a march on the mall but we won't go show at the local city hall hearing on fixing potholes even though we know we will be bouncing across those potholes the very next morning. this is something unique to our nature and when given an opportunity to find soldiered with people over something that is a very narrowly defined identity or principal, and can

cause great passionate responses within us. a little under 200 years after that, george orwell wrote an essay, and he says it's an imperfect word nationalism for this phenomenon he wanted to describe as a habit of assuming that whole blocks of millions of people can confidently be labeled good and bad. in the habit of placing one groups beyond good and evil to recognize no of the duty and that advancing its interests, his habit of what he called nationalism but he was describing tribalism was marked by certain things like obsession. obsession. any criticism or slur against your group provoked a vigorous and it sometimes violent and forceful response. and indifference to reality in that what might be outrageous acts by others are forgiven within your own crib or not even considered to be outrageous when they're committed by our side. so identity politics has generated a a certain type of crisis of attachment that seems to be at a point where will see

it continue in a pace, if this there is right, which is that the more our fundamental tribes, family, household, community right debt and are unrestrained and are shifting, the desire to join more abstract tribes is all the more powerful. we can't talk about that more in the question-and-answer time or discussion time. if these trends we've seen and what with the numbers in the social sciences now of increasing family instability, civic fabric tearing apart, community is collapsing in of their civic health, it should be no surprise the social commentator wrote about a year ago that we've seen this rise in identity politics when peoples fundamental attachments become confusing or even begin to dissolve. but it also want to say that when we look down at street level we can see that not all hope is lost and different might actually be part of the solution to our problem.

while others have documented over the years this increase in polarization wheezing, some can detect a 50% of parents that would have a hard time if their son or daughter married someone from another political party where it was 5% i think figures 50 years ago, we realize we have the strong force of polarization some of which we understand, many of which we don't. there's also evidence that at the local level, engagement within our communities, engagement where we are living out and expressing the american project at the local level has some promise. i will let you consider some of the following not yet released data that some colleagues and i at the american enterprise institute have from a servant which is concluded at 2400 americans. when you ask people what they get a strong sense of community in america, we asked them if they have some sense of community and a strong sense of community, we ask people what you have strong sense, 31% said they have strong sense of community as americans in their

american identity compared to just 16% of all the way about their political group and 17% in terms of ethnicity. even the sense that you have community with fellow americans because they are americans is still something that is alive and well. 25% of people said their city gave him a strong sense of community and for people who do attend a house of worship, or 6% said strong sense of community came from the house of worship. our survey found that between 66-80% of americans of all, race, age, income, education, it does matter how you slice it, pretty much between 21380% of all people think the local community is going in the right direction while 40% of the people think that the country is. three in ten americans say they have worked together with neighbors, that they have the neighbors to try to solve a problem or to make an improvement in security. three out of ten is not bad. i think these data suggest part

of the solution is close to home. as much as we can promote service and perhaps even require it at times in her schools, and a programs and in our policies, the more big issues like racism and inequality can become a community issues that we all have a stake in overcoming. we've learned over the last 20 years through reforms and committee placing and charter schools can reforms to public housing and even welfare that when communities take responsible for fixing the problems they can do. not without friction and and nt always perfectly, but as communities and not as abstract identities. it's been too long since we have fought long and hard about the bedrock of civic life and its wall at play here. that's an important area for us to talk about as we think about the issue of our tribal identities versus actual identities in communities. how do you take the latter to essentially either weaken or moderate properly the former?

even if we built on the strength of the local level and shift our identities, we are still the set by something that is deeply disquieting, and this is my second point that only quickly before we sit down. and that is a pervasive and think even dangerous crisis that we have. a loss of confidence and transcendence on questions of human nature and what is the best society. it's those things that are true, whether we could about them or not. not only in terms of the truth, not to speak about truth grounded in faith claims, religious faith claims, but transcendence in the sense of things that are true out of the basis of our rights and probably understand what human flourishing actually is. identity politics is rooted in power and interest. remember what orwell said. it's not about truth. it's about advancing power and interest for specific group. it's an important thing for a

lot of reasons. it has a very real benefits. there's some evidence that when you're motivated by truth claims that are rooted in the transcendent view of the world, that you have tolerance for other people who are different than you. just this week the cato institute released a survey of conservative religious conservative voters and secular conservative voters and found that religious conservative voters are much more tolerant of immigrants and racial minorities and it's a phenomenon of secular conservatives. as we know the four reversed on basis of the president support. another benefit to the role in society is an openness to opposing ideas. there's a body of social science work on scientific curiosity, people that are legitimately interested in exploring what is true about the nature of things are going to be much more open to debate, disagreement and

talking with people don't share their views and who disagree with them. generosity is related to this. we know that religious people give more and get more frequently facility people that just have an experience of all and elevation that comes with discovering something true to r seeing and witnessing morally noble actions. i'd and how you recover a culture of embracing the pursuit of truth without some kind of massive renewal even in some modernized form of the liberal arts approach to education. dr. fukuyama talked about a for more education adco a step further and say think way to recognize there's pretty certain trading of our distant of how we inculcate, train and pass on these things are actually true about our democratic way of life and what we need in order to be successful. we need more than engineers in hard sciences to believe in truth. we need people and humanities and in the social sciences who do. buildings and bridges can fall down if you don't take truth

claim seriously. if a school of engineering thought came about you wouldn't trust the buildings and the bridges but civilizations and societies can collapse, too. both of these areas require an understanding of what is true and what is good about them. this probably means take a back primary these fundamental tasks as well. it's been a generation since alan bloom wrote the closing of the american mind of the students that were on campus when he was writing are now running things including her schools. perhaps there's an opportunity for partners to do this at household level, to what what families for the basic concepts of natural rights and natural law through new tools and new types of products. finally, religious renewal, a way of therapeutic models of conveying theology and away from politicized theology. perhaps back to the cataclysmic model of educating might also not be a bad thing to do. i don't know if we can pull any or all of these things off, but i do think we should try. thank you.

[applause] >> thank you for that, frank and right. that was great fun. we have a lot of ground to cover. starting off from a 20,000-foot view, frank, you mention that the rise identity politics is not limited to the united states, that we've seen that as well as the growth of the liberalism in different trouble democracies really around the world. so what is it that is prompted the shift away from economics to identity politics in the first place? and secondly, why the shift towards illiberalism when it's been liberal democracy that is done the most to expand recognition of previously disenfranchised groups?

>> well, i do think that the economic explanation is a part of it. if you look at who votes for populist parties, not just in the united states but across europe, they have a similar demographic. they tend to be older, more rural, less educated, not part of this cosmopolitan globalized economy this done extremely well over recent years. those of the people who voted for erdogan in turkey, voted for putting in russia. part of it is i think just political opportunism that there was an opportunity by a peeling to his definition of hungarian national identity is yet to be an ethnic hungarian which is very problematic way of defining national identity. but he can get a very firm political base by doing that because a lot of of the ethnic

hungarians come he's also franchise those villas that wit that hungry as well. part of it is just the rise of these kinds of political opportunist. it is part of this larger push back against the kind of world of our liberal global institutions have created where the people have benefited enough and there were several of the fact it's passing them by. >> ryan, anything at? >> nothing on that. >> we've got you. you studied community and civil society for most of the current and certainly both proceeding and et cetera the rise of identity politics has been the decline of embodied in person community. what do you blame that on? why has community and civil society so tanked, and other insights of hope that you see? >> that's a great question.

i think we're still trying to understand why it's been tanking. it hasn't tanked everywhere. as we've seen from a number of different scholars out there including my own college at aei, charles murray, it's tanked very unevenly. in communities with high proportions of college educated people, dual-income households, higher incomes in general, you have a lot more engagement in community still. there's a lot more participation at the community level. it's really that, they can operatory% of america that looks a lot more like the 1950s sort of america that would like to remember an idealistic terms. it's been very and even and so you had in some of these places where the rise of populism has been starkest are in these areas where you've seen a collapse of confidence in civic institutions, non-attendance of religious institutions. i mentioned that survey that

just came out this week which shows that is precisely the secular working-class communities are the ones that are not going to church. they are not involved in their communities, and they're the ones who are most sort of susceptible to this kind of nationalism that's been spurting. that is a really difficult challenge for us. i think culturally it's going to be difficult to turn that around if inequities in some kind of bottom-up renewal from within communities. as a matter of policy, i think we're at a point where we need to help people relocate to other communities. there's some evidence when you do this that people started to come habits and characteristics of of the community with a go, and that might sound radical but instead of trying to renew a dying community from within, it might make more sense to all people mover and more. that's one of the things left to think about. there has been a long time in

happening, kind of secular decline of just participation in local community institutions, faith-based organizations, particularly by people kind of midway and out on the economic spectrum that doesn't seem to have any forces within it for self correction. >> coming from silicon valley i would have to say that technology has probably played an important role in this, because there's this long debate to set up by bob putnam as to whether community was really, we're all alone and community was dying. i think that as i read the empirical evidence in the wake of that debate, it's actually stronger than ever. it's just that it is occurring that in this face-to-face meetings in small towns and on front porches. a lot of it is moved online but, unfortunately, the nature of social media in such an actually company, it is perfectly make identity politics, right? you got some crackpot conspiracy theory about how the united

states words, and if you go online you can find the hundreds of people in the country who believe that alone with you and you can completely shot at any contrary evidence. that's what facebook and twitter and all of these technologies i think have brought us to. one of the issues is actually how you deal with that. i think that we've now come very rapidly in the last, just in the last 12 months in regarding these as he rose of modern life to being villains. i don't think they are actually either but it is a problem we are going to have to deal with. >> let's talk about that. one of the points you raise is inc. seem to go much better on the local and embodied level, then at the abstract, national and international level. all of our technology is moving us towards more virtual, more disembodied kind of communication here and with the rise of social media, twitter

camera in 2006, facebook a few years earlier, it's amazing how much that is changed in person communication, diminished in person, made it much more virtual. what hope if any do you see for that? >> i agree with everything you just said, and he think we don't even fully understand what all these forces will do to us longer term. we are seeing interesting research right now just on the generation and the amount of screen time and a lot of use of, a direct relationship to things like anxiety and depression in some of these behavioral mood disorders. those will be with us for some time, take away more and more young people are experiencing this at a younger age. i would also say that we are all on various digital platforms. we'll use this technology but not everybody's behavior at the local level or the lack of participation in the community governments and in the local society is collapsing the same

way. strong family still matters. religious institutions still matter. these fundamental institutions are the places within which we learn to practice the kinds of things that our society and our democratic with life actually need. you can be a facebook a lot, between a lot, you can be tweeting nasties that participate in the fight and yet still go to your kids school and help out that afternoon. people are doing that and i think the data i was siding with the come up with a study which will probably come out i think it about a month, the first one, it will be a series, i think you'll start to see some of that. it's very much like we've seen this long-term decline since the '80s 80s of confidence in the federal government. and behind that the state governments as well. peoples confidence in the local government is not the same as it was an elected 70. 75% americans basically think the local government is okay. that set me local governments are less prone to corruption and

more transparent? no. but there's approximately to that. if you're embedded within functioning institutions that you can actually affect and work through and make change, people are still doing that. even if they are still spending three hours of the day shouting at people and twitter. i totally agree that social media, it's like makes a second politics think some it easier so much worse. but there are views of the fundamental aspects of our democratic and communal life that i think are also gotten some other dissolution your talk about. >> frank come in your book he wrote that the rise of the therapeutic model midwife to the birth of modern identity politics, wine, i know you mentioned the therapeutic model as well. it is rather uncanny when you think about how radically different that approach towards understanding of man is that even say an orthodox christian view of man, which is basically

grounded in dignity, stamp honors. at the same time the doctrine of original sin, the idea that we are bent myself as nation come in the of both love and forgiveness for checks on pride and power. in contrast the therapeutic model as you spelled out in your book can it comes more from your soul, the idea that we're inherently good, we need to be liberated from the south constraints and free to self-actualized. is the therapeutic model compatible with the sustaining of liberal democracy? if so, how? if not, what then do we do? >> will so the decline of the shared religious more horizon is related to the rights of the therapeutic model. the fundamental text in this line of literature is the book in the late '60s, the rise of

the therapeutic society, that's exactly what he said. he said previously you went to a priest or pastor for counseling about anxieties that you had about your marriage, about your job, about the we dealt with the neighbors and so forth. and with the decline of formal religion playing that kind of a role, people interned to psychoanalysts and psychologists, and the state itself took on a therapeutic role. in this respect self-esteem became the central issue that the goal of the therapeutic society is to raise peoples self-esteem. there's an inherent contradiction in that therapeutic mission though, because it everybody actually has a steam, and nobody has esteemed because esteem is due to certain things that are estimable and the premise of their previous that everybody should have it because everybody should feel good about themselves.

that's why in high school, graduation, everybody gets an award for being the best at something because that's what's going to make them feel good. i think it's had this, i actually had a whole chapter on stanford university in this regard because, but i didn't put in the book in the end. [laughing] there's a quotation, so in 1986, jesse jackson came to stanford to try to get rid of the western culture core requirement, and there's a quotation from the leader, the student union -- the black student union leader that was pushing for this, and he said something very revealing, which is that i understand my professors think that plato and rousseau and always people are important, but they don't understand how that hurts the mentality of people that are not

of that race and background, and what was interesting was, in essence, universities have taken that you are from that displays and educational mission with the therapeutic mission. so the main interest is actually in making sure that none of the groups that have reason to feel disrespected is damaged. and that leads them to make decisions about curriculum and so forth that actually do have any educational justification but they do have therapeutic justification. now, can a society in general survived this shift of religious framework? i hate to say but, yes, i think it can. i would simply point to europe. europe has become the most secular society probably in human history. it's much more orderly than the united states and it has good democratic institutions.

i've always been very skeptical about these arguments that you actually have to have a certain kind of religious foundation to actually maintain basic social order. it's not just europe, i can think of other, agent really does have religion anything like western -- and orderly society. so i think that that decline, you can survive. the therapeutic i think is tricky because it really does shift the discussion away from, you know, i discussion about really human excellences are and not to be and what we really ought to esteem and towards a model that says anybody deserves it. that's contradictory and an unfulfillable goal. >> ryan, anything to add?

>> well, i'll just be brief. the one thought that comes to mind is i think it is a problem. i think the rise of the therapeutic model, the way it expressed our way threat it's come to what we can make it to mediate is a real problem. i think that what we probably don't talk enough about is the way in which kind of the human aspirations will fill the model of pursuit is really important as were raising and people and teachings are college students and teaching our kids about what it means to try to fulfill the potential the chair because what we do know is happiness is rooted in that. the therapeutic model doesn't have a lot of evidence going for it when it comes to the kind of happiness comes you get come at a fundamental objective of public policy in this country. when you look at whether it's

the other research on subjective well-being that is out there and you see at you at a basic level income, income contingent make people happy but these are the things sort of medical the quality of relationships and the sorts of things, and we have wide with dennis this desire to improve ourselves. if our educational system is not built up around that notion, that you are not we need to be right now, but this lifelong pursuit of earning success, but when put into, of becoming, something that i think has been lost at a think this therapeutic model has damaged it pretty seriously. carbon room when i was teaching one of my classes in texas, it was a public poll secours and i would do this one segment on political biases and that have students read a variety of things including jonathan hite work from the righteous mind which talks about the moral language is essential that progress and conservatives speak.

i had a student say to me i just reject that. one of his finest is that what you mean? it just makes me uncomfortable, like i don't want to deal with it. i said that this, ran experience and this is fairly serious research behind his finest. it's like it did matter is one of these great expressions, this makes them comfortable, i don't like was his hunches going to choose not to believe it. and i think that essentially where we are. >> let's talk about where we go from here. francisco you mention the need for a creedal identity. but as also point out, civic knowledge is down and even people like sender ben sasse said what we really need is a new civic catechesis as as a precursor to an kind of creedal identity. if you could develop specific catechesis, what would it be?

>> well, that's, , i mean, it obviously would require a certain knowledge of history because you can't understand institutions and unless you understand where they came from. it would require a a certain amount of three because there is very as a constitutional government is supposed to work. i think actually in the current age i would add some of the stuff that wouldn't be in a traditional civic education class because, for example, it turns out a lot of students including very sophisticated ones do not know how to judge the authenticity and the authority of things that the read on the internet. actually a civic skill that has become very important developing that a delete to distinguish between more and less credible sources of information. this was not a program i thought through at any length, but i

think those would be the basic components of it. >> rhein, one of the point you made was that you said and this is a precondition to of creedal identity would be the reinvigoration of the liberal arts tradition. why is that and what would it look like? >> i think there's a lot that we've used in the past that still would be good. if we remain committed to it. i think the core body of classic texts and really at the university level having something a little bit more like a core fund wouldn't be a a bad thing in this regard. i think a modernized approach to the liberal arts-based on some of what we learned in the social sciences as well. part of what a liberal arts education is posted is not to disembark car t-cells but cultivate skills which like to lead and only 2% in democratic life. we've learned a lot more in last 25 years about the kinds of

things that develop what might be called social skills. when i read the social skills literature, the noncognitive literature, the behaviors that the scholars are writing about a typical behavior choices say you're supposed to help through liberal arts education, the ability to form arguments, to analyze, to make judgments, to stand up in front of people and make an argument and be able to critique an argument. these sorts of things which with new tools for coping that within people which could also be used, so it's not just testing out the great books and making people cigarette and read them. there's new ecological methods and tools we have now that we can use to which would really work well. >> we will turn out to the most dynamic part of her eating conversation, which is hearing from you. so those of you i've been to a trinity forum event no before the other with three guidelines from question for an audience, simply ask that all questions be brief, all questions be civil, and all questions be in the form

of the question. we have our crackerjack in turns around the room with microphones. please wait to be recognized to have a microphone in front of you before going to attend. questions and ideas. right here in the middle. maybe you could stand up so you easier to see. thank you. [inaudible] >> yes, we can hear you. >> my name is michael smith. thanks very much for all binky. i just finished the book this week and still processing to some extent and irregulars as well with reference to our blue the bodily language to talk with these ideas. in self-inflicted ideas and how we understand that society modifies, , the ideas we have ay

ideas insecticide interest that there's something at work. i had a little bit of trouble tracing this idea identity the most from plato all the way to identity politics to progressive movement today. you referenced, you know, look, you damn wretched, take your first site. it's this closing of one ought not do it. the way i understood that in plato in the republic is it suggests there's something that the individual recognizes is intrinsically wrong with the behavior undertaken was i think you fall that threat to the present day, identity politics would suggest that which one identifies which is good for oneself is a thing which is good for oneself. my question in brief, with the question mark, is, is the psyche that appears in plato constant with the present day that our identity is that which we think

it is, or is there a further identity somewhere deeper down that is who we are independently about how we think of ourselves? >> well, you know, i think one of the characters, characteristics of the modern concept of a kennedy is that we think that that hidden in identity is authentic and is something real. we may not even know exactly what it is but we feel that it's that authentic self is a one that we morally value. seems to me what your question is asking is, how does that relate to actually weather did something morally valid or not, and i have no idea how to answer that. i think that as a psychological phenomenon you have to just understand the structure of modern identity company, this is what charles taylor explicates

perry foley, the structure modern identity directly coming-out of arbeiter like rousseau consolidates that inner self, whatever it is. for rousseau it's the kind of plenitude of creative, you know, express the feeling. it could be the inner feelings of an artist. it could be again groupers connections we have with a folk that we are connected to through rf knows. there are a lot of different forms of it, and whether that's somehow transcendently valid or not, i can how to answer that question. i suspect in most cases it's not. >> ryan, anything you want to add on plato? >> no. he did great. >> all right. we will go up here to the front. who has the microphone? right here, , that would be gre.

>> as an australian, part of western civilization from a country where we rotated several -- a short amount of time is quite clear to us what extent in uk and u.s. isn't inherently unique. we just expense and devoid because institutions might function although differently. my question would be, what is the country who hasn't quite ended up with the u.s. has complained to restart to learn how to avoid this current situation? put lightly. >> so that's actually a very interesting question, canada and australia both have higher proportions of their population born outside of the country and the united states.

the united states right now is about 50%. i think canada is like up to 22, 23%. australia is read 20 or so, and yet apart from that you have had a serious populist movement. there's no serious populist movement in canada right now. this could all change tomorrow. .. is not simply racism, xenophobia and the level of foreign-born people in the country it actually has to do with other things like for example the degree to which the company is control of its borders and the degree to which it can select the kinds of the people that legally allowed in. both canada and australia have skilled base immigration

policies and they both have very little illegal immigration. now, australia has gotten a lot of criticism for this because you stick your refugees in new beauty and places like that-- new guinea, and places like that that's not a nice way to treat refugees. on the other hand, maybe that's the explanation for why you avoided this right-wing backlash in a country that's become really really multicultural there are rapidly, so this is why wanted to get into this discussion of immigration because among other things i think that there's a common assumption that opposition to immigration is a simply the result of the majority population resenting the fact that people that don't look like them are sort of driven by basic races enough phobia, but australian and canadian cases

suggest to me that there are other factors some of which are more legitimate than racism and one has to do with the fact that whether you are societies actually control of the process. of the other has to do with the point i should've mentioned earlier which is a simulation. i think you can digitally worry about immigration-- you can legitimately worry about whether immigrants are going to be able to successfully assimilate into the national culture assuming it's a democratic, open so on and so forth. that's a reasonable worry and reason to worry about immigration and that may also be a factor that is playing into the debates in your country and elsewhere may explain why you have that difference and why you have this. >> other questions? over here?

it's coming. >> i'm thomas on a visit. i'm so glad to have been here. i have the impression that human beings tend to exaggerate, so when there is an economy and exaggerate too much there is bound to be a culture identity-- [inaudible] it is bound to come. what do you think, mr. francis? >> so, i think that's probably a general principle that i guess the question is how do you see it actually playing out in

contemporary politics. i think that the way i would illustrate that principle has to do with the whole issue of the critical practice because political correctness rises out of identity politics in certain ways. if you don't want to say things that are perceived as demeaning to particular identity groups so you have been very careful about the length would you use and so forth and i think that that in itself has driven a lot of people to support someone like donald trump who gets a lot of credit for saying what he really thinks even if it is race it, xenophobia, people, spiteful so forth. at least he's authentic and that seems to be the kind of case of one form of speech actually triggering a reaction on the other side, so i don't know whether that's a good example of what you are trying to illustrate, but i do think that that is one of the elements now

playing out in our politics can mean that's why trump get away with saying these really i think sort of disgraceful things because people say i may not agree with his particular comment about women or four ballplayers or whatnot, but at least he says what he really thinks and that's something that other politicians have not been willing to do. >> also, back over here in the back there if you could stand up so you are more visible. >> thank you for coming. my name is bishop davidson. your grounding of dignity in some sort of christian tradition coming primarily out of moral agency were moral choice, i think, is in part right, but you are surely aware of maybe this other alternative idea that it's grounded in something along what ryan studer had to say with

transcendence and then your conclusion on what's to be done in the end of the book regarding kind of this credo, this credo identity, is that any sort of concession to transcendence for us to get away from a place where our identities are oriented around our choices and come to a place where they are more unified behind something transcendental? >> you know, i think as a realistic project getting in any kind of agreements on transcendental grounding for identity will be pretty difficult. i think that one of the-- the fact of the matter is that national identity in this country is going to have to be pretty thin because it is such a diverse country. you know, you think about an oil worker in louisiana versus a

hipster waiter in san francisco in terms of all the things that a culture would hold in common, religion and even things like sports, dress, cuisine, all of these things are different for these different groups in the country, so unlike europe where you actually again they have gotten away from any understanding of transcendence, but they have much thicker culture based on much more-- much deeper historical traditions and shared experience that manifests itself in things like food and dress and speech and so forth. we don't have that in the united states and so any type of credo identity will have to be a very thin gruel. it will have to be things that will be acceptable to people that come out of really really different religious traditions or tradition of no religion at all and that means i think it has to be basically political in

nature. it has to be built around a certain-- we will have to actually shunt aside the discussion of where the granting of where those beliefs comes from because the natural rights that jefferson talks about in the declaration of independence a lot of americans would disagree with that, but it's possible to-- in fact, i had a long discussion with richard schultz the head of amnesty international about universal human rights and i just said, in europe where to human rights come from? what are they grounded in and he said well, they are basically just evolved over time and they are kind of what the culture has produced and i said okay so in china you have a culture that doesn't believe in our view of human rights so does that mean they are correct also and he said no, i mean, but you know-- he didn't have any grounding for this, i mean, he could've made

an argument that referred to natural right, but someone like him would not accept an argument like that, so i just think that unfortunately we are never going to get agreements on those kinds of first principles and therefore we have to fall back on political ideas that we can commonly accept and allow for us to live together in a kind of pragmatic way and if you can do other things, if you can add other virtues to it, you know, i didn't mention this but i think national service is a good idea. i think that the idea that you oh something to your society beyond paying taxes and obeying the law is a way of cultivating a sense of active citizenship and so if we can get to that point that would be a very good thing, but anything beyond that that gets the real first

principle i suspect will not get to. >> you spoke about transcendence. anything to add their? >> i would just say because i was speaking more in general audi to make it less sort of lofty the idea that we have basic rights, which are enshrined in law which are rights whether we like them or not or we think of them the same way of someone else's an important thing. i think we can actually recall debate and interests in these enduring and permanent things without having to have discussions about this sort of august or june of them and theological. i think john rawls wrote the theory of justice in 1971. his entire famous veil of ignorance experiment in the most famous barr the book wouldn't even be possible without an idea that there was a universal application for this notion of justice and that that book today couldn't even really be published in this sort of identity sprott environment

because you can't came to-- claim to know what is just for people so just that understanding of justice and i'm just picking that out as one example is the example of some presupposed principles that are just just a true and they are what-- we should unapologetically talk about these things and i think a renewed civic education. >> one last question. let's see, so many hands. we will go right here. >> thank you. i'm a student at howard. my question deals with the current political institution in europe because a lot of my friends and i often discuss this topic of why populism identity politics is on rise in places the socialist tradition used to be pretty strong through the 20th century, so this extends some confusion of why populism

is on the rise there. >> i think it kind of depends on the country so in a way the strongest populist movements have been in eastern europe where you really have a lot of these quasi- authoritarian political parties in hungary poland, the czech republic and so forth and part of that is that i think that eastern europe went directly from communism-- communism to democracy without this cultural liberalization of its society. it's very ironic that they have this anti- immigrant populist movements because they don't have foreigners there. the rate of immigration into these companies-- countries is almost zero so for them it's a completely theoretical issue like they are saying to themselves we don't want to become like the netherlands or france because they actually have never had this a slow

process of learning to live with diverse minority populations that don't look like you. so, i think that is what's driving at their. in other parts of europe is more similar, i think, to what's going on in the united states. if you look where marine le pen's-- very heavily in northeastern france the most the industrialized part of the country that had the industrial kind of heartland of france in the 19th century and its gone into this long-term decline and so there i think these economic factors can explain a lot of the voting patterns. >> ryan, we will give you the chance for the last word. >> i think i agree with what francis just said. [laughter] i think you have a-- depending on which country are talking about you have very serious assimilation issues which you referred to earlier in the sense

of identity, which is much less credo and much more rooted in the history of the country and so there are some places you really cannot assimilate very well and then when you increase the amount of people who didn't grow up in a country greats a particular backlash and i think that's what we see in stark numbers across the continent. >> francis, brian, thank you. [applause]. >> c-span launched book to be 20 years ago on c-span2 and a sense and we have covered thousands of authors and book festivals including over 30 events with the conservative commentator william f buckley. in 2000, he appeared at our monthly: program "in-depth". >> there was a poll published that said between 75 and 80% of people engage in television, journalism have voted democratic in the last election. when i was at yale a professor

to whom i was very attached disclosed a poll taken of 10 professors-- professors at the political time. there were 23 of them and they were questioned duly or trimming, 23 dooley-- 23 truman, doing on. one doesn't have to recite the data of this kind because it sort of uniformly known that by and large the academic media and the radio and journalists are liberal, democrat versus republican. >> you can watch this and all other book to be programs for the past 20 years at the tv.org. type the author's name and the word book in the search bar at the top of the page.