>> "faith seeking freedom" libertarian christian answers to tough questions is the name of the book. norman horn, doug stuart, kerry baldwin, dick clark and the ford by lawrence reed. >> thank you so much, peter. dam,

revisited." host: author mary eberstadt author mary eberstadt why are there two versions of your book adam and eve after the pill and adam and eve after the pill revisited? care to books peter. the first one written about 10 years ago called adam and eve after the pill was what i call a microscopic look at the effects of the revolution to individuals with men, women, children and a decade later adam and eve after the pill revisited which is a macrotopic of the revolution on politics on society and christianity itself.

so the aperture has been widened. >> what are some of those macrotrends? >> well it's a long story. let's try to do the short version here. d i've been interested for a long and tracing the fault lines that are beneath society as you know it. i'm not a reporter, i don't look at the surface. i tried to get underneath the trends that are transforming our these trends is the sexual revolution and the concomitant of christianity which begins really in the early 1960s. what is the effect of these combined trends? one thing that has happened his families have gotten smaller. families are more broken than they used to be and many people live alone who didn't use to and

this has been a transformative effect on our world. we can talk in more detail about that one but the collapse of the family has meant that we are sending more and more people into the world that don't havedi experiences with the primal community, the community of the family and this i think is what we talk about on the surface. we talk about the divisiveness of our politics. when we talk about the fact that people seem polarized and at each other's throats to do believe underneath that are the accumulated factors of six decades now that it resulted in children who are less socialized and resulted in people who know less about each other's human beings because they didn't get that practice in families. >> we are going to show headline from "the boston herald" in 1960 and thisto is about the fda

approving the contraceptive pill. you can see it right there in the screen. in your view, that event changed the world. is that fair to say? >> i think it was the mostt transformative thing that happened since eve took the apple in the garden of eden and the reason is that transformed relations between men and women first of all. we to go back to the early 1960s to realize that people thought this would be a positive thing. they thought giving more people power over their fertility, they thought it would strengthen society because women would be able to join the workforce in droves if they did. they are no longer tied to large families. something strange happened during the next few years. instead of strengthening

marriage it looked as if contraception had a destructive effect. suddenly divorces skyrocketed and cohabitation also skyrocketed. abortion quickly became legal and there were millions and millions of those. so what happened here? why was this thing that was supposed to liberate humanity having such a negative effect? secular economists have looked at this and they have concluded that what happened was the birth control pill meant that men were no longer responsible. there was no such thing as a shotgun wedding which is a fate that some listeners may not have heard of but it refers to the fact that if a woman got pregnant the man was typically held responsible. birth control is a game-changer this way because it meant women were held accountable usually exclusively whether or not they became pregnant was the woman's

problem and a woman's issue. , simultaneously a course that made them and less relevant in the situation. there is a wonderful sociologist named lionel who wrote the book called the decline of males over 20 years ago when he argues the pill had essentially sideline men. they weren't needed anymore. only women were in control of theirhe fertility. so these are seismic changes in the relationship and today when we talk about the problem with men for what to do about all of these men i think what we are seeing in substantiation of this trend that i'm describing begins in the early 1960s. >> mary eberstadt you ride in adam and eve after the pill revisited you ride that since the pill was introduced there has been a rise in abortion and unwanted pregnancy rates p

that's a paradoxical effect but that's why my first book adam and eve after the pill revisited talks about the paradoxes of the sexual revolution. a lot of this fallout was unexpected and talking about the sexual revolution peter i want to make clear i'm not being monocausal. that's a bad word. i'm not saying there's one cause or the deterioration we are seeing around us is what i'm saying is that is the one cause that has not been stressed sufficiently in sociology or by church leaders or by others in authority. it's a thing that's hardest to talk about and i think we need to talk about it because splitting the human adam the way that we did in the 1960s and beyond is led to one of the worst problems of their time. >> a quote from adam and eve

after the pill revisited just to give viewers an idea of the themes you are talking about in the book. you can expand on any of them you want. dates are very short quotes. the sexual revolution in dewars is a force of modernity. second "back six decades of social science have established the most efficient way to increase dysfunction is to increase fatherlessness. the third quote, christian believers are in open railing uncharted waters and finally posts 1960s disorder was generating casualties of all kinds. anything there you'd like to expand on? >> all of it. i'd like to start with the idea of casualty because everyone knows these subjects are difficult to discuss.

everyone has lived in some kind of family that have been affected by all of the trends under discussion i raised the trend of fatherlessness and are not trying to point fingers or make people feel bad that i'm trying to connect the dots so the generations that come next might suffer a little less from the trends that we are describing. after the first adam and eve book came out over 10 years ago there was one thing that surprised me which was the emotional resonance of the book. this was not a self-help book. this was a undertaking to discuss the effectski of social revolution and anthropology and ito had nothing to do with theology and none of my book depends on theology at all. i'm not a theologian but i was very surprised the leaders who got in touch by e-mail and otherwise to say this chapter on really resonate with me.

let me tell you the story of how it destroyed my marriage. for example and there were harder stories that i heard from all over. so the thesis that the sexual revolution was having negative consequences that were not well understood seems to be vindicated by these personal stories, these broad testimonials for people to talk about how they were worried about raising their child without a father for example. so there's a lot of emotional resonance and intensity that i didn't expect it was part of why i continue to look at that subject in the second. >> mary eberstadt cameron dicker bugs you talk about a high schoolgirl who was pregnant and it was quite a scandal and today

that doesn't rate and eyeblink. >> that's a snapshot that tells us how the world changed after orthe 1960s. the story goes like this, i grew up in broome upstate new york in the small town and down the street at one point was a young teenager who got pregnant and it was the talk of the neighborhood because the father was a young soldier returned from vietnam did not intend to marry her. that is to say the scandal was not about her. what was thought was that she was a single mother. she went away and have the baby to return to school and there wasch no social programs. to my knowledge it was directed at her. 20 years later i went back and was talking to a former teacher and she said a third of the

girls graduating high school that year were pregnant great none of them were married. in this 20 year gap i think we see what was repeated in america this story by the millions were no longer waswh it thought pregnancy was something that two people were responsible for present mymy only one person usually a frightened young woman was responsible for. and that was a step backwards. >> how did you get from rube mark -- grimm new york to washington? >> well i was very fortunate. i went to cornell university on a scholarship and after that i thought maybe i'd like to be a philosophy professor and i double majored in philosophy and government but i decided to take the year off and to make a long story short i started riding and i got involved in new york journalism especially in smaller

intellectual magazines that are not the same today that they were back then. back then in the 1980s there was public interesting commentary. they were very exciting places towe ride for you to hang out ad in and i ended up an assistant editor in the public interest magazines by irving kristol a legendary writer and from there i ended up doing riding for major officials in the reagan administration. one was jeane kirkpatrick the investor to the united nations and from there ended up speechwriting for secretary of state george shultz for two years. >> what is your full-time job currently? >> we have four children and there is. i did very little riding. 15 years they were growing up

and once they were in school i s came back. >> you are with a pink tank now argue? i'm i'm a senior research fellow at the institute and to hold a chair information center in washington d.c.. >> is it fair to say you are practicing catholic? >> i try. stemem >> the forward of your most recent book adam and eve after the pill revisited was written by cardinal -- stomach cardinal george pell of australia was a great intellectual and spiritual leader and i will not pretend that i knew him well. but he was kind enough to take an interest in some of my riding. we had corresponded about some of the scenes in my book. for example one thing that caught his eye with a minute patient that i wrote about the theme of chaos.

in 1930 when the great novelist converted to catholicism he who was asked by newspaper why he did that. he just throughout this line and he said because in our civilization now the choice is between christianity and chaos. now the chaos of his time was very different. in the 1930s he entered the war period and there was political chaos and carnage of the 20th century and world war ii. the chaos in our time was very different and yet weff are seeig it in more detail than what was specified so i wrote an essay about that outlying intellectual chaos, chaos within the idea itself and cardinal george powell because of that essay and they offered to ride a forward for the book. >> cardinal pell went on to ride

teaching over the years has been coherent and consistent. what did he mean by that? >> well he meant the catholic church stood as a quote sign of contradiction -- in the world and whatever was going on around it, it would continue the same teachings. its teachings go all the way back. when jesus tells the disciples unlike the jewish people his people are not allowed to divorce for example. the disciples were the first to complain that these are hard subjects but there's consistency that draws people in. all of the things available to the romans you name it, divorce etc. were put off-limits and this teaching has not changed. of course we talk about mercy

because those are also teachings but the idea that human beings if they were were being held to a higher standard is consistent and justice that idea has repelled many people and that many people are all of the centuries it has also drawn others in. >> i want to go back to quote we read earlier and talk about this. christian believers are open whirling unchartered waters. you want to talk about in your book the church of life and christianity life. what do you mean by that? >> under the pressure of the sexual revolution was to entity has buckled and what they mean by that is there's always the desire to accommodate these radical changes in the way people live. so let's not the judge.

let's soft-pedal the teachings that people don't like abutts talk just about the teachings that they doop like. some churches mainly protestant churches have completely abandoned these kinds of teachings that go all the way back to jesus. they lightened up on divorce and they have lightened up on homosexuality and they have lightened up on pretty much anything that the sexual revolution would claim as a a prerogative. the interesting thing is at the results of this has been institutional decline for the churches that ran this experiment. the anglican community for example comes to mind here. the anglican community is coalescing. i read a story recently with a headline that said though the last person to leave the anglican egg -- anglicanism turn off the lights? every denomination.

the church of nice was split over the church of nice and ended up going in the nice direction have not flourished as a result. so here we have a paradoxical thing. because you would think being nice to make it more likely that people would show up in your church. instead the opposite is true people it's been learned is that strong churches, -- churches are strong asyi the saying goes. the more churches stick to their original foundation the more likely they are to pull people in. this doesn't mean thell catholic church is driving these days, far from it. you see secularization across denominations that the collapse seems to have been worse for the churches that decided to jettison the most unwanted teachings, the teachings that make our contemporaries most uncomfortable. >> mary eberstadt tie that into

the 1960s fda approval of the contraceptive pill on the sexual revolution. >> the pill becomes the biggest temptation of all time. if you were to ask people what they would on for most of without comp -- and it was widely embraced including by catholics and get what we saw was the churches including thehe catholic church shied away from traditional teachings acus they didn't want to make people uncomfortable in the post revolutionary era. so we have this dynamic where the decline of the family with the pill fuels the decline of faith and the decline of the practice of institutional organized religion. we can talk a lot more about that one if you'd like. >> let's look at your book, it's

dangerous to believe. this came out in 2016 and i believe in the bucketfeet expound on this for more than two centuries americans have prided themselves on their commitment to freedom of religion. leaders who lean in a more secular direction might be surprised to hear that anything has happened to shake that bedrock pledge yet in recent years that historic commitment to freedom has come under siege. >> this is because the sexual revolution is on a collision course with traditional christianity and traditional judaism. there is no getting around it. traditional christianity had a bedrock set of teachings that were unpopular in roman times and have been unpopular ever since. along comes the sexual revolution and its devoted partisans which i think includes the great majority of the country at this point.

obviously the opinions were describing our minority. the question is how destructive is that bite and i think it's very destructive of the united states. for example let's talk about how christian adoption agencies have been shut down in some states. clearly the pressure coming at them and coming from people who want to replace the teachings of christianity with the anything goes sexual revolution theology. i really believe this has become a rival space to christianity. we have to ask ourselves is this good for people? is a good for those adoptees to miss out on a loving home just because the parents that are, as have happened, is it good for the poor among whom the little sisters of the poor work to

clobber the little sisters of the poor with lawsuits for contraception. who does that help? it doesn't help the little sisters of the poor doesn't help their work among the poor. my point is when we see this collision and we see the attemptsol to kneecap good works done by we are seeing something that is bad for the worst among us -- the worst off among us and i don't think this is well understood. the people that are ideological about the sexual revolution go after christian good works routinely and this is not called out and the question of who is hurting is not called out and that's why emphasize it in the book. like i want to ask you the supreme court decision on row v. wade last year. after 50 years of legal abortion

that premise ended. should abortion in any case be legal in your view of? >> i'm a constitutionalist and i think turned the question back to the states was an overdue constitutionalist correction. dobbs was a very important decision. it represents the first time since the 1950s that there has been serious institutional rollback on the question involving the sexual revolution. dobbs the supreme court says in effect a week off is wrong and we turned back to the state. i think it may be a game-changer not only in the u.s.. elsewhere in the world because what happened after roe v. wade his country after country watching in the united states came to adopt similar laws, came to legalize abortion where it

had always been criminalized for example. those countries i think and those leaders are now having second thoughts as well. this decision will reverberate and i would predict that it will have a good effect in the united states because if there are more babies among us that will be a humanizing thing not a bad thing. this is another issue that we should talk about. what humanizes people? it seems like a simple question. taking care of people who are smaller and weaker or older or sicker than they are is one of the ways to be humanized and in traditional families after the interruption of the 1960s this is done routinely. young people are taking care of old people were taking care when everyone knew what to do with the baby etc. but i'm not

romanticizing it and i'm not saying we should go back to the 1950s which is a decade i didn't live in and i'm sure most of our viewers haven't either. what i'm saying herere though is babies have good effect, not neutral effects just as having to take care of other people has good effect on people. with the collapse of the family i think we have seen a generalized -- that is increased in our society is people are out at the practice of taking care of others. simultaneously christianity is in decline and they are not being told that one of their jobs on earth is to take care of others. these two things i think have affected us. >> mary eberstadt when you look at the election results following theyook dobbs decisiot favors those who work pro-choice and favored abortion rights. so realistically did this

decision hurt your point of view? >> no because i'm not a politics kind of person. i want to know what the right argument is. i want to know what's really going on out there and i'd rather be right than see my party elected. >> mary eberstadt is our guest the author of several books. we will show you those in just a minute. you've seen a little bit of our conversation so far. we want to include you in this as well. here's how you can participate. the numbers on your screen 2027 for 80 to one if you live in a mountain and pacific timezones and if you can't get through on the phone lines and you want to make a comment this is the text number 2-027-488-2903.

if you send a text please include your first name and your city if you would. social media several ways to contact us as well. just remember @booktv for facebook or twitter and her e-mail address is booktv @c-span.org. we'll begin taking those calls in just few minutes. mary eberstadt first book came out in 2004 called -- the hidden toll of daycare, behavioral drugs and other parent substitutes. the letters, the common tale of life death and atheism came out in 2010. how the west lost god in 2013. it's dangerous to believe religious freedom and its enemies came out in 2016. how the sexual revolution created identity politics in

2019 and adam and eve after the pill revisited came out in 2023 the first adam and eve came out in 2013. i believe it was. we will begin taking those. mary eberstadt the subtitle, how the sexual revolution created identity politics. tie that together for us. >> i think not only the united states but many other countries in the western world are in the midst of an identity crisis. who am i is the question. where is this coming from? again getting back to the world before the 1960s, there were two fundamental answers to that question. i'd like to think one was horizontal, who am i that could be answered by him my relationship with other human beings in the family. if you were to say who are you a common response would be i'm a

mother, i'm a sister i'm an aunt and cousin and we could define ourselves relationally that way. simultaneously most people throughout history have had some belief in the cosmos in a deity and vertical relationships. so what happens when the family family -- and the churches go? the conventional way to answer that question of who am i are off the table for many people. so we see this migration into politics, and to specifically identity politics. there's an important point here, there's an important point that is not well understood especially amongng conservative. conservatives like to poke fun at the idea of sectarians into

call them snowflakes and to say that millenials are impossible to understand and they are so sensitive etc. but when i look at those generations i see suffering. i see real suffering on account ofre not having what most human beings before us had, robust families with connections and protection and love, connections to organized religion which provides community and good works and redemption and words likeli that that we don't use so much anymore. these seem to be things that people need in perpetuity and the fact that so many young people grasp for these things and can't reach them and go into politics instead, i think is a very plausible way of by identifyinges identity politics and why it's arisen since the

1970s. the work was first used in 1977. in a document by radical feminists who announced they were giving up on that. they don't trust anyone to have their backs except for each other. it's where that phrase identity politics first appeared. this is very suggestive because this is the generation that first comes of age after the sexual revolution. the first move there is to declare men and women can get along any longer. from their identity politics leads to block lives matter. black lives matter manifest which is hetero normative but he of the nuclear family. it also declares there were apparently new problems in relationships between men and women. so this is all to say that identity politics does not arise out of nowhere. it's coming up the a shattered

post revolutionary world. we should have a lot of empathy for the people who are drawn into this way of doing politics eventh though this way of doing politics i think is very devices for the united states. spring from your book primal scream's economists say the subsidized something is to ensure more of it. and this is essentially what the sexual revolution is done but it inadvertently subsidized androgyny erasing the penalties for traditional masculinity and femininity. >> lot of people are puzzled by how androgynous society has become. i am not because i think what has happened is since the splitting of the human adam the penalties for being say traditionally feminist have risen. the traditional housewife is

widely not in the idea of getting married andil having a family as your primary purpose in life makes you retrograde and makes people laugh at you. simultaneously men who are tradition minded are also exiled for different reasons come because it's thought they are patriarchal and. so these being the limiting case is what we see is as a lot of pressure to gravitate towards some more androgynous theme. therefore it shouldn't be surprising to see androgyny for example to see it the whole that -- the whole that it has over the imaginations of younger people. .. just getting to understand, it appears that the

natural family as a -- the and the gradual now recognizablesc muffling of that symphony is surely an important overlook the part of the story of how certain western men and women came not to hear the sacred music anymore. >> guest: to make a long story short there, when sociologists look at religion there's ais tendency for people to think sure such and such a family has lots of kids because they are religious because their religion tells them so. there is in fact what's called an iron locket applies across ls islam, judaism and christianity the more religious people are the more children they have. this is true. what i do and how the west really lost god's turn that

thesis on its head and argue may be some of what we are seeing in the decline of christianity is the fact people are no longer living and robust extended families. in other were there something about birth for example that transports many people into a different frame ofdi mind. transcendent frame of mind and there is something about standing at an open grave which we do less and less of it. that confirms the notion there something about the cosmos it's not just about me and a dead person. the less we do of these the less experiences we have of birth and death and taking care of the sick the less likely we are to get those glimpses into something more eternal than we are hurt that is what that book is about. >> host: before go to because i

want to read a couple of your quotes. and i apologize if these are not original to you but they stood out to me. you describe the 20th century as men have forgotten god in the 21st century as a men are at war with god. >> guest: in 1984 alexander gave a very important address in which she said the problem of the 20th century could be summarized in four words men have forgotten god. what he meant was the carnage of the war in the 20th century would not have happened had christians really believed what they said. so i tookto that quote and thout how we would describe our time. i think men are at war with god is a fairway of trying to

summarize what we know so far of the 21st century. and what i mean is that we are out for it with creation itself. we are at war with the very idea of a created order from birth, which we want to control in every way possible to just where we see this increasing press for euthanasia because we want to be in control to the basic fact of mail and female which we also seek to control. and there is i think and anger about this war on the created order that is assured that is another outcome of these radical changes that began in the 1960s. >> host: letter from glen coming glenncoming in from freely, inie you are on with author one. >> thanks. i would like to ask about with

religion. like how we have a free market of religion here in america versus places where there is an official religion might be one of the reasons organized religion is doing better here than in some other places. and specifically islam which as i'm sure you know isn't abraham based on judaism and christianity with the same stories and profits and all. pope john paul ii actually -- i think the following popes viewed islam not so much a competitive but rather a partner in the fight against secularism and certainlyn lots of the cultural stuff you have been talking

about. i have been wondering what is your opinion of his long? do you view it as more positive or negative and specifically do you see it more of a competitor a partner? what we've got your point a lot to chew on there. >> guest: thinking for us not question but trying to duck it but i do want to emphasize that and how the west really lost god i limit myself to talk about christianity and to some extent judaism because islam is not something i have studied intensively. now that said i think we can generalize about all organized religions they share at least this in common. they tell us that we have to work to be good. they tell us that our nature it does not start out good. we have to work on ourselves and get someplace.

and once more with the declines of christianity we are seeing another unintended consequence here which is the idea we don't run ourselves anymore we are perfect right the way we a are. fluent a walk at the door in our pajamas that's just great we can do that. we can do anything we want. in other words there is a radical autonomy that seems to rule in many places now. that would not be ruling if rolf people took organized religion more seriously. see what edward from keyport new jersey good afternoon. >> thank you, good afternoon. i find flaws in two points i think it's the opposite that secular is better for the world. my two points is prior to 1960 people brought their full family units of god-fearing christians the genocide the indians, the second point of going to make all of the god-fearing bureaucracies in the world their economic impoverished.

people pray five times a day in some places and they cannot pave a road. i really believe secularism is the way of the future. technology and logic is the only path forward for humanity thank you. stu and edward do you consider yourself an atheist? >> i would probably go further if i against god if god was proven as a real concept of the against and i'm a freethinking individual. i am a sentient being just because he created us doesn't mean he controls us. even if you could prove to be god's right ob against it. >> host: thank you for calling in, mary eberstadt? >> guest: i would make two pointsak here. one is the united states became the most powerful country in the world during the years in which the vast majority of the public was churchgoing or synagogue going or observant in some way. that is to say i don't think there is much evidence for an ever inevitable clash between

organized religion and capitalism. but on another point whether it's good or bad for society christianity ebbs out there is a set of evidence we should consider here. that is about what churchgoing people do. i'm not saying this to romanticize the churches are the churchgoing people but it is a sociological fact i was proven in a couple of books by arthur brooks for example. people who go to church or synagogue's people who are religious or farmer likely to give to charities for example. and so as we see less of christianity we will see less of those kinds of good works. they're more likely to volunteer for their more likely even to donate blood. in o other words the constant message you need work you need to do good things doesn't seem to seep down at the grassroots

levelgr it affects personal behavior. that affects it in a weight that i think is good for society. we went edward talked about science versus religion. are they compatible? are they in competition in your view? >> and no. that is a misunderstanding that comes about largely because of the success of the new atheism of over 10 years agohe now when the bestseller lists were dominated by several voices like christopher hitchens, daniel bennett, richard dawkins, and what we saw in that new atheism was a new stridency about religious people. the ideal is not only were they stupid, they were bad. they were bad for society. but something like this religious people committed the atrocities of 911. therefore all religious people

are potential terrorists. i think even without elementary logic people could see why that doesn't hold up. stu and you also write in your books the atheists do have a strong argument against organized religion because of the child sex scandals the mistakes that have been made. >> there is a lot of room to criticize the churches. i think the fact of the sex scandals was something that helped to s propel the new atheism. we've talked about two different things though. we are talking about behavior on the one hand and whether something is true on the other. you will get no argument about the agreed justness of the sex scandals which i wrote about at length in several essays. however the question of whether

it what the church teaches is true is something entirely separable from personal behavior is anything but the scandals approved is what the church teaches people are born with originalprth sin and they have o redeem themselves. >> host: tried wide with four kids and a writing, how did you manage to do both? >> mostly i didn't. i did not write for a good while while they were growing up. >> did you miss it? >> no because it was not the most important thing i was doing then. >> when you write your books where you write them? >> were to buy rate them? often i write them in my head at 4:00 a.m. in the morning and as soon as i wake up put it down on paper. >> host: and longhand? >> guest: yes, yes i make the notes in long hand and a type of the argument. >> california you are on the air. >> thank you for taking my call.

question i get asked, i am 78 where things are better when you're younger are they better now? i find the answer is it depends who you are and where you were in society. so growing up a white and frankly privilege whatever that means but i accept it. it was a totally different world than african americans, than hispanics, then all sorts of groups who are now doing much better but there people who are doing worse. i do not know how you qualify make the judgment as to society is better, society is worse you have to look at individuals. there are an awful lot of things one would dispute the 50s were that way. i look back and i honestly think there are some things much better and there were some things are much much worse.

just my comments, thank you very much. >> yes, thank you that is eighta nuanced view. i am starting from the premise that what people need is connection with other people. i am using a variety of evidence to support that statement. so for instance let's talk about animal science which is something i discuss in primal dl screens at some length. because we have learned new things from animal science. we have learned for example there is no such thing as the lone wolf. wolves do not run around by themselves anymore than people do. they usually exist and aussie and harriet so nuclear families. this is true for most other mammals that have been studied. no why is this? becausee it gives them protectn of a kind because you're safer in numbers. and also because from an

evolutionary perspective this is where social learning takes place is in animal families. monk is not born how to be monkeys they learn to be monkeys by watching other monkeys and connecting with them. we see this most clearly in the experiments on animal separation that were done where babies separated from mothers and others in the community quickly become dysfunctional. usually so dysfunctional they can no longer be returned to animal society. what does this tell us? animals are dysfunctional when they're separated from their own. the funny thing is, we can see this very clearly in the case of other species. we know elephants for example suffer if they are separated from the elephant families and those to one reason why elephants are no longer in circuses. this is something i am applying

to homo sabeans. we to suffer only have radical disconnections from people around us. we don't have friends. when we don't have families who depend on the animal scientist on the most exciting kinds of unexpected evidence that supports some of what i'm saying your pic looks merry on you you talk about christianity are you referring to the catholic church or protestant churches as well? >> if i say christianity i'm talking about both. >> is there a difference when it comes the topics you're discussing? >> in general it seems as if the protestant denominations have suffered the biggest collapse. dispense with traditional teaching things likeac marriage and family. some have also split i don't

it's a conservative and liberal wings. >> the methodist church. >> tradition minded wing. but there is no doubt the trend of secularization is affecting all the christian churches. >> host: have you look at the growth of a maga churches on the prosperity gospel joel oh students of the world? but it seems to prove is the stricter the church the stronger the church is likely to be. in other words people still leave churches with strong teachings term there are even more likely to leave churches that they come and see us on nice. because we are next test method shoot my name is ken morris i reside in richmond, kentucky. my question is my background is retired u.s. mc retired

instructor at kentucky law enforcement academy. ekaterinburg i have researched societal problems affecting law enforcement consequently society. i believe a major contributor is secularism. references the 60s, i pinpoint it to november 1963. furthermore on discussing leadership issues with the department of virginia tech university about the lack of humanity in society i believe your writings are on point could you please address secularism in section revolution. qwest first let me say thank you for your service. secularism in the revolution my view in a nutshell is a sexual revolution became like a great big party that got out o of control. i know it's 2:00 a.m. in the morning and nobody wants to call

the police on the party but everybody realizes something bad has happened and something has to be done. how does that connect to secularism? the revolution became a great temptation. people wanted to embrace it. part of what made it possible to embrace it but to stop taking christianity so seriously. that's part of the story of the decline of christianity. christianity stood like a brick wall against that party that was going on. people decided they did not want it. they would walk away because the church is not scientific are they would walk away because religion was for superstitious people. i think if you look at the historical doubts what's making people walk away very d often as they do not want to be told to do hard things things have became much more difficult after

the invention of the birth control pill precooked another text message christian taxes how does climate change fit in the mosaic of your thinking? >> thank you. i am not a scientist. but in a way the concern about climate change makes me hopeful. the reason i say that as we see young people who are passionate something outside themselves with the example of climate change will protest that will try to change the lives around it. they will become more disciplined because of it because they believe that it's e right thing to do. as a short leap between concern for non- animate creation, climate change and concern for animate creation, human being, family, other people there's a lot of potential synergy there. >> manuel is in la joya

california. meant well you on book tv with author mary eberstadt. are you with us? >> yes can hear me okay? experiments and please go ahead. >> caller: i used to teach to lena law school there only latino my last name is ramos so you guys can lookam me up. clinton invited to the white house and some of the top that used to call us hispanics. the top 100 hispanics for a conference which was a nice recognition. but i grew up as a rich kid in havana, cuba. i was born in havana. i just had my 70th birthday party at my old country club

called club havana. stewart men well i apologize for interrupting but why did you call in today? what would you like mary eberstadt to respond to? >> caller: i want to thank the pope are putting together obama behind-the-scenes we now know obama had to go behind the scenes and role because i was bored u under fidel. and that want to thank the pope and then on his birthday they announce this huge change of relationship between my two countries but you can imagine how emotional i was about that. but i want to ask you, some people say the john lennon song that said the world to be a lot better without religion. and without borders.

that use that song in the olympics in japan and cuba likes to put it on to be all the time. >> you agree with that sentiment?im and so my question for you is my theory. i have got a theory that conflicts are dangerous because of the cuban missile crisis we all know about the cuban missile crisis. that was the closest the world ever came to being destroyed. now john f. kennedy as we all know was our first catholic president. what people don't know is a fidel castro was also raised by catholic nuns and priests. we have two very rich essentially white guys, catholics almost bringing the

world. split men well i apologize we are going to leave it there but there's anything mary eberstadt wants to respond too. interrupt me but otherwise were going to move on to ed and long island, new york. ed good afternoon please go to e your question or comment. >> caller: yes, how you doing mary? i happen to enjoy your works very much. your books are very enlightening. i would just like to ask you how you feel about the current or the recent events on the border. and how you also feel mr. david berkowitz i think his name is. i'm not sure who he is referring to when it comes to the border. >> that is a political question

i've not vertically written about. i have not worked in the united states government i know i took an oath to protect united states of america. i believe in putting national interest first week and have discussions about what exactly that means. this is a question about american national interest in american security. that is as far as i have gotten. sue went the last two callers have mentioned orders manuel and ed talked about open borders as far as cuba is concerned the communists it is a good thing. anything there? >> guest: no not really. sue went pregnant tulsa hi craig. >> thank you i appreciate c-span and appreciate and commend mary

eberstadt for the work she is doing that is outstanding. iwa just wanted to speak about - make their people calling in and point to members and groups. members and groups are not the whole group. i'm certainly not the philosophy behind the groups or the belief. that said i look at the same it's either christianity or chaos. i think that's absolutely true for the atheist ii will step bk and say this class to make a palpable dope to them. even the most of atheist would have to admit the principles in thee bible to create a structure for society that is not chaos. you take ephesians five and six the bible talks about the family lestructure. if you hit it with psychology and sociology put up against it and tested. you find out sociology used really does work. it makes children respect authority and children who

respect the law that is the next generation we need. i think from a functional psychologist or a pragmatist it works and we should use what works. i just wanted to state that and thank you for the work you're doing for. >> thank you very much. that brings up a good point i have a disagreement with the new atheists about this. the new atheists presented a paradigm in which you can believe in god or not believe in god. the true paradigm is everybody believes in something. it is how we are made. it is part of our nature. we have to get passionate about something which is why it would need to ask the question you are asking.? what is true here? is it true a religion that tells people to love one another actually has effects on people that makes them better members of society? i agree with you the answer to that one is yes. be

of an hour left in our conversation with maryy eberstat 7488200 if you live in the east and central time zones. and want to participate 2027488201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific timeho zones. and if you cannot get through on the phone line want to make a comment you can do it via text for social media. text line is 7488903 please include your first name and your city if you would. and when it comes to social media just remember that book tv our e-mail address book tv at c-span.org. march 26, 2023 wall street journal you can't cancel me, i quit. what was the thought then? >> i was invited to give a

speech at thurmond university. i was excited about never having been there. i looked up the local museum which has a great collection of paintings i was generally ginned up for this. and then before i got there typical thing happened in exaggerated fashion which is that some student decided i was a fascist. i have a photo advertising my talk. the press wrote fascist and misspelledis it. posted advertising my speech was taken down onad campus and in te local student newspaper i was being called names i really cannot think there any truth to like hater i was called dangerous et cetera. it turned out the speaker before

me had a very bad experience of this cancellation i think he went to give a talk on got this treatment of people lined up with posters - saying he was a d person a hater and a foe been all of this. he had a three arm guards who guarded him during his talk. their students who left the talk so other students could not come in and sit in the seat et cetera. in other words it says cancel culture on parade. and i thought about it. i thought maybe it was time to make a statement in a different direction. not to have to play this stupid game. and so instead of going and giving my talk with armed guards a big subject to people calling me names that i do not deserve i wrote an op-ed in the wall street journal saying i was canceling myself because i think speakers in this toxic new leet

toxic environment have the power not to play the game. instead i sent 25 of my books to the presidents office at the university so students could get them. i sent them for free. and wrote the piece in the wall street journal and gave a class by zuma. my point to the speakers out there or to anybody who is worried about cancel culture is that you can reframe that situation. he cancel culture situation you faced -- is that different than it was 20 years ago as far as allowing a controversial speaker, and i do not mean to call you controversial -- but, somebody with a point of view. mary: it is much different now. it is much more menacing because there is no rationalism about it -- an irrationalism about it.

some students show up with their mouths duct taped shut. some speakers are subjected to threats of violence. social media inflames all of this. >> people involved in this are doing is cherry picking anything. so they'll find a quote from a radio interview given 20 years ago and take it out of con attention make it look bad. and this kind of cherry picking also very destructive because it distracts from what an author is trying to do it distracts from an argument so begun this is not something that we have to do and maybee if more people cancel themselves, we'll see less of this. that's my hope. >> from your book primal screams you mention -- the stinger charles murray incident thathe middlebury in

middlebury college in primal screams. >> yes. so we need to talk about the irrationalism out there that we see among the inflamed young and particularly among the followers of identity politics. this has nothing to do with an intellectual disagreement with a speaker this has everything to do with an on bound derangement estate that these -- some of these students get themselves into. in the case of charles murray and allison stinger if we reduce what happened at middlebury a bunch of able body college students attacked a 70 plus-year-old man, and sent his hostess on campus middle aged professor a woman to the hospital with an injury.

now, how can these things be happening and once again it goes back to what we write about. people are very disconnected from one another. they are not being socialized many of them in their families or by other institutions like religion and so they're arriving on campuses gravitating into identity politics, and unrevelling as a result and this is something we need to understand. it ise not as usual. this is about being attacked at hominie called a hater, these were not thrown around by protesters back in the day or by the civil rights movement. these are new labels that

they're no relation but there's something to be concerned. >> allison stinger and -- they agree with charles murray intellectually but wanted to have thisel dialogue many this conversation for the students. >> yes that was especially striking. she was just the facilitator. she wasas just in the room and e was collateral damage. >> what's happening on campuses and elsewhere today is not merely a sued politics of self-regard it is all panic, all of theit time, served up with me than a smidgen of violence. you use the word pan panic there. >> it is no secret that mental illness about that rising among the young. you kindly refer to the first book i published home alone america which was about young people about children and adolescents and there's a whole

chapter in there about what we could see already 20 years ago which was that -- the rise in anxiety and distress and panic and depression especially was real, that therapists didn't think this was some art fact or better at discovering it but young people they were seeing were increasingly exhibiting these kind of traits. that trend described 20 years ago has intensified so much that it's often a front page news story whenever the latest study comes out. so why are we seeing all of this mental illness psychiatric trouble, there's no doubt that social media plays a parts on this. social media is throwing gasoline on the fire. obsession with imagery gasoline on the fire -- it's about this free floating

lack of connection. that's having destructive distress on young. >> in north carolina please go ahead with your question or comment for mary -- >> yes. i'm enjoying this conversation. very much -- so i had two quick questions, first of all at what point in american history did you think that started to happen? i think it's actually started to happen in the late 1800s. and second question is -- where is this all going? we're already seeing the breakdown of ours institutionis to break down family, to break down law and order. if we don't turn around and recognize that we need god in our country, we're just going to end up resulting a total collapse of our society.

and so i like to get your -- perspective on that. >> thank l you, greg. >> thank you. to take that last part which is very important, i do want to say if there are reasons for being hopeful here because it is easy to despair about some of these issues -- but i take hope from the fact that in between first adam and eve book and now with the new one, it has become possible to talk about these things more broadly than itt used to be. back when the first book came out through question sexual revolution in any way was forbidden. it wasn't talk about in the mainstream process, write me off of the religious fanatic even though there's no -- theology in the book the book is

meantt to appeal to all readers all of my books are. ten years later, we seen a number of books and on different countries interestingly all of them written by women and all of them questioning what i was questioning ten years ago which is -- is this new world relive in good for romance. is this new world good for children? secular writers in discretion -- so i'm really ep couraged by that because if you look at bad episodes of human history, if you look at, for example, the problem with jen that a lot of english people are having in london, right before the victorian era, there were terrible things afoot children were- drinking jean mothers wee drinking gin pregnant women and foreigners went after this and said this isn't good for you or the baby. and the result was a --

a religious awaken and a social awakening, and it became one of the reforms of the victorian era to renorm and stop people from hurting themselves quite as badly. that is likely outcome of where we are now why it is important to draw attention to it. >>y i saw article recently that the survey of english -- bishops the overwhelming majority said it is true england is no longer -- what does thatr say to you? >> it says that the thesis in the west lost god is correct. the collapse of the family in england and in other places became inexcrippable from the

collapse of the church even though the commune i can was troy trying to play nice and saying we won't push these things hard that people find objectable despite all of that trying it is no longer a christianch country or that majority of people identify as children. >> 1980s moral majority ronald reagan was that a religious reawakening? >> not from the point of view of sociology. but it brings up an interesting point. there's a ten city to be a kind of hegalian to think religion is in inevitable decline and atheist talk about this and religious people think about it that's why they despair because they think that this is some historical process that is going

to end with everybody being village atheist. but history itself refutes that point of view. because what we see if we look at examples from history, is thatat religion doesn't go like this. religiones waxes and wanes in te world and looks like a wave, so for example in victorian london, there was market more rereligion than in the proceeding years and the idea that only the idea that materialism t draws out god that the richer we got the less we need religion is also falsified by example of victorian london because the o religious revival was led from the top. it was the people at the top of the socioeconomic ladder who were more likely to be going to church and professing belief we see this pattern in the united states including today.

similarly, after world war ii, there was a religious boom in all of the countries of the west including places that are very secular today. like new zealand, for example, and across europe. came back from the war, and they filled the churches. you can see this reflected in what hollywood was offering all of those sandal movies about christian stories. the ten commandments, the singing nonwhatever -- the point is that people are going back to church and this revival which is not -- this religious boom which is not nearly as well known as baby boom that accompanied it, continued up until around 1963. so in other words, this kind of lazy that tells us that whatever is going on will go on inevitably until the end is -- is refuted by historical

example. >> text message from nicole in fortrt lauderdale ms. ebberstat you have overgeneralizing i have two stay at home and mothers and no one mox them and working moms wives and working moms would love to be stay at home but their families need two incomes to make ends meet. the cost of living is just too high. >> yes. point taken, and it's impossible to have a conversation about such large subjects without overgenerallyizing and i'm sure everybody can think of counterfactuals tosu any given point being made. but in saying that the stay at home mom has become this socially less acceptable option in the dominant conversation, i think is eminently defensible. because the social pressure is on the side of moving into the

paid work place. and the economic pressure agree point taken. >> call from city you may be familiar with this is david utica new york. >>w good morning. i think we need to understand that this woman is a science denier. and science deniers if they were to get their way, would have high found christianity which would start by expulsing -- jews. then muslims, or the other way around. and then they m would start working on christianity like catholics are always at the top of the list. and before you knowwa it, while they're encouraging you to read your bible at the dinner table, they'll be men and maybe women

and white cake riding up and down in the middle of the night. we have d seen that before, this breeds it. and men in brown shirts in bunches running up and down streets, breaking glass. that is what happens. she's going to deny it, of course. but that is what happens when science deniers, i mean, she wants the big bang. she wants even adam, my god. >> thank you for calling -- >> big bang it was a quantum fluff. >> mary eberstat men in brown shirts, science denier men in capes. >> that was a good example of the kind of pushback that one can get on brings up these kinds of issues and the fact that it's largely proves point that i was

making earlier. but i do want to make one comment about the brown shirts. the suggestion seem to be that religious peoplened end up as nazis to make a historical correction that was not the case. that was part of the point of alexander sullivan eats in his life was to demonstrate that the ideologies responsible for mass murder in the 20th were ideology to void of religious faiths. nazis were anti-christian, the communist were anti-christian. and to try and connect the dots so that christians ended up at nazis is not historically plausible. > are you a science denier ad what somebody has said that maybe they haven't to you. what do you think that means? >> i think it's a label. i think it's an epset it is not

an argument i feel the same way about transphob what in the world is that supposed to mean? nobody explains. they just hurl these things around to discredit people and i can't respect that. >> glenn tacoma, washington, good afternoon. >> hey, good morning on this end of the world. how are you guys doing today? >> good go ahead and make your comments, sir. >> my comment is my ears perked up when she talked about labels and --he i've come to the conclusion that the word woke is being used by the right and from the left. without knowing what they're really talking about. and as a 60-year-old man it sounds like code for the most vile form of -- lover that can --

and they're using it as a weapon and nobody seems to do anything about it. when a u man from florida calls everybody woke, what he's really woke goes to die, what they're really saying is that vile swarm, and just seems plain to me nobody is called it out. >> glenn we'll leave it there and i will ask mary eberstat on your thoughts on the word woke and wokism. >> the word is defensible because it gets that kind of truth. which is the united states was largely founded as a protestant nation with all kinds of revivals through years including upstate new york where i come from which was a hot bed of these things and there was -- not one but two, quote, great awakening as they were known. and the word woke does seem to capture that there's something about the identity politics that

has a religious impulse that has a religious flavor that is somehow connected to the kind of revival protestantism that was dominant in the country so i think it is defensible to use that word for that reason. >> mary is the author of several books you can see them behind her but also we'll show them to you on the screen. first book, home alone america. came out in 2004. hidden tole of day care behavioral drugs and losers letter which is we haven't talked about yet a comic tale of life, death and atheism out in 2010 how the west really lost god 2013 adam and eve after the pill that same year. it is dangerous to believe, religious freedom and its enemies, 2016. primal screens how the sexual revolutionon created identity politics came out in 19 and adam

and eve after the pill revisited just came out this year. now, one of the things that we like to do is ask our guests to read their famous books are and we got the favorite books from mary eberstat and thesis on currently reading which i'll read part of it to you it starts more interesting when you have -- a title. i so a book the master and margarita -- did i say that correctly? i don't speak russian -- but bodies and declined evil and w f anything by shakespeare for lighter phillip and petey james masters of the genera wha is the master in margherita? >> master in margherita was

written in stalinist russia by a play rights and author who somehow managed to survive. it is impossible to describe briefly contested novel about the intersection of writing and falsehood and impression, and it is so vividly told that the author could not publish it in his lifetime because it would have i meant his death a critiqe of communist but there's the same line in the book that's my favorite line from all of literature. a author is sitting there, his manuscript has been thrown into the fire and he thinks all of his life's work and another character who is a supernatural character, declares man ewe scripts don't burn and it magically comes back to him.

and in other words, all of the labor isn't for nothing. because once something is written, it is very hard to get rid of it. that doesn't mean you see its effect in your life tile. the author of that novel really lived to see the effect that it would have. butn one of the effected it whn it was published that it caught fire around the world figuratively speaking, and the phrase man ewe scripts don't burn became a slogan for freedom seeking people. so i thought that was a beautiful story and that's why it's one. of my favorite books. >> what's the best way in your viewte to read shakespeare and o understand -- >> to see it rise and -- uncorrupted. to see it on stage is my favorite way of reading shakespeare. >> currently reading here we go -- over the summer mary eberstat wrote i read a book by public

intellectual called apocalypse of the sovereign self recovering the christian mystery of personhood. it is a gripping, in-depth analysis of how the collapse of christian angt apology is leading to social and mostly i'm looking through books about upstate new york, one of the most fascinating largely unknown petry dishes of the american experiment from years of the so-called burned over district, with its unprecedented religious ferment to game changing and rust belt up to the crisis that is devastated parts of the state all of it taking place against a background of forbidding natural beauty.in this is a place you have to understand to understand our country. and its pioneer history, i grew

up in two villages scattered across the state in the next few years iemgew hoping to break new ground on telling some of its amazing stories in different generas and media what's that story you want to tell about your home territory? >>ou well first i want to credit great late friend of mine pg o'rourke who had dinner with me ten years ago almost exactly. and asked me what was on my mind and i started and i started on upstate new york and telling some of these stories and these historical intersections and republican trying to get the hang of the place because i don't care most are aware of its richest and we talked more and he got on the idea that i should write in -- not in one genera, not like write a history not write a memoir he said any genera you can manage if you want to do fiction tell as fiction if you

want to do memoir tell it as memoir but shed light on this because he said no one has your stories. now that's another great line, and not just about me. no one has any individual stories xepght the individual and so -- i'm hoping to do what pj wanted me to write about history and characters perhaps return to fiction, loser letter was a fiction, and it was one of the best adventures of my little literary life so more of that might be in order for upstate -- so pj o'rourke sat in the chair for this program i did a while back and -- i guess i wouldn't necessarily put you two together as friends. >> oh. pj and his wife tina and my husband nick, nicholas eberstat an couple ofan other friends sot of grew up together over the last 35 years.

or tried to -- >> and you -- talked about the loser letters and the fact that it's fiction and it's -- i don't to say sarcasm that's the wrong word but that's what i'm thinking of loser letters here's a quote -- from mary eberstat cheering for pornography and sex and by extension broken homes and abuse and screwed up kids all of the rest of the sexual revolutions fallout may not be everyone's thing but most of you knew atheist guys have definitely made it yours. i respect all of that. [laughter] >> it's a little hard to explain satire can be. but this goes back to the new atheism. i'm s sure you remember the yeas that were dominated by talk of is there god isn't there a god. there were proofs and there were pushbacks, and most people who were not in the ate atheist

trying to respond were taking this at face value writing serious books and michael wrote a book and many other wrote serious book saying no this is claim that science and christianity is compatible and enwhy the new atheism is wrong. i wanted to take a different tack because -- i suspect that when it comes to these questions of -- are you religious are you not religious? there's more going on under the surface than just philosophy 101 arguments about whether god exists. these often have to do with deep, personal issues. or reasons for not wanting to believe -- and so i tried to get at this by eventing a female character named af christian, and she is a fan girl of the new atheism and so she's writing letters to the new atheist trying to help them

up their game saying you have to do this and you have to do this to makee it better to be all atheist in the end in the course of the letters her own personal story -- comes out and you can see the connectionon between her rejectn of god and what's happen in her broken life that made her reject this way. so it was a great adventure that in 2017 this novel was adapted for stage and it premiered at catholic university of america for two weeks in the fall. and that was very exciting and i would love to do more work like that. >> next call for mary comes from jack and sandy ego jack you're on booktv. >>tv good to speak to you this morning. mary, you've been in the advertising business for many years. and i'm 79 so that gives you a

hint. and worked on textbook for advertising over through the 90s three editions of it. and one of the issues that comes to my mind in teaching people in cathe jail how to do graphic wok and how to make communications i come up -- with the need to explain how to communicate and -- it goes back a ways -- just on the advertising i've been like an ad that says power, power of being connected and then can help someone connect. okay, so anyway, in my studies, it's interpret the sensory of eyes and ears and other senses read about our, you know, measure our territory. around us and what's going on in our environment, and what happens is that besides those

negative signs, that means we're losing territory. and it's been shown it goes back and once we feel like we're losing our territory, we will have anxiety that's because -- ... sets up thef conflict what you're talking about if communications and things distort someone's territory, make some think it is shrinking. we have more and more and more and more people in the world, are we heading towards a huge assuring or breaking apart of territory a massive scale? still when i think we got the point jack.

mary eberstadt anything you want to respond to there? >> guest: in the book there is a chapter in which i invent to fictional characters. one, a man who came of age in the 1950s the other his grandson brandon was the name i made out. coming of age now. it's about the difference in social life between the boomers and the milan angles and zimmer's. we see acts of humanha subtraction. brandon is not like his grandfather's because so many people have been subtracted out of his life by fatherlessness, abortion, the shrinkage of his family and other things i talk about there. that is an example of how to capture that feeling of losing, the word you said is territory.

but losing human connection. we went greg from sacramento are you familiar with jordan peterson? what do you think of his ideas about instructional truths? >> guest: i cannot say i'm well enough red and jordan peterson to recognize those words. but i have seen the kinds of crowds he brings in of young men. i saw him traffic major american pity to a standstill one day he filled a stadium. from what i have read of him and seen of him he has given young men what they need which is practical talk about how to be a man. where his work connects with the mine is i am trying to describe why he has this audience. he is a wonderful speaker at thisis not about him.

i am trying to describe the supply side of this, where are all these young men coming from? >> text message from jim in university place washington subject god. what definitive proof do you have or know that god exists? proof not belief. >> guest: if i had that we would not be having thisav conversati. i think i would direct you toward how the west really lost to god. that is where he tried to get at the idea there is a deep connection between the lived experience and religiosity. the more we live apart from other people the less we understand why everybody before us has been leaning toward god. this is true across cultures.

people want a connection with the cosmos. they want the connection beyond themselves. generally speaking atheist aside. this is the human story for the most part. soy when mary eberstadt in your view has christianity been co-opted by politicians in a negative way? >> guest: well yes. one of the things that might make people believe in original sin is how corrupt the relationship between the church and the state can be. and how confounding it can be for when for example lip kings with defined rights claim for themselves. so again, no arguments about how the church as often screwed up

its self or had corrupt leaders, or had leaders with earthly motivations rather than supernatural ones. stew and going back to the kings and queens with divine right to rule, it was always said elizabeth ii trul believed that she was chosen. and that whole viewpoint has kind of faded off, hasn't it? that these families have the divine right to rule? >> guest: if you are talk about the royal families they are subject to the same secularizing trends we are talking about. it would be surprising to hear any of them claim the divine right at this point. >> mike, detroit good afternoon to you. >> i was raised by the world war ii generation but what i look at the democratic party and its

constituencies you've got marxist socialist, globalists and progressives you have gestapoar tactics you look at hitler or stalin in the targeted the same types of people with religious values, family values people who believe in democratic principles. parents want to maintain they did not want to seeee their children mutilated by the states. seems like in this is a party that worships the state above all else. i wonder if you see that, the parallels? >> so, what we see it what we write about a little is the relationship between the crackup of the family on the welfare state. the welfare state as we know it is largely in response to the trends i am describing. that comes into bankroll broken

home. it comes in to be a kind of political super daddy and homes without a daddy. so in thisso way we see the decline of the family and the rise of the welfare state perpetuating each other. that again is not the weight where you sit thinking about the state. but it is the bedrock underneath will be talk about why we need the social programs and i am not being a libertarian here. i am not a libertarian that to me is the deepest levels those two connected. stuart has the state in the sense become a new religion? >> guest: certainly. if not the states, then things that people used to geto to power. they have religious overtones is what identity politics is all about. see one hamas back to the pill 1960.

inw economics today, how has it in your view the pill and that sexual revolution changed economics? porch i rely on the work of a sociologist team w bradford wilcox at the university of virginia who has done great work establishing that if we had the same rates of marriage as we had in state 1984 most households would be significantly better off. this is a reason when you talk about family policy and america because it is directly related to the economic trouble that many people experience. divorce is expensive. the single motherpe household again not pointing fingers here at my own mother was a single mother for a while.

i feel on very sturdy ground about that and knowing how hard it is. part of the economic problem today is a people problem. it is a problem of subtraction. it's a problem of not having as many hands as we need to do the work of running a household. stu and mary is calling in from palm bay, florida. mary, please go ahead. >> caller: hi, thank you for taking my call. i just want to start by saying i read u.s. legal scholar name harold berman the religious foundation of western law he was primarily speaking and so my question to mary is about the destruction of rural law in the public good through secularization what are the main groups and organizations that take these actions and lobbies to destroy and how do we restore

in her opinion the public good and rural law and heal a lot of these ills she has been speaking on and i thank you. christian charity are usually launched by organizations like the american civil liberties union. other groups aligned with identity politics. particularly lgbtq versions thereof. how do we get back to better place? well this is why i think we have to shed light on these things. because we can have hope. it is like any situation where there is a patient who is ill. the first and the doctor has to figure out is what is the problem? no plate treatment would be without the prompting understood for what i am trying to describe is the problem.

and one of the things it points to is the need for trying out pro family policies at the state level, at the federal level, anywhere we can try to devise incentives that would keep a couple in the same home doing the hard work of raising children. making their financial lives easier. i know there are politicians who talk about these kind of options. i am not a politician myself so i tend not to go there. but clearly there is a role for government here to do some overdue experimentation. >> host: mary eberstadt i found in your writing this trilogy father with a small f father with a f-uppercase-letter and patriot pat ria. what is that reference?

>> one thing we have not talked about yet is another kind of is the decline of patriotism. this we see very clearly among the young. to me it's one of the most surprising findings because i've always regarded myself as a a patriot. most people who have ever worked in government have an enhanced sense of patriotism. what does this mean? and one of the chapters in the new book out of many after the pill revisited i suggest perhaps there is a relationship between these three declines the decline in religion or belief in the supernatural father. decline of the family often meeting the absence of the natural father. and the decline of attachment to country.

because what is ailing many people today is not just they can't find a church or don't want a church. not just they live and small families or note families at all. there is also the connection to community that robert putnam wrote so beautifully about in bowling alone. this hamas has increased over time. though not being connected to communityno is another way of being lonely for people. that is why i speculate that maybe this kind of attachment or nurture or whatever you want to call it is a muscle and the less it is an exercise in one sphere the less it's exercised inn others. it is striking we see simultaneous this attachments. >> cornelius is calling from alexandria, louisiana. cornelius good afternoon.

>> caller: good afternoon peter and mary peter want to wish everybody a happy labor day and this is constitutional month and patriot day on september the 11th. so we need to celebrate all of that. i am for patriotism. peter, i want to talk to you first and then we will go to ms. i found out what year that was 2008, abraham bolden senior heat would be a great guest just got a pardon from president biden. he would be a great guest hes tried to prevent president kennedy's assassination found the years 2008. do what he is referencing an older program what he called in paraguay had been. >> my question for you mary i'm african-american. i am 62 yearsn, old. i remember women segregated schools we hadrp a prayer, the pledge, the negra national

anthem and the national and that the white schools have the prayer in the pledge and the national anthem. once wer, integrated we just had one the prayer, the pressure, the national anthem. i believe as you that the democrats have pretty much taken all of this stuff out. if you look at the communist manifesto they have completed everything. i have an idea for you. with ai technology coming out and military kind of revealing these aliens which i believe are fallen angels and stuff, that would be a good book for you to look into an ai to rewrite the bible artificial intelligence. that is my comments read god bless you peter. god bless you mary. we went you'd have a blessed day as well. >> guest: thank you. >> host: i want to go back to the technology we have had cars and phones over the years that

everyone has lamented this is going to lead to the end of society. but thesese things seem to be exponential and what we do with them and how we have isolated ourselves is that a fair statement? >> absolutely. the social science is proving it. so how do we control it? to me it's a little like tobacco which was ubiquitous when i grew up every adult i knew practically smoked and you could smoke in hospital rooms back then as long as you are not your the oxygen tank. it's kind of unbelievable now. but what makes it unbelievable now there was a reform movement that arose people really did not want to listen too. but over time with the six hundreds studies people started changing their minds. this is why we could know what r smoke and restaurants.

this is way fewer and fewer people spoke. there is public consensus. i'm not saying that the puppet smokers i'm using it as an example of society when faced with sufficient harmony. that day is coming i think for the smart phone. i think the harms it can do are going to be increasingly well understood and particularly strategies for keeping kids off at are going to proliferate. intelligence them thought a lot along those lines dan is in bridgewater new jersey left off one of the branches the

eastern church believes in the mystical relationship between the individual and that god. and the church is there only to serve theur relationship. i think in that sense the distinguishes from the catholic system that insists on the relationship of the church as a means to get through to god. we have priests or any of these other problems the church seems to be falling apart in its decisive way of dealing with it for the orthodox church, whatever the church does its only function is to serve the relationship between the individual and god. we deemphasize the relationship. stop is a but it is a relationship between the individual and god that he can never escape no matter how

fallen or whatever he may be he is still part of it at all times in his life. >> thank you sir. >> gemma comment? >> guest: my only comment as i was not trying to sideline orthodoxy but thank you for that thought. >> host: tribe open hear people say spiritual but not religious what does that mean to you? what do you hear? >> guest: i hear dee why i religion i'm going to do my own religion and it is understandable people would think this. but people who believe that do not understand our capacity for self-delusion and what i mean is this. i am devising my own religion. i like to play texas hold them, which i do. i am not going to devise a

religion that says gambling is a sin and point not in my interest. stops me from doing something i like.u you could continue the metaphor if i am designing a dinner party and i am a vegan i'm not going to put steak on the table. it is just to say we have a very strong tendency to do things that are in our immediate interests that gratify us. and so i do not think anybody who is designing his own religion is going to make demands on himself. now there are big questions whether the demands made by judaism, by christianity of all kinds are reasonable demands. do they point to truth? what are they therefore? we can spend our life time lifetimeexamining those kinds of questions. but about theim question of whether spiritual but not religious is the same thing as organized religion?

absolutelyni not. >> host: billings montana looks like you might have the last word bill go ahead. >> hi mary. i am to sherry my search for regular intelligence with you. i don't think it's going to be found on this program. but i do have a question. the religious right the evangelicals believe trump is the chosen one. mary, isn't donald trump really the chosen one? >> bill before we get her to answer that question or to talk about that, what is your experience? >> i was born and raised a catholic. too that end i am recovering. >> host: thank you sir. evangelical, donald trump,

recovering catholic, anything that we want to address? >> guest: no. the question -- make the specific question is donald trump the chosen one? this is just not something that is been given to me too know. >> host: what about the evangelical right and their support of former president trump? >> i do not understand why the evangelical right has singled out in this way. there's obviously a lot of people in it who like what he stands for or what he says he stands for hoot like his policies are in the four years of hisdu administration. those people have as much right to vote for as anybody else. and yet for some reason they are always the one to put in the petri dish of home people ask why are they supporting donald trump? i'mm just said wish or even scrutiny across other groups request you consider yourself

evangelical rights? >> know it. >> what does that mean? >> guest: is usually a protestant thing. and it has been very wetted to politics to certain political outcomes like the end of roe versus wade for example. but it is not where i am coming from. >> host: tried what if someone wants to read one of your books, but which one would you recommend and why? >> guest: you said it wouldn't would behardball. [laughter] thank you. for people interested in the relationship between the sexual revolution and the decline of religion and the family, how the west really lost god's know all the books are addressed to the general reader. some of them have lots of footnotes but they are footnotes because i did own to distract

and writing for regulartr people and have no theological or other presupposition in the arguments book. i hope to change some minds for some of those represented by callers today who take exception and i thank them for their relative stability. sue and mary eberstadt thank yu for being on an depth in book tvs 25th year. we too it's been a great pleasure peter, thank you. ♪ this year @booktv arcs 25 years of shining a spotlight on leading nonfiction authors and their books. with the talks are more than 22000 authors nearly 900 cities and festivals visited 16000 events. but tv has provided viewers with 92000 hours of programming on the latest literary discussions on history. politics and biography. you can watch book tv every