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the legalization of same-sex marriage is presenting all kinds of conflicts, legal, social, all across the country. one of the ways we have seen that play out is with business owners who because of their faith object to serving gay couples who are coming to them for services involving weddings. we have florists, owners of wedding venues, cake bakers, photographers. it is not a lot of case but

enough across the country. >> should business owners be allowed to deny service to same-sex couples? if so, a question i hear all the time is if we would permit that, why is that any different than being allowed to deny service to people of other races or assist with a wedding of a couple of two different races. many people ask, how is denying service to a gay couple any different than denying service to a couple on the basis of their race? >> anybody care to take that on. >> first of all, i think the

instances we look at are best addressed at an interpersonal level and a case by case basis. oftentimes, the way these kind of debates end up being legal cases creates enormous problems for pluralism. when you are facing a judge and you have to prove that the other side is irrational, you are going to make different arguments than when you are facing your neighbor and you have to figure out how to live together. it seems to me, this shouldn't be said in a fair society event. keeping this out of the courts is what victory looks like and what saving pluralism looks like. in american life, for reasons that are obvious and overpowering and right, the race question is different than any other question that we deal with in our national life. to be a free society, you do have to have some defult assumptions in favor of freedom of association and allowing

people to make their own decisions together. when it comes to race, we have made exceptions to those fundamental premises of our national life for reasons that are valid reasons that draw on our history. the life of a country is not simply applied philosophy. we don't just take abstract principles and make people live by them. we have a history. we are an organic society that's lived across generations. there is this enormous sin around the question of race that we have to continue to live with. we have to continue to atone for and address the consequences of. it seems to me that it is right we make certain exceptions when it comes to race, exceptions to the ways in which we normally allow people to have enormous freedom to make their own decisions, to run their own business, to do whatever they want. in other places, we might show a preference for freedom of association. when it comes to race, we have to say no. this has been the darker side of who we are. it cannot be.

exactly where those lines are drawn it seems to me has to be done as much as possible on a case by case basis, as locally as possible, as politically as possible, rather than legally. there is no simple answer, no simple formula. i don't think it is irrational that sometimes race is different in america. >> i have to say i think that is right. the wedding vendor issue in my view is being used as a wedge issue on both sides, to avoid the larger question of how we are going to uphold nondiscrimination and also protect liberty of conscience. how are we going to do that? that's the larger question. we have not generally, we have not generally talked about this and worked together across our differences to find answers to that question. if we did that, there would be yeses and noes on both sides like we had in utah.

but, you know, we would have agreement at the end on a number of key issues. taking the wedding vendor by itself is a nonstart. it doesn't really address the larger question of how do we protect conscious and how do we uphold nondiscrimination. it polarizes immediately. having said that, in my view, it may be possible to find some agreement on how to deal with those issues in ways that protect conscious, in the way in utah, they have protected clerks to opt out of performing same-sex marriages but nobody knows it. the couple doesn't know it. it comes in the office. could there be a carve-out, specially if there is nondiscrimination protection for lgbt people in that community. the same people that want

religious exemption oppose. we want religious exemption but we are not willing to protect you. you can get married in our state but tomorrow, you can get fired. you can get denied housing. we are not going to do anything to protect you but give us an exemption over here for baking the cake and so forth. really? nobody is going to do that. that's ridiculous. if there is nondiscrimination and support from it from people on all sides, then we can talk about that that for people that are not discriminating against lgbt people but can't participate in a same-sex marriage ceremony. maybe we could figure that out as doug laklok has tried to do. i'm not sure we can, specially in isolation. give me a whole menu of things where you are going to get this, you are not going to get this.

i think we can come to agreement. why haven't we done this? there is finger pointing on all sides. i will say that those people that most want religious liberty protection have waited too long and we are still waiting to hear from them, to say we are in favor of nondiscrimination in these ways. then, i think they would get more of a hearing on the religious liberty. on the lgbt side, why should we accommodate you? we are going to win this. we don't need any longer, these tortured conversations about religious exemptions and so fort. frankly, we don't trust you and we don't think you care about our rights. we have come to this terrible place. i think we can still redeem ourselves by sitting together. they did it in utah, folks. if they can do it in u tax we can do it. we can sit together and listen to one another and find some common ground. i think what happened in utah is a great model. it didn't address this particular issue but it

addressed a whole range of issue that other states are still battling. i think we can do it. >> charles, could you just spell out a little bit what happened in utah. it is often called the utah compromise. >> what happened in utah, it is underappreciated. utah has different laws than other states. it has a lot of protections for religious freedoms for institutions to begin with. yes, it is a different place. that can't be replicated elsewhere. what can be replicated is the process. equality utah, the leadership of the utah legislature, leaders of the lds church sat together, what a concept. this is the american way in its best sense. they came together and said, we will never agree on marriage or these issues but we have to live together here in utah. we understand this. we understand that.

we need to figure out a way that you feel safe from being fired in the workplace or housing discrimination. we acknowledge we, lds, we should support that. we ask for you to recognize the religious exemptions and protections for religious liberty, including what people say about same-sex marriage needs to be protected as well. can we do that? they worked and worked and workeded over a period of time. the lds church went to the utah city council when they were discussing nondiscrimination for salt lake city and said, we are in favor of this legislation. that was the first breakthrough. that came before this negotiation. then, in this negotiation, which wonderful law professor from the university of illinois helped to broker behind the scenes. a wonderful majority leader of the state senate in utah, senator stewart adams, is a latter day rogers williams in my

mind. he did exactly what you are talking about. he said, i disagree with these people. i don't like that they represent me but my faith tells me i need to stand up for their rights if i want mine protected. because he said it is just right thing to do. so the legislation that was passed try toss do both. it tries to protect people from discrimination in important ways and uphold religious liberty. that's what we need to do. a couple things. part of what charles says illustrates what has so annoyed me and puzzled me by this debate. there are very few jurs dicks that have an anti-gay discrimination law and a religious protection. for the most part, there are very few places where there is at the moment a legal conflict. the indiana case, there was so much form over it, as in, we're

going to allow religious employers to discriminate. they always could. indiana didn't have any anti-gay discrimination. most people assume we have that in the united states. in most states and at the federal 4re federal level, we don't. to some extent the debate has been really ill-informed. where you do join the issue and you have anti-gay discrimination legislation in place and what you do about accommodation, that is a really hard one, actually. both sides have good arguments there. i'm not sure where i stand on it. "a," i'm inclined to think you can avoid these issues most of the time and keep it out of court. don't insist on going to someone who doesn't want to sell you a cake or sell them a cake, whatever. both sides there are silly. that conflict shouldn't be in

court. where the conflicts do come out, i am inclined to say that probably employment discrimination, you are going to have a much narrower set of accommodations. employment is a fundamental, economic right that your accommodations there are going to be narrowly carved out for churches and very religious nonprofit institutions where religion is at the core of that organization. for public accommodations, the cake case and other kinds of things, you could have a broader carve-out that could include, as in hobby lobby, for-profit but religious employers. it may be different kinds of discrimination. you strike the balance in different ways. >> how does that not become a slippery slope? i understand you all saying race is different. i am sitting here thinking about what if a jewish couple and the

man is wearing a yamaka and he says, i i'm sorry i don't serve jews. or the buddhist showing up and they say, i don't serve you. why is religion not in your mind the same as out right racial discrimination? why shouldn't there be law ns that direction? >> it is a slippery slope in both directions. you are saying, why don't we accommodate everywhere. that's a slippery slope. if we are going to apply employment discrimination laos without accommodation, does that mean the catholic church has to employ female priests? that can't be right. if you push the logic to their limit, it breaks down. you are going to have a possible slippery slope in both directions. you just have to muddle through. >> part of what it means to live in a free society, you never take any idea to its logical

conclusion. all of life in a society like this is accommodations. there is a certain amount of common sense that says if we follow this abstract principle all the way down, maybe we have to kill each other. let's not do that. the fact that it doesn't make sense in theory doesn't mean you can't live that way. our society doesn't make much sense in theory. it is okay. it works well. there is theory and theory. there are ways to articulate an understanding of living together. ultimately, as a set of logical statements, they don't quite work out to the bottom. that takes it together in general. just look around the thanksgiving dinner table. there is a lot of accommodation involved. >> i also think liberty of

conscious is at stake here. we have to work harder than we have. many if we don't have liberty to follow our conscious, particularly in matters of faith, we don't have freedom at all. we as a country have lost importance of liberty of conscious. the u.s. civil rights commission came out with a report that said it is a sub bore den nat right. in my view, that is wrong and dangerous. it feeds a public perception, that these claims of conscience are a nuisance, this woman who won't da this or this baker who won't do that. i understand the emotion around that. i have sympathy for people being

served in public accommodations. what is important, these are claims of conscience. claims of conscience, whatever you think of the content, for james madison, for others or first, foremost, that's why it is first in the first amendment. yet, now, it seems to be the last afterthought. let's do this, this, and this. and maybe we'll worry about this poor person whose conscious is burdened. burdening conscience, if you will forgive the expression, roger williams called it rape of the soul. this is soul liberty. i think that's what's at stake and why we try to work this out. it is very difficult to carve this out. when public schools have to give exemptions, where somebody has to wear a head covering for religion but nobody else can wear head coverings, they work at this. that's what america is. we work ought carving out for

conscious sake. we are the place for the cause of conscious, we should be in this country. another example and then i'll stop, is another controversial examples. i think fapharmacists. a pharmacist who cannot prescribe certain things, if that prescription can be given immediately to the person or almost immediately. if there is no marm to tharm to person coming to get their prescription filled. why not have a religious exemption so that person doesn't have to violate his or her conscious. he is a pharmacist. he was hired to do this. wait a minute. liberty of conscience always has to be, whether a public accommodation or a church, this is my view, james madison's view, roger williams view.

if we can do that, if the county clerk in utah provides the marriage ceremony and the couple never knows that john in the back has opted out of doing it, what's the harm to the couple? none. what's the great principle upheld, liberty of conscious for joan. it takes work and it offends people to try. if we don't do that for people today, what's your deal, tomorrow it will be our claim of conscience that is not taken seriously. >> evolving the point of race is different. i any it is a right. largely, white religious conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot on this point. when it comes to the cake baker, specially white christians are saying, race is different, any

other social issue, we are post-racial, obama. there is this sense and huge disconnect between the breath of challenges facing real communities. i do a lot of speaking to faith groups. when i'm in a mostly white church and there is a focus on the the ex essential threat of the cake baker. five miles down the church, there is a black church that shares almost the same three logical questions but they are, are we able to vote, is the criminal justice system treating us fairly, do we have education and health care adequately? there is a disconnect when white p conservative christians are so focused to neglect other christians that are facing tremendous issues. we need to focus on those if we are going to be serious about

pluralism and the adequate premises we have. >> it will be impossible to ignore the election. we are all trying very hard. we will open the floor. i hear an awful lot from religious conservatives. a lot of fear that a hillary clinton administration would take on the threat of infringing on their religious liberty to the extreme. all kinds of scenarios i'm hearing. we will have to close religiously affiliated colleges and universities. we'll have to sell off our

hospitals. the expectation is that the administration may force the universities to provide housing for same-sex couples in their do dormitories. there are all kinds of scenarios that are played out. who of these two candidates do you think is the better threat to religious liberty and confident pluralism? if you could expect that there are signs, in the clinton administration, that hillary clinton has given any indication that she intends to infringe on religious freedoms that we have? i hope you will talk about both candidates. who wants to start?

>> you're on. >> i have to collect my thoughts. i will say this much. to pull back a little bit and think about pluralism, about coexistence, about that and beyond this minimal kind of tolerance, more maximal. being able to enjoy my freedoms and to think and believe what i would like to without unjust obstruction also to coexist and expand the notion of tolerance, to support and advocate for and encourage and have the sense of the rights and freedoms of others. i am also an immigrant who has

lived here for 20 years and been a permanent resident for 11. it does seem to me that someone running for high office who time and again has taken opportunity not merely to insist on rights as a game, that the more rights we have, would mean less for others or the more rights others are afforded means a denial, infringement, depravation of our rights and someone who not only advocates it but who seems to absorbs the sentiments of what coexistence means and returns it even more force and per nick uous philosophy, the immigrant

in me sees this as such an important cocktail mix for the erosion and the undermining and the threatening of enriching ideas of pluralism and tolerance. it is hard for me to see past that and to see, to even see that to vote the candidates and the kind of things they are doing are an advocate for religious toleration and pluralism. it is hard to see past it. it is almost like it has created a fog in our brain. since i have been here in the past, two decades that i can't

imagine a worst candidate at this time. >> you went through something e even to arrive here today, the incident that you had in your travels to get here this morning. i heard something. >> oh, yes. >> is that worth recounting that story? >> it may be like new york grumpyness. the cab driver's machine wasn't working. so i said, i am out of cash. he goes, well, he locked me in the cab. he got the cops to come. i said, i have to go to the atm machine to pay you. what has happened then, i am even seeing things in myself becoming uncomfortable with. one of the things about

pluralism enriched, john is advocating, is not interacting with each other with fair, bad faith. one columnist, the thing we mentioned earlier about public space. it's the way we assume bad faith in others. bad faith makes you skeptical of what you have advocated. we should be asking for that the courts should be a place of last resort. in some ways, the state is a place of last resort. many times the courts will say, we have to create a structure and a framework because of added complex, their inability for you to work at a local level. one of the things that has happened has created a scenario in which you assume such bad faith on the part of others. you assume the worst of others.

you fear others. you assume others have the worst intentions in their dealings with you. for instance, one of the things that's happening, is a person locking you in a cab because he is grumpy in a new york grumpyness. >> is making assumptions about you, his passenger. >> one thing he has done, one thing i have seen about this campaign, the way increasingly assuming bad faith on the part of others. oh, new york's you are doing that to him because you hear a jamaican accent. increasingly, we assume bad faith on the part of others behavior. immediately everything is explained by, you are not like me, you don't look like me or worship the way i do.

one of the things i think has happened for someone who has campaigned in a way that is encouraging us to assume bad faith on the part of others. it doesn't bode well. >> so i'm all about democrats. my answer won't be surprising. let me say, criticizing my candidate first. i mean, i do think sort of specially on the issues of the reaction to the hobby lobby case, the reaction to the indiana racist statute, we have lost touch with our traditions. i think we have gotten pretty badly offtrack there. i think that creates some justifiable concern for religious conservatives. a lot of what you are talking about sounded overblown to me in an example of this sort of mistrust that is building up. there is some basis for it. i see some basis for concern. i disagree with my side there.

but in the scale of things for religious liberty and in general promoting an atmosphere of lack of understanding of other people. the trump campaign, what it has done with muslims and on immigration is much better than i could. a really toxic environment. i don't want to criticize a lot of trump supporters, are things we need to think about, about why it is resonating. there are problems with our political institutions, economic institution that is we need to think about. i think the quam pacampaign has on fears in a certain way that is something like i have never seen in my lifetime. >> you open by saying. this is the last question before we open it up to the audience here, that the obama administration you thought had picked a fight with certain

people of faith. do you anticipate that a clinton administration would do the same or deepen it? >> i was surprised by the way they picked that fight. it was controversial, internally. vice-president biden was opposed to picking that fight, particularly with the catholic church. i don't know whether the clinton administration would pick the same fight, the fight over the hss mandate in the affordable care act. there is a way in which the logic of some of the legal actions that have started as a result of the same-sex marriage decision will proceed in one way or another through the courts. i agree with brett that there is some justification for these concerns. whether that leads to the closing down of religious universities or hospitals, following that progression, i think that's not a crazy conclusion. it is also not the necessary conclusion. i do think these concerns are

justified. tim at the same time, i'm a conservative. i don't have a candidate to volt for. i am certainly dissatisfied with the options we have. there is a strong case to make that neither of them is treating our country, which we ought to treat with love and care, is treating our country the way it deserves to be treated. >> it is worth pointing out, the clinton administration, the last one, was really very good on freedom of religion, free exercise of religion. bill clinton signed the freedom of religion act. he supported our efforts to encourage religious liberty in public education and sent out guidelines to every public school in the united states. some of that, you know, was part of the political time. i think he was genuine in his

support of free exercise of religion. i don't know how that would translate in what another xlin ton administration would do. i am optimistic that those that care about the issues would make the case. i think we have no choice in this election but to hope that we can. i would say the obama administration started out, in my view, as somewhat tone deaf to the religious freedom concerns. i think that tone deafness or work is echoed in the u.s. civil rights report. it is not an obama document but certainly a harbinjer for things to come. they will get very little accommodation or protection in the years to come. i don't think that's the case. i don't think the president agrees with the report. melissa rogers has done a

fantastic job advising president obama to be protective of religious freedom. it has been a mixed bag this time around. i do think that there is reason to hope that hillary clinton, like bill clinton, will care about free exercise of religion. >> it just so happens that we want to open up to questions but as a representative of 501 c 3. i am not going to name any names or say anything in particular. i would like to say that tone matters. i any think a lot of people have skirt skirted over some of the candidates that candidates have made about muslims in particular. it is all bluster. they don't really mean it. it is not going to happen. when we tracked responses to different incidents, when we looked at anti-muslim bigotry

across the years right before september 11th to right after the boston bombing, what we found, it is political rhetoric that matters when it comes to anti-muslim sentiment, not actual bad things that happen. anti-muslim sentiment spiked in the leadup to the gulf war, the iraq war, sorry. i'm old. the leadup of the iraq war and amongst republicans in the 2008, 2012 elections, that's when isla ma phobia and anti-muslim phobia spiked. it did not spike after 9/11 and the boston marathon bombing. there was a dip in anti-muslim sentiment in the boston bombing. political rhetoric matters. >> that's very interesting. i am hoping we have some good questions from our audience

here. why don't we start with the microphone over here. can you introduce yourself as you ask a question? >> sure. my name is debra mason. i am on the faculty here at the religious freedom center and professor after the missouri school of journalism. i have two very different questions actually. one is that internationally, they talk about freedom of religion or belief. one of the things that seems to be left out of the conversation in the united states are the views and voices of the growing group of people that we call the nunns, which is a group of demographic that is growing. where are those voices and how are the voices being heard as a group of people that aren't necessarily organized and aren't necessarily coming from the same viewpoint? >> so for those of you who aren't familiar with the nones

term, it is n-o-n-e-s. a lot of sisters have told me they are very upset about this. these are people who have no particular religious affiliation or identity. there is a growing segment, both within the united states and globally. >> as a matter of fact, they are very organized now. unlike earlier cultural war battles that i remember from earlier in my career. religio religio religious nones include so many people. among those that identify as etheeists, free thinkers, humanists, any have gotten a message to get anywhere in this democracy, you have to organize and be a effective voice.

whether it is the secular coalition, the coalition of many different groups or american atheists or freedom from religion. most of the public school conflicts now or debates or issues that come up around the country in public schools over a cluster of religious issues are sparked by aler from the freedom of religion foundation. they are very well funded, very well organized and very effective. so a great many things that have happened in public space, in government spaces where what government used to do was have the ten commandments go up or have something go up and unanswered, it is always answered now. they are going to have to put up another statue or message. folks have gont it on the other side. they realize unless they get in there and insist on that level playing field, it won't change. i would say they are being heard. >> i think it depends on

locality. there are parts of this country where even the school prayer was ruled unconstitutional many, many years ago. there is still an unofficial school prayer going on. this is a point where religious conservatives ought to have more empass think. what would it be like to be a child tho does not have a faith, who is really coercively in this moment of prayer. there aren't people advocating for him or her. our past understandings of the establishment clause where we would allow so-called nonsectarian prayer to be okay in public spaces. we have change reality where i think those are live questions now. i don't think we are necessarily doing a good job of addressing those questions. >> can i follow up with one other? it is a very different question. i appreciated the grounding and reminder of the religious

difficulties of catholics and jews in our history. one of the big differences we have today is the digital media. we can't put the digital media back into the genie bottle. we know hate groups and terrorist groups are very effective at using digital media and giving voice to the sorts of viewpoints. i just wonder what role and responsibility do the large companies like facebook, twitter and google have in help tog sha shape the conversation without infridgi infringing on the first amendment right of freedom of speech and free press? >> i don't have an opinion on it but i can tell you some of the larger companies, youtube and google, they actually have a grants program currently both to

help fight the pull towards terrorist groups and isla ma phobia. they are taking this somewhat seriously by providing grants to other organizations that are working on this. >> this is documented. they are not doing anywhere near enough. twitter is just a mine field. twitter is where you go to see the worst of humanity and i have seen some remarkable things there. twitter, for instance, has been continually, relentlessly criticized for the way they allow hate speech to flourish. forget it if you are a woman. it is a million times worse.

i can go on and say something on another twitter for good reason. you answer something and two or three comments come back like if i am an idiot. if i was a woman, there are hundreds of rape threats coming in and people are publishing my address and so on. it is a place in which you are reminded in this climate of interest, that we need to welcome all views. some would rather not have. some views are welcome. forget it if you are in a certain gender. companies aren't doing anywhere near enough. my request is, how can we put the proper pressure on them to have a more robust approach to allow different views to flourish without threat? >> not an endorsement for twitter there. >> i love twitter.

>> i had an experience recently where i -- i never do this. i get a lot of hate tweets directed my way. i'm used to it. it is part of the playing field now. recently, had somebody coming after me in ways that were extremely threatening. as well as anti-semitic and ma sonlg nist and others. i reported twitter. within a few hours, they had removed that person's account. i mentioned that because i think this is how institutions can sometimes respond and adjust to situations when they see that there is a problem.

>> at the margins, maybe. what's really tricky, a threshold, a constitutional matter, the first amendment is not going to apply to facebook or to my university or other private ins sutitutions, which leaves those institutions with the ability to do some sensorship but that gets us back to the puzzle of how and when we draw those linings. ultimately, this is going to be on us to start policing our own speech and the freedom we have to do so. that's what's really scary about twitter and the current moment. very many people are not actually moving toward those civic norms. they are move ago way from them. >> i am glad to spell that out a little bit. i think we needed to have a little bit. you could have it even more, the social media discussion. it is a big factor in all of these things. >> your turn. >> good morning, guys. apparently, within today's society, we see an increase of separation and isolation between race, religions, sexual preferences that have a diverse

beliefs, educational backgrounds, goals and desires. taking a look at this increase in the society, i pose the question, is there unity in diversity or is it a myth? >> can you tell us who you are? >> i apologize. i am sierra smith and a student at the religious freedom center. >> it is a really wonderful question and a crucial question for us. i think one of the ways in which life in america has become somewhat different in the last two decades but really in the half century or so, since the end of the real kind of post world war ii era, we are a much more diverse society. we have always thought of ourselves as a diverse society in america. in some ways, the golden age our politics misses so much, those post years, for different reasons, religious and conservatives look back to, years of fairly low ethnic and

immigrant diversity. in the 1970, just about 4% of people living in p america had been born abroad. this year, 18%. much more openness in our mainstream institutions to people from different backgrounds. diversity has expanding enormously. that is a great gain for american life. it also presents us with some difficult farcts, which among other things, diversity reduces social trust. we have to push against that, not pretend it isn't there. that shouldn't happen. it shouldn't happen but it does happen. the challenge we face is mhow d we as a society deal with the fact that we are also made weaker by being more divide and more fragmented and more fraccious at the same time. these are two sides of the same coin. it seems to me we have to think about it by taking those two sides seriously. given p that we are diverse and

dynamic, how do we solve these problems of fragmentation? to me, that argues for localism where it is possible. for allowing problems to be resolved by actual human beings that can see each other face to face, rather than abstracting a way and dealing with all our problems as national political problems. it argues for taking pluralism seriously and for, again, making the argument that it is true even when it is not what you want as an outcome. there is no way of making that easy. that doesn't become easy by being repeated over and over. a lot of the challenges we are see seeing in this election are challenges of a former majority thinking of itself as a minority. a lot of christian conservatives were used to seeing themselves as a moral majority. i don't think it was ever that true. now have to confront the reality they are a minority in our society. you see it with certain kinds of

white working class voters. it is a transition and a transformation. for people in communities that have always been minorities, we have a lot to teach the sort of newly found minorities in our society. i speak as a jewish person who works together with a lot of religious conservatives who are not used to understanding themselves as minorities and there are lessons to be learned from one another's experience. we are just not used to doing it. that's a big part of the problem. it is new to a lot of americans. >> the local comment is so important, so helpful. in a local community, i don't have a bad story. when it comes to creating a unity across differences that allows us to negotiate the differences. the key has been, i didn't have the confidence. i used the term charter

pluralism. charter pluralism means that we have to establish what do we agree on that flows from our founding documents. flows from the constitution of the first amendment. once we establish agreement on those ground rules, fundamental rights for all, of responsibilities to guard the rights for others, including those you disagree with, on civil debate when we differ. when we get that in place and i'm usually going in the community when they are divided about the december dilemma or sexual orientation in schools or some other divisive issue. the first thing we do is work on those civic ground rules. that's the unity that protects the diversity. if everyone sees themselves benefiting from these ground rules and they are willing to apply them to others. then we usually get agreement. as i say, i don't have a bad story from modesto, california, to mustang, oklahoma, across

country when they have had these terrible conflicts and it does take face to face, being there, working this through, different sta stakeholders there from different perspectives. at the end, we usually find common ground on these issues. that's what the country is all about. no one can tell me america doesn't work. i think it is not true, all the rhetoric we are hearing and all the division and so forth and so on. if you go in the local community and meet with those folks on different sides, they are ready to work together and find common ground. they need their civic ground rules and civic commitments to be reaffirmed. >> for me, one of the things with your question, it brings us back to again, not to focus on this election. it is actually beyond the election. we have a national discourse

that was deeply polarized and s oh, but somehow they're reading it very differently that one of the questions to ask is there unity. what are we talking about. one of the things that seems is the sense of -- you know, in a diverse group of people in a sense that we're the losers and on the wrong end of things. there's a whole range of people saying that we're unified and sick of being losers and who wants to be a loser? yes, there's unity and what kind

of unity are you going ask. what does it unify. it's more robust around the common good. as much as i love the cause and seek in a wonderful way in johns book and in a way of this morning, part of me as a guy and the book shop and when crying it was like good, when i we want to barns and noble, there was an award and that local independent book is down there and when they said what they said are the things that they should not have called me. suck it up and leave. i did not have the kind of localism that people had. maybe it's the fault of mine, sometimes there's a localism and what is happening and we are seeing it more and more with the organizations and used in the local books for a way and the ends. it's a political end and there's

a kind of localism and that's in a way of injecting what the world imposes and asking if they can be unified and the worst kind of things and saying here is what is going to unify us and this is going to use the local groups and things that are un wanted. >> okay. we're close to the end, and we have so many people that have wonderful questions. i'm sorry about that. i want to give each of the panelists just a moment or two to, you know, close us out and also try to move us forward a little bit. maybe leave us with a thought or something to go home with. we talk about the local solution. any thoughts on that? >> sure, thank you for this and

john a wonderful book that everybody ought to read. one of the things that i'm left with is that we need a stronger sociology of success and how we talk about it. we need to do more things like what works. our political conversation is almost exclusively what is not working in the country. we need a much stronger sense on what is work asking what we can learn from it. there's very little of that that happen in the political debates. conversations like this lead me to think that we need to hear more from people that sees things and things that work. >> listening to this discussion i talk in the book and today tolerance and patience and i focus on tolerance and humility. patience is so important.

and that's the theme and we have heard them today and that's maybe how we start this. now, we can not always be patient about everything, but there's a role all of the culture cut against it and this is right now and responding to the tweet right away. and waiting an hour or two just to think of the cost and benefit of the exchange. so patience could be important. i will say since i did not get to answer the political question, i will say that there's one can date that's not showing it at all. it's pretty clear to me that while there are concerns at the clinton and white house, i don't think that it's a close call. i think we have a challenge and it's the challenges to the

liberty. >> well, thank you john for your book too. i commended to people and finding a vision for a common good is a great task and the century and going forward. i would say in the religious liberty where i spend most of my time, i would recall the -- he said that you know the liberty principals are not our articles of of faith. we have the faith and in different ways. some people don't have that. we have those and they're deeply

important to us. if we're a person of faith, that is probably more than any commitment in our lives and that makes the challenge so great subpoena to do it with a diverse group is that and i think it's a risk in many ways if we don't take it seriously. so these principals are not the articles of faith, but they're the articles of peace. they're our articles of peace. he was prophetic because he said it many years ago. in the future, we're going to need them more than we do in the history if we're going live in the country. we must aaffirm the articles of

peace and that's what we share across the differences. they're in the best interest of all of us. they protect people that don't have a religious affiliation if they're properly understood. that's the task to reacquaint firm the articles articles of p. >> before 2016 there's going to be no majority ethnicity or race, and whether religious diversity or racial diversity, we have to accept that this is the reality that we live in. we have to find ways to deal

with that. i am not going to deskriebt as he did, so you're going to have to read the book. it outline that had in today's society we're so in this track where we speak to people already agree with us and we affirm that we're awesome. or we get yelled at and called horrible names by people that don't like us. that's easy to do on social media. my take is way is that we have to make space to talk to people that don't love us and who maybe very very different from us. we have to also listen to those diversity of opinions, and actually not just listen to see what they're saying and try to understand. >> the hope is working on the

level on the specific problems and you may work with them and you can find ways to work together on a variety of things if you make it more concrete and try to work out the solutions. i think there's a lot of hope going on there at the national level if i have a chance to answer on the last question and one of the problems that we face here that we have not fully confronted is that the separatism of the ideology has a horrible affect on the parties. most of them are safe from the party and what matters is the primary opponent and that creating a move towards the extreme and the constant system is not meant for the kinds of parties that we have. that makes it increasingly hard to govern ourself. i see that getting worse than better. my party in this last election showed moves to the way that the

young people pointed and vote in that party suggested that we may have a democratic party that's ideology as the republican party. that's not going to work in the constitutions. >> it's hard for me saying they're making the predictions as the future. i will say it this much, half of what has to happen and here at the abstract level and it's flushed out is and we have to have ways and that goes beyond the boundaries. so much of what is discussed is the boundaries and about police and boundaries