more booktv now stanford professor explains how to move past identity politics and remove to civil discourse in his book identity o the demand for dignity and the politics of resentment.

>> i have a disgruntled microphone. the im the president of the intercollegiate studies institute. in a minute you hear from the president of the trinity forum and i'm honored that we are jointly hosting this program this evening. members of the community believe in a simple axiom, and that is think, live free. think, live free.

the polarization stems in part from the lack of spiritual and character formation and leaders. there are a few opportunities to grapple with, reflect and discuss what matters most. in other words both organizations believe deeply that an informed citizenry and informed readers are well read intellectually curious and deep thinking. we build, maintain and grow a community of college related constituents, students, faculty, our alumni. we want to discuss and engage in the big ideas. what makes a society flourish and prosper? what makes a person whole? why does a society in which the rules are above the rulers make a difference?

isi focuses on higher education. last year we had over 1250 faculty advised students studens that he was over 30,000 deep educational interactions between the faculty and/or students. we had six reachable weekend conferences and liberty fund related conferences, 60 student newspapers that access thousands of students as well as make national news on the national review, the morning news and numerous others. and the summer honors conference is considered the gold standard in developing intellectual thought among college students. a de facto minor conservatism where we discussed the conservative mind, the road to serfdom, the ideas of consequences on other types.

the purpose of all of these activities is to take the intellectual leaders and allow them to develop their own perspectives around these foundational ideas and how they can be applied today. the principles that drove the success of the western world and brought the western world along with it have been like poverty. however suffered by humans and humanity they are constantly shifting. foundational ideas need sharpening and reviews and discussions like this evening was our justice t justice depart ongoing process.

dinner for the western civilization to be held in washington, d.c. on thursday october 15. early that afternoon we are hosting a forum where we will discuss the freedom that drove the success of the western world and i do hope that you will be able to come and if not i hope you will consider supporting in any way that you can. we are on thyou're on the colled university space and it is an unfriendly and an uncaring place for those who do not wholeheartedly buy into the identity politics of the current age. we have this maelstrom and support the extremely bright young leaders who have the audacity to question the campus dogma. you can help to ensure that we develop the next generation of

conservative leaders. in short, you can help save america, help save the west and help save the world. and that is not bad for a day's work. with that i would like to introduce the president of the forum and prior to joining in 2008, she served in the white we house is the special assistant to th the president and directof policy projects for the first lady laura bush and early in her career she served as the policy advisea policyadvisor to the sey leader bill frist on domestic issues serving as a liaison and outreach director to the outside groups from 2001 to 2005 the senior counselor to the chairman of the national endowment for the humanities where she helpedd determine design and launch the we the people initiative to help enhance the study and

understanding of american history. [applause] thank you for that kind introduction and welcome to all of you for the conversation. on behalf of all o of the of usa pleasure and an honor to partner with you. i appreciate all of the work that you have done as well to help make this a reality. we are also grateful for the democracy fund which invests in efforts to ensure that the political system is able to withstand challenges and to deliver on its promise to the american people and we are delightedelighted the presidents joined us tonight along with several members of the democracy from staff including margaret, laura, pulp authors, jessica harris.

thanks for joining us. i also want to give a special shout out to the senate has joined as i understand there were about 18 out of 30 of the pages in the senate here tonight and we are delighted to have you here, so welcome. as well as thank you to each of you for making it out it is never fun or easy to fight rush-hour traffic and we are delighted and honored that you're here with us tonight. we also know there are people who want to be here tonight but couldn't make it so if you have friends that are among that number, we are live streaming tonight's event you can let them know right now and we've also have the video on the website with photographs and clips on facebook. we've also been why tonight as well as at identity and dignity so you can 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

unfamiliar, we worked to provida space and a resource for the leaders to engage life's greatest questions in the context. and we do this by providing readings and publications which draw upon classic works of literature. as well as sponsoring programs like this one tonight. ultimately coming to better know the author of the answers. as we have noted in the evening conversations before, it's been said that the questions of life essentially boiled down to three things. what is a good person, what is the good life and what is the just society. with each of the questions is

profoundly influenced by the sense of identity, which we base our sense of personhood, individuality and dignity and the obligations, thpublicationsd relationship that flow from that understanding. much of history that can constraint one was burned to the village where one was likely to die if performed the same work and worship in the same way as one's appearance and positives very someone chosen by our family, an noticing people throughout your life. choice was limited but one sense oone'ssense of self is given and uncomplicated. technology, economic opportunity and the freedom to attend to the liberal democracies would extort very choices. opportunities and options for all of us such that our sense of identity is no longer fixed, but open and often fluid. the power and the influence of some of the petitions over us at

historically particularly the institutions of the moral and religious authority the institutions of civil society have in some ways waved in their authority or the influence the commitment and obligation and relationship that once brought us to each other to help us define who we are as we can. for many the disappearance of the communities, the mortal authorities into stable institutions has led not to a blissful freedom, but a profound sense of alienation. such isolation has turned on its individual level a search to be part of a group and a societal level a marked increase in populism into tribalism as the various identity groups seek recognition from influence and power. in his provocative book the speaker tonight argues tribalism

and identity politics that has arisen for the quest of dignity and respect is actually undermining the stability of the liberal democratic order that makes the human rights religious freedoms and freedom in general possible. the increasing politicization of the identities and the inevitable resentment that follows if we proceed our own identities to be dissed lend itself to him apocalyptic politics where compromise is seen as an attack. in a shared interest in presentment and nationalism. builthe word of the common ideas that encompasses on the unifying vision of what it means to be an

american. these are important questions and challenging ones. our speaker tonight doctor francis fukuyama, a political scientist, political economist and best-selling author who serves as a distinguished senior fellow at stanford university's institute for international studies as well as the center of democracy development and through the flaw. he previously taught at the school of advanced international studies at johns hopkins as well as the george mason university school of public policy and served as a researcher at the rand corporation and the deputy director of policy planning theg staff and in addition to his latest book is the author of political orde order and politil decay the origins of political order in perhaps the most famous

the end of history as the last man trust in americ america but crossroads. the advisory council for the democracy fund indian alumni of harvard university where he received his phd. after doctor francis fukuyama's talk code studies at the adi previously serving as the director for politics and government at ut austin as well as special assistant to the president for policy for president george w. bush and a policy advisor for the mayor stephen goldsmith in indianapolis. he's the author of transforming charity towards a results oriented social sector of the editor of religion and public square in the 21st century and the co-author of the society

that has been widely published in publications such as the "washington post," "the wall street journal," weekly standard and national review. frank, welcome. [applause] thank you for that generous introduction and thanks to the trinity forum for having me here. i was astonished at the crowd tonight and i'm glad that there are so many young faces so thank you all for appearing. let me get right into the book. the reason i wrote this book have to do with the elections of

2016. it is a rise of global populism in which you have democratic leaders that are legitimately elected that they pursue policies that are oftentimes economically populist but more important it's a matter of the berlin wall into the constraint that limits executive power in a well functioning democracy into places like hungary and poland and turkey youth had leaders that have gutted their judiciaries and eliminated any kind of a press that would hold

them accountable and weaken their bureaucracies have basically cleared away obstacles to their own kind of personal will. i hate to report that i think something like that is going on is thawithin the united states e while. where we do have a president that seems to not appreciate the importance of some of these institutions and has been doing a lot so the second represents a broad movement and what i've been trying to do the last couple of years is understand sources and why we are in this current situation. so, the usual explanation is an economic one where globalization is seen to have expanded the output of the goods and services in the global economy.

but it hasn't been evenly distributed and anybody that takes a basic phrase would understand although everybody gets richer and the not everybody and in particular less educated workers have been losing employment and opportunities to the rising middle classes into places like china, india, bangladesh and so forth so there've been other developed countries basically no increases in per capita income for a very asked him if period of time and that has generated a lot of backlash in the feeling that the elites that were responsible for creating this liberal world order are very much out of touch. there is a cultural and identity dimension to what has happened but often times is not

appreciated as one of the drivers of this. so, what is identity? this is a word that came into use with the psychologist in the 1950s and the term came into circulation in the 70s, 80s, 90s associated with a certain type of politics in the developed democracies like that of the united states. as i try to explain in the book this is not a recent phenomena and that it is very deeply embedded in the western tradition. i go back all the way to plato where socrates says there is a parpart of that once things andc ovulating rational part of this under another part that he labels that is sometimes translated as a spiritedness and this part demand recognition of one's inherent dignity.

because it is recognition, it is inherently political and draws us into the public square because we want other people to recognize this and so this is an old concept i think in the modern world has developed in different ways because the concept of dignity as shifted and it was only due to the warriors and an aristocratic class risked their lives but in the course of the development of the western civilization i think it played a very important role to all human beings insofar as the capacity of the choice.

if you ask why would all human beings think they are equal here in this capacity for the choice to do so as the centuries go by this idea that we have an equal dignity insofar as we are equally free to choose takes on a secular form in the writing of other german idealists and i believe it is absolutely the basis of modern human rights and our understanding of the rights as defined in the constitution. it really does have to do with the fact that we are equal agents and equally entitled to participate in the process. the final component of the modern sense of identity is that

we believe it is inside us and doesn't necessarily correspond to the social world. the social world actually may despise us may not recognize us and the modern aspect of this is that we believe that authentic is more valuable than the social rules that look down on us and between the authentic internal rules that have to change and that leads you to the kind of revolutionary understanding of the relationship between individuals and the surrounding societies. so that is the basic kind of theoretical background. there is this universal respect for the personhood and agency of the citizens of the democracy that make up the democracy.

in 2011, there was a vegetable seller in tunisia who had a vegetable cards confiscated by the police as he doused himself in gasoline and killed himself and that is what triggered the spring because throughout that region of the people that lived in these dictatorships identified with this situation. they could have said you did something illegal. they wouldn't even give the minimum amount of respect that a human being deserves and they said that's basically the condition of all of us.

they do not recognize our personhood and it would've the revolutions that have occurred in georgia and ukraine and other parts of the world against dictatorship there was a revolution of 2013 and 14 and the word dignity was important because those that were out on the streets protesting did not want to be dragged back into this system where you have to be connected to the rulers if you were going to get ahead they are going to live in a modern society like that of the european union that would recognize people on a more impersonal basis. so this is at the basis of our democracy. our democracy recognizes us by giving us rights. he gives us the rights to speech and association to the religious belief and ultimately to vote

for thgothrough the franchise at is the idea being recognized as equal individuals in a democratic society. that kind of universal recognition that is the basis of the democracy often times isn't enough for everybody. and particularly when you can take democracy for granted, you begin to seek other forms of recognition. the first is national for some. a nationalist believes he or she is a member of the cultural community that should be represented in politics. living in central and eastern europe up in central and eastern europe ought to be unified under a single german government or the serbs listing and the empire had the right to their own republic and it is that pressure

to change boundaries based on this assertion of group identity that drove the conflict that ultimately resulted in the world war ofor the first half of the h century. my own view is that a vote of the young men that go off to fight for the islamic state in al qaeda in the middle east are not driven by genuine religious piety. they are driven by an identity problem especially the european muslims who have rejected the traditional islam of their parents and grandparents. so they are living in paris or wherever. a muslim preacher comes along and says you are the member of a

community that is bein being beo disregard all around the world. you need to have agency by coming to fight back. that's why they grow it long beard, pick up that kind of conflict. these are two examples of the identity that lead to bad the political result in violence, so identity of only drives democracy but also these forms of politics. now we get to what's going on in the liberal democracies. this concept is very broad and it applies to a lot of the stuff going on outside of the united states and countries around the world. this runs roughly as follows. you saw a number of important

social movements. it begins in the civil rights movement for african-americans, feminist movement, the lg bt, the native americans, all of these groups had in fact become available in the mainstream society they were disregarded the rights were not respected. in some cases with african-americans the right for actually legally subordinated to those implicated and it was the quality. so identity politics in america begins with a very jobs and important striving for equality and especially this quality of respect. if you look at a lot of the parties in europe, there is a transformation in the way that they see themselves and their

project. they are seeking as their main political base. as the left began to shift towards this identity-based coalition on particular groups a lot of them are going to the conservative party's.

they now vote for the national front for similar sorts of reason because they are located in this identity space. this is a part that gets tricky because i want to be very careful to say the impulse leading to politics is a matter of justice. the injustice suffered by african-americans and women in all these other groups, it's about the same, they are different and the remedies are going to be different. i think that where identity politics has gone off the rails

in a couple of different areas where the group tends to emphasize this to emphasizethe s opposed to the way tha that simr and wants to join the larger community that poses a problem because not every group identity is compatible. they express homophobia and anti-semitism and subordination of one of these cultural values are not compatible with the kind of individual agencies that we believe. in the characteristic that defines the way that you think about politics, the culture of sports and things like that the

premise of the democracy is pr individuals that can make up our mind about important public policy issues and we should be limited to the conditions of our birth and quite frankly the identity politics as it evolves on the left is not stimulated to an identity politics on the right. in white nationalism and so forth it is embedded by the president and hasn't 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 the american identity which is something that i thought we had gotten past we have a little bit of this

disease that puts other countries around the world where people are not disagreeing over policy issues and higher taxes. we can talk about the discussion further but there is a clear set of things that can be done. it often times disparaged because it is associated with a kind of out of control and aggressive as no nationalism of the early 20th century. i think the fact way that the

national identity evolv evolvedo gotten to the point by the end of the civil rights era it is said to be of a certain race or ethnicity but it is to believe in the u.s. constitution and the rule of law and the principle of equality embodied in the declaration and if yo you sign p to those beliefs it doesn't matter where you came from you would be considered an american and conversely if you don't like those principles, you can be un-american ananamerican in a wt be an german or japanese or something where the identity is based on your ethnicity. so that is an important achievement and we need to emphasize that. so the identities will continue to assert themselves, but i do think that we need to focus on rebuilding a sense of identity

based on these ideas that are accessible to the diverse society that we live in today and that we need to emphasize those integrated aspects of identity and that's the nice thing about identity it doesn't have to be fixed or based on biology. that is an important task ahead of us. civic education i think is appallingly undergone in our school system if you look at the statistics on the number of high school graduating high school seniors that can name the three branches of government one of the rights as guaranteed and it's really shocking and they are not going to defend the constitutional government if you start off with that kind of a

knowledge base. there's other things we can say about immigration policy. i've got lots of opinions about that because that is th a policy issue that is the most in terms of these identity issues with a high level of immigration that has been taking place in defense but they are being changed we really don't have control that t will save that for the discussion. i'm sorry i went on longer than i was supposed to. thank you and i look forward to this. [applause] ..

. >> but if somebody says something negative you get defensive the way we are enraptured by the local sports teams you can be in a funk for an entire day if they lose in the playoffs they don't even know that you are in a funk.

and something fundamental. and so the points i want to bring up in response to those remarks that sociological within which identity politics are poisonous today. so identity politics are not all bad the way that they flow from responses and to respect the inherent dignity of specific groups of people that the way in which politics that

we are more joiners than splitters and rejoin in ways that are threatening for the ongoing project of american democracy so that and's back to tribalism to think about what to do about it in 1752 to talk about the emergence of modern times the parties of principal with the seafaring town or on a farm but you notice going on in modern politics not even the term ideology but speaking about principle in terms that the way that emotions were stirred by abstract ideals was powerful. we will talk the march on the

mall but even though we will be there the very next morning. but given that opportunity to find solidarity with people over something that is a fairly narrowly defined identity can cause passionate responses within us. 200 years after that calling on nationalism it's an imperfect world for the phenomenon for those that are labeled good and bad. and recognizing no other duty but this habit of nationalism was marked like upset - - obsession to provoke a forceful response for what

might be outrageous acts by others are not even outrageous. that has generated a crisis of attachment but this pace of the more tribes of the community but to join more abstract are all the more powerful and we could talk about that more so those trends that we see increasing family instability and communities collapsing it should be no surprise that we

have seen a rise in identity a politics but i also want to say looking down at street level where it is part of the solution to our problem and as has been documented this increased polarization 50 percent of parents have a hard time if their son or daughter marry someone from another political party by 5 percent 50 years ago many we understand and many we don't. at that local level engagement and with the american project. but a survey we just completed

so if you ask i get a strong sense of community 31 percent say they have a strong sense of american identity compared to just 16 percent and 17 percent in terms of ethnicity but because they are americans it is alive and well 25 percent of people said it gave them a strong sense of community if they do have a house of worship they have a strong sense of community came from the house of worship that survey 56 and 80 percent of americans of all stripes, it doesn't matter how you slice it two thirds think the local communities but 40 percent

think the country is. three out of ten say they have worked with the neighbors that they have to solve a problem or to make an improvement in the community. so i think this suggests the solution is close to home even from schools and programs and policies one of the issues like racism that we all have a stake to overcome. over the last 20 years from community policing and charter schools and even welfare taking responsibility not without friction but not as abstract identities it has been too long with the bedrock of civic life.

that is an important area to talk about as we think of tribal identities as far as actual identities to essentially weaken or moderate. but even if we build at the local level so something that is deeply disquieting and this is my second point that this is a pervasive crisis that we have a loss of confidence with the question of human nature what is the best society? and very simply those things that our true whether we care about that or not. i'm not just speaking about truth grounded in faith claims religious faith claims but transcendence and the things that our true and to

understand what human flourishing is identity politics is rooted in interest remember what orwell said in with a specific group. so what is real and discoverable is an important thing and has very real benefits with some evidence when you are motivated by truth claims, you have a tolerance and just this week the cato institute released a survey religious conservative voters and found that religious conservative voters are much more tolerant of racial minorities and what we see is a phenomenon of secular conservatives to form a very strong basis of the president support also to transcendent

of role of society is the openness of ideas social science works on scientific curiosity legitimately interested to explore what is true about the nature of things to be much more open to debate disagreement talking with those who disagree with them. we know religious people give more and get more frequently but having that experience to witness noble actions i don't know how you recover embracing the pursuit of truth with a modernized swarm of that approach to education and the doctor talked about the need and to recognize there has been a certain cratering how we inculcate and trade and

pass on these things that our true for the democratic way of life and what we need to be successful we need more engineers in the hard sciences and humanities and social sciences. if the school of engineering came about you could trust the building and the bridges but societies can collapse both of these under areas try to understand what is true also taking back primary schools through these fundamental acts as well so the students that were on campus now including schools so there is an opportunity for social entrepreneurs at the household level to explore the basic concept of natural rights and natural law and finally going

away therapeutic ways to use theology with that model that may not be a bad thing to do not know if we can pull all of these off but i do think we should try. think you. [applause] . >> thank you for that. we have a lot of ground to cover we want to leave time for audience questions as well. that frank you mentioned identity politics is not limited to the united states now that we have seen that in different democracies around the world. so what is it that has

prompted the shift away from politics to identity in the first place and why to the shift of liberalism when democracy is done to expand recognition of those disenfranchised groups quick. >> i do think the best economic explanation is part of it. if you look at who votes for the populist parties, not just in the united states but across europe, they have a very similar demographic. less educated, rural, not part of the globalized economy that's doing extremely well people that are voting in turkey for putin in russia. part of it i think it is just political opportunism that opportunity with that

hungarian national identity that is very problematic that he could get a very firm clinical base by doing that and by the way disenfranchised all of those outside of hungary as well so part of that is these kinds of political opportunist. and then part of the kind of world that our liberal institutions have created. they have not benefited precisely from the fact. >> you cited community and certainly that accelerating rise of identity politics as a

decline of the in person community. what do you blame that on? why has it so tanked and are there any signs of hope quick. >> that's a great question. i think we are still trying to understand why a taint because it hasn't tanked everywhere as we have seen from a number of different scholars including my own colleague at ai - - aei it has happened unevenly so those with high proportion of college-educated people dual income households, higher incomes in general, there is a lot more engagement and a lot more participation at the community level with 20 percent of america looks more like the 19 fifties america an idealistic terms.

so in some of these places the rise of populism are these areas you have seen a collapse of confidence in civic institutions or non-attendance of religious institutions i mentioned that survey this week that shows precisely the secular working-class communities are not going to church or not involved in their communities and are the most susceptible to this nationalism that has been spreading. that is a difficult challenge. hopefully it will be difficult to turn that around as a matter of policy i think we are at a point we have to help people relocate to other communities there is evidence

they take on the identity of the community where they go is trying to re- invigorate an old community that might make more sense. but it has been a long time of a secular decline of local community institutions faith-based people midway down on the economic spectrum. >> coming from silicon valley i say technology has played an important role in this as to whether if the community was dying but i think as i read the empiric a lot of it is online unfortunately that is the nature of social media.

that's perfect for identity politics if you have a crackpot conspiracy then you go online with 100 other people in the country that believe that you can completely shut out any contrary evidence and that's what facebook and twitter and all these technologies have brought us to. so these issues are how you deal with that that happened very rapidly in the last 12 months doing from heroes to villains doesn't have to be either better probably have to deal with. >> that you said things go much better local than the abstract and international of course, all technology go towards more virtual or

disembodied kind of communications so twitter came around in 2006 but it was much more virtual what do you see from that quick. >> i agree with everything that you just said we don't even fully understand what these forces will do long-term even right now on the screen time that is a direct relationship to anxiety or other disorders those will be with us for some time particularly when more and more young people experience at a younger age but i will also say that we are all on various digital platforms we all use this technology but not everybody's behavior at

the local level is collapsing the same way. so religious institutions still matter. these fundamental institutions are the places in which we learn to practice the kinds of things that our democratic way of life needs you could be tweeting nasty stuff but still go to your kids school and help out and people are doing that someone may come out with the study we come out in a month the first part is a series you'll start to see some of that. very much losing confidence in the federal government and then state government as all one - - as well.

75 percent trust local government but like they are less prone to corruption and more transparent but there is a proximity to that. if you are embedded within functioning institutions you can affect and work through and change it's worth that even if they are spending three hours of their day shouting at people on twitter so i do agree it makes identity politics so much easier and so much worse for those other aspects of the life that are driving the dissolutions. >> so the rise of the therapeutic model the birth of modern identity politics you mentioned the therapeutic model as well it is uncanny when you think about how radically different the

understanding of man like an orthodox christian that is grounded in dignity and at the same time the idea of selfishness in love and forgiveness but that therapeutic model was the idea was inherently good from societal constraints and free to self actualize. is that compatible with sustaining of liberal democracy? if so, how and if not what do we do? [laughter] . >> so the decline of the shared religious moral horizon that text of philip reese's

book with the rise of the therapeutic society that's exactly what he said. previously went to a priest or a pastor to be counseled about anxiety about your marriage or your job and that would be decline of formal religion to play that kind of a roll, psychoanalyst and psychologist and the state itself took on that therapeutic role and self-esteem was the central issue the role of a therapeutic society is to raise people's self-esteem that is the inherent contradiction of the therapeutic mission because if everybody has that is due to certain things and everybody

should have it because everybody should feel good than everybody gets an award because that's what makes them feel good that i actually have a whole chapter on stanford university that i didn't put in the book. [laughter] but there is a quotation from 1986 i believe jesse jackson came to stanford to try to get rid of the western culture requirements and there is a quotation from the leader of the black student union leader pushing for this and said something very revealing i understand my professors think

all these are important but they don't understand how that hurts the mentality of people that are not from that background. so universities have taken it to heart to place the educational mission with the therapeutic missions of their main interest is to make sure the esteem of none of the groups have reason to feel disrespected is damage that leads them to make decision about the curriculum that have no educational justification but a therapeutic justification. now generally society - - surviving this shift but yes they can and i would point to europe. europe is the most secular

society in history and much more than the united states with democratic institutions so i've been very skeptical that the arguments you have to have a certain kind of religious foundation not just europe that asia doesn't have anything like that so with that decline you can survive. but therapeutic is tricky because it really does shift the discussion away from what really is esteem or what is just a model.

>> i will just be brief but the thought that comes to mind it is a problem the way it expresses itself in the workplace the way that we communicate it is a real problem. so what we probably don't talk enough about is the way so the model of pursuit is important as we are raising young people teaching college students what it actually means to fill that potential that we have because the therapeutic model doesn't have a lot of evidence when it comes to those outcomes that

you get and i think if you look at the other research after you have a basic level of income but these don't matter with the quality relationships so then it is within us to improve and that system is not built up around that notion. >> you are not where you need to be right now. so success or fulfilling potential or becoming has been lost in this therapeutic model has damaged it seriously i remember i was teaching classes it was a public policy course and i would do a segment on political biases and i would ask a variety of things like talking about the

moral languages i had a student say to me i just reject that and said i just wanted to just makes me uncomfortable so we ran some experiments and this is fairly serious and is finding that this makes me uncomfortable and i just choose not to believe it so that is where we are. >> so where do we go from here? so you talk about that cradle identity that the people who say we need a new adhesive as a precursor so if you could

develop one what would it be? . . . .

i thought through at any great length but i thought those would be the biggest basic components. >> you said a necessary precondition to any kind of development would be the reinvigoration of the liberal arts tradition. >> there's a lot that we used in the past if we remain committed to it. the core body of classic texts of the university level having something like this wouldn't be a bad thing in this regard so there is a body of knowledge but the modernized approach to the liberal arts based on some of what we've learned in the social sciences as well cultivates certain abilities that allow you

to participate in the democratic life. they are the behaviors and ability to form arguments and analyze and make judgments to stand up in front of people can make an argument and be able to critique. there's new methods and tools that we didn't have before that would work really well. >> those of you that have been tto and he didn't before know that we have three guidelines

which is reason we ask all questions be briefed and in the form of a question. so we have our cracke our crackk interns around the room. questions from the audience right here in the middle. maybe you could stand up so you are easy to see. thanks to you all for being here. i finished up this week still processing to some extent.

recognizing that society modifies the ideas that we have and there's something cyclical at work. i had trouble tracing this idea of identity all the way to identity politics in the progressive movement today. you referenced this when one knows not to do it. there's something the individual recognizes this undertaking whereas i think if you follow that the present day identity politics would show it is good for one's health. so my question in brief, it's

this idea that appears with the present day that our identity is that which we think it is or is there a further identity put down that is who we are independently of how we think about ourselves? >> i think one of the characteristics of the modern concept of identity is that we think it is authentic and something real and we may not even know what it is but we feel that it is the one that we morally value. it seems to me what your question is asking is how does this relate and i have no idea how to answer that. i think as a psychological phenomenon you have to understand the structure of the

modern identity. this is the structure of modern identity coming out to validate a a kind of a creative expressive feeling. it could be that we are connected so there are a lot of different forms and whether that is somehow transcendently valued or not, i don't know how to answer that question. i suspect in most cases it is not. >> we will go up here to the

front with some microphone. part of the civilization from a country where we have rotated it is clear to us that it isn't inherently unique. we just experienced it in a different way because they might function differently about my question would be a country that has not quite end up where the u.s. has, where do we start to learn how to avoid this current situation? >> that is an interesting question. canada and australia both have

higher portions out of the country in the united states. the united states right now is 15%. canada is up to the 22 or 23% in australia is around 20. and apart from this, you haven't had a serious populist movement in canada right now. this could change so it is an interesting question why that is the case. my hypothesis would be something that followed. isn't racism, xenophobia and a level of foreign born people in the country. it actually has to do with other things like the degree to which the country is in control of its borders into the degree to which it can select the people that

are legally allowed in. both canada and australia have these immigration policies and they both have very little illegal immigration. they got a lot of criticism for this because you stick all of the refugees in places like that and that is not a nice way to treat refugees. on the other hand, they be that the explanation for why you avoid this kind of right-wing backlash in a country that is really multicultural so this is why i wanted to get into this discussion because among other things, there is a common assumption that it is simply the revolt of the majority population resenting the fact people that don't look like them are driven by basic reasons of

xenophobia that with the australian and canadian cases suggest to me is that they are morally legitimate and racism and one has to do with whether the fact your society is in control of the process and the other has to do with a point i should have mentioned earlier which is assimilation. i think you can legitimately worry about immigration, you can legitimately worry whether they are going to be able to assimilate assuming its democratic open and so on and so forth. that is a reasonable worry on immigration is a reason that is playing into the debate in your country and elsewhere.

other questions over here. >> in india on a visit i'm proud to be here. i have the impression that human beings tend to exaggerate. it is respectable.

how do you see it being played out into actual contemporary politics. i think the way i would illustrate the principle has to do with this issue of political correctness because political correctness rises out of identity politics in a certain way. you don't want to say things that are perceived in particular identity groups and therefore you have to be careful about the language used in this report and i think that in itself has driven people to support someone like donald trump who gets a lot of credit for saying what he thinks even if it is xenophobic and so forth at least it is authentic and that does seem to be a case of one form of speech triggering a reaction so i don't know if that is a good example

of what you tried to illustrate, but that is one of the elements that is playing out in our politics and why he can get away with saying these disgraceful things. i may not agree with this particular comment about women or football players or whatnot but he's saying what he thinks and that's something other politicians have not been willing to do. >> we will go back over here in the back if you could stand up so you are more visible. coming out of the moral agency or choice, i think it is in part right, but few are aware of those other alternative ideas that are grounded in terms of

transcendence and then your conclusion on a buddhist to be done at the end of the book in this kind of identity is that any sort of a confession to the transcendence for us to get away from a place where they are oriented around our choices and come to a place they are more unified behind something transcendental? >> as a realistic project, getting any kind of an agreement on the transcendental groundings for identity is going to be pretty difficult. the fact of the matter is national identity in this country is going to have to be pretty thin, because it is such

a diverse country. you think of the workers in louisiana and a waiter in san francisco. in terms of all the things a culture would hold in common. religion and even in like sports, cuisine, all these things are different but for these different groups in the country. unlike europe they do have much thicker cultures based on a much deeper historical traditions of the 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 come as any kind of an identity is going to have to be thin and will have to be things that will be acceptable to people that come out of different religious traditions

and that means it has to be basically political in nature and built around certain beliefs to push aside where the groundings of those beliefs come from. a lot with this agree that it is possible, and in fact i have a long discussion with the head of amnesty international about the human rights, and i said in your view where do human rights come from and what are they grounded in? he said basically they've evolved over time and they are what the culture is.

they didn't have any grounding fofor this and could have made e argument that refer to the natural right. unfortunately we are never going to get an agreement on those kind of first principles and therefore, we have to fall back on the political ideas that we can commonly accept and allow us to live together. in the natural service if it is a good idea if it is beyond paying taxes and obeying the law as a way of cultivating the sense of active citizenship if we can get to that point, that

would be a very good thing. but anything beyond that i suspect we are not going to get to. >> who was speaking more into generalities. i think that we can recall debate the interest in these kind of permanent things without having to have discussions about getting theological. i think they wrote the theory of justicjustice in 1971 and his ee experiment that was the most famous part of the book wouldn't even be possible without a sort of idea that there was a universal application in this

notion of justice. that book today couldn't even be published in the identity fraud environment because you can't claim to actually know outside of the group. so that's understandin that unde is one example of some presupposed principles that are within institutions are based upon in the renewed civic education. >> we are going to take one last question. we will go right here. >> giving in the current political institution in europe because a lot of my friends and i often discuss this topic of why identity politics is on the rise in places where it used to

be pretty strong so there is some confusion why it is on the rise there. >> they had been in eastern europe where you really do have a lot of these authoritarian political parties and leaders in hungary, poland, the czech republic and so forth. part of that is because eastern europe went directly from communism to democracy without this kind of cultural liberalization of its society. it's very ironic that they have this populist movement with the rate of immigration to these countries it is almost zero in a sober than it is a completely theoretical issue like they are saying to themselves we don't

want to become like the netherlands or france. they've never had this slow process of learning to live with figures minority populations that don't look like you and so i think that is what is driving it up there. in other parts of europe it is more similar to what is going on in the united states. if you look where the national vote comes heavily in eastern france it's the most of the industrialized part of the country that had been the kind of heartland of france in the 19th century and then had gone into this long-term decline. these economic factors can explain a lot of the voting patterns. i think i agree with what francis just sad.

depending which country you are talking about you have these issues referred to earlier in the sense of identity which is much less real and much more ripped in the history of the country so there are some places you cannot assimilate very well and then when you increase the amount a differenamount a diffeh that country creates a particular backlash and that is what we are seeing across the continent. [applause]

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