>> what is your assessment of the united states? >> thank you for having me. it's a wonderfully broad question it's hard to deny we have been through a spring dominated by a public health crisis that still very much with us also facing our social crisis that is as old as our country in some ways struggling for racial equality and human equality. but also very much of this moment forcing us to confront

challenges our society has had trouble with in recent years this is a time that makes us wonder how strong institutions will be how we rise to a challenge like this but because at the time of testing but also think of america's strength what we are good i had as a country and to address the enormous problems. >>host: how did we get here? >> that's a complicated question. our country has always tried to strike a balance between the dignity and quality of the individual on one hand and some strength of community on the other our society in the past half-century has emphasized the individual, liberty, freedom, dy that has brought some enormous advantages and

benefits but there is another side to the coin that can look like fragmentation and isolation and alienation and loneliness and we have seen all that and era marked by a crises to the financial crisis to a pandemic that forces us to look to the sources of our strength and ways to drive us to the history and politics is not always good at doing that for somebody like me trying to work at the intersection of political theory and public policy this is a time to think of fundamentals to draw strength from what has been

good about our country to address the problems that we live with. >>host: in your book that fractured republic you talk about the norm have we ever had a norman what you consider to be the norm in this country? >> that's a very important question because we live in a time that has a misperception of the norm. are living in a moment culturally dominated by the baby boomers the generation of people born between 1946 and the early sixties. still today in their sixties and seventies they are running the core institution and in charge of our politics may be president trump was born 74 years ago this month june 46 president george w. bush born july 46 bill clinton born august 46. barack obama 61. they are all boomers and the life experience that they have had is the unusual version of america that came out of the second world war very unified

having achieved something great with enormous confidence in institutions, government and working together to solve problems and over the course of the 50 or 60 years we have lived through a fragmentation and diversification that has been good on the margin of society people that were alienated but that also met we lost that solidarity defining postwar american a lot of politics is defined by a sense of loss that the era of the

childhood was the norm and we have fallen from that but that was not the norm it if you look down at america any point in the 19th century would find a divided society with very little confidence dealing with some cultural forces like what we see now with mass immigration urbanization and industrialization. our country has a lot of resources to draw on with a moment like this it's important not to misperceive the norm. fifties and early sixties america that we shouldn't take that to be the norm in some ways we are stuck in that place to regurgitate. >> should that be the ideal? >> no. i don't think so it isn't about one particular moment in history. ideals should be core principles and how we treat each other the ideals are written in the declaration of independence the core fundamental beliefs we are all created equal, the government begins on the premise come as a result we have freedom as

individuals but as strong and united society. those core principles with those ideals laid out as forms the government institutional design can provide us through different kinds of challenges. those ideals are what we should look to in a moment like this but our politics cannot be organized around returning to a golden age which first of all is not as golden as people think it was in for many americans it was far from that. and history doesn't go backwards the question now should be how do we become strong for the future so that means reaching to the principles to see how we can apply enduring ideals to changing circumstances as we should be striving to do

understanding the country as it is to be home in 21st century america and how we can be our best selves at this time not return to a bygone golden age but to engage in nostalgia to get in the way of constructive politics. >> the fractured republic that came out 2016, "life in america is always getting better and worse at the same time liberals and conservatives frequently insist that only the path of their dreams it is easy to see but also our country was once on that very path has been thrown off course by the foolishness and the wickedness of those on the other side of the aisle the broader public meanwhile is a political debate with evidence of real engagement with contemporary problems and few attractive solutions. >> that is a description of my frustration of the dynamics of contemporary politics you see

that both parties there is a way the republican party urines for the social arrangement and the democrats year and for the economic arrangements but the fact is america changed for good reasons we went to liberalization to open up opportunities for those on the margins and also that created choices and dynamism in ways we have benefited from enormously. also common cost and how we address that not just how we go back to the social order. but the question is how do we apply these and during and deals to a situation we spent too much time worried about whose fault it is we fell from a height rather than preparing

for the future politics today has remarkable little to say about the future we don't talk much when america will need and 2040 that sounds far away but in 20 years is as close to us as the year 2000 that's exactly what we should be thinking about. there is a need to get ourselves out of the nostalgia for midcentury america speaking as conservatives and in general what we want for the future and what we need to build to get their. >>host: yuval levin what does a conservative mean to you? >> i am a conservative. a lot of my work is about that question what that means are the left right divide in american politics and what that is about it begins at the basic premise of anthropology. my conservativism starts human

beings are born less-than-perfect fallen or broken or twisted we need to be formed before we can be free and that is done by the core institutions of society by community and education and by politics and culture so those that are capable hot to be valued and treasured and conserved their proven themselves over time to be capable to provide generations of people with what we need to be a free society. because i begin from the premise that is difficult to do an affirmation is difficult, want to conserve the institutions. people who describe themselves as progressives at their best begin from a different premise that we are born free but many people are not for your living up to their potential because they are oppressed at

impressed on them the status quo there is truth to both of these but what you choose to emphasize runs very deep in your character in your cents free society does need them both but ultimately a conservative view offers what society needs the most along with justice so i am a conservative. >>host: in your most recent book time to build our souls and institutions shape each other in an ongoing way when they are flourishing to make us more decent responsible that when they are flagging and integrated they fail to form us or to be cynical and self-indulgent and reckless reinforcing devices that undermine a free society. >> the book is really about the nature of the social crisis we are living through. the previous book tries to

think in broad terms of social dynamics in the history that led us to the polarization and the newer book, a time to build things about the institutional underpinnings of the social crisis we are living through how we connect with each other, how we understand ourselves to be parts of a larger whole of isolation that only political polarization but in the private lives of many people a desperation that leads people to opioids and the enormous increase the suicide rate and i argue that is the weakening of our institution with a sense the purpose is not to form or mold them but use as a platform to stand on and be seen to build the following or build their own brand or

elevate themselves. there has been id information from politics to perfection to the academy where people think of the institutions as platforms for themselves rather than the mold for our character and behavior and what it means to be part of an institution to be shaped by the institution is very important to the recovery and we see that and politics that people run for congress to get a bigger social media following and to get a better timeslot on cable news rather than thinking of how to work with institutions to change our country for the better. >>host: you write in a time to build we have seen a powerful addition of dereliction and dysfunction which takes us deeper to the core of congress institutional confusion, simply but many

members have come to understand fundamentally as players in a larger cultural ecosystem at the point of which is not legislating or governing but a performance outrage for partisan audience. you mentioned matt gates the republican of florida and aoc has two people who represent this. >> yes. i use them as examples but the problem is much more widespread. we come to a place we think of political institutions as platforms for cultural performances. people run for congress to get a blue checkmark next to their name on twitter more than enact legislation.

they are trying to do good and improve society but they see the role politics can play is fundamentally a platform role to put themselves in a place where they can channel the outrage of the voters who got them ther there, they can perform and stand as outsiders and comment about congress rather than those in congress. that has been happening in the presidency as well and president trump exemplifies that more than any other president that it is a stage to perform. the president sees himself as an outsider he spends a lot of time talking about the government complaining on twitter like the department of justice rather than understanding himself as the ultimate insider with the responsibility that is defined by the role that he plays. so ultimately be argue to recover a functional institutionalism we have to ask ourselves the question we don't ask anymore, given my role how should i behave?

as a member of president how shed i behave or as a pastor or congregant how should i behave that's the way to let the institutional roles form and shape the way be behave in society to drive us to a greater responsibility and obligation rather than think of ourselves as standing alone on a platform and acting out that cultural rage social media taking the core institutions and we need to push back. >>host: technology has played a role? >> yes. ultimately it serves the role we wanted to. the forces run deeper than in technology not just at the whim a social media but we use them in these ways because that's what were looking for that liberalization and diversification in the middle of the 20th century many of

the great social forces were telling people be more like everyone else and that's all very constricting in our time there is a lot of good to that but it can also tear society apart and where we can lean too hard so with solidarity and how we think of society. >>host: yuval levin i want to bring your book the great debate into the conversation and start with reading this quote, the political left and right seem genuinely distinct points of view to bring to the surface that divide them how do we become country of the political left and right? >> that is the subject of the book it is intellectual

history and began as my dissertation at the university of chicago and over a period of years tries to look at the origins of the left right divide and it does that through the lands of the late 1h century debate between edmund burke and thomas paine edmund burke the great politician thought to be one of the fathers of modern conservativism, thomas paine a revolutionary war figure became an important figure to make the case for the french revolution and engaged for each other with the nation of social change and that encapsulated with the core distinction between the left and right and begins from a

beginning anthropology and then to thrive and flourish and be free so most of these are generally speaking liberal views they both believe in democracy and individual liberty and they differ fundamentally what the free society really is of how to advance the good is still the right way to understand the left right debate in politics the left and the right are not factions they are parties in the sense they are divided by a difference of opinion what would be good for everyone so that is a constructive

politics it is necessary to formulate the debates of the countries and it still serves us this way the difference between left and right that are still relevant and what politics is about. >>host: what is your background to come to this point of view? >> and immigrant to the united states born in israel my family came to the us when i was eight years old. i grew up here mostly new jersey went to college in washington dc worked on capitol hill, graduate school university of chicago and then came back to work in the bush administration dhs and then the bush white house as a policy staffer and then went

into the think tank world where i have been at the intersection of political theory and philosophy in my work in public policy of political practice say started in 2009 journal of quarterly affairs and i try to connect policy and practice to shed light on the other and has how i came to my conservative views for me that is a mystery has to do with influences around me growing up. my father is a conservative. but this reaches to a mysterious level we never fully understand and how we understand those fundamental views but i am impressed by institutions that enable people to thrive so i'm very

impressed by the americans social order and constitutional system and we can draw a lot out of history from what we confronted so i am a conservative. >> what are the nonnegotiable's? >> those are stated in the declaration of independence we believe in human equality and dignity that's why people are on the street now because we all saw on video a gross violation and abuse of a person to be treated as an equal and wasn't that is a nonnegotiable fact whatever the political inclination we all believe we are created equal and endowed with basic rights the government exist to protect those rights and from there on we have a lot of debate what should institutions look like and what is the most effective but the basic ideals written in the charter of society are the nonnegotiable's of american

politics. i think they are true. >>host: good afternoon and welcome to book tv on c-span2 the are were monthly in depth program we have missed you the last couple months we are glad to be alive again with author and scholar yuval levin author of five books beginning with tyranny of reason coming out 2001, imagining the future, 2008. the great debate 2013. the fractured republic 2017. now a time to build 2020. we want you to participate in our conversation this afternoon beginning with the phone number

you have all social media sites. >>host: back to the great debat debate, what is a lasting effect of the french revolution in france in this country? >> it was really one of the core ethical moments and the effects have been enormous.

it unleashed the modern wave a revolution for good and bad and created the frame the shape of modern radicalism shaping 19th century politics and is still with us today in many ways. it is important to see it is not where modern liberalism is born the liberal society broadly understood not in the left that our way of life really began in the united kingdom well before the french revolution also the american happened revolution before france and i think of that is the great turning point in human history of a truly free society made possible with the achievement of the dreams of liberalism. but after the french revolution the politics of our

society presided over a core question of social change do we change by building on the past or breaking with it? that basic question in a lot of ways is the distinction between left and right became the defining organizing question not only france but britain and the united states and every free society today so you find polity on - - policies that are divided if it is the crown or the parliament should have power that was changing by the 18th century but with the french revolution the question that divided left and right was essentially the french revolution of the purpose of politics is an ongoing constitutional revolutionary process ultimately to liberate us from the burdens of the past if the purpose is gradual

change that keeps us connected to western civilization enabling us to make the most of our inheritance so that conservative you the french revolution had enormous amount of the debates that we have and in many ways. >> and it fits with your description of edmund burke gradual performer to uproot. >>. >> he was a wig and auditory he came from and that fundamental disposition was gradual reform it is almost offered in opposition to revolution that we need to change gradually so we don't lose we have built up of what works and to change what doesn't work.

pain had much less patience and said the status quo is unjust we need to overturn and start over we know the principles let's throw out what we have got coming from an age of oppression and start over in the right way much more radical revolutionary those are contained within the american revolution both a conservative and a radical revolution in the declaration of independence that begins by stating very radical principles but then goes on to state prudence demands you just don't overthrow government for shallow reasons and list the reasons why americans and those are very conservative. they have been denied their rights as englishmen and requires. - - recourse the american

revolution was a conservative and progressive revolution so with the entire framework of the politics to become ours new jersey go ahead. >>caller: how are you. how does he explain the disconnect and the congress and how they go along with the amoral and self-serving self absorbed dictator like the president? things are not adding up just

wondering what he would say about that. >> thank you for the question i am a conservative critical of donald trump. i don't think he's fit for the presidency. he was not my choice i don't think he's done well by our country but that said, the fact that our politics is as polarized as it is as part of the reason why so many republicans have stuck by trump even that they themselves disprove of or should i don't think trump is a conservative i don't think he has the worldview that we shared want to see them politics but we reached a point where each party defines the other as the country's biggest problem rather than thinking of the real challenges we have we think one another as the core problem to be dealt with. that intense partisanship means ultimately you prefer your own party over everything else that republicans have found ways to rationalize and

justify those that are unwilling to criticize i wouldn't criticize everything he's appointed good judges coming to regulatory reform he's done well that generally speaking and especially with character the president should be people of character i am enormously critical of president trenton more ought to be. >>host: your former boss it was reported may be supporting joe biden. >> i think that's unclear he hasn't said who he is supporting exactly what everything cap george bush i generally like the policies he pursued is a man of character i could see him in action when i worked at the white house and what struck me most is he always lived with the weight of responsibility of the presidency on his shoulders.

he knew his decisions mattered, a lot depended and they had to be taken seriously and he owed it to the country to approach his job with the gravity required and that is clearly lacking in this president. no way around that. >>host: politics is a negotiation of the principal differences in response to particular needs and events party politics should not be looked down upon as unseemly as thomas burke argues and on the contrary the means by which well-intentioned politicians join together as honorable compatriots. >> burke is very interesting he's one of the few people makes a positive case for party. there's always been a pragmatic case they are necessary to organize politics but very few people have made a philosophical case for the need for parties in a free

society and thomas jefferson is another they would've found themselves in different parties but burke stopped ultimately what they enabled us to do was from a broad coalition we think of parties now as fundamentally divisive to break us down into factions that parties broadly understood have a strong incentive to have a broad not a narrow coalition in the democratic party you have to run candidates in alabama and over again you have to have a broad sense to find ways to appeal to people in broad terms and different circumstances and situations it forces compromise and cooperation ultimately the institutions we required forced us to accommodate each other like congress is the essential core institution because it compels accommodation.

there will always be fundamental differences. people disagree. that's never going away. how do we handle that but in a liberal society it is compromise so you want institutions that force you and require you to compromise to achieve anything and burke is right. >>host: maryland go ahead. >> my question of what has been said in the first call by mr. yuval levin the first caller said dictator if all the people who testified were righ right, absolutely right , they do not have the right to say to the president

because i'm right. that is stupidity the guy who organize the march on washington, the main guy not the philosophical guy mlk i am not into character and martin that there is the best lawyer in the united states drunk or

sober trump will violate the constitution if he violated anything that is fine with me. >>host: we will leave it there. little bit about political character. >> it is important to say he is not a dictator he is elected president of the united states. trump is not a dictator we disagree and he doesn't how that character it takes to be a president but he is our president. he was elected he has not violated the constitution at least not in any obvious way that i can see there are debates about things he has done and the courts so for all of the objections i do have the argument sometimes that you hear he is the authoritarian are dictator are not well-founded. if anything he is an unusually weak president has not use the powers of the presidency and

the way he might have like a public health crisis that we have lived through this year and another circumstances. there are some objections but i don't think he is a dictator by any means that word should not just be thrown around. >>caller: go ahead patrick. >> i have never read any of your books but now and then and forever but my question was in reference to inequality that seems to be a word the protesters are using maybe one side in the past years since trump has been elected has the great society done and injustice in the late sixties

and to address this subject matter once before? and can we water down the expectations that shortchanged the generations in order to compete? >>host: what is the last couple of weeks have been for you? >>caller: i mean i will privilege community the western periphery the outskirts of minneapolis i'm originally from wisconsin i moved here 35 years ago i went to community college i barely got to high school minnesota gave me a chance and i flourished graduated ten years later and have contributed to

the community and have grown with that this is been a real disappointing time to see this all in front of me i am in my mid- fifties. i got off to a late start, but i have a spring in my step i really care about the future with a sense of history from the past and i volunteer and i work with addiction communities specifically that has suffered from the covid crisis but this is been a very challenging time i was fearful this would not end. >>host: a recent headline is how minneapolis one of america's most liberal cities struggles with racism.

>>caller: is ed product of these policies that have not worked? i'm not saying i heavy hand is better but other options we have not explored and what mr. yuval levin has brought up in reference to the possible selfishness of groupthink and individual thought process that it's about me now in my market and collectively our community and our state. >>host: let's bring yuval levin into this thank you for spending a few minutes with us on the tv. >> it's people like you to make this country great and ultimately that kind of engagement and local community that can strengthen our society.

first of all on the question of the great society on the one hand it was a set of large public programs intended to have a new social safety net in our society and to think how they are structured like medicare and medicaid and in that sense we have been left with a tremendous bill to pay even as these have made it is a great social vision and connected in our minds and reality and the civil rights bill pc to the great society and 64 and 65 and those have been largely successful moving through a moment how much

there is to do on the civil rights front and a basic human equality in the struggle against racism we still see real progress has been made it is not the same scale and character that we saw in prior decades and a lot of framework remains to be done but when that murderous police officer that killed george floyd was violating the law and will be tried for murder there was a time the law would have been behind that copy in society simply would not have value the lives so progress has been made i wouldn't say that's a failure but ultimately that is

not the same thing as social progress it has to be made a new this is why i aim a conservative and the imperfection we need to be formed and educated to be moral people and require engagement with those moral ideals and to respect each other with a core dignity and it will not end. with the social institutions and structures and to treat people equally under the law. what you but before the rising generation the court were ideals of american society

that will never end and there's no way around it. the fundamental work. >> what is your take on minneapolis a very progressive city that prides itself on minnesota nice and high morals is not the hot first high profile incident in that city. it's not a solution and in some ways there is a way other structural institutional factors make it very difficult for the police department like minneapolis to enforce its own rules to make sure officers treat the public with respect and dignity so when these problems arise they can be

more difficult to deal with. and to be ready to deal with everywhere and then a simple sense these things happen we should be glad they happen less than these two and that will always happen and to make sure we are engage with one another as citizens and institutions are formed around the core commitment regardless of race or anything and with the liberal jurisdictions politics doesn't get us out of it. >>host: your most recent book a time to build. seattle go ahead you are on with author yuval levin. >>caller: hello.

i would like to know how i as a non- trump supporter but today is an older person i appreciate burke a lot more but how do i talk to people who are trump supporters to seem to be resistant to compromise and opposed to common cause unless you are on that team the partisanship has gotten way out of hand. >> i very much agree with you about this and in both parties the unwillingness to compromise is now the core problem of our political life not the fact there is a left or right or factions within left or right to like or not like but the fact they cannot see each other as conversation partners and as partners in compromise so what

polarization is meant in the politics of the 21st century is the loss of the sense that ultimately to compromise the only way politics would function. >> one of those is we haven't had a sturdy majority and minority party and political scientist often use the terms the sun party and the moon party so there is a strong party it could be the democrats or the republicans and that rains for a time in a minority party but functions as a minority party and with that political realignment we have now listens the middle of the 19 nineties where power shifts back and forth and we

do not have a party of the minority party of the country and one of the things that means it means i can leave when everything but every new president we have had comes into office and tell both houses of congress and each party is right to imagine and for the next election it can push things in its own direction. those majorities are never very big you don't get very much done so the major legislation we have seen in a century tends to be quite partisan and not to endure to have a lot of trouble to be sustained as we see change.

and civility means acknowledging the people that you disagree with will be there tomorrow. >> so ultimately political progress and sometimes that means at the local level to have real compromise happening we have a conservative republican governor with the democratic legislature at a practical level there's no other way that kind of recognition is more on the surface and that means that we should be channeling more power the problems can still

get results in a constructive way to the national politics. >>host. >> what can an individual do to make politics better? is very much the question i tried to take up in the latest book in a time to build in those institutions we are each a part of community institutions civic or religious and national politics but we have to ask ourselves how we can work

together to advance the common goal so how can i do better? in the book does layout larger reforms with the party system some necessary forms and then to talk about the media and suicide. that they are and we are part of the problem the first of all we have to see that all of us are subject to the tendency is optional to think of them as platforms for ourselves and to take her cells beyond that is the beginning of change but it is the essential

prerequisite. >>host: yuval levin one of the other big institutions that you tackle and a time to build is the educational system higher and lower and post on the facebook page the educational institutions are failing to educate our children for a prosperous future and worse dividing the country as progresses have shaped curricula. teaching our children we are country dominated by injustice these include the kids out on the street now. >> on the one hand and i k-12 primary secondary is enormously decentralized where control over curriculum is generally held at the local level and different places can do very different things. i think that's okay.

that's the way you make the most of diversity but there's some places i don't like much but maybe other people don't that the point how to teach history name concerned that version that denies recourse is being pushed on a lot of children and college students any history of american life will take very seriously and the history of society and the history of struggle against racial oppression which is also as old as our society women trying to do better as a country it is simply a failure to deny access of frederick

douglass or lincoln or tubman are mlk. and to teach the gerd with the bad with that rising generation to make the country better. >> those that have been the ideals of our society of course we haven't always looked up to them that the people devoted their lives and then to be empowered by but that project would say there's only the downside in the dark side. >>host: and yuval levin from your book a time to build campus culture harvard and yale they were created as conservatories for puritan orthodoxy to train men of

religion to repent of the sins and seek redemption that moral aim is driving purpose now of their religious roots like classroom instruction the demand of the larger society of mass repentance for a great gcollective sin. that tries to make some sense of what is going on on americanan college campuses the last two years and it does that to offer perspective with the next character of higher education we demand a lot of things of our universities and expect them to give the skills they need for the american economy and give access to the

deepest truth and civilization we also expect them to be engaged to improve society to be active to change things always part of american education that campus activism began and the sixties is untrue as i suggest was actually the original purpose of american university harvard and yale were created to advance moral change in american society the nature of the moral change now advanced is different that the character the sense of higher education involves that social activism is not new there's always been a veryre tense balance between the aim of giving students skills for economic life and access to a higher truth and changing society and then much to lean

too heavily to the campus activism that's really not about learning. and then you see this liberalism that is troubling.. and o then building up of the knowledge. c and not to pretend is completely devoid of political activism nothing to do with larger society. that's not what we should want or expect and with that academic ideal everything it does with a form of teaching and learning that is where they have been disconnected for purposes and the cultural of liberaln, education that sees teaching f and learning has the enormous role to play the culture of campuses and the

generation students that enormous advantage. >>host: other contemporary headline ivanka trump rips cancelel culture as she is dropped at commencement speaker after students protest. >> cancel culture is what i'm talking about students shouldn't just hear that they are there professors don't agree with. campus is no place for opinions other than the accepted mainstream consensus view and a lot of times as a form of rebellion against the establishment and then college students here with a variety of views everybody and

everybody for those that have those in society that those to keep out conservative voices and then the mainstream of professors and students and the enormous problem and the trail . . . .

nobody in the state of oregon represents me. they represent themselves. the. the response to changing circumstances we have to ask how do west resolve these. what we've got is a system for legitimizing that kind of decision-making. becoming as close as we can to allow people to be heard and for allowing the views of the majority to be advanced in ways that don't trample on the rights of majority. it doesn't work perfectly but there are problems and that is

the purpose and very often but the system achieves. it ishe unsatisfying and one of the things to me i don't expect it to be satisfying. i think that there are going to be contradictions and problems that don't go away but we cannot fully resolve. we can mitigate and try to address them, that this world is not a perfect world and how to live with its imperfections, how to address problems that confront us with in ways that are legitimate in ways that respect each other is the challenge of the core of the design of the system of government and i think that the parties are an important part of solving the problem in finding ways to represent different views and to protect minority voices. our institutions of government, and local areral a part of that and the fact we are dissatisfied at the end of

it is life, but we are much less dissatisfied and under the system that didn't takees us as seriously as this one and the effort to represent us. there are ways we can do better and i am open to those but there are a lot of ways we could do worse and we should be grateful for achieving what it's allowedd us to achieve in the country. >> host: i'll b aubrey in richm, virginia. >> caller: ima victorious long-term c-span consumer. i've spent a lot of time watching hearings. a little while ago, you said something about the scale and character of discrimination changing, but that isn't true. the scale and estranged, i agree on that, but the tactic has not. he's made some reference to

george floyd's murder and the reaction to it. what you don't understand is the reaction to george floyd murder isn't just the video, because we have been watching videos of rodney king coming forth. what we saw thisrd time was quie the premises at its worst. you had a white police officer murder a disabled walkman casually while looking into the camera. think about that and why you see what you see on the screen today. we have institutional discrimination every day and the worst part of it, the murders

aside, i'm talking about in the workplace people don't see every day and part of the problem i want to talk up this false equivalency you see in the current republican party and with democrats. we are looking at the evolution that came to a head during the obama administration. >> host: tell us what it is and then we will hang up and let him respond. >> caller: president obama's first inauguration where the

plan was put together for democrats, republicans not to couple for it at all and in that regard, that led to the tea party and now we have donald trump republicans who are the ultimate manifestation. >> host: we are going to leave it there. your response? >> guest: i agree with the first part of what he said and what they saw was precise and white supremacy and other than the unacceptable both in character and in scope. i agree with that. characterizing it as one party strikes me as a symptom of polarization more than a

diagnosis. i think it is unquestionable both parties have moved over the last two decades or three decades and have been driven by various kinds of changes in the campaign finance reform and cultural changes by social media and other things. therthere's simply less co-optan among the party lines and there ssis no doubt they were a part f that. we can point to different people who played different roles in the process but the process has been a huge problem with politics in the country and it is oriented to cooperation that is oriented to compromise not under a dream we are all going to agree that by accepting the reality therefore we have to make bargains and deals and that is what politics is about, giving each party some of what it once in return for giving the

party others afflicted ones is the way thatth politics works. there are some issues that are nonnegotiable and the issues of basic respect for the human person regardless of race is non- negotiable and not an issue that we can ultimately allow to be put to the side so politics can take up other things. it's a question of human rights and dignity and essential to who whom we must be as the people in america so it needs to be front and center. >> host: what about the comment that there is systemic institutionalized racism? >> guest: there is. we have to find, we have to see the racism as both a function of the attitude of individuals and the arrangements and organizations that we establish the district to the politics.

i do think that we have made real progressur in fighting some of that institutional racism, that there is less of it than there was. but that doesn't mean we can stop the effort. it doesn't mean that the work can be put down. one of the things we see in videos like the one we saw, and these were happening when there were not felons to take videos. this isn't something that just started to the contrary. this is a deep problem as we have taken a fundamental challenge in american life. and i think there is no question that is one of the ways in which the country has a lot of work before it as reaching the ideas that we aspire to. we do a display with those ideas and we do want to reach that. it's a very widely shared aspirational society but the aspiration alone is not enough.

>> host: our system requires compromise. how did we ever get to the point where compromise is unacceptable? this seems to be more common on the right. >> guest: we've bought into that in part to a culturalst and political evolution in which politics especially at the national level has been talk around a set of almost symbolic issues if the problem to be solved as the other party than yothenyou really cannot compromd ome only solution is to get rid of the other party. but you are not going to get rid of the other party in the country has actual practical problems that stand in the way whether it is of a quality and standing in the way of prosperity and opportunity is available to the rising generations or standing in the life we want together. those problems are to be taken out in the public policy and can

only be achieved in the process of accommodation and i think our political system has been transformed in a way that understates and undermines the potential to compromise and accommodation. it has at the national level. to be saved as has been caused by one party is innocent of the problem and not a diagnosis. it's been charged by both. torched by both. there's an enormous amount of contempt for the right on the left and that is deeply destructive. there is an enormous amount on the right and that leads to the same problems to be addressed in the same way. the people you disagree with are still going tois be here tomorrw and you need to think about politics as a way to reach accommodations to lift together

as neighbors and fellow citizens and not as enemies. >> host: you are watching book tv on c-span2, television for serious readers. this is our monthly in-depth program. this month is the author and scholar. we are concentrating on the three most recenttas books are e great debate edmund burke, thomas paine and birth of right and left in 2013, the fractured republic renewing america's social contract in the age of individualism, 2017, and a time to build its most recent from family and community to congress and the campus calvary committing to the institution can revive the american dream. c-charlie is acharlie is in ross new york and you're on the air. air. >> hello,ly everybody. i'd like to make two points. i agree with what he was saying when it comes to morals and

questioning the human heart. we don't tell you character in our society anymore. i don't know if we ever did. i usually tell young people the most important thing in life is just to be a good decent person that is the first thing we should be. also we have a problem in our society that isn't mentioned in the fact we have a concentration of wealth and communication. you have the corporate media. we need good civil debates and i do not hear that. i would love to hear the debate between two americans with opposing views. there is not only to views, there are many and we need to get them out and debate and talk

with one another and that isn't happening and i think the concentration of wealth with the concentration of the media has something to do with that. >> host: thank you very much. my guess is that most of us think that that would be a good idea to hear the two points of view and have a reasonable argument etc.. >> guest: i certainly think that's right. there's all kinds of reasons that have to do with the incentive in the culture that doesn't happen very much and why when we do have these things they tend to be a little bit more like people reading talking points and engaging in that with 12 people lined up on the cable news panel saying a few words. i think some of that has to do with an assessment of the spam that is unfair to the public as c-span knows there are people willing to listen following what

is happening to the good happening and engage with it in a deep way. but i also think that there are some deeper economic and cultural incentives. there was a much more concentrated media architecture where you have three television networks, two or three national newspapers that had enormous cultural power to shape this consensus around themselves and people were such were concentrated than they are now. we've had a fragmentation of the media because of the internet and other economic pressures where there are many many voices out there now and it is often difficult to trust and who to believe and whether they are actually following any kind of standards we can take seriously but there's a greater diversity of the forces.

they have to be understood and in them somehow and ultimately breaking up the concentration is not simply good in itself but has to be part of the society where there are dangerous concentrations where there arere monopolies that you have to be broken up, but i think the situation at the media is much hemore complex than that and we are dealing simultaneously with a fragmentation of the voices and the consolidation of ownership. >> host: here is a tech stuff. maxwell rubin of pacific palisades california. i enjoyed reading your book the

great debate and political philosophy. it openedla the door on human nature, institutional roles, hereditary politics and when to make reforms. my questionn for you is how we can eliminate the unhealthy populism in the republic on both the left and right and get the general publicli to trust career politicians who i believe have the experience and wisdom. >> guest: thank you very much for that. it's always nice to hear that book being assigned in college classes and gratifying to hear from someone who benefited from that or got something out of it. i think the question of populism which some ways has always been a core question to the americani political life of course is very much in life and our political life today is important to think about the distribution. i think that we don't really face a choice between elitism

and populism between the view that people have all the answers and should be in powe imported y into the view only some believe have the answers and should have the power. the answer that is embodied in the constitutional system, the view that is in the constitution is no one have all the answers and politics us to a range of salt around the reality no one has all the answers which means no one should haves all the powers of the system gets people somehow were quite a lot of quirks and to elect public officials, to exercise power over them through the mechanism of electoral leverage but it also gives certain kinds of institutions significant power. judges are at a distance fromm the public, the president isn't as directly answerable as members of congress for example.

and that being the case, the system has to be different powers with each other so that for the change to happen, but the broad agreement that indoors over a long pure code so that it sustained long enough to create a majority in congress, a president that will support it in thand the general public sent that will enableho it to be accepted into the themes change happens slowly and can be frustrating. there's also ththere is also thr populism and politics. it'sy important the system is answered and taken seriously but they also have to respect experience that there is such a thing as expertise in public policy so for example i am not a supporter of some ideas like term limits in congress. i don't think people that create

problems in congress are those with the most experience. and it seems to me somebody is going to have to have the power in a kind of system and it might as well be those that are answerable up for election then permanent bureaucracy or staff structure so it's a matter of finding balance in our system is good about on the whole. >> host: portland, oregon. >> caller: thank you, c-span for taking my call. before i get to my question i would like to quote kareem abdul-jabbar racism is everywhere in the world and until you shine a light on it, and you don'te see it so america should take this issue to redeem its leadership and deal with it and the rest of the world will follow. now my question, how do we make the supreme court and the independent body again. smy suggestion is to take away

the appointment from the president and also for the body to renounce their political dedication in writing they will renounce their political affiliation and the decision-making. there itak is. >> guest: i think when it comes to the courts, they faced the same challenge. we need balance between accountability and independence. so, to argue for the fully independent supreme court makes sense if we think they will always make better decisions than the political system that is answerable to the public. public. there'there is also the huge che how it could cease fully independent. who are these people with this problem without accountability and who will decide who is on the court. i think our system reaches a compromise that makes sense, which is that judges have a lifetime opinion if they are not answerable to the elections or to the elected officials once

they are appointed, but they are appointed by elect officials said that there is a connection between them and our democratic system, but there is also those that are independent. i've been open to the idea that lifetime tenure on the court is something that can be resolved and others proposals out there for the terms so that you don't have the justices that are appointed when they are 50 and to serve for 40 years on the court and you sort of step with whatever you get. and if they would go to the appellate court and still have lifetime tenure on the supreme court, they would only serve a period with eight years. so they would get two or three appointments.

the lucky you just mentioned is about the contempt the democrats have for the republicans to.

they believe they were robbed of a second as he did because hillary clinton your characterizations of president trumps character, how do you put that up against beginning in 2016 widtthe2016 width of the ef hillary clinton and the e-mail situation that then directly

into the crossfire hurricane at the end of july and continued with as we know now the illegal fisais warrant with one original and three renewals and then it morphed into the crossfire into the general. >> host: there is a lot there was a pattern. what is your take? >> guest: like a good prosecutor, first of all i think that the story begins earlier and you can see the polarization of politics didn't just begin but it worsened in this country for some of the reasons mentioned at the time it was

unprecedented but it's not a legalistic question about all of these particular type of scandals. that's the question of how a person thinks about the responsibility he has and he rises to the presidency, how he thinks about people and i think that there is a kind of narcissism core of belief thinking about the world that is fundamentally a character problem and some of the attitude that he has just isn't something that we should see so i don't think that it's ultimately about the particular scandals and how they get worked out that it's about the character.

you can never really get away from character. >> host: when we have a guest on we ask him or her to list some of their favorite books. here were your choices. alexis took full democracy in america, adam smith of the theory of sentiment, george wo statecraft and soul craft and crisis of the house divided. tell us about the last two books. >> host: >> guest: this is a list you might expect from a conservative but maybe the less they leave the last two are less familiar. thee crisis divided is a very a-depth study of the lincoln douglas debates. a political theorist and philosopher and teacher for many

years and could before now. this is a book he wrote in 1959 that is a kind of close reading of the lincoln douglas debates that tries to put them in an extraordinary way in the philosophical concept of the classical political thought and to articulate the way of thinking aboutcl the morality ad the issues at stake. it's still in print and well worth the while. this is a great english novel written by george eliot was the pen name of mary ann evans, one

of the great english writers of the 19th century. middlemarch is the best novel but i haven't read them all so i shouldn't say that, published in 71 and set in the 1870s and the english midlands and really it is a kind of epic novel with some hugely important issues of family and community and how social change happens and it's such a gripping story. i was introduced to it in a gradual defeat coke graduate school laid out by the students as a way of thinking about the human condition and i think it is a wonderful book. >> host: currently you are reading robertt putnam's the upswing and adam jacobs the year of the lord 1843.

>> guest: at the upswing is the next book and put him is known for a book you wrote in 2,000 the script breakdown. he is one of the great social observers and it was supposed to be out this summer but i guess it's been delayed a little bit and at the end of the journalism of the course of the last century describing the path he says showed that coming together and pulling apart.

a intensely individualistic in the beginning of the century that mobilized in the direction of solidarity in the middle of the 20th century and began to pull apart and now we are at another extreme is going to be a very important book and will be out in a few monthss i guess. alan jacobs is a into the suspect has written wonderful books about the intersection of intellectual life and theology and politics and society. this book was published a few years ago is about a group of thinkers in the final years of the second world war who tried to envision and imagine what the post-world war would look like. ro's grippingly done in some thing i recommend it to

everybody. >> host: has this held up? >> guest: yes and no. i think it is met with criticism at the time which in some ways was right which is part of what it described as the demise of american civil life was more like theri revolution of americn civic life. people were doing different things together so the old clubs and civic organizations definitely did get weaker but people found other ways to join together but i do think the fundamental argument he made which is that the country was headed in the direction of isolation and being dressed individualism was right and the problem became worse over time with political polarization and the growth of technology that social media and others in some ways bring us together but that actually do that by keeping us apart and many of the trends

that i point to writing have in fact not only been shown to have been right to have gotten worse over time to write on the whole that has held up. >> host: half an hour left with our guest this month to. (202)748-8200 in the east and central time zones and want to participate in the conversation (202)748-8201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. we've also scroll through the tech stuff number and a social media site. michael lynn latham, new york. good afternoon. >> guest: good afternoon. thank you for having me on. and to enjoy the conversation here. i have a few observations, and then a basic question. we are a nation of debaters. there is no question about that. and compromise is essential to arrive at our solutions to our

problems. i would also like to interject a gentle man that wrote a book on popular as some said that politics and politicians will not save us and i thoroughly agree with them on that. my question is although compromise is essential to getting to solutions, how can and why should were worth one compromise their beliefs in something they believe one is counter to it, case in point the abortion issue? no matter which side you are on. >> host: did you come michael. >> guest: it points to the question of what we mean by compromise, and i don't think that it needs to be more could mean for people giving up on the core beliefs. i think that it means giving part of whatin you want on the

practical policy question by prioritizing what you want based precisely on your core beliefs so ultimately you are forced to decide what you are willing to give and with most matters to you so there are certain issues where it's difficult to compromise but we do compromise even on the questions when it comes to practical matters when we face a choice that is an all or nothing we strive to turn it into something more like give and take. some states would have liberal regimes into some much less so.

we would certainly have more restrictions than we have now. the united states has to most liberal abortion regime in the western world almost in the entire world i with no constrais whatsoever through the moment of pregnancy it's much more extreme than any european society in as other countries have and a lot of people have very strong views on the mobile question that would be open to the more moderate law that allowed for the views to be respect to a greater degree. so i think it is about give and take. it's about applying those questions in ways that allow you to tell the difference between gaining ground and losing ground and therefore allow you to gain the ground by making clear where your priorities are and what matters most and that is where it becomes possible.

>> host: june in california. >> caller: it's good to see c-span back to normal wear you are not in the same room. my question is we saw this last several weeks to examples of extreme police brutality. one against mr. floyd and the other against the gentle man in buffalo and then we had 50 police officers just kind of walked past him, one looked down at him and was apparently told to get away even though he was bleeding. how do we look at that? we assume george floyd was racial and horrible and brutal because he's black. the other gentleman was white. i think the problem, there is aa

huge racial problems there is also a problem just simply with badly trained police that seem to be endemic all through the country in many places even liberal places and liberal places have been getting much more demonstrators have protested. thank you for being my question. >> guest: i appreciate that point. some of what we are seeing is simply the tendency of power to corrupt and is the reason why to have to always have ways of keeping the cover in check and making people with authority in our society accountable so some of it is racially and some is abuse of power. it's important to see that these are exceptions in the practices

of policing in america. theres are many of all races and backgrounds and they have to be respected even if the police training practices and other things with social institutions more broadly are reformed to address the problems they have. so,, it is a very complicated problem, but i think that there is no question the abuse of power is a constant threat and whether it is done in the name of racism or whether it is done simply as a form of abuse, it should be totally unacceptable and some of the things we are learningab in a way this week look, we have done for years this kind of abuse exists and it needs to be addressed. they cannot be just waiting for this to pass and get back to normal. it has to be a moment that changes the way we think about policinghe but as i said, it has to be done in a balanced way and always in a way that respects the need for order for police,

the real need, especially in some of the communities where we have seen some of the most significant breakdowns of order in the last few weeks. it's enormously complicated and it calls on us to take the problems our society faces seriously and to never forget that giving equal power means they also have to be watched. it is a basic principle of democratic o life. >> host: and in a time to build you write that this is the irony that we have repeatedly confronted, the failure of our institutions have led us to demand that they be uprooted or demolished. but we cannot address those failures without renewing and rebuilding those very institutions. >> host: there's a tendency in moments and they don't just mean in the pasts week is, but the past few decades. to say we need to build debate coburn down these institutions and to get them off of us and be

liberated from them and the strugglin thestruggle against te establishment and the struggle againstfr the elite. all these things are understandable. they are driven by real frustrations with very real problems. but we need functional institutions. and we even needme responsible, respectable elites who can run these institutions. we need the police, we just do. there is no way around it. we are human beings. that means we need the power to be exercised in responsible ways. we have to demand more of them. it's not enough to say let's get rid of them becauseh ultimately our societies cannot function without them so the challenge is harder than that. it's hard to renew and revitalize and put them into account not just how to get rid of them. >> host: dam in massachusetts, go ahead with your question or comment. >> it's great to talk with you thisis afternoon from

massachusetts and i. want to gie you a little bit of background about myself and first of all, i've been a student of demographics for years and also wrote recently march 4 to the daily news. where that fits in here as we all think about the truths and where i'd like to apply those voters. i will leave this out fo lay thh goes something like this with the lack of vocation it goes down in morality i think that it

would solve many of these problems is people have been calling about and this is a beautiful country that we live. >> thank you. >> ultimately each one is a kind of morality whether it's learning history in a way that can inspire us to be better people rather than just inspire us to lose faith and hope in our onuntry alternate in the formation if they are deformed it will lead believed the morae formation and that isy why the health and standing and character of the institutions matters enormously. i think that it is a complicated story in some ways we have seen

a decline in the practice and affiliation but in other ways, we have seen an increase in the demand and the hunger and this is a hunger traditionally that has been answered by religious institutions and can be answered that way again because they approached the society in the terms of contemporary problems by offering themselves up with solutions whether they are challenges of isolation or challenges of racism and injustice. i think there is enormous opportunity now for the institutions as respectable and responsible institutions and we don't see it enough. so, what i imagine is how we might make our way forward to mrevitalize our society and mae the coming years better than the

last two years. that is the moral institutions offering themselves up as ways for each of us to become better from the loca vocal intrapersonl little way up to the nashville. it's absolutely essential. >> host: you used the word devotion to your conclusion at the time to build. >> guest: yes, you know, you think that devotion is what is required for us to be properly and appropriately connected to the institutions that we belong to society. it's more like the things we admire. it's on our own performing and what we really want is o to be part of something worthwhile and something that helps to improve our country and ourhi world.

and so, the sources of devotion are a lot of the things that are most in need now. we do not think so because we buy the language of the kind of easy-going cynicism in our society. but i think that there is an enormous hunger for the proper objects of devotion. and you know, the revitalization of the country is going to proceed that way if it happens. >> host: text from john in mississippi. what you please comment on the concept of political correctness. >> guest: well, you know, political correctness is a term that is used to describe the ways in which some of our mainstream institutions demand the field to a certain political tenants generally those of the left and the progressivism as the price of admission to the american life, so you cannot be a professor if you are views are not the views of the majority were you cannott participate in

the debate with a professional institutions or cannot be a journalist. i think that it ispr a problem. it's part of what we confront now in a lot of our institutions in society. but, you know, there is also based on the right we can exaggerate them sometimes and can imagine we are being held back because other people have conspired to keep us back. if they also have to be better at offering ourselves as an alternative as a way forward for america and a more attractive and appealing and engaging and inviting form of what the right has to say. too often what they say is too exclusive house they seem to be speaking to everyone in america. when that happens we shouldn't be surprised. so, my inclination is always to ask first how i can do better and we c can do better before imagining any problems do we have might be the fault of other people holding us back. >> host: have to ever been canceled on a college campus?

>> guest: though, i have not. i've spent a lot of time on the college campuses back when i was allowed when you could travel and go somewhere and see people in person. and i hope to get back to that when it is allowed again and when the pandemic is us up. and i certainly hope and have seen instances of disorder around some political events that also happened to be at uc berkeley about three years ago now on the nights when there were riots and fires on campus and all kindsn of things were nt were not about me thankfully. but, so i've seen that happen, and'v i know people that have suffered quite serious forms of that kind of culture but thankfully i have not myself. >> host: back to your book time to build. atat the heart of the pressure s what has become identity politics. on thess college campuses it appears to amount to the

identity and power relationships asamong the different racial ethnic and socioeconomic camps. these relationships are understood in terms of the pressures and oppressed. >> ndguest: what i am describing there is really an effort to try to understand the contemporary progressivism as it presents itself on college campuses in its own terms and in the best terms possible. you know, i think that there is a way of understanding the core distinction between the left ant right. getting to those roots in anthropology that we start with today by saying that they tend to think about the political challenges and order versus disorder or civilization versus barbarism. the left tend to thin tends to m as oppressor and oppressed. and in part, that is because the right from the sense that it is difficult and people are highly imperfect, they tend to think social order is the hardest

thing to sustain and therefore it is a necessary prerequisite to anything we might do in society. the left tends to think of oppression is the core problem so everything has to be understood in terms of power relationships between different groups. i think there is obviously truth to both of these. but it does seem to be ultimately that in order to have justice, you do need to first order and we have to worry about the social order so we can have the kind of society that is then capable of also worrying about justice. but i think that this decision, this disagreement between the left and right runs on a serious debate and both sites offer serious arguments about how to make this as i get the better. and in that sense i think that it servest us well. >> host: roger in sarasota florida, go ahead, please. >> caller: yes, your recent mention of the term limits provoked a question.

i see the term limits as a possible way of breaking the cycle of the predominant role of money in our political lives. with the federal legislators voting the vast majority of the time to raise money for the reelection and being paid huge percentages to -- >> host: i apologize, you are cutting in and out there. but i think we got the gist of the term limit comments that you wanted to make. >> guest: timmy the question is exactly what the solution is to. what plug-i would and if you hao term limits is a very powerful permanent staff bureaucracy. the people that do not leave and

so does that buil those that bue experience over time from the members that will come and go and kind of glee debate could be this permanent bureaucracy i think that is how it works in which the people that are there for the long term are also the people for their answering to the public. they are there in the sense that some problems that we have seen to provide the kind of corruption that follows people being in these troubled for too long. the problem is simply a think of the term limits would create a worse problem, a much worse problem and someone in the same problem that we have now which is you would still have people that are ultimately corruptible and corrupted over time because they have been there forever and they see themselves as the permanent infrastructure of the politics. those people wouldn't be elected officials and sold the have said be lobbyists, staff, peoplee around the system and i do not think that that would be better. so i certainly see the problem, but i do not think that the term

limits are. the solution. >> host: somewhat called the deep state, wouldn't they? >> guest: that is the way of calling it the deep state. ti think that therefore it's important that the people that remained of her time be elected. but i also think that there is value in the experience there is such a thing as being a legislator. there is such a thing as expertise and legislation and we do want people in congress who know what they are doing. so i do not think that we should underestimate the value of the people that have been around a while to establish themselves. i think in some ways those people are less in the grips of the power of money. they've built up their own constituency and authority over time and so on the whole i think term limits would serve us well. >> host: before we run out of time i went to read this e-mail

from keyport new jersey. the growth of the government is making the outcome of each more important, federalism isn't taken seriously by the powers in dc. we no longer have the freedom to experiment with different ways of doing things. the supreme court has power that it's none of the founders envisioned in the people are still self-serving and are living to state scenarios where like-minded people live. can our public survive such political self-segregation? there is a paradox where we have less and less trust in our government. it certainly does seem to me the core argument one way forward is by increasing the amount of power and authority that flowssi

through the state and local government and federalism offers us a way to turn our growing diversity into a strain rather than to let us become a debilitating weakness for our democracy. and i think that the government is moret functional with state and local levels so we should allow more to happen at the state and local levels it's interesting in that principle and as a matter of basic political practice it would make a lot of sense for us now to emphasize the way in which our differences can be expressed in federalist system. some of that work in response to the pandemic which has hit different places differently and therefore is requiring different places to respond differently. i think generally we have been well served by the system in that crisis and it can serve us well and a lo in a lot of other. >> host: good afternoon, can you hear me.

>> host: weekend. >> guest: first of all, i am a native to those that settled the land both in southern minnesota as the homestead act so i know quite a bit aloud about the working class home and the labour party and who wanted to go in for those like mccarthy. i find it just incredibly ironic that this old drug liberal city

and state would have this explosion of violence and horrible murder of this black man it seems to me the ironies is that all. i could go on about racism and culture in minnesota that i will spare that. my question to you, doctor, is as said earlier, when he was at the age of eight and obviously a jewish american, how does he explaindo theyexplain, or what s explanation of the allegiance of the jewish american by and large to the ultraliberal socialist or socialist marxist with the liberal philosophy.

>> host: i think we got the point. let's ask if he cares to answer the question. >> guest: i would say first of all on the point about this, it is a tragedy more than an irony, and several tragediess that are. begin to entire country is raising up on this. on the second question, there are deep roots both in terms of ethnic politics in the terms of the political radicalism among the american jews but i would say there's also a fairly large growing segment of orthodox jews in particular so my community is diverse, too and the argument of the left and right off to make those reach beyond the

communities and speak to all of us as americans of his inclination to appeal to our hike is as privations were deepest ideals. both parties are at their best when they do that and certainly we think that is the kind of politics we should want.ha >> host: if somebody were to buy one of the books, which one would you recommend to them? >> guest: you cannot pick among them. as a book that is sold a has sot is a great debate which is in the college performances and translateperformance is thentrao give the people the most, but i think people should read them all. >> host: and the other two that we have been talking about in our time with him is the fractured republic, as well as his most recent, the time to build. for thehe past two hours you've been our guest on booktv. we greatly appreciate your time. ..

him