you're voting for me, just go and vote. they're so leveraged to having -- they can't afford any hemorrhaging. >> watch sunday night at 9:00 p.m. eastern on book tv on c-span2. >> once tv was simply three giant networks and a government-supported service called pbs. then a small network with an unusual name rolled out a big idea. let viewers decide all on their own what wastant to them. c-span opened the doors to washington policy making for all to sebringie. in the 40 years since the landscape has changed. there's no monolithic mediaing. c-span's big idea is more relevant today than ever. no government money supports

c-span. it's nonpartisan's coverage is funded by your cable or satellite provider, on television or online, c-span is your unfiltered view of government so you can make up your own mind. >> the book is titled "alienated america: why some places thrive while others collapse." tim kearney, thanks for being with us. >> thank you. in the book you write the following, quote the republican's nomination of donald trump is best understood as a referendum on whether america is currently great. it was a referendum on whether or not the american dream was still alive. the 2016 election told us something about america that we did not see and for that reason we use the election map that we follow through our journey. explain. >> thanks. and that's about the primaries. a lot of us were caught off guard right away when trump jumped up to 25% in the

republican primaries and then finished second very close second in iowa and won in new hampshire. and it was -- sometimes it was a weird mix. you see rural parts of the company who were all for huckabee or santorum and now they were being split into two electorates, either donald trump or it does cruz. and the cruz places either -- or -- the cruz places were places where there was really strong church communities. the rubio places were places with highly educated people with lots of university ofs with a higher incomes. it wasn't just lower income, though, it was at their churches

had shut down. it was not a factory shutting down, it was a community sort of crumbling around them. that's what i base "alienated america" on is that the suffering of the working class is about the collapse of community institutions. >> you put a couple of specific examples in terms of the social fabric of these communities. you write in western pennsylvania, you may recall the die ver gent local economies, pittsburgh is doing pretty well right now while if a yet county is not. jobs, trade and economics are not the whole story. the answer is local community, institutions of civil society. >> that's right. when steel mills and coal both took a huge blow over the last 50 years, frankly, pittsburgh and rural fay yet county and other rural counties were all harmed by this. pittsburgh is doing very well and the rural parts are not. so why not? and the argument i make is that pittsburgh is planted more

thickly with strong institutions that the industrials put in, art museums, university ofs, but also these really neighbors. the rural parts of the state, they didn't have as many of those things. there's a social safety net. there's institutions. community constitutions that hold people together, keep the education going. in the rural parts, maybe there's one church, maybe there's one diner. families move out, and you sort of have this fraying and people are left more isolated and alienated, that's the difference between the places that thrive, like pittsburgh and the places that are collapsing. >> and then there's this which did surprise me in reading it. you write about marriage. marriage is dying mostly among working-class women, undermine the idea that the empowerment of

women is defined its demise in short, married people are much less likely to be poor. marriage is good for kids. nobody would argue that point, but to the earlier point -- >> a lot of people believe that when -- so marriage is dropping in the u.s. and childbirth, family size, all those things are on the -- >> it's dropping because? >> it's not dropping -- i'll say what a lot of people wrongly think. a lot of people think it's about college educated women swearing off marriage, but the fact is, college educated women are much more likely to get married than women who don't have any college education. and that used to not be true. while there's some delay among highly educated getting married, the biggest drop off is among working class, noncollege women never getting married or more likely to get divorced. where it's happening is nmiddle

town ohio. it's happening in blue collar places where education and income are lower and i argue that it has to do with the fact that they don't have strong communities around them. my wife and i, we have six kids. it's hard to raise kids. you need support, somebody who's going to watch your kids, strong public schools. those other institutions are absent in so many working class places in this country. >> how did we get here? that's a question that you pose in the book. you talk about the following. from the book "alienated america," deaths of despair, such as suicide and alcohol poisoning, men dropping out of work and out of society all together, a retreat from marriage and births out of wedlock becoming the norm, economic mobility fading. these are the symptoms of an american dream that is dead in much of the country. >> we can't make it be just an

economic story. if you talk about the fraractor closing, you're missing what comes next. the most involved parents go and move to another school district so the school loses a lot of those resources and then the churches shutdown. so the cover of "alienated america" is a shuttered church because i think that's the most important -- that's the central institution community institution for so much of the middle class and working class america and we see the way i ended up in fay yet county was i found somebody who had done a study of the drop off in church attendance and that county was one of the biggest. for the working class and middle class, church was the key place where people come together, get connection, get a little safety net, get a sense of purpose. when those things go away, that's what results in all those bad outcomes you were talking about with the suicides, the drugs the high school dropout, the out of wedlock birth.

it results from a loss of community cohesion. >> it's a book that includes donald trump but not about donald trump. >> it's about how trump won the republican nomination. people remember lots of things about his opening statement but that's where he said he set up the line make america great again. we live in washington, d.c. which is robust and in the d.c. area which is bustling. but in a lot of parents of the country, that resonated. that was what got me going down this line is saying why are there so many places that people think the american dream is dead. >> you wrote the following, with all of these swings, trump swung working class counties enough to win all four states in the white house. trump at the same time underperformed earlier

republicans in the wealthier parts of america. if you look at the map of the u.s., she explained to an overseas audience after the election there's all that red in the middle where trump won, i win the coast, i win, you know, illinois and minnesota, places like that. and then you asked, what are places like that? >> the places she was bragging about winning were places that have lots of wealth, have most people have college degrees, which is not the norm in america, and then -- and in those places there's still strong community institutions. public schools, it's not that they have more money, they're more likely to be a second income where the mom is working only part-time and the intact families are there so there's more people involved in the communities, running t balls, little leagues and that sort of thing. and the places trump was

winning, disproportihe did bettt every county in michigan and part of that is because years after the factories shutdown, the people said, we used to have a memorial day parade and we don't anymore, we used to have little league, three churches here. so hilary was bragging about winning the places ha are going well. and she tried to counter trump's make america great again by saying america already is great. and that wrung hallow in so many parts of the country. >> the book is titled "alienated america: why some places thrive while others collapse." the book by tim kearney here at the table. our phone lines are open. 202-748-8000. welcome to the program. >> caller: i just want to say i

grew up in pittsburgh and i watched several generations of steel workers basically lose their jobs because the shutdown of the mill and what actually brought pittsburgh back was the fact that there was substantial investment in the -- things like the benjamin franklin fund, that's what revived pittsburgh, it had nothing to do with the number of churches and people attending. >> what you're talking about are strong institutions and a commitment from local leaders who had money to build them up. and it's important to look at them as employers, yes, the health care industry there, the -- when you're talking about the university as well. but it's also important to realize that talk to my employer, why are employers when amazon or whoever is looking for places to settle down, they're looking for places where there's

strong education, why? because they want to be able to hire a workforce that is reliable, that's going to be innovative. and that's why the institutions, whether it's strong public schools, whether it's communities including churches, they do a good job of holding neighborhoods together. all of those things build up what a hiring manager would call social capital. go outside of pittsburgh, again, 60 miles away to fayette county. when those public schools were losing some of the money, when the churches were shutting down, it became harder for parents to raise their kids that had this kind of capital. so yet the money that came in wasn't just being thrown around, it was being spent in pittsburgh particularly to build up communities and people and to

help them sort of keep their lives together so that when more of the industries were ready to come back, that you had people there who have been in good shape, families that were intact, communities that were intact and people who were prime for hiring. >> we'll go to eric in california. good morning. >> caller: good morning, america. thank you for having this discussion. even with -- this press secretary was mentioning about her feelings about the president being selected by god. unfortunately a lot of people doesn't realize that in this conversation, there's two sides and even when you have a divided house, you lose. and when people are ministering in this concept of keeping people divided, once you have people divided, you automatically win. and donald trump is working on keeping people divided, keeping this country divided.

and a house divided does not stand. even in the context of fear, as long as you have people fearful, i don't care what kind of mortar and brick structure you have, fear would dominate the whole day of people's lives. >> thank you. we'll get a response. >> and fear and division are at the heart of the sort of thing i'm talking about in "alienated america" which is that we're made to -- man is a political animal, humans are social creatures. we're not supposed to live our own lives. we're supposed to help our neighbors and shape the world around us. and that means involving ourselves with our neighbors or in a pta or on our parish counsel or with the local government. as those constitutions on the local level become weaker and as we get disconnected from them, everybody looking to national politics to have their impact.

but guess what, almost nobody -- then it's just an "a" or "b." it's these high stakes games for these elections and everybody thinks if the other guy gets elected, we're in deep trouble. so i want to elect the guy who's going to punish the team. i think that's what the election of trump was about, i feel punished by politics so i'm going to elect a punisher. and some of the democrats are looking at things like that. once you get into that, then everybody loses, you're right, except for some of the people who are getting more power. so the way to dial things down is to reempower local constitutions and local communities and then people are dealing with their neighbors. there's not going to be as much hate and free and things are not going to seem as high stakes as now. >> you write, if we restore factory jobs, can we restore communities and thus restore the american dreams. robots are getting the new jobs

at the u.s. factories. slapping tariffs on goods will not create jobs, mobility is probably the problem. >> we -- when donald trump talks about making america great again, a lot of times he's talking about bringing back the factory jobs. and you talk to economists and they say, well, the thing is, the share of the u.s. economy that's manufacturing hasn't actually gone down but employment has and increasingly the threat to these old factory jobs is automation rather than china and mexico. so a tariff to bring back more factories doesn't increase the employment. so this isn't to say this isn't a problem of these lost factory jobs. it's a huge problem to say there's not an easy solution to it. >> we'll go to maryland outside of washington, d.c. good morning. >> caller: my question is the pervasive use of spanish.

i find with their dynamic numbers because they don't assimilate, they really change neighborhoods, have witnessed it on a personal level also in conversation with my friends. so it's extended territory that i'm talking about. how do you put this into your equation about america, as far as culturally, what's happening here. thank you. >> the first part of your question. >> caller: i was saying with the pervasive use of spanish and a lot of them -- i find most of them now are not assimilating, the culture is being changed because they come into neighborhoods and they do not change -- >> thank you. we get the essence. thank you. >> so this is a really interesting thing where a lot of the immigrant populations in a lot of cases, especially if they come in with strong religion, end up not having some of the problems we're talking about

because they're more attached to religion, they're more attached to a community. but the flip side of that, if you've got two different languages being spoken in a community that really does undermine the community strength. it's harder to have, you know, a pta meeting if there's -- if not everybody speaks the same language. and so this is one of the things that a lot of sociologists have studied. it's a real problem, trying to move the american dream forward. we would love to have more neighbors that are diverse, and cohesive and success but those are hard to come by. and the language barrier is a big part of that. the american dream is about new people coming in and changing the culture. but there's a painful transition period where the neighborhood kind of feels like it's getting pulled apart particularly if they're not speaking the same language. >> our guest is timothy carney

arthur of book "alienated america: why some places thrive while others collapse.." >> the choice for 2020 is this, do democrats prefer the pride of being the party of the elites or are they willing too sully themselves, by trying to win over the backwards -- the play on words. >> "washington examiner" need to make sure my employer is happy here. yes, the factor is that so many democrats reacted to trump's election -- i think most democrats reacted to trump's election by saying how can we reach out to their voters. but some, including the hillary quote, the people who elected trump were backwards and deplorable and there's an article saying there's no such thing as a good trump voter. as long as everybody thinks everybody who voted for this guy

is bad and democrats aren't going to reach out to them. sherrod brown was going to reach out of to them. he's dropped off the race. it's an open question how much the democrats are going to say there's real suffering among these blue collar guys even they're a bunch of hold white guys who are not the most popular constituency in the republican party. are there are democrats who were able to love them. i know some of them will, but i don't know if that's the tact democrats are going to take particularly when in the primary there's going to be an impulse to run against those voters. >> we'll get your full bio out there. your other books including the big ripoff. commentary editor for the washington examiner. you can check out his work at "washington examiner".com.

susan, good morning. >> caller: it's an honor to speak with you. i think i saw you on c-span last week at a book -- you were being -- there was a book fair or a similar. but anyway, it's really great to speak with you. i guess to me -- first of all, proud graduate of north allegany senior high. i come from a long line of strong pittsburghers. i think the elephant in the room for me is the complete back of incentives to pursue a life encouraged by marriage. if you have people on the downside of three, four generations of industrial and community decline, and their

lifeline is whatever they can patch together through state and federal benefits be it wic, housing subsidies, subsidized health care, what have you, those things are all based on the birth mother not being married. you are -- you experience either no benefits or a complete deplegs of your benefits if you choose marriage as your social construct. that's one thing that really upsets me because i don't see anywhere on the horizon incentives being built in to encourage marriage. >> thank you, susan. >> i think that's exactly right. one way to think about it is that for a lot of us, our safety net, if things were to go really wrong, it's going to be extended

family and community and for me, you know, a. because they have this social structure built around them of welfare benefits, then that's a network that doesn't lead towards community. in fact it pulls it apart. one of the things welfare spending does is it crowds out private organizations such as churches or non-profits or local organizations run by a local government or a local institution and, again, the welfare benefits having anti-family incentives is destructive. it is great that we're able to get food, money and clothes to hungry and poorer people. but we have to look at the structure of those programs. what i'm arguing in "alienated

america" is that this actually kills them. the deaths of despair happen because there isn't a human level network around them. there might be checks and food stamps coming in and again that can save them from certain evils, but over the generations as you erode the community ties which are the things that are always going to build family of strong community, on a human level, you're undermining and over the course of generations you get these deaths of despair in places where there's plenty of access to all of this, you're still getting this despair because you don't have the institutions, the network, the things that can hold you up, give you a sense of purpose anymore. >> let's go to steven in baltimore. good morning. >> caller:. the problem i have with donald trump is that he blames the minority community, mexicans, black, muslims, for the troubles

of america and so he's pointing to those people and saying, that is the reason why you're not driving, that is the reason why you have so many problems. and it seems like they sort of buy this hook, line and sinker even though mexican americans have a lower crime rate than average americans. and things of that nature. and this seems like they don't care about that type of racism. when he says that africas are s-hole countries -- >> i think this is an excellent point. and i think again, you get more racism, more an taggism towards different people the weaker -- the weaker are the connections to strong local community institutions. one study and i have studies

like this in the book, but one recent study showed that among republicans who go to church, attitudes towards minorities are a lot better. so in other words, the more people are plugged in, not just to sort of religious values but to community institutions, the warmer they are towards people who might be different. so when somebody is peddling a racist idea, that's more likely to take hold among alienated people who don't have as many human level connections to people. >> from the obamacare, erosion of civil society, it is at the core of america's social, economic, and political tumult. strong religious communities are the best example that brings the support structure and sense of service that only local level communities can bring. >> i'm a catholic guy but i'm

not making specifically a religion argument. people need real local communities that bring them together with others, provide a sense of purpose as well as a safety net and throughout american history, for the working class and the middle class, church, synagogue, mosque, that's been the core institution. whether it's an alumni network, a country club, a strong little league or public school, for the working and middle class, when the churches go away, there isn't as much there to connect them to other people. so it's an argument for church but not necessarily for just a religious perspective. >> so let me go back to what we talked about earlier from your essay in which you questioned whether or not the democrats want to be the party of the elites and do they want to go to the back wood places full of those who are deplorable, those bitter clingers and remember

what barack obama said in 2008, referring to those in pennsylvania, that cling to their guns and religion. >> and there's an animosity in some part of the less base towards religion. most of obama's eight years -- most of his 2008 run he was trying to reach out to religious voters. that was a fund raiser where he made those comments to a group of elites i think it was in the bay area. by 2012 and 2016, there was among the democratic party a joy with which they were going after, you know, a baker who wasn't going to bake for a gay wedding and obama's administration was locked in a lawsuit with an order of nuns. and that's really destructive because church as a part of a community is very important if you care about the middle class and the working class. i'm wondering if there's anybody in the democratic party who's willing to stop that war on

religious institutions, trying to push them out of the public square. if they're willing to say we don't agree with this teaching whether it's on marriage or whether it's on abortion, but we're willing to let them be part of our very device public fabric. >> we welcome our viewers on the bbc parliament program and those listening either on c-span radio in the washington, d.c. area or on siriusxm and potus which carries this program on sunday morning. the book is called "alienated america" and he's the father of six. >> that's right. >> the age ranges? >> 12 down to 2. >> start the college fund, huh? >> let's go to john in connecticut. >> caller: i think that your point is so valid but this

country was built on community, if you think about how each town was built, the people got together, they supported each other, they built a town, and then they built a city, and then they built a state. what -- but the destruction, if you want to destroy america, you have to go and destroy the family, because that's where it begins, and then you destroy the community and then you destroy the city and the state. and that's really what you are seeing, the piece that you picked up and focused on is that the communities are gone. and i think that's so true. i don't really have a question, i just have a point, do you think it's big that it's a piece of all of the things that are destroying what we knew as america? >> thank you. i do think that the biggest problem that's weakening america is the erosion of strong local communities. and that it -- if you read

democracy in america, he talks about how we're making these little platoons, organizations, strong village governments, or other clubs, and they're religious, secular, professional, educational, and all of those things, it's been talked about how those things are weakening and i think now here we are 19 years later seeing a lot of the negative consequences shows up in things like deaths of despair rising out of wedlock births. but i do think also in america there are tons of strong communities around there and that's part of what i found in "alienated america" was both that a lot of the highly educated places around washington, d.c. or new york or around other major cities really still do live a kind of 1960 lifestyle of intact families,

parents getting -- finishing school, getting a job, getting married, having kids, staying involved in their kids' lives. but i found lots of strong religious communities. salt lake city, it's amazing the cohesion. there's strong dutch reform churches in s churches in sioux, iowa. the erosion of communities the weakness of america, there's so many strong communities and so many of them that can be replicated that i think a lot of this trend can be reserved. >> for more than 50 years, the lord's town plant in ohio producing more than 16 million vehicles. this is the photograph. it's the last chevy cruze

carrying the american flag in the windshield. it was heading to a dealer ship in florida. the employees saying good-bye to this plant. youngstown will take a hit. based on your work, how does this community recover? >> there's no happy short term story here in part because youngstown has been a lot of parts of ohio have been dependent on one or two employers. and so this is a lack of strong economic diversity and so there's -- is there going to be enough money and enough employment to prop up this town until something can come back? and it's again not just money. you're going to need the institution. there's a domino thing here. when the factory shuts down, there's a couple other institutions that depend on it.

when they shut down, you've lost the money and the institutions. if you want to know how youngstown can come back, look at pittsburgh, if there are people who can invest in making sure sure that the schools, the neighborhoods, the other institutions stay strong so that becomes a good place to set down a business for somebody else who comes around along in a few years. >> if you're interested, you can go to the website for the story about the plant and photographs of previous chevy vehicles that were made in the youngstown area. over 16 million over the last 52 years. let's get to your phone calls again. darlene from oregon, good morning. thank you for waiting. >> caller: i'm just calling because i disagree with the gentleman's premise because i have lived -- i'm 67. when i was educated it was back in the kennedy era.

and i -- what i have seen is a deterioration of the public school system because of lack of funds. when i was being educated, everything was free and everyone was allowed to participate. when my nephew graduated from high school, i was involved, i was helping to raise him, i was shocked that the parent had to pay out of pocket a certain amount of money for their child to be allowed to participate and that was for each thing the chiemd wanted to participate in and, b, only the top 50 students or so that showed some type of athletic ability were allowed to participate and this is all after school. >> i agree with the fact that the deterioration of public school schools is a core of the problem. i think it's a vast simplification to chalk it up to

the funds. public spending has gone up in america. there's not a strong correlation between per pupil funding and strong outcomes. one of the studies in "alienated america" points at trying to figure out how much that per pupil spending has to do anything with economic mobility. and it's way further down on the list. so a researcher at stanford and harvard university looked at different places and how much somebody is likely to climb up the economic ladder, do better than his parents, and found that there is a correlation that a little more per pupil spending helps, but it's a really small correlation compared to the number of intact families in the neighborhood or the amount of community or what he could call social capital, community organizations, community involvement, chartable giving, all of those things have a much bigger effect on economic

mobility and there's other studies in there too. spending more money on schools isn't what makes good public schools good public schools. strong parental community involvement that turns schools not into places that turn out guys and girls who can memorize all the kings of england or anything like that, but into real community institutions that build connections among parents and kids. that's the definition of a strong public school. i agree those are more concentrated in the wealthy places but it's a lot more complicated than just per pupil spending. >> which communities are doing it right? >> there's two main classes that i talk about. one i call the elites. these are increasing americans live with people who have the same level of income and same level of income. i think that's a negative thing that's happened over the last two generations. but the places, i named chevy chase, maryland, which is a few miles away from here, i talk about other places, college

towns that fit into that elite category. they have good outcomes. they have strong marriages, strong families, lots of institutions, low out of wedlock birth, et cetera, and then there's the strong religious places, sat lake city, these places that are about average on income, they have all the good outcomes without tons of money because through the religious institutions they build those really strong communities. >> are you on social media, instagram, twitter or facebook? >> yes. twitter, tpcarney. instagram i am also there, but that's mostly kid pictures. >> our next caller, good morning. >> caller: i think we are overcomplicating the situation. the problem started when the woman left the homes and went into the workforce and what i am by that is the -- the moms kept

the family values together that they kept an eye on the neighborhood on the kids, they're the backbone and foundation of the neighborhood and society overall and when they left the homes -- it's a double-edged sword. they have the right to go out and work and everything, but i think that that hurt this society -- society and the family foundations when they -- so many went out in the workforce and gone from their neighborhoods. they were the watchdogs of the neighborhoods and the families. >> mike, one of the chapters in my book is called progress at a price and it talks about this. it talks about how women having increasing ability, the obstacles to their going out and working and filling out their career aspirations was a great

sign of american progress was at a cost. and they're talking about the women keeping an eye on the neighborhood is a key thing. an idea that a kid could get in trouble even if their mom or dad aren't around, and some mom would say, jimmy, stop acting like an idiot. your own senator, elizabeth warren, she wrote a study back before she was a senator about how families are little more fragile when they require two incomes. and the increase in the size of the workforce that happened again through the progress of women being freer to work as well as black people being able to compete with white people and immigrants. all of those things i count as progress, but you increase the supply of labor, you drive down the price. more families depend on two

incomes and it makes families a little more fragile. elizabeth warren who pointed to how that brought about a lot more family fragility. i think a lot of what you're talking about is right. that was one of the strengths of 1960 but it's not going to come back. so we have to think of other ways to shore up communities. >> i have to ask you about chapter 6, bowling alone. >> bowling alone was the book in 2000 by robert putnam and he used bowling leagues, the collapse of bowling leagues as a metaphor of the erosion of people doing things together. people were bowling but by themselves, more people watching tv and all of these things staying in their air-conditioned houses with their own coffee makers instead of going to the diner. it was his image -- he described it as a decline in social

capital. i say people aren't connected as much. they don't belong to as many things. membership in organizations has been falling sort of since 1965 and it's continued more or less since 2000 when robert putnam wrote bowling alone. and that is at the heart here. it's not falling everywhere. if you live in salt lake chase, chevy chase, you probably belong to too many things. so much of middle class america, this is the case. it's true for everybody that we're not as connected but it's much worse in the middle class and the working class. what i'm trying to argument throughout that chapter is this isn't something that life is a little less fun because you don't belong to a bowling league. there's bad outcomes involving, drugs, suicide, out of wedlock pregnancy that flow from us not belonging to things, whether it's a bowling league, a church or a pta.

>> our conversation with timothy carney. >> mr. kearney. thank you for the book. it sounds like you've bitten off a great deal to chew on. i would like to make two points. one, how do you justify religious as a source of pulling a community together when you have the community -- a good set of economic factors like jobs when our economy seems to be going more towards service if you want to find a decent job people have to be expected to move. i think that there's a -- as i said, i think you've bitten off a great deal to chew and i wish you luck with it. >> those are two excellent questions. i'm a catholic and i had a -- a moment when i was finishing up this book, i was writing it from

my neighborhood pub, and a guy asked me what it was about and when i mentioned church, he said, i used to be a catholic, i don't go anymore. and the story he told, he himself was not a victim of abuse but he told about watching priests who did these things sort of get a slap on the wrist and then he had to go through the intense screening before he could go on a field trip and this utter sense of resentment. and i felt like i couldn't convince him otherwise. i couldn't steer him away from his animosity towards the church and that made me even though angry at the priests and the bishops who did this. it's another cost. in addition to all the individual victims who suffered so much from priestly abuse and the bishops covering it up, there's the millions of other people who just saw this and were turned away from the church. i think those are also victims. so the other side of what i'm saying here, i think churches

among other institutions of civil society are good for this country. and when they do evil things, it doesn't demolish the good that they do, but it does push lots of people away. and those people who are pushed away end up being victims as well because they lose their connectivity. that's how i handle that. >> as a catholic, do you think that the church based on all its dealing with right now with the issue of psexual abuse that it will affect a generation of catholics moving ahead. >> i think so, and to this day, that does not send the message to catholics of this area that they -- they want a good shepherd to care for us. here's a guy when he was in pittsburgh moved around a few

different priests. some of them the cases he handled very poorly and that this -- and he hasn't shown the repentance that we're supposed to show. i think this does harm for a generation catholics and would be catholics. i think it trickles out beyond the catholic church to other christians who say this is an institution i don't trust. i would argue you're still better belonging to these institutions but i know that that argument is not going to convince a lot of people. so i think the church hierarchy in rome and america are hurting people by not being more repepent in handling the situation. the subtitle of the book, why some places thrive and others collapses, casey is next. good morning. >> caller: thanks for having me on. so i've got a couple comments i'd like to get your opinion on

and also a question that i'm really curious if you have the answers to. to tie in what the previous caller was saying, it's really unfortunate that the -- the child abuse scandals in the catholic church seems to have come out and, you know, sort of destroyed the church as a meeting place for community. i agree with that totally and it probably did lose a generation or perhaps two. coincidentally, my family is all from ohio, youngstown in western pennsylvania and many of them have left the church specifically because of that reason. >> and this is something we see a lot of and -- but one of the

interesting things that i think people lose sight of, and we look at the church as a whole or we look at government as a whole or pennsylvania or ohio as a whole, for so many people their interaction with the united states, the catholic church or their state is on a very local level. for me and our parish, we have a pastor who has been aggressive about calling out the bad actors, about trying to be a good shepherd, and so for my family, our interaction with the church is in our own parish. if you're a parish that's strong or problems with the southern baptist church now with abuse problems, if your own personal congregation is healthy and strong, that can matter a lot more than the -- what's going on overall. and i think that's true with the american dream as well.

if you live in a small town that -- where people seem to look out for one another and there seems to be economic opportunity and there's lots of those all around america, if you're living in a place like that, then america seems alive and well. that's one of the interesting things, even if we have a big picture of it, our experience of it is on a smaum station. >> your concluding chapter, that summarizes the alienation, religious, social that many people feel and use that as an excuse to make their decisions. >> yeah. people feel disconnected and one thing that i think is that life is about making good decisions and so it's easy when somebody ends up as a single mom or a drug user to say, you made bad decisions and it's all your fault. it's also easy to do something else and say, they were in a bad environment so you can't blame

them. what i try to do is something in between and say, you're responsible for your decisions, but if we build a strong community around you, it becomes easier to make the right decisions. this is why we care about what schools our kids go to, this is why we try to make our own neighborhoods be better because we're making an environment where making the good decisions becomes the easier thing to do. the short term incentives get aligned with the long-term decisions. a lot of the suffering out there, you're not going to say it's not your fault that you're addicted to drugs, that you never married the mother of your child, et cetera, but you are going to say it's harder in some environments to make good decisions and the importance of strong community institutions is making it easier to make those right decisions. >> this has a sociology book as it is an economics and political science book. >> yeah. i'm a political journalist

and -- but i'm steeped in american enterprise institute and a lot of research, robert putnam, these stroories. but my experience is both going out there and being with people in places like north dakota and wisconsin. but also the election map really did show us this underlying sociology things that murray and putnam were talking about where you could see the pessimism show up in the iowa caucus for a vote for trump over cruz or rubio. and then you could say the root cause of this pessimism isn't just lower wages, but it's fewer strong community institutions. so i think i'm tieing together the economics of sociology and my own political reporting. >> gary is joining us on the phone. he's in oklahoma this morning. go ahead. >> caller: yes, thank you very

much. i'm really interested in this, timothy carney, and his book. i was a family physician for many years in small-town western oklahoma. and i've noticed a tremendous change after the welfare state, i've seen a tremendous, tremendous change where we have a lot of mennonites in our community and the mennonites still have a very tight community and it's still like the 1960s and there's certain catholics in our community that are tight and they support each other and they have their own welfare system, their own ability to help each other and reach out to people who are suffering and need things. and then i've got these young people who are isolated and they don't feel like there's any hope for the future, their life is not going to be as good as their parents. and they go ahead and get on drugs and they get on alcohol and things and, you know, when i

was young in practice, i'd say, like, for a lot of the young girls that were catholic, 95% of them were virginal when they got married and now a lot of them get married and have the traditional 1960s life and then half of -- and have a tremendous work ethic and then half of them -- they laugh if you talk about marriage or -- so it's just a tremendous kind of like a divergence and i hate it because it's something that i've grown to love about western oklahoma and small-town western oklahoma and it just is a tremendous challenge and the book just hit me just like over the head and the idea of all these things like knights of columbus, rotary club, going bowling, it's like, we're getting destruction of our environment. part of it i blame on the

internet. part of it blame on federal programs and i think if we could just -- if we could just see what this -- what the future is, it -- it's not all based on money or programs. some of it is based on the human being, and the purpose and meaning in our life. and that's all i got to say. but the book is tremendous and i love it. thank you. >> gary, thanks for the call. thanks for adding your voice to the conversation. >> thank you, gary. it sounds like you could have written my book. but hopefully, but technology is the one thing i haven't really talked about that you referred to there, and that's alienated america as well. it changes the way we interact with other people. it can draw us away. you can see a group of teenagers all hanging out together, and not interacting in any other way. there's lots of great things about technology. i had a 20th high school reunion a couple of years ago, and it wouldn't have happened if there wasn't a facebook group about it.

so social media can bring us together physically. i think that's the best thing it can do. because i do believe that despite all our technology, we can't replace physical interaction and the importance of that. but even before there was social media and smartphones, technology does have, along with all its mistaamazing effects, h are bigger, the attached garage, the espresso maker at home. the app that delivers groceries to your house, it is perfectly possible for some people to not interact with other people and for some people it is a vision of heaven, in vo verted people but on the whole, making that the norm erodes some of the ties that you're talking about that again results not in just sort of everybody being chummy but in good outcomes in life. >> from staten island, new york, rose, you've been very patient. good morning. thank you for waiting. >> good morning. thank you so much, mr. carney, for your book.

how i identify is i'm from bethel, new york, a rural community, a devout catholic faith. i've seen a lot of the catholic schools on staten island be closed. and what i didn't expect is i love living on staten island, it is more suburban, but seeing these great catholic schools close, catholic school instilled that conscience in the community, in the kids, in school that sometimes public schools cannot do. unless there's a certain talent of that specific teacher, and so i feel like we need, like you mentioned that division, between some of the communities that have maybe some cultural differences, but like in south america, they were all, they all know christianity, so if there is a way to, that separation of church and state kind of hurts the community a little bit, because that consciousness is

not exactly automated in the public schools. >> thank you, rose. >> it's certainly true that the closure of catholic schools not just happening in staten island, it is happening around the country, and one of the studies i go through in alienated america has to do with neighborhoods where churches were, where catholic schools shut down because of some, they tried to look for some almost random occurrence, maybe there was some problem with the building that was unexpected and they had to shut it down. in other words they tried to find the places where the school was shut down not because the neighborhood was crumbling but because something happened at the school and they found that it seemed to be that the shutting down of the catholic school then led to all sorts of other negative things in the neighborhood, whether it's graffiti, people were less likely to say you can trust most of your neighborhoods, and uptick in crime and public drinking, so yes, a shutting down of a catholic school really does harm a neighborhood. if this study holds up. i'd like to see other studies

try to replicate it, but i think that that is definitely true. and we need to have, what makes a strong community isn't just sort of bringing people together or anything like that, it's folks joining together, for a joint higher cause, trying to pursue a good outside of themselves. and you do see that in lots of secular places. a lot of, think of park slope in brooklyn, they're really dedicated to raising their kids and the neighbors' kids as well, and that's a joint higher cause outside of themselves. but again, for most of america, throughout american history, religion has been that cause that's a joint higher cause that brings communities together. >> you again say the book is not about donald trump but you focus on donald trump. he tweeted a short while ago, despite the most hostile and corrupt media in the history of american politic, the trump administration has accomplished more in its first two years than any other administration. judges, biggest tax cuts, regulation cuts, v.a. choice,

best economy, lowest unemployment, and much more. exclamation mark. when you hear, that what's your reaction? >> so i think lots of good things have come from trump, and with regard to the problem of alienation, the first thing he's done is he's stopped trying to chase the church out of public school, but a growing economy is going to be key to this, but it is not enough. in other words, when the economy, one of the studies in there is williston north dakota where i went part of the fracking boom and when money came in, there wasn't, in the first five, six, seven, years as blue collar guys were getting the jobs, there wasn't a change in out of wedlock and birth but in 10, 20 years, they can slowly build the company back up. so i think the president was elected because of the dlb of the community but no president is going to be able to solve all of the problems. >> stan in staten island, good

morning, keep it brief. >> caller: it is interesting, the conversation, because i think back to 191, when there was a criminal justice conference, and with three things that stick together, things get resolved. >> fam lick education, religion. a three legarged stool, they al require one another. families first. it is the building block. fine. families are stronger when communities are stronger. and some say we need more money in the public schools. no, if you don't have involved families and a strong community, it's not going to work. these are three things that all depend on each other to get the good outcomes and in a lot of america, they're there, but in a lot of america, what i found in this book, they're not there, and then the outcomes are pretty dreadful. >> we will conclude on that point. the book is entitled "alienated america, why some places thrive and others collapse," the work

of tim carney, here in washington, thank you for being with us. >> thank you. >> come back again. this coming monday, washington journal will spend the entire program highlighting members of the 116th congress freshmen class. the most racially and ethically diverse in history. the show will feature original c-span interviews, key moments from recent hearings and events, as well as a breakdown of the historic freshman class plus we will take your phone calls. washington journal is live every morning at 7:00 eastern on c-span. and when congress returns next week from their recess, the house plans to vote on overriding president trump's veto of the resolution that would terminate his border emergency declaration. the house approved the resolution 245 to 182, and that's short of the two-thirds majority needed to override the veto. you can watch the debate live in the house, on c-span. and in the senate next week, lawmakers will work on the judicial nomination for the appeals court district covering the western u.s.

and later in the week, federal disaster aid, and a vote to start debate on a resolution concerning the green new deal. follow live senate coverage on c-span 2. sunday night, on q&a, two-time pulitzer prize winning biographer robert caro on his book "working" and his search to find out how political power works. >> you went up the stairs, into his rather modest cottage, but he had torn out the walls, at the end, so that it was all one big picture. so he sat in the center of this big black leather chair. if you look to the left of him out the window, it was the robert moses bridge, the robert moses causeway, to fire island, you looked out the right-hand, there was the tower of robert muller's estate port, so there is robert moses sitting framed by this, and intimidating and i

never forget, he got up, had this wonderful charm in his smile, tough old guy, still mighty, still at the height of his power, i think he was 8 then, but still at the height of his power, and he said, so you're the young fella who thinks he's going to write a book about me. >> robert caro, sunday night, at 8:00 eastern. on c-span's q&a. the chief of u.s. border patrol testified before the house judiciary committee on the trump administration's migrant family separation policy and about the origins of the zero tolerance immigration policy. congressman jerry nadler of new york is the chair of the committee.

>> the judiciary committee will come to order. without objection the chair's authorized to declare recesses of the committee at any time. welcome, everyone, to this morning's hearing on oversight of the trump administration's family separation policy. i will now recognize myself in opening statement. two years into the trump administration's wide array of dramatic and damaging immigration policy changes, it is unbelievable that so much harm has occurred to so many people with so little congressional oversight. that ends with this new congress. now the first immigration related hearing in this congress, the judiciary committee will finally seek to hold the administration accountable for its indefensible and repugnant family separation policy and for the injuries that it has inflicted on thousands of children and families. even now, months after the height of the crisis created by the administration's implementation of its cruel and inhumane anti-immigrant policies basic questions remain unanswered. in part, that is because the department of justice and the

department of homeland security, until last night, stonewalled the legitimate request for information by this committee, that were made over six weeks ago. although we have referred several document productions by the department of health and human services, we only received our first document productions of under 100 pages each last night from doj and dhs. that is absolutely inexcusable. these requests were made six weeks ago. i expect these agencies to comply with our request in the future. and i expect the witnesses to be prepared to answer all of our questions today. starting with four fundamental ones. first, why did the administration think that seizing children from the arms of their parents was acceptable policy? second, who is responsible for developing and implementing the family separation policy? third, what are you doing to reunify all of the families you separated? and fourth, what plans are in place to repair the traumatizing damage to children and families caused by their