tonight 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2 and you can access our programs on mynetworktv.org or follow along on c-span now. >> a new mobile video are from c-span. download today. ♪♪ >> next from a book tv's monthly in-depth program with author and new york times columnist ross got "the decadent society" "the deep places", and what about his five-year struggle with lyme's disease. >> new york times columnist and ross douthat. religion and conservatism and etc., let's talk about your newest book, "the deep places". what happened to you in 2015.

>> my wife and i set out to fulfill a fantasy and we are appropriately punished for it. we were living in washington d.c. and we had to little girls, who were planning to have more kids from lifting small house are from the capitol. we were both from new england, connecticut. our families from the northeastern we have this idea of escaping from corruption and getting out ofy d.c. getting bak to where we found out. in my case especially, perhaps idea going to live in the country and have a farm and raise chickens spend a lot of time outside with our kids, not spend all of our times on phones and computers. we put our house on the market and it sold for a lot more than we expected, the real estate market was crazy back then. we took the money that i like to

say instead of doing somethingin sensible like investing in bitcoin, crowded fish 1790 farmhouse with 3 acres, pasture, stone walls,th everything you imagine when you imagine new england countryside. while we were in the process of making this move, literally right after we did the inspection on the new house, i became really sick with what started out as pain in my neck and then my head and became less full-body mixture of migrating pain, throat and bowel problems, phantom heart attacks, all kinds of things. we were still in washington so about the house but p we are gog to move late b august so for the three months, i saw probably 12 doctors in washington d.c., i

worked my way up to the head of infectious diseases in a major hospital not a bunker figure out what was wrong with me sometimes gently, sometimes less gently suggested i was under a lot of stress and having some kind of anxiety driven breakdown in some way, the pain and everything else was all i had and it was only when we moved to connecticut and direct ourselves to what had been our dream house and now seems more like a stephen king type scenario, i started seeing doctors who said no, we see things like this all the time, you almost certainly have a tickborne illness, you almost certainly have lyme disease which i probably acquired literally while walking the overgrown property of our dream house late back me so the story of the deep place is first

the story of this crazy descent into insomnia losing 50 pounds and being productive the medical system have no idea what to do about it and then secondly the story of what happened once we got to connecticut because lyme disease is a famouslyis controversial condition. people who have it don't immediately get better, because all kinds of medical debates about what they should do next, whether they should keep taking informatics or stop and wait for residual pain to go away now is one of the people who didn't get better quickly. i took antibiotics, they stabilized me and i was able to sleep five hours a night instead of one hour a night, back kind of thing butch i didn't get betr quickly. i was caught between competing schools of medicine and set up basically having to conduct a lot of very strange experiments while living in isolation with my pregnant wife and our two little kids so it a mix of a

story of chronic illness and the strangeness of chronic illness infrastructure treated and also a new england style graphic melodrama, part stephen king and nathaniel hart hawthorne. inside of the devil, the villain is a tiny growing insect. >> part of "the deep places" title, does not include research you were doing or alternative here's to lyme's disease? >> the title price you reference a few things at once, one is the fact that the bacteria literally gets very deep inside your body, people end up with symptoms in their joints, deepen our muscles, there is that sort of literal sense but yes, it's also ending up in a way, the metaphor i using the book, you sort of

fall through the floor, you think of medical consensus and successes of official american medicine, solid hardwood floor under your feet most of the time, most of your life from childhood vaccinations through whatever treatment you get or diseases along the way. when you get a sickness that either can't be diagnosed which is true at first for me or doctor struggle to figure outro how to treat, you basically fall through that for an end up underneath where there are people who can help you, doctors who helped me a great deal, i would not have, as well as i have without them but you also have to go around yourself. first do a lot of strange research, i read a lot of papers and testimony in all kinds of things but ultimately you have to try things on yourself. you're the only person who actually knows what will work or

what does work, you're the only one to take this combination of antibiotics seems to help me and found seems to do nothing. then you push beyond back into the real range and when you spend years being sick, i was sick for almost two years before i started to see sustained improvement, your cost-benefit calculus changes a lot so you are open to having a chiropractor put magnets all over your body or nurse practitioner pump you full of av vitamin c and so on, can't a list of strange things i would never expect to try in the life i had before i got sick. >> why is lyme disease controversial? >> lyme disease is controversial because there's a simple fix for let's say 75% of people who get

it which is you take four to six weeks of antibiotics, the disease is wiped away and you feel better were mostly better and you go on with your life. then there is this group of patients who doesn't get better or relapse. there is no simple system anybody has figured out automatically helps all of them get better quickly so the official consensus is we don't know why these patients are stillk sick because we've alreay treated them withic antibiotics you don't want to over treat people with antibiotics, you assume the disease itself must have been wiped out in whatever problems remain a residual information, damage from the disease, some kind of autoimmune disease triggered by the disease or psychosomatic, it's all in your head kind of situation so that is the official view closest to what the cdc does

about treatment. and there's this other group of doctors, and there are a lot of them, they are sort of outsiders to the official consensus whone say if someone is sick and you treatment and they are still sick, they probably still have the same disease and you should continue treating them until they actually get better so these are the doctors a lot of patients in my situation and up eventually seen and what they do is they run extended courses of antibiotics, combinations of antibiotics, the other complication is tics can carry more than onee disease so sometimes, quiteme often these doctors think people who are sick with lyme's disease also have called alecia or camilla, the other micro carried by the and you have to treat them, to so that us sort of the

polarization there. you have a consensus that works for most people who get it but not all it takes we don't want to do any harm so we are not going to try anything approach to the residual cases and on the other hand you have a very experimental minority of doctors willing to treat people for long periods off time. >> in your column today in the new york times how i became extremely open-minded, this is one of those carryback questions i'm going to combine two topics unrelated. number one, i want to ask you about the rice machine and then read a quote from your article talking about how you became open-minded and what it means to you. on both sides of our national divide, human psychology coherence simplicity in our understanding of the world. people who have a terrible experience with official

consensus discover a weird outsider idea that actually seems to work and to embrace a numeral two replace thene old o. that knowledge is always wrong outsider knowledge is always right. this is a key dynamic political medical debate. conspicuous of the failures in the last 20 years encouraged narratives, possible critiques of the system with outlandish paranoia but insiders only see paranoia, you are not and his allies advocate so they pull up the drawbridge and assigned fact checkers to patrol the wall which in turn confirms the outsiders belief that the establishment has essentially blinded itself and only faye has eyes to see. >> i'll try and combine those

questions because i was trying to draw basically some lessons from some of my weird experiences, the weirdest experience is really with this life on the medical range lessons for how we think about political debate which is what i write about most of the time in the new york times. the weirdest experience, probably the weirdest expenses, there were a lot of weird expenses i had while trying to treat lyme disease, there are these machines called rice machines named for man named royal life in the 30s who claimed to have figured out frequencies, these radial or electromagnetic frequencies in which microorganisms bacteria will vibrate and break apart or shatter or die trip mean you

could basically treat illnesses by pumping waves, frequencies through people's flesh and knocking out the microbes in them so this is an idea that i would say is extremely far outside the existing medical consensus and fair are a few studies you can find here and there, a study university in georgia killed e. coli in goat sync sound waves so there are experiments that suggest maybe there is something to this but in general, the world of these machines and what looks from the outside like charlatans, snake oil salesman peddling these machines are probably don't do anything to people who are sick desperate and i was really sick and there are a lot of people who have lyme disease who have used these machines and swear by them.

at a certain time i acquired one of these machines and it's the craziest thing, you get the g l machine that looks like a computer in a 1980 sci-fi movie and wires coming out of it and you hold onto these handles while you run it and there is this book is not just lyme disease, it claims to lift frequencies for just about every illness under the sun the claim is that hundreds of people, thousands of people discovered these frequencies for all their different illnesses while experimenting with the machine the last few decades. it seems crazy, right? but when i used the machine, it worked in the sense that it generated in myn body physical reactions are pretty much identical except much faster to the reactions i get when i was really sick and would take a high dose of antibiotics. now obviously is just a personal experience and what goes on inside your own body accessible

to the viewer so someone can read the story and say well, it's just the power of suggestion, it's a placebo effect and you know, all that is intellectually possible but i can tell you i am one 100% certain this machine, did to me some version of what it claims to do so i kept using it in combination with antibiotics throughout my treatment and is still up in my attic. i don't use it that much now because i'm feeling a lot better but i use it time to time so that is a long story of the rice machine but the connection to politics, there's lots of people who have these experiences, not everybody is buying machines and using them to treat their illnesses there's lots of people who havere something happen for their like what i thought was true about the world is actually

true or whatal i thought the medical system told me or the political system told me doesn't seem to actually be true. lots of people haveye had those experiences in our politics the last 20 years from 9/11 through iraq war, the financial crisis, the way that experts made these predictions about benefits of trade withe china that did not work out for significant portions of the country, you can go down the list. as a series of moments you will have had inn politics for they say wait a minute, the expert said this from weapons of mass destruction with saddam hussein from the face of the housing bubble would never first opening china would be good for america make china more readily liberal, not them be sent happened. you have skepticism about elite political narratives just as you can end up with skepticism without official medical narrative so what you doou then?

i think the challenge is once you have had one of those experiences, you august the are going to be skeptical of the establishment, of the official consensus and ideas from affect inevitable but you don't want to assume everything outside the establishment is right. the establishment got a bunch of things wrong, therefore going to trust outsiders the way i used to trust the establishment and i think that's a mistake of the french or this populist mistake rates like cnn and liberal media are all these things wrong so i'm going to trust everything i hear from conservative sources or f something when in fact skepticism that runs both ways. you want to say probably the establishment is right and i have to still be open to that but i also have to recognize there are truths about the world not captured by establishments consensus in the have toed be on

minded in both directions. that's ultimately what this piece is arguing for this strange rice machine beginnings, open-mindedness work not just the possibility the french get things right but the establishment still gets things right and you have to use your own set of things to put a picture of the world together that includes both of those possibilities. >> soap to put. about this, we still have the country how are you feeling? >> we sold the country, we lasted there for about two years and it really was a stephen king experience. my wife is a writer, too so we were to writers living the shiny in an isolated home where the husband's sanity is a little uncertain, he's always writing,

i kept writing my newspaper column and i think my wife was always afraid i'm around my laptop and see all work no play makes ralph doughboy written on the screen and we have little kids, who didn't want them to go in the field, all of the things we imagine about the house we didn't actually want because i was so sick it was too much so eventually we abandon ship, a real estate glass and ended up in new haven connecticut which is where i grew up, we didn't want to go back to see, who want to stay near family. so that's where we live now and it's not a full ending to the story and i'm not one 100% better in one of the things you find with chronic illness, yousi have to reconcile yourself to the possibility that you won't get to one 100% but most of the time i am 90 or 95%, i do my treatment much less frequently

than i did when i was at my sickest and i do hope i will be solely well into her three years or some indeterminate period of time ahead. i haven't given up on making the absolutely full recovery but i want that from the beginning. >> when you hear people regarding the covid prices, trust the science, follow the science, what is your reaction? >> my reaction is, science is not an authority but a process so you do want to trust scientific methods and people do science well, you want to trust scientific results but you can assume the first think the cdc or fda says or does, especially under crisis conditions is kcorrect so really with covid,e lived for months the way people would mysterious chronic illnesses live all the time we have this mysterious pathogen,

obviously much more of an immediate crisis than a chronic illness like lyme disease, that's actually killing people by the tens and hundreds of thousands we didn't know enough about it- at first test for it effectively and then a lot of the things were said so confidently in the beginning, but who says it's not airborne from the cdc or surgeon general and others say you shouldn't use masks, all those things end up getting reversed and even a lot of the treatments we did, it's unclear now whether we were right to put many people on ventilators in the first few months. there's a large debate about

that so it's a case study when you're dealing with something science doesn't fully understand and there's a lot of science not fully understood, you have to be external too except conventional wisdom shift a lot and you can't just assume there exists white coated authority ofco science hs all the answers that you can absolutely trust. with that said, you also don't want to assume official signs is always going to get everything wrong. at a certain time, it really was official signs that delivered vaccines much earlier than anyone expected initially so there has been real trials for official signs in the process. i say at the end of the column you are citing i am the guy, i have the machine in my attic but i also got the covid vaccine without qualms early on so that is an example at least in my

case how i try to strike the balance skepticism of official signs and willingness to recognize the things that's achieved. >> how did you get to the new york times and how do you describe the politics but. >> i got to the new york times by being i think very fortunate and coming-of-age as a journalist early in the internet era so i graduated from college in 2002 it in my 20s, i worked as a junior editor at the atlantic magazine as my day job but then i did a lot of writing on the side. i wrote some books in this agreement essays and book reviews, all kinds of things. i had ag personal blog, the beginning of blarney of the golden age of blogging you could look back and say so i was there doing a lot of different kinds

of work in a time when the internet was just transforming journalism, transforming it for the worse in some sense, the internet quickly weakened the positionds of all kinds of american newspapers. my wife was a newspaper reporter at the baltimore sun by the time we got married so i watched first hand how the economic effects of the internet, hollowing out the economic base of newspapers that classified as in the things that used to pay for your local newspaper went to the w internet and that was devastating so that was that turmoil for people were losing their jobs but there was also demand for people who seemed like they sort of knew how to write on the internet hoping somebody who sort of moved back and forth between old-school

journalism, the atlantic was the old school magazine but also writing on the internet having my own blog and being engaged in those debates, all of that made me seemed like a good person or national person the news new york newspaper for everybody was bringing mark was on board figuring out how to integrate new journalism into the old system, that was part of the story and the other part, i'm some sort of religious conservative. at that time, i had never had explicitly religious conservative on its but page and i think there's a desire from the people who ran the newspaper to add that kind of voice to the discussion so in that sense, i was sort of in the right place

at the right time, which is a large part of what you need to do to get an extraordinary watching job that i had. >> in 2012, your book religion came out, i want to read a quote from back. the eclipse of christian belief has led inevitably to the public morality and private virtual life. >> that is strong stuff. now is a book i wrote about three years after i started at the times. the argument in the book, was partially history, storytelling. a book about the decline of institutional christianity in the united states in the 1960s to what was back then, present-day of 2011 or 2012 the core of the argument in the book was as institutional religion

climbed from a court replaces it not sure of the rule of secular reason with richard dawkins and daniel new atheists sitting around rules for everyone without any reference to god, that's not what happened. at institutional religion declines, he sort of get the institutionalized forms of spirituality and religious belief that are more individualist in many cases, more consumer oriented, less theological and less to go back to the quote you started with less of a strong moral impact on the lives off the people who practice them to sort of go from a world of billy graham and martin luther king fulton sheen as leading figures of american religion to a world of joel

o'steen and oprah, prosperity gospel christianity new age spirituality and one thing i try to do in the book was take the prosperity gospel in the new age spirituality seriously, i don't think that kind of religious stuff is just superficial and empty, it has theological ideas, people find appealing for a reason but fundamentally to go from a world of reasonably strong christian churches to a world of hyper individualized spirituality presided over the roof f figures is a change for e worse and an important change that's affected just about every part of our society including politics. if you look at politics right now on both the right and left, you see a lot of free-floating

religious energy, energy that used to be channeled into the first congregational church or catholic parish or your synagogue, instead it's channeled into political identity, pouring religious energy into political identity this leads political intolerance, this phenomenon where he used to be that people if you asked them would you be comfortable if your son or daughter married somebody of a different faith, people would be a little uncomfortable if you ask would you be comfortable if they married somebody with a differentt political party, they are more likely to be comfortable with it if not its reverse. now people are more comfortable with the idea of his son mary and evangelical or an atheist than a republican is with the idea daughter is going to marry a democrat or a democrat with the idea her son is going to marry a publican so we have

taken religious commitments and put them into politics, it's inevitably polarized our country more than it used to in politics and greed things at the fringes whether it conspiracy theory, identity movements like you and on really religious movements and their impulses or excesses on the progressive left like the idea of woke from a religious term. awoke any sounds like awakening for a reason. it's a religious impulse that a lot of what you think of as woke as a religious moral energy, strong moral absolutism which is bad thing but doesn't have a metaphysical picture, got on the universe to fit it into sort ends up, it delivers witchhunts

with affect communityty in solidarity and virtue at its best religion supply. >> going back to bad religion in the history of it, right in the 60st and 70s, the heretics carry the day, what happened? >> the idea in the book is you can see american religious history as this balance between what i call orthodoxy and heresy meaning not greek or russian orthodoxy but the idea of religious establishment and a bunch of religious experiments at the fringes. for a long time from about establishment was just mainline, the court protestant denominations and experiments would be latter day saints or christian science or the shakers transcendentalist, ralph, those kinds of people andn. fees thins

both existed, america had a really strong institutional religious center that eventually included roman catholic suit some extent, jews as well by the 1950s in them all of this while energy at the printers. what happens in the 60s is the center falls apart and never really puts itself back together so for a variety of reasons the sexual revolution, economic and technological changes, political changes, a lot of different forces at work, the past mainline collapses, it's membership diminishes dramatically and stops being this central force in american life it was down to the 60s, people come of age today have no idea how large these old-line protestant churches used to loom in american life so that falls apart. catholicism goes to the second council and tries to go through

effort but falls into the civil war between liberal catholics and conservative catholics starting with issues about the sexual revolution but also including issues about liturgy, what the message should be like in all of these things going on all the way to present day civil war has, and under pope francis, burned as hot as ever you have a catholic civil war and a brief search and evangelicalism becomes a more important part of american political life, especially but not strong enough to fill that center the religious center ceases to be strong institutional christian churches and becomes a mixed of new age spirituality and pop spirituality and joel o'steen prosperity gospel stuff so that's what it means to say heretics, it's not that there

weren't heretics and religious freelancers in america before the 50s there always were, it's always been part of who we are but the brother used to be in america were veryer strong solid intellectually socially influential churches as well and those have gotten much weaker with no sign right now of them making a comeback even though lots ofho americans believe in d and are still religious, the institutions, themselves have fallen on hard times without obvious hope at the moment of recovery. >> are we a christian nation in your view? >> we are a nation more christian than anything else but not in a sense that would happen recognizable to the america of 1945 so if you said what is the

primary theological influence on american life? it still christianity even for many people who think of themselves as secular or post- christian, general moral frameworks stillll matter if you look at even the way that race identity is framed on the progressive side of politics right now, the idea that you center politics around people and groups that have been victims and their victim status makes them somehow sacred and have a kindd of authority, thats an important part of progressive ideology in the last ten or so years, itwe clearly owes a debt, god himself as a sacrificial victim's victim status is a source of the sacred for

christians you can still trace these christian minds into temporary debate but saying nation of heretics, which is the subtitle of that book of bad religion is one way to cap this reality we still are heavily influenced by christianity but over christian belief and practice are in deep decline and there is i think a lot of religious energy that aspires to be post- christian, especially among younger people if you look at the interest in astrology and paganism and wicca things, there is a quest or eastern spirituality to some extent, there is a clear desire among people with religious impulses or religious

resources andan ideas that are wholly post- christian but all of that has convinced into an actual post- christian religious, bits and pieces here and there, it hasn't actually come together into a silicon valley tycoon, pagan sacrifices on the capitol or something, there is no formal post- christian religion, there's a lot of christian influence and a lot of post- christian fragments floating around at the same time. >> common frame today, i am spiritual but not religious. what you think when you hear that? >> i think that's in part reflecting exactly desire for a way of encountering the things religion is supposed to put you in touch with. ultimate meaning supernatural

experience, maybe supernatural beings, divine guidance, moral guidance without doing it inside the framework of either christian orthodoxy or traditional christian church. obviously this applies judaism and islam as well, similar impulses there, average person who says i'm spiritual but not religious as someone whose grandparents would have attended a methodist or catholic church, some kind of sense of institutional religion means old-fashioned christianity, i've left back behind, i still have these religious impulses but i don't want to satisfy them or pursue them within traditional frameworks which are easier constraining or out of date, how could you possibly go back to that? but fundamentally who say they

are spiritual but not religious religious or fish are just anti- institutional or desire to be post- christian. fundamental impulse is there, i don't think there's a real difference between spiritual impulses on one hand and religious impulses on the other hand, they are basically the same impulse, the distinction is how are you trying to fulfill them and what kind of experience and what kind of community with what kind of ideas framing what you're doing or trying to experience or find. >> let's go back to 2008 when ross downsides, republicans can win the american class and when the american dream came out, you talk about income inequality school twice in a crisis of authority when it came to crime issues, was a playbook for 2016?

>> the book accurately foresaw the deep trends like gave us the donald trump presidency and has given us our current political divide whichl is that america ws polarizing around education where college-educated voters were moving into the democratic party,, non- college educators were moving into the republican party and thee- republican party which had this traditional image as the party of affluent and country club -- well, we quoted vent government of minnesota who said we are not the party, he was republican and he said we are not the party of the country club where the party of sam's club and that wasn't completely true when he said it still isn't completely true now, the republican coalition has a lot of rich people in it but the republican coalition has become much more working class and its

extending beyond the white working class right now so the biggest trend is white americans without a college education have become more likely to vote republican but in the trump era, we are still waiting to see but the post trump era, you are also seen minority voters, african-american hispanic, especially hispanic move toward the republican party again, they are likely to be middle to working-class voters who are sort of following this polarization across racial lines to american politics is slightly less racially polarized but more class and education polarized than before trump came on the scene so that's what we foresaw. what we wanted was a republican party that leaned into this transformation with an aggressive policy agenda

especially on economic policy and family policy to help support the american working class which has struggled in a lot of ways with the impact of trade and globalization and opening to china with social disarray and when we were writing the opioid epidemic wasn't on the scene yet so were talking mostly about family issues and family breakdown, out of wedlock birth rate going way up, now of course you have a terrible drug epidemic ravaging working-class communities is not only working-class communities but them especially. in an ideal world we would have a republican party that would have a strong agenda social and economic agenda oriented toward meeting the needs of those motors. i don't think have had back. i think we have gestures that it from trump a lot of what trump offered instead was a politics

of celebrity and grievance. one voter that didn't offer a long-term policy vision for what the republican party should do for them so i think the question in the post trump era, you have the realignment we imagined, would you have the policy agenda we imagined i'll be honest, i am not optimistic about that and i think tom's own influence over the republican party makes it hard to develop policy because policy is not what donald trump is all about. >> in 2020, your book decadent society came out from america before and after the pandemic, what is your definition of decadence? >> decadence in my definition means technician drift and repetition at a really high level of wealth and development so basically a condition that

societies get into when they r have really succeeded, you can't be decadent unless you've been triumphant and successful before but where a sort of, you have a loss of energy, complex systems built up and they get creaky basically, they don't work as well. innovation declines, birth rates decline, people become less likely to start companies and write the great american novel and all your movies become superhero movies certain account of what i think has happened in the whole western world but especially united states the last 40 or 50 years. the book starts with moon landing as i peeked of mid american century and since then, economic growth rates have slowed down, birth rates have fallen before replacement levels in both people our political

system doesn't work as well as it used to, intellectual debates have gone stale so it's this twilight in between peak and a real defiance of the book says we are not in real decline which is good, this is obviously something available, many people think we areou i in an actual catastrophic client and i don't think we are there, we are stagnant, unhappy in our stagnation with problems associated with stagnation but you can see a renaissance or rebirth without going through something like the actual collapse, let's say russia or to be more extreme, the empires of the past spirits. >> from your book, "the decadent society", as a leader for a decadent age, trump contains

multitudes. he was both an embodiment of our societies think different vices and would be rebel with repetition and disappointment, a figure who rose to power by attacking the system while exploiting the same decadence to the ill. >> yet, trump was propagated and still is. as we await the trump restoration in 2024 but i think tom's campaign in 2016 wasn't part in rebellion against the stagnation i am describing, but decadence i am describing. trump comes in and basically says the elite running this country have sold our interests and by our industrial base hollow out and let american

carnage take over our society and we want to get back to the future promised. we want to make america again and i think that was central to his appeal, also to bernie sanders appeal in the same election, you have these years in both political parties, hillary clinton and bush being the obvious examples who stood for the establishment that's existed for 20 years and american life so you have trump as a populace sanders as a socialist saying once we promise more than this? but we promised more than this technocratic management of slow growth? where the flying cars? are the moon colonies? where is the surgeon economic growth? where's the future? i think that was crucial to trump and it was nostalgic in certain ways but nostalgic for mid century america, in america

in the 50s and 60s that believed the future was just going to get better and better and better. that is trump as an anti- decadent figure but then trump himself is obviously decadent, guy who's been married three times sleeps with porn stars and is personally corrupt in various ways and is not actually interested in the work of government but a creature of reality tv whose main concern throughout his presidency was how he was being covid on the cable news shows he watched all the time. so it'sgh this dualism where trp runs and wins and everyone is surprised by campaigning against decadence and stagnation but asn a president he represents this pop-culture form of decadence, the guy who plays the great businessman on tv and the guy

who played the president. that's what he wanted to do. he wanted to occupy the presidency as a reality television office and he didn't do any of the things he promised an infrastructure bill, basic things he promised didn't happen in the end he lost reelection, not enough that's a real crisis it wanted this reality tv president in charge but he may come back. >> your colleague at the new bank, had accomplice money from behold the rise of the sort trump, emulating trump without embracing him is the new republican strategy. is that the way to go? >> that's the way you have to go. there's no future in republican politics right now you say donald trump and all his works are evil and i will cast him into the outer darkness, you're just not going to function as a

republican politician with that message. it's also the wrong kind of message for some of the reasons we've been talking about. the transformation of the republic and party into a working-class party and the idea that you should have this rebellion against a decadent establishment, those are powerful changes and ideas to be a leader on the right going forward, you need some version of those i guess inc. into your pitch in your argument so figuring out how to do that without also going in courtrooms andd this twitter warfare againt his enemies, his family's corruption and conspiracy theories about how the election was stolen, that would be the sweet spot for future republican party. trumpso is populism without

certain elements of trump's personality paranoia. whether you can do that while him trump himself as around, it's an open question. you can win the governorship of o government. you can win below the presidential level but i don't know if there's a model for doing it in 2024 trump himself is down the ballot saying why would you want and if you accept that, any version of the narrative, and he's sort of the rightful leader of the party, the exiled king waiting to come back to his room so that i think is a big problem for the

republicans removing donald trump. as long as you have the idea that he really beat joe biden and the democrats stole it and it's hard to see how someone else comes along and says put me in charge of the party went trump is standing right there saying i one, i'll win again. you have to make an argument to narrow needle. the election wasn't really fair to trump last time but i, rhonda sentence or glenn youngkin, i can be the democrats marked handling self you should give the nomination to me even though you still like. that's the argument you have to make. it's a challenging one, not a normal political argument i think. >> the day after election day, 2021, you tweeted this out but i should say i have revised my relative pessimism/optimism index about the near future of

american conservatism 1090215 to 85. >> so still pretty pessimistic, yes. the change in optimism from the virginia outcome from a republican perspective was one of the concerns republicans have still have was trump all kinds of new voters into the party, he really did. he got much higher turnout in certain areas and pass report contact and he got a lot of voters who hadn't voted before to cast ballots for him, nonvoters and this was why, how he was able to win in 2016 even as traditional suburban republicans, which to the democrats and how he kept it close evening 2020 is even more of those suburban voters went for joe biden. the question was, if trump isn't

leaving the republican party anymore, maybe you win a few of those votersse back but you y probably don't energize voters for the parties based in the a same way some it's a wash and republicans and up behind no matter what. in these elections from affected happen. youngkin and in new jersey a slightly different way, republicans one back suburban voters especially on issues around education and schools and still got really good turnout trump voters, rural voters especially and i think with youngkin, also continue to make modest inroads with hispanic voters also informed to trump's success keeping a close in 2020 so that's an optimistic model for the republicans, you can

have candidates get back mitt romney voters from 2012, get the voters back and still get the hereally high working-class and world turnout, add a few more hispanic voters and suddenly the coalition can one within for jeanette if you translate that to the national level, at the winning coalition, a coalition that wins the presidential election outright, doesn't have to win the electoral college and wins it out right so that's the reason for optimist. the reason to say pessimistic is what i said in my last answer at least for the next four years i don't know how presidential politics you get out from under trump's shadow. trump does not when back enough of those suburban voters thinklves, i don't although who can say what will happen in 2024? >> good afternoon and welcome to book tvs monthly in-depth program, we invite one author to talk about his or her body of

work in the new york times columnist and author, ross ... he published his first book three years after graduating from harvard and called "privilege". harvard and the education of ruling class, next came a new party, republicans can win the working-class save the american dream, his co-author on that book that came out in 2008, that religion which we have talked about, how we became a nation of heretics that came out in 2012 in a book about the future of the catholic church, change the church, pope francis in the future of catholicism in 2018. "the decadent society", how we became victims of our own success. w came out last year's latest book, a memoir, "the deep places", a memoir of illness and discovery. we spent the last hour talking

with ross and now it's your turn. we are going to put the numbers up on the screen if you'd like to participate in the f conversation.al we set aside online for text messages only. that is for text messages only. if you have a question or comment, include your first name and your city if you would. there are several ways of getting us on social media. you can e-mail tv@c-span.org or you can tweet, make a comment on facebook at book tv, that's what you want to remember if you go to twitter or facebook. we will run through those second so if you didn't get a chance to write them down, we are going to begin taking those calls in a

few minutes. we mentioned your book, "privilege", graduated harvard wrote that book in 2004. harvard is a tolerable place, he writes. an incubator for american ruling class, i'm stratified self-congratulatory intellectually address. why did you choose to go to harvard? ... >> hopefully the better part of

myself that sort of imagine a place that was actually devoted to you know, the best not to imparting aug series of human of education and to the students. you know so i think that i have both motivations,, i had vaultig ambitions and you know, i sort of a serious intellectual desire and the omission found that harvard expected to find an wanted to find which was sort of an entry point into the american elite. in the intellectual side of me found that it could get the harvard education is a dimension i had to work incredibly hard to find it and putting together on its own it. so inside the elite university, you can find great education but no one is going to give it to you, you have to piece it together and so if i look back

my time in college, i would say the probably one year out of the four, i did the kind of intellectually serious work that he imagined that when i got there, the harvard was supposed to deliver. and the rest of the time, i was caught up in the pursuit of preparing for professional success. and then there weree some you know, some romances and too much drinking and a lot of other things that i embarrassing fully put into that memoir and hope that my children never read so you know. it was college right, it is a mixed bag. >> is a four-year liberal arts model outdated at this point. >> i dunno, i think that it is out-of-date headed in the sense that it does not work for lots and lots of people who do go to college and i think that it's outdated in the sense that you live in a society where you are

aspiring to get 30 and 40 and 50 and 60 percent of high school students to going to college and you should not expect everybody to spend four years and you know, weird ivy brick campuses having that kind of experience. i don't thinkou that it makes sense and i think that you need a lot more flexibility in the models that you have for higher education if you know, you want to live in a world where higher education is the norm did you need more of the two-year programs and flushable programs that people can move in and out of and the programs people can go to while working part-time job. and so on and continuing education programs theha people can come backhe to after they he been in the workforce for a while predict should be possible tono have some equivalent of college education at that is available easily to someone who has worked in the real workforce from 188 - 27 or something and

you can go back to college at that point the system is not set up for that hundred flexibility. so all of that is to say that yes to some extent is the model that is been overextended we been adept using this kind of archaic upper-class model of education as a means of delivering as opportunity and the ticket to opportunity the golden ticket and everyone is supposed to vote, don't think that really works out well and at the same time i think that you know there are virtues that have schools maintain that kind of model especially if they can actually focus on intellectual work in preparation read and i think that it is a failure for our elite that they don't get as much including myself in this indictment that they don't get as much out of this for years that they should, the point of

having those four years is to atget people a space that is not yet part of professional life and is not yet just a feel for the omission and where you're actually supposed to be you know, learning some things about the world that w happened before 1965 like, like a big chunk of our sort of masters of the universe in washington or silicon valley or someone, they don't really seem to know a lot about the world outside of a relatively narrow elite american kind i of band and i think thatt is a failure of education in high school as well as college that they don't have that range of cultural historical knowledge and grabbing. but i don't think it would get better if you just did away with a four-year experience altogether. >> let's take some calls, and their times columnist and author, next caller pretty good

afternoon to you pretty. >> good afternoon, i questioned is i am confused by the conservative christianity concept of the call to believers to take control off all seven aspects of culture, seven mountains there would be family religion education and media entertainment business and government and how and why and timmy this is in conflict with the constitution on the very basic level and that is with the idea that in article six that there should be no religious test a for anybody any qualification of office and also there should be the government and their way to make any law of establishment of religion

pretty. >> do you know where dominion is an comes from pretty. >> okay, i would like to understand more about that pretty. >> okay let's let him answer printed. >> yes no, i am happy so yes dominion is a ms. will look there's a bunch of different ideas that go under that label but they all are sort of an extreme form that is a very unusual perspective another major influence on our society which is basically ended that holds christians are obligated to set up in kind of bureaucracy and there's these figures with names like rj who are associated with this idea that like you're supposed to set up a sort of eddie rainey and it style state except modeled on christianity with christian principles rather than islam. so that is sort of a very narrow and small group then there's this larger i did that i think

you're getting of the seven ideas of culture and which is basically a perspective on the idea that you know, even though it's evangelical christians there supposed to increase their influence everywhere that they find themselves and you know if they're in business, they are supposed to you know, have christian influence in business and politics greater christian influence on politics. i guess that i would say to your specific question about the constitution that you know, there is always been this balance in american life where we have the separation of church and state and we don't have formal religious test for office and we don't have an established single established base but religious groups have always been tremendously influential and sort of watching reform movements and doing things in our politics religiously

inspired so we haveat not actuay separated religion and politics. we've only separated church and state. so if you go back to the 19th century and you look at these important movements, the abolitionist movement, then simply info it's overtly influenced by in certain ways the evangelical christianity of that era, have the social gospel the late 19th century you have prohibition in which you know, people don't look back on necessarily is a huge success but it was a huge social reform crusade motivated by religious sentiment and then you get all aythe way down to martin luther king and you know if you read the letter from birmingham and these are religious documents and making cases toki a country using christian arguments and so there's a version of christian writing religious engagements with politics but there's this inevitable that as long as you have people serious about their religious beliefs and you think

that their religious beliefs have implications and they could be liberal or conservative applications are not going to tell them a that you can't bring those ideas into politics because the religious that is never been how american society has worked and not really realistic to think how it would work in the question then is when was that leading to a kind of a practical intolerance that does fall with the constitution and the separation of church and state and basically it's religious movements sortus of working back and forth were like that push too far like prohibition was basically telling the catholics i mean, i'm stereotyping here and apologize telling catholics how much that they could drink and so on so but that full is part

of the negotiation of democratic politics and i guess my advice to you in writing about the tendencies and specifically evangelical thought is to say that this kind of engagement is inevitable if you have a society where people take religion seriously and the i question is, where does it cross and rustling and what is the difference between having christian motivations for your politics and trying to impose too much and too many theological beliefs on the society as a whole and that is where the argument is i think, it is not you know, people to christianity keep thursday or any religion seriously, gordon wanted to have influence in society and you can have kind of a perfectly secular society if many people the police are religious. >> ellet is calling in from aestheticians, you're on with author ross douthat braided.

>> hello mr. ross douthat, i want to speak about the united states conference and the catholic bishop and wolf needs november 15 and to begin their meeting regarding eucharistic revival and diminished man of faith for many reasons but forpa serious reasons because of the pandemic which many churches in santa rosa. i'm going to read two sentences hopefully, pope francis who has identified in the united states as the source of opposition to his and preach this month that communion is not the report of sinners, i'm sorry but the reward but the bread of sinners and i'm a catholic and i believe

the reconciliation it, repentance for receiving the bread of jesus, the holy communion. >> okay t alan, we would have to leave it muscular reaction to the upcoming bishops meeting. >> also, right basically there is the weakness of institutional religion we been talking back and forth in catholicism has obviously braided been through decades with the aftermath of the pandemic is fake and to putting extra stress sort of lukewarm occasional churchgoers falling way that's at the core of the catholic believers but

the churches thrive on having a court can also a proliferating and if you lose that, it has a lot of negative consequences for the church itself read this is sort of the baseline reality and part of that reality is the sense that a lot of catholics have sort of lost the sense of the sacred around the eucharist and around holy communion election catholics is literally becoming the body thebl blood of christ, such as the symbol, is particularly the source of sacred nests. and so the patient was have a general concern about how the restore that sense of the sacred and how do you get the catholics. to take the mass itself more seriously pretty good but then coexisting without yet this political controversy where the president of the united states is a catholic and bradley clearly diverges from the churches teaching on abortion

and he takes communion every sunday and that there is a big argument in the church with about i think that is fair to say that the pope is on the side of letting not withholding communion from politicians who straight or defect fromch turkmn to church teaching were some american bishops think that you need to do it. and i suppose offer an opinion pretty the problem of the church as it does not have the general credibility that you would need to effectively publicly call a politician to repent rated i think that right now because of the crisis and a lot of other stuff, the people who are not really devout catholics and even many do not take the bishops incredibly seriously as moral arbiters so if you have the

vision of standing up and sang for the of the eucharistic integrity recorded did not joe biden communion, i don't think he would get enough bishops to go along with it to make it actually enforceable and also we would just make the church look sort of partisan to people sort of on the outskirts of catholicism. so all that means it's probably i don't think they're going to do it, there's not going to be an official church from the conference sing the joe biden should not take communion, that's just the wayom to heaven but even in the idea itself is hard to see how it would be effective. but then there's also the problem that democrats that the catholic church has been trying to dialogue with the democratic politicians throw probe choice or a couple of generations now. and the ideae of being it's better to have a dialogue and to draw some kind of hardline to

seem to exclude people from the church that over the course of a dialogue, the democratic party has become more pro- abortion, not less pro- abortion including joe biden used to hold more pro-life positions than he does now. so it's not clear that that strategy of dialogue, is actually gaining anything for the church and all of this is a long way of saying that the church is sort of this impossible choice where they can deny communion and withhold it from joe biden will partisan it will see me the effective are they can just continue with a dialogue that is gotten them nowhere over 40 or 50 years those kind of bad choices are what religious institutions say when they're in periods of decadence for decline unfortunately. >> a text message from paul in florida, what are the working class only for republicans ross douthat, with hardly anything that is done for them.

>> so, you know do we have another two hours. [laughter] so there are a number of answers to that. one the simplest way to look at it, is to say that working-class americans tend to be more culturally conservative and it can take a lot of different forms and sometimes it means that theyre are more religious, sometimes it means that they hold more conservative views about race or immigration it is sometimes in this increasingly -important, just means that thy do not feel sort of condescended to and they do not relate remotely to sort of cosmopolitan academicta progressivism which o say the most of the elite of the democratic party in the world is formed. so if you just frame it in you

know, really specific cultural examples fromes the present rigt so there is the shift in how liberal politicians are expected about women. in the pregnancy because of the desire to be inclusive of transgenderr people where official democratic party rhetoric police and some documents will now say pregnant person at instead pregnant woman or person instead of woman giving birth. this kind of slightly academic mode of speaking broadly to be alienating her seem totally bizarre to working-class americans overall. iner the college educated americans of this very small particular example of a s larger pattern which is that there is just did cultural alienation and between class americans and sort

of well-educated progressives see how the alienation. and then you have the fact that on economic issues, the working-classll voters are stila little more likely to be close to the democrats on a bunch of issues and they are to the republic tense because the republican party economic agenda has been traditionally to cut back or text taxes for all americans or especially upper american americans and not do much else in the democratic party's agenda has been more likely to redistribute money to the working class but there are a couple of things that is happening the last five or six years especially that has abridged that divide and activate on economics in one of the fact is that under donald trump the republican party sort of walked away from a lot of us message with mr. robbie o'brien

about reforming entitlement programs so that was an issue that really turn off a lot of working-class voters who depend on medicare and social security that was part of how barack obama won reelection in 2012, which in saying that to the working-class voters, you know i know you, don't love cultural liberalism but the republicans are going to cut your medicare and i'm going to protect it. so in the trump era, they took those issues off the table basically said that you know we are sort initially committed to medicare reform will put something in our budget that supposedly will change the system over 20 years but basically, were not going to make those cuts were not going to do the paul ryan agenda. and at the same time, trump also made a lot of promises of simple which he didn't some some which he didid on trade and infrastructure were feet you know sort of it himself directly to working-class voters who felt like they had been left behind

by the agenda both political parties under globalization. so for both of those ways, they move the republican party closer to a lot of working-class voters on economics. and that still happens now like if you look into the hood of the campaign in virginia, francis he didn't campaign on deep budget cuts he campaigned on putting more money in schools and cutting gas tax which is something that falls harder on working-class voters often than it does upper middle class voters fight glenn youngkin it to see the republicans doing but it is modest at economic outreach to the voters who have the strong cultural reason is that reasons not to want to vote for the progressives and when you put things together, a republican party doing a little bit towards the economic center, and democratic party with the elite harleys moving towards the cultural left and that is how you get the working-class voters shifting pretty steadily right word even more than they already had under in the ronald ragan

and george w. bush era it also you see that happening to some extent with hispanic voters and this is a big shock for a lot of democrats in 2020 the truck was able to do a bunch of hispanic voters but in fact there a lot who are culturally conservative in various ways who are sort of economically moderate and will not vote for rigid libertarian republic party but they will vote for republican party that said, look we are presiding over a good economy and free covid-19 and you know, trump was willing in the end to spend much money on covid-19 relief and the republican party was basically moderate enough on economics to get more culturally conservative and do better in florida and in texas than democrats expected so anyway, there's a s lot more toe said but d that is a somewhat condensed attempt to describe the dynamics that in t the plage

pretty. >> california, thank you for wanting and you are on with author ross douthat. >> thank you for taking my call. i'm in an area which is fairly poor, very light and some hispanic, pretty good number of native americans. i do not find that the connection with the democrats, both the color concept and everything has any resonance at all and i don't see this concept that these people, the blacks ogindigenous, the people of colr belong together. i don't even know what it really is because many people you know, what is that but as a main and in terms of society that has become much less ritually in spite of what is being said, much less ritually denominate,

people. >> silk what would you like ross douthat to respond to pretty. >> i think that the whole issue of the fact that the rural poor are just as poor as the urban poor and they have just as many problems if not more in some aspect. but in the medical area for example, vast numbers of people die young where i live and there's no reason except the complexity of the system and it makes it almost impossible to find doctors pretty. >> i tell you what, there's a lot their hand is there anything you would like to impact. >> let me try to take two points, that really interesting set of comments and one is that if you are wondering, to connect to the previous question, why do

working-class whites do not respond well to current democratic methods as part of it is precisely what the caller was suggesting, the democratic party messaging, especially in the last few years, has focused a lot on the idea of white privilege has a powerful force in american society and to the extent that right privilege manifest itself and it does, it manifests itself mostly among the upper and upper middle classes and if you are a lower middle-class white prisoner rural white person told you of white privilege of going to look around and you're going to say what you talking about. i don't see that privilege at all. and, you know, this reasonable position to take, if you want to joke mansions voters, and a poor white state like west virginia, the extent to which are going to relate to a liberal message that says, basically that the primary

purposee of them had a party's agenda physicals the racial gap like this just got a message that you're going to relate to and even if sometimes a policy in question would help you, sometimes something that you know the policy that actually would help rural white voters but is being sold as policies about opposing printed closing bridges that again this totally understandable that that messaging just sort of falls flat with the underprivileged door not exactly privileged white working-class for light for so that is one place where i think that the caller is onto something and the other point that at the beginning, you have a lot of voters who are native american and who are often immigrants and hispanic immigrants are african-americans who do not see their own vision of america in the sort of

progressive narrative have you know oppressive whiteness has casino, all-encompassing force. so often times from the democrats and that talking to activists who they see as ctspokespeople for minority vots but in fact, the activists just represent activist groups or bureaucracy for a foundation don't actually represent with the voters themselves think so you have a lot of hispanic voters who believe. strongly in the idea that american dream and the idea that they're getting in america there are doing well in their ethnic background of the color of their skin is not a big impediment is liberalism as all of his time talking about the recent racial oppressiveness to the new market narrative, those voters again are going to say leno i face discrimination here and there but this narrative does not actually describe my experience w,in you get like us up here but you know again to sort of sold

to a single point, there's this moment in which democratic politicians all started to refer to hispanic and latino voters as - latin x voters because it was the most includes immuno non- gender specific nontender the way to refer to latino voters because it was a way of escaping thes gender of these languages. the new hispanic voters who actually think of themselves as latin x, you get like one - 2 percent of people saying that they are latin x so you doing outreach to minority communities using the term of that the minority communities themselves do not recognize that is a very strange way with mask politics and reflexes sort of the way that elite progressivism has

basically undercut we should be a lot of the democratic party's natural advantages with minority voters. >> yes good afternoon, mr. ross tdouthat, i would like to know what are some of the or who are some of the religious thinkers moving to your viewpoint such as perhaps maybe even malcolm - and i also as i understand, you and your family experienced conversions into the pentecostal and into catholicism and a wonder if you could elaborate on your consciousness to some of the intellectual experiences that you had during those convergence that also, tell you what pretty. >> it is all yours mr. ross douthat printed. >> sheriffs are to go back to

france, suggest, when i was a kid, basically did kind of a tour of american christianity where we out as episcopalians and then my mother specifically had experiences as kind of a surface, services that will help with this woman whose name was literally grace, and high school auditoriums around connecticut where people would basically have what were described as an experienced has encounters with the holy spirit so they would be prayed over and it fell on the floor and you know, be slain in the spirit is the language of the pintoto cost us hundred pentecostal thing which is to describe its of this was sort of a pivot point in my childhood and my mother's name is patricia snow and she's actually written a couple of essays about hit but you can find in the internet if you're interested in a more direct description because i was more of an observer.

my parents both of these experiences and we went through a phase of sort of going to pentecostal service and we drove all the way to toronto for this religious revival there at one point. but for me, i watch is experiences, i do not have them myself. i'm not really a mythical personality or maybe god just decided that i didn't need whenever my parents were getting. so then we ended up becoming roman catholics, i think that there was this kind of mystical bridge there where she went from having mythical experiences and under protestant to reading catholic mystics to be sort of the catholic bridging into

the roman catholicism in for me it was much more intellectual and i read you know, fairly predictable writers when i was a teenager who were influential and i was also very happy to sort of entire as an awkward teenager, is very happy to enter aed church we just memorized the prayers nobody asked you to pray spontaneously or testified how the lord jesus to change your heart and that was not, my 14 euros that was not very keen on that part of the pentecost, there is just how mary's instead that came as a welcome relief. but that sort of evidence version and yes, he was quite influential and these are again fairly evil people to have read one writer who i liked and i recommend, especially to the people were sort of you know maybe halfway in and halfway count of religious belief and

really interested in these questions is a philosopher. he wrote a bunch of books and essay collection with a rather the title is gone happy and he wrote a book just with one-word title, religion and has a really long subtitle if you look it up on amazon. a really really smart race catholic sort of semi- catholic really interested in religion brighter who i sort of came to playin real life but a certain kind of influence on some of my writings on religion. so the more obscure name to throw out there and influence for people interested in this kind of stuff. >> christine good afternoon calling in from massachusetts pretty. >> in lucerne valley,

california, don please go ahead with your questions and comments for ross douthat predict. >> hey greetings ross douthat, is aum columnist for the new yok times, i wanted to see your take on the 1619 project, many historians say its unfolding history and advocating crt and racial conflict and as opposed to the more positive virtuous character ethics espoused by the 1776 commission project. >> thank you, ross douthat. >> so that 1619 project was something put together in part by the new york times magazine in my colleagues jones played a big role and i think they're a bunch of different things going on in the project in the

controversy ran in part of what is trying to do i thank you so just basically you know, have a more complete history of slavery in the black experience in america i think this is part in general in what some of the ideas that are in play and i think they'reou just that, justs the idea that we've had a sort of oversupplied your tip about slavery in african-american history, they did not focused i enough on the nature of life under segregation and what happens to african-americans after the civil war. and things like the statutes are part of that where basically white america for certain period of time, told a story about american history was mostly about sort of getting the country back together after thel civil war the left a lot of the

story of black america out and minimize you know, some of the worst things that went on under segregation i think an overly romanticized is certain figures in the confederacy. so that is a long way of saying that i think there is a big part oft this 1619 project is just trying to do that basically trying to tell a more complete history around slavery but then there is also this particular controversy around an argument about the american revolution and you know whether the specific question of whether the founding fathers in the revolutionaries were actually worried about slavery was going to be abolished by the british and so and maybe that is and then, connected to that, there is this sort of historical school that argues that the

economyas was important and more important than a lot of people think to the development of american capitalism and so therefore there is this sort of slavery is basically in both cases, slavery is closer to the root of the market revolution and american capitalism than conventional wisdom holds. i would not want to get into a long argument with myt colleagus averages a very simply that i think that the argument that the connection of the founding's of slaveryin in the connection of early capitalism to slavery, i think his arguments are overstated and maybe ended up a little bit overstated inen somef these pieces had the project. it is more an argument for historian thanst for columnist pretty but i think there's a distinction there that is important which is there is a general desire for more complete

accounting of slavery and racial history that he thinksna entirey reasonable then there is a specific argument about the nature of the american founding and how you know, sort of how compromised it was by slavery. there's a very lineman important controversy that i would be against what we think of as a more conservative side of the debate pretty. >> into light a special ed, he wrote a column for the new york times: the excess of anti- racist education. and you specifically cited two books, robin deangelis white fertility and how to be an anti- race - why those two books. preventing student will in parts because those books between them sold approximately 1.2 salient copies. i was in the summer of 2020, and you know that. around the george floyd protest.

they represent how a certain kind of progressive ideology on race, how to practice in the use of public policies, and views on assorted how we should deal with racism like kind of a corporate antiracist a training freighted that you hear too much about and often straight out of robin dn entered d'angelo's work for lakers and a lot of the pushes to you know, sort of do away with the revised education academic standard and i think to the argument that programs are themselves •-ellipsis you know the revealing differences that are creating differences in any way with an all business display

with a desire to make america a more equal society and deserve justice experience in this shows up in the certified progressive energy right now but to the extent that the ashes is through you know. were doing no gifted education was for talking toxic likeness to latest and i am just rulings that people that is going to have anything like this that's actually phases and think it is more likely to ratify certain

racial divides them to break them down pretty. >> lose two years prior to those two books coming out and equated the term will capitalism in 2018 and headed that occur to you. >> i think it is told from another bearded catholic journalist named matthew walter about 100 percent sure and get credit for the term but i want to say that in the hundred percent sure that equated better yet, i mean, that is very useful resident from the fact that for the training and racist education and so while in the piece as reflected in the force of robert robin d'angelo, they just could not get on board with this in full into their hr process and there's sort of attempt to build a corporate culture so that is what you see all over now and you know the

odd thing is that we had an earlier color about you know, the places evangelical religion in america and the separation of church and state, will historically in the u.s., is also the mission of how the business relates to religion and you have various points where you know sort business seems very secular and materialistic and some takes on elements of religious culture in the 1950s, you know you have an american capitol for cna and they have this unless sort of corporate culture especially in silicon valley and elsewhere were sort of semi- religious progressives ideology. where you know, incorporation will stage an acknowledgment when they talk about have landed

is being held on was taken from a native american tribe right before you know they get into their strategic report or something. it is super weird, that is one thing to be said about this, it is very weird to sort of watch the incorporation of these five again, academic progressive rhetoric into corporate hr and baldwin park, was reflectingrt sort of extent to which is the scene that i think by people who run big companies sort of given something to progressivism. to avoid the kind of bernie sanders version like american corporations, they would much rather you know, have a diversity program and training along the lines at robin d'angelo suggestse in white fertility, than they would be subjected to bernie sanders side tax rate so there sort of the

way in which this is a way for corporations to save your progressives as well, don't access, we have a diversity program and we got antiracist training programs and it is an instance, an attempt to divide the left and have the cultural left incorporation sort of working hand-in-hand printed so as to permit the economic left from you know, raising the corporate income tax rate to buy this most cynical reading on it is not the only thing going on gbut it's one of the things gog on that was like - >> as a fellow harvard alum who was usually impressed with ross douthat, i wonder why he allows himself to appear in front of a profane word, what is his connection with that one of the school, yale and would you tell the viewers how is the only studio available in new haven and anytime that we can avoid doing a video uplink interview is a good day so we made

progress in the video uplink to an actual studio with great audio think. and hopefully next time in person and said you have any connections. >> yes in the text will be more disappointed to hear that not only have i had my harvard background by appearing before this 14th often ignited even go talk a couple of classes yale since returning to new haven and i did grow up in new haven so obviously had the bulldogs in me some level to begin with it is solvable to the service but i will say that you know, if harvard wishes to preempt covid-19's kind invitation to me to occasionally coteach a class, i'm offering a senior faculty position, i am happy to take him up on that offer any time. so if the president of harvard is watching right now was to bring me home, and fully

available. >> field, new york please go ahead with your questions or comments for ross douthat pretty. >> ross douthat will it take to get chronic rhyme and lyme disease is a disease of the healthcare insurance companies stop persecuting doctors who treat chronic and the people that have it in the care they deserve. >> field do you have pretty. >> note my significant other does pretty. >> i am very sorry filled in as you know i k know what you're going through pretty i would offer to possible answers the first is generational change in medical system where you have basically you know, this a very long-standing phenomenon in science where it is less likely that you convert people who believe that sort of committed to an existing paradigm and is more likely that a younger generation it comes along and

just look takes over that recognizes that paradigm is wrong in a different paradigm is needed and i think that case and places them only as you can see this happening there really are a student group of younger doctors and researchers who recognize the chronicling does exist and it almost certainly is caused by you know the persistence of the actual infection, noty just by inflammation work psychosomatic issues and there is a lot of really interesting research going on in places like johns hopkins and columbia, and elsewhere on treatments and so i think that part of what changes just you know, in 20 years time, you will be different group of doctors and researchers asnd the dominant forces and debate and they will be influenced by the researchers is already happening right now and you know, the book that i wrote on the subject is designed to be an entry in that

debate but hopefully it does offer a summary of the reason to believe that this is real than the other thing in this connected these two things are connected to the other issue right is that as you must well know, even for the doctors and researchers who are ready to treat chronic lyme, there's not a single tree cement protocol that everybody agrees that works, is incrediblyy complicatd and i sent myself with the resources you know, being semi- prominent journalist with a lot of sort of financial resources to certain points at my disposal and it's taken me six or seven years to get as well and i'm still not all the way well there's lots ofho people is been even with the best doctors spend long periods of time experimenting and try to find the thing that works for them so the closer that you can get to a single clear you know this drug

works most of the time protocol most of the time is the question of how do you treat chronic lyme disease, the easier it is to overthrow the paradigm that says you should not treated at all like it is not enough basically to have bill to put it in old fashion scientific terms, not enough to say that the system of the solar system it has a lot of problems in it, you needed galileo to come along and say, and here is the alternate system that will replace it is of the closer that you get because of the doctors and the researchers get to a simpler way of treating chronic lyme, the crazy thing is that i am maybe your significant other had to deal with, is the easier it will be for the system as a whole to say, we can switch from our mix denial and agnostic to embrace this clear alternative that we have strong evidence that it actually works

it's less a combined answer in the generational change and more clarity in the question of how you actuallys treat this infection. >> when not for his own definitely asked him or her about their favorite book and here is ross douthat, f scott fitzgerald with the great gatsby, the lord of the rings, and the everlasting a man which he talks about in a book called secret history by the cochlea, did i get the name correctly and what is book about. no no, i'm not nearly that impressive amid the secret history which is a novel by donna hart which is named after the secret history of the novel about classic students get involved in will shouldn't give it away but is given away early and become a murder, sort of a cult of classic students in a

small liberal arts college in the northeast. >> by donna hart, she also wrote the goldfinch was her well-known book that came out, just a few years ago pretty yeah, i try to pick the novels because you know, this paper: this who writes mostly about you know, politics and ideas but in fact, both to save me through my fiction. >> current reading some of victor's - why pretty. >> trying to, so we have a ten -year-old and an eight -year-old and a five -year-old we been listening to these soundtracks and i think we've listened to 1002 and 40 sometimes. and last year or so and in some point like remediation actually read youul know read it this

novel. and the victor hugo novel is about 1400 pages not believe that i've read 500 pages and i cannot guarantee you that i will finish printed and i struggle a little bit to eat in spite of influence on me novels in my everyday existence at somebody's voice reading twitter and static. so thech real challenge but it's also a remarkable sort of step into that kind of novelty because there's really nothing, there's no public to write this today and you know, you have a sort of basic story and then was sent to most the book is just extraordinary confidence that hugo has he's right about everything the world is actually copperheads avoid getting better everyy day and you can put the french revolution it together with catholicism is all going to work together. and for 40 pages and then were going to pause and is going to

tell you about the battle of waterloo and he will tell you aboute that. [laughter] suis just like really emerges in well i would say to go back to my own books known decadent society defined by this kind of reckless confidence and literary style finds aggressive novelistic arrogance and he bit of an contemporary novel it would also bringing your level by selling pretty very talented irish novelist is like this thick and minimalist characters her life, the universe has mysterious and i have the radical ideas and i would like to be religious but i cannot get open together and then turned to hugo and the students are missing the barricades and humility is not logging about

you know, this hand it is just different motives and civilization versus 19th century has interesting to have that feeling even if i can actually get to the end of the book. and you know how it is because i've obviously heard the sound track i think this on track is about 1400 pages long to pretty. >> this is very but i have to say. >> so can stuartt florida prett. >> hi, thank you very much, is really interesting. excuse me, i am very old i have a slight list and i have about six decades, long-ago religion turning team and i love to some of the priests and the nuns

handed catholic organizations but i believe the catholic church is unable to change. because by today, we should have been having a section of the priesthood that would allow to married women should be able to have the same authority has priests and offer holy communion. and it seems to me that catholic church is declining in the western world and in 50 or 100 years it will be a shadow of itself so i would like to hear your thoughts and respond. >> thank you very much rebellion. and ross douthat you only have two - three minutes to expound on that big question pretty. >> probably for the best so yes,

the story of catholicism in the western world is a story declining at least for the next 20 years or so in the united states ico would expect that to continue and i think the problem with yourself is more complicated than just because we actually have plenty of examples and models of churches protestant churches the episcopal church the luther church in and elsewhere that have done exactly as he says rightly that it has they have married clergy and female pretty sad they have you know shifted their positions on various issues for theological and moral in most cases they have the same problems that catholicism has her worst problems for institutional decline in sort of a greater loss of cultural influence so whatever is happening to institutional religion was the world going it is not just a simple matter of these churches haven't kept up with thehe times, they need to become more liberal and certain friends because we have model tried that they have not had

great success pretty i think the challenge in the 30 seconds left is slightly different, it is to adaptpt without losing core elements of catholic tradition that are still attractive to a lot of people and i think that the celibacy from of creases comes with a lot of problems and contribute to thehe church problems in various ways presumably you could get a few more priest to be allowed married clergy and the same time, the virtuous celibacy is an ancient christian principle and one that catholicism has depended upon 2000 years and some presenting that principle at allll anymore, is reason for the existence of someone called into question and so that i think gibson may g be some way f getting at the challenge that there's christianity it cannot survive if it doesn't seem to be

offering something that is actually timeless or connected to the church of jesus christ which was the only church, extremely big on celibacy and the thing goes for the question about the eucharist in the communion you were talking about earlier in thest question is uncivil is how do you adapt, is how do you adapt while preserving these essentials without which it would not have anything to deliver it all and if i knew exactly how to strike a balance, i would be in rome right now writing memos to the pump instead of being here with all of you fine people. >> ross douthat other now of six books, his most recent is the deep places that memoir of discovery rather accidental book or not one that you are publicly planning on writing. what is your next book going to and do you know yet predict. >> i do not know for sure, no one i don't plan to get infected with any new diseases, god

willing so probably not in other memoir, maybe something about religion it and believe in god that is we have been talking about europe maybe something totally unexpected like a fantasy novel, who can say. spending thefor last two hours with book tv. ... comcast is partnering with 1000 community centers to create wi-fi enabled booth so students from low income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything.

♪♪ comcast, along with these television companies support c-span2 is a public service. >> with the u.s. senate not in session, joint us all week for book tv tonight, i look at recent in-depth programs. we begin with ross on conservatism in america. privilege, fact religion and secular society america before and after the pandemic. two hours later, our guest dan dunbar discusses native american turn history, women's liberal movement and mark. her books include indigenous peoples history of the united states and a nation of immigrants. after that, conversation with carol swayne who served as vice chair president comes 1776 commission. she talks about critical race theory, 1619 project, immigration and more. her books include we the people,

1776 report and recently published black eye for america. starts tonight 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2 and you can access our programs online at book tv network follow along on c-span now. >> next from a book tv's in-depth program historian and activist, outlaw women, indigenous peoples history the united states and recently published not a nation of immigrants. >> roxanne dunbar ortiz, i want to start our conversation today with a quote from your most recent book, not a nation of immigrants.n you writeup that claim the unitd states is a nation of immigrants is the benevolent version of u.s. nationals. what you mean by that? >> in the