political spectrum and that bipartisanship is still possible. so i would say this means a right to protest and voice ourselves on issues important to america today. announcer: voices on the road on c-span. and coming up this afternoon, a look at china's model of domestic governance and how it has changed under the leadership of president xi. we will take you to the center for international studies in washington come alive at 5:30 p.m. eastern. until then, part of a recent washington journal conversation. the book is titled alienated america. thanks very much for being with us. you write the republican nomination of donald trump is best understood as a referendum on whether america is great or in need of great making again.

it was a referendum on whether the american dream was still alive. it told us something we did not see. for that reason, we use the election map is a path we follow through the country. explain. guest: thank you. that is about the primaries. a lot of us were caught off guard when trump jumped to 25% in the primaries and finished on the newiowa and w hampshire. what areas right away raced to trump? sometimes it was a weird next. areas were for huckabee, but now those areas are for donald trump it i went to places in iowa to see what was the difference between the ted cruz places and donald trump.

then there were rubio places as well. places workplaces with strong church communities. the rubio places workplaces with highly educated people with universities. the donald trump places were places that were suffering. it was not just lower income. it was that their churches had shut down. it was not just a factory shutting down. it was a community fumbling around them. the suffering of the working thes is largely about collapse of community institutions. host: you have a couple of specific examples of the social fabric of these communities. you write in western pennsylvania, you may recall the divergent local economies. pittsburgh is doing pretty well, while fayette county nearby is not. jobs, trade, and economics is not the whole story.

the answer is local community, institutions of civil society. guest: when steel mills and coal took a huge blow over the last 50 years, pittsburgh and fayette county were harmed by this. pittsburgh now is doing very well, and the rural parts are not. the argument i make is pittsburgh is planted more thickly with strong institutions, art museums, universities, and these cohesive neighborhoods. an italianck church here, squirrel hill. when the economy turned itself, there was a social safety net, institutions, not necessarily the government, community institutions to hold the community together. down, steel mill shuts families move out. you have people more isolated

and alienated. that is the difference between places that thrive in the places that are collapsing. met: this did surprise reading it. you write about marriage. marriage is dying, mostly among working-class women, undermined the idea that the apartment of women is behind its demise. married people are much less likely to be poor. marriage is good for kids. no one would argue that point. guest: marriage is dropping in the u.s.. host: it is dropping because? guest: i will say what a lot of people think wrongly. a lot of people think it is all about college-educated women swearing off marriage or women's liberation. the fact is college-educated women are much more likely to get married then women who do

not have any college education. that did not used to be true. while there is some delay, the biggest drop off is among working-class. noncollege women never getting married or more likely to get divorced. where it is happening is not westland andd greenwich village. blue-collaring in communities. because they do not have strong communities around them. my wife and i have six kids. it is hard to raise kids. you need support. you need somebody who is going to watch your kids when you step out. you need strong public schools. those institutions are absent in so many working-class places. host: how did we get here is the question you pose in the book. following, deaths

from despair, men dropping out of work and society altogether, retrieved from marriage and births out of wedlock becoming the norm, inequality skyrocketing, economic mobility fading. these are the symptoms of an american dream that is dead in much of the country. guest: we cannot make it just be an economic story. if you just talk about the factory closing, you are missing the crucial steps when the local diner shuts down, the most involved parents moved to another school district, and then the church is shut down. the cover of alienated america is a shuttered church because that is the most important, the central community institution for many working-class and middle america. the way i ended up doing my reporting in fat county is i found some of who did a study of the drop off in church

attendance, and fayette county was among the biggest. they have lost eight churches. for the working-class, church was the key place to come together to get a sense of purpose. when those things go away, that results in all the that outcomes suicides, drugs, out of wedlock births. book that includes donald trump, but not about donald trump. guest: it is about how donald the nomination. he set up the line make america great again by saying the american dream is dead. the american dream is not dead in my own experience. we live in a robust, bustling area. no a lot of parts of the

country, that resonated. that is what got me going down this line. why are there so many places people think the american dream is that? host: you wrote, with all of these swings, donald trump swung working-class families enough to win the white house. donald trump underperformed earlier republicans in the wealthier parts of america. hillary clinton showed her true colors when she declared this results in some sort of victory. if you look at a map of the u.s., there is all that read in coast, you i win the know, illinois and minnesota. guest: the places she was bragging about winning are the places that have lots of wealth. most people have college degrees, which is not the norm in america. in this places, there is still

strong community institutions. it is not just that they have more money, they are more likely to be a second income were the mom is working only our time. there are more people involved in the communities running little league's in that sort of thing. the places donald trump was winning disproportionate to previous republicans, he did better in almost every county in michigan. afterf that because years the factory shutdown, people say we used to have a memorial day parade, we don't anymore. we used to have three churches, and now we are down to one. hillary was bragging about winning the places that are doing well. she tried to counter donald trump's make america great again by saying americans already great. titledhe book is "alienated america: why some places thrive while others

collapse." book by tim carney. our phone lines are open. for the mountain pacific time (202) 748-8001. we go to rick. welcome to the program. caller: thank you. i grew up in pittsburgh. i watched several generations of steelworkers lose their jobs because of the shutdown, and what pittsburgh back was substantial investment in things like the regimen fund in carnegie mellon and the health system. it has nothing to do with the number of churches and people attending. host: -- guest: you are talking about strong institutions and a

commitment to local leaders who had money. it is important to look at them as employers. thehealth care industry, university as well. talk to any employer. why are employers looking for places to settle down? they are looking for places where there is strong education. they want to be able to hire a workforce that is reliable, innovative, showing up on time. this is what the institutions, strong public schools, communities, including churches, even if you are not excited about churches, they do a good job of holding neighborhoods together all of those things build up social capital. go outside of pittsburgh toothache county, best fayette

county, -- outside of pittsburgh to fayette county, to begin harder for parents to raise their kids with social capital, the soft skills hiring managers for. was beingthat came in spent in pittsburgh to build up communities and people and to help them keep their lives together so that when industries were ready to come back, you have people there that were in good shape and people that were primed for hiring. eric in will go to california. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for having this discussion. last week when the press secretary was mentioning her feelings about the president being selected by god,

unfortunately a lot of people did not realize in this conversation, there is two sides in even when you have a divided house, you lose. when people are ministering this concept of keeping people divided, would you have people divided, you win. donald trump is winning on keeping people divided. the house divided does not stand. as long as you have people fearful, i don't care what type of brick-and-mortar structure fear would dominate the whole day of people's lives. host: thank you. we will get a response. division are at the heart of what i am talking about. man is a political animal. humans are social creatures. we are not supposed to just live our own lives. we are supposed to help our

neighbors. that means involving ourselves with our neighbors, the pta, on the local library board, or in the local government. as those institutions on the local level disappear, get less power, and we get disconnected from them, everybody looks to national politics to have their impact. just these high-stakes games every two or four years. everybody thinks if the other guy gets elected, we are in deep trouble. i want to elect the guy that is not to punish the other team. that is part of what the election of donald trump was about. i am going to elect a punisher. some of the democrats are looking at things like that, molly harris. -- kamala harris. down isto dial things

to re-empower local institutions. then people are dealing with their neighbors. there will not be as much hate and fear. things will not feel as much high-stakes. following,rite the "if we restore factory jobs, can we restore communities? robots rather than blue-collar workers are getting new jobs at u.s. factories. slapping tariffs on goods from china will not create jobs. " donald trump is talking about bringing back the factory jobs of the 1960's or 1970's. you talk to economists, and they say the share of the u.s. economy that is manufacturing has not actually gone down, but employment has. increasingly the threat to these old factory jobs is automation rather than china or mexico. a tariff to bring back more

factories does not necessarily increase the employment. this isn't to say this is a problem. it is a huge problem, but there is not an easy solution. int: we will go to janice maryland. caller: good morning. my question is the pervasive use of spanish. i find with their dynamic numbers, because they don't the -- a semi, they change neighborhoods -- thass imilate, they change neighborhoods. how do you put this into your equation. host: stay on the line. we did not hear the first part of your question. caller: i was saying with the pervasive use of spanish, most of them are not assimilating. the culture is being changed

because they come into neighborhoods, and they do not change. host: thank you. we get the essence. guest: this is a real interesting thing. a lot of the immigrant populations, especially if they come in with strong religion, p not having-- end u some of the problems we are talking about with the weather working class. if you have two different languages spoken in a community, that does undermine the community strength. it is harder to have a pta meeting if not everybody speaks the same language. this is one of the things a lot of sociologists have studied. it is a real problem to move the american dream forward. we would love to have more neighbors that are diverse and cohesive and successful, but those are hard to come by. the language barrier is a big part of that. the american dream is about new

people coming in and changing the culture and being changed by the culture. there is always a painful transition, especially when the language is different, when the neighborhood feels like it is being pulled apart. is to what wet talked about from your washington examiner essay, whether the democrats want to be the party of the lease -- the lease or goe talked about from your clingers? examiner of deplorabe yes, the fact is so many democrats reacted to donald trump's reaction. said howgrants have

can we reach out to their voters, but some, including the hillary quote, the people that elected trump are backwards and deplorable. there is no such thing as a good truck motor. as long as people think everybody who voted for this guy is bad, those democrats are not going to reach out to them. in that case, i don't think they have a good chance of winning michigan, pennsylvania, ohio. you knew sherrod brown was going to reach out to them. he has dropped out of the race. it is an open question. how much are democrats want to say there is real suffering even if they are a bunch of old white guys. they are gun owning old white guys. by the democrats able to love them and say we have better solutions? i know some of them well. i don't know if that is the ttack democrats -- the

tactic democrats are going to take. host: your other books include the big ripoff, visiting fellow at the american enterprise institute, commentor for the washington examiner. susan from massachusetts, good morning. hello, it is an honor to speak with you, steve. mr. carney, i think i saw you speaking last week on c-span. it is great to speak with you. , on my, first of all mother's side i come from a long line of strong pittsburghers who went through the chain of industrial workers and firemen on too many generations of doctors and college-educated

high achieving people. roomnk the elephant in the for me is the complete lack of a lifeves to pursue encouraged by marriage. if you have people on the downside of your for generations of industrial and community decline, and their lifeline is whatever they can patch together for state and federal benefits, housing subsidies, subsidized health care, those things are all based on the birth mother not being married. you experience either no benefits or a complete depletion of your benefits if you choose marriage as your social construct. that is one thing that upsets spain because -- me because i don't see any incentives being

built in to encourage marriage. you would almost be a pariah if you suggested it to a national politician. host: thank you. guest: i think that is exactly right. one way to think about it is that for a lot of us, our safety be extended to family, community. for me a parish community. for lots of people in public school. you go to these parts of rural america, and because they have something of the social structure built around them of welfare benefits,, that is a network that does not lead to towards community. it pulls apart because one of the things welfare spending does his crowds out private organizations such as churches or nonprofits were local

organizations run by a local government. the welfare benefits having anti-family incentives is destructive. it is great we are able to get food and money and close to hungry and poor and homeless people. we have to look at the structure of those programs. if they are undermining community and family, it kills them. the deaths of despair happen because there is not a human level network around them. there might be food stamps coming in, but over the you erodes, as community ties, you are undermining. over generations, you get these ofts of despair -- deaths despair. you are getting this despair

because you don't have the institutions, the network that can give you a sense of purpose anymore. host: let's go to stephen in baltimore. good morning. caller: the problem i have with blames thep is he minority community, mexicans, black, muslims for the troubles of america. peopleointing to those and saying that is the reason you are not thriving. hook,ms like they by this line, and sinker even though the fact that mexican-americans have a lower crime rate than average americans. careems like they don't about that type of racism when he talks about asshole

countries. host: thank you. guest: this is a point. -- excellent point. weaker more racism the the connections to strong local community institutions. study showed that among republicans who go to church, attitudes toward minorities are better. the more people are plugged into religious values, community institutions, the warmer they are to people who might be different. when someone is peddling a racist idea, that is more likely to take hold among alienated people who do not have as many human level connections. host: from the book, erosion of

civil society is at the core of america's social and political tumult. the support structure and sense of purpose that only local communities can bring. guy, butam a catholic i am not making a religious argument. it is a social logical argument. people need real community that provides a sense of purpose and safety net. throughout american history, church, synagogue, mosque has been the core institution. when secularization happens in more elite areas, there are other things. network, social club, pta. when churches go away, there is

not as much there to connect to other people. host: let me go back to what we talked about from your washington examiner essay, whether the democrats want to be the party of the lease -- the lease or go to the backwards -- the elites or go to the backwards places that cling to their guns and religion. host: -- guest: there is an animosity on the left toward religion. most of obama's 2008 run, he was trying to reach out to religious voters. that was a fundraiser where he made those comments to a group in the bay area. among thehere was democratic party a joy with which they were going after a baker who was not going to bake

for a gay wedding. obama's administration was in a lawsuit with an order of nuns. there is an effort to push the church out of the public square. the church is important if you care about the middle class and working class. i wonder if there is anybody in the democratic party who is willing to stop that war on , we don'tinstitutions agree with this religious teaching on marriage, but we are willing to let them be part of our public fabric in the u.s. listeningelcome those sure ton radio, beef check out the free c-span radio app. our guest is tim carney. the book is called alienated

america. he is the father of six. the pages? two.: 12 down to host: start the college funds. john, go ahead. caller: i think your point is so valid. this country was built on community. if you think about how each town was built, the people got together. they built the city. they built a state. if you want to destroy america, you have to destroy the family because that is where it begins. then you destroy the community. you destroy the state. .hat is what you are seeing the piece you focused on is that communities are gone.

i think that is true. i don't have a question. piece ofink it is a all the things that are destroying america? guest: i think the biggest problem that is destroying strong is the erosion of local communities. distinct ismerica how we are constantly making ,hese little local platoons other clubs, religions, secular, professional, cultural. robert putnam in 2011 talked about how those things were weakening. the negativeeeing consequences showing up in

deaths of despair. in america, there are tons of strong communities. that is what i found. a lot of the highly educated places around washington, d.c., live a 1960'sly lifestyle of intact families, finishing school, getting a job, having kids. i found lots of strong religious communities. salt lake city, it is amazing the cohesion and the mormon church at the heart of that. iowa, all these places built around strong churches that don't just have a strong spiritual sense but a affect as well.

there are so many strong communities. i think a lot of this can be reversed. host: for more than 50 years, the plant in youngstown, ohio, produced vehicles. caring theevy cruz american flag in the windshield heading to a dealership in florida. a $3stown will take billion hit from the shuttering of the lordstown plant. how does this community recover? guest: there is no happy short-term story. dependent ons been one or two employers. this is a lack of strong

economic diversity. is there going to be enough upey and employment to prop this town until something can come back? you are going to neediest additions. -- need the institutions. there is a domino effect. if you want to know how youngstown can come back, some of it is going to have to be looking at a place like this for. -- pittsburgh. invest?le place to seta good down the business in a few years. if you want to learn more, you can find information online.

calls.et to your phone thoroughly from oregon -- darlene from oregon. caller: i am calling because i disagree with the gentleman. i am 67. when i was educated, it was in the kennedy era. what i have seen is a deterioration of the public school system because of lack of when i was educated, not only was everything free, everyone was allowed to participate. when my nephew graduated, i was shocked a parent had to pay out-of-pocket a certain amount of money for their child to thing they for each wanted to participate in, and only the top 50 students that already showed some type of

athletic ability were allowed to participate. this was all after school. guest: i agree with the fact that the deterioration of public schools is a core part of the problem. i think it is a vast oversimplification to chop it up to funds. per-pupil spending has gone up in america. there is not a lot of correlation between per-pupil spending and outcomes. at how littlets that per-pupil spending has to do with economic mobility. it is way further down the list. a researcher at stanford and different places and how likely someone is able ladder, up the economic and found there is a correlation

, but it is a small correlation compared to the number of intact families in the neighborhood or social capital, community organizations, charitable giving. those things have a much bigger effect on economic mobility. spending more money on schools is not what makes good public schools. strong parental community involvement. real community institutions that bill social capital among parents and kids. that is a strong public school. it is a lot more congregated than per-pupil spending.

complicated than per-pupil spending. increasingly americans live among people with the same level of income. named, chevyhave chase, maryland. i talk about other places, college town's. they have good outcomes. they have strong families and lots of institutions. there are strong religious places. these places are about average on income. outcomes all the good without money because of religious institutions. host: are you on social media? twitter, instagram, but that is mostly kid pictures.

host: we will go to mike in massachusetts. good morning. caller: good morning. i think wee to say are overcompensating the situation. complicating -- i think we are over complicating the situation. the problem is when the women went into the workforce. they kept an eye on the kids. they were the backbone of the neighborhood and society overall . when they left the homes, it is a double-edged sword. they have the right to go to hurt but i think that society and the family onceation when so many into the workforce -- went into

the workforce. guest: one of the chapters in my book is called progress at a price. it talks about this. about women, the obstacles to them going out and fulfilling their career aspirations and how there is a cost. you're talking about with women keeping an eye on the neighborhood is a key thing. the idea that a kid could get in trouble even if mom or dad is not around, there would be some mom in the neighborhood who would say jimmy, stop acting like an idiot. of the people making an argument about the costs to increase dual family income, elizabeth warren wrote about how families are more fragile when

they require to incomes. the increase in the size of the workforce due to progress of women being free to work and black people being able to compete with white people, those things i count as progress. you increase the supply of labor, you drive down the price. more families depend on to incomes. it makes families more fragile. it was elizabeth warren who pointed to how that brought about more family fragility. i think what you are talking about is right. ofs is one of the strengths 1960. it is not going to come back. host: i have to ask you about chapter six, bowling alone. that was the book in 2011 by robert putnam. he used the collapse of bowling

leagues for the connection to people doing things alone. more people watching tv, all these things, staying at home instead of going to the diner. it was his image of a declining social capital. i say people are not connected as much. membership in organizations has been falling since 1965 and has .ontinued since 2000 that is at the heart. it is not falling everywhere. if you live in salt lake city, you probably belong to to many things. there are too many people demanding your time. so much of middle-class america, this is the case. it is true for everybody. we are not as connected as we used to be.

what i'm trying to argue is this is not just something that life is a little less fun because you don't belong to a bowling league. there are bad outcomes involving drugs, suicide, out of wedlock pregnancy, high school dropouts that flow from us not belonging to think. host: andrew is next. new york. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. thank you for the book. that sounds interesting. it sounds like you have bitten off a great deal to chew on. as ao you justify religion source of bringing the community together when you have the crises that are going on in the roman catholic church these days? how do you build a stable community around a good set of economic factors like jobs when our economy seems to be going more tourists service, and --

towards service, and people seem to be expected to move? i wish you luck with it. thank you. host: thank you. guest: those are two excellent questions. have aatholic, and i moment when i was finishing this book, writing from my neighborhood pub. the guy asked what it was about. i mentioned church. he said, i used to be catholic. he told about watching priests who did these things get a slap on the wrist, and he had to go through this in test screening before he could go on a field trip. this sense of resentment. i felt i could not convince him otherwise. i cannot steer them away from his animosity towards the church, and that made me more angry at the priests and bishops

who did this. cost.another in addition to all the ,ndividual victims who suffered there are millions of other people who saw this and turned away from the church. i think those are also victims. churches, among other institutions of civil society, are good for this country. when they do evil things, it does not demolish the good they do, but it does push lots of people away. those people end up being victims as well because they lose their productivity. -- connectivity. host: based on the church, do you think the issues we are dealing with now including priests and pedophiles, it will affect a generation of

catholics? guest: i absolutely think so. to this day, are acting archbishop in the washington, d.c., archdiocese does not send the message to catholics in this area that they want the good shepherd. pittsburgh whon moved around a handful of priests. some of them he handled very poorly. repentancehown the we are supposed to show. harm for a generation catholics. he goes out to other christians io say this is an institution do not trust. hierarchy areurch hurting people by not being more

aggressive and apologetic and repentance. places thrive while others collapse. morning.good caller: thanks for having me on. i have a couple comments and also a question. the reviews what caller was saying this previous caller -- to tie into what the previous caller was saying, the scandals in the catholic church seem to have destroyed the church as a meeting place community. i agree with that totally. did lose a

generation. ohiomily is from northeast and west pennsylvania. many of them have left the church because of that reason. this is something we see a lot of. one of the interesting things i think people lose sight of, we whole. the church as a for so many people, their interaction with the united states or the catholic church is on a local level. have ain our parish, we pastor who has been aggressive about calling out the bad actors about trying to be the good shepherd. interaction with

the church on a daily basis is in the parish. there are problems with the southern baptist church now. if your own personal contribution is healthy and strong, that can matter a lot more. i think that is true the american dream as well. townu live in a small where people seem to look out for one another, that america seems a lot different. even if we have a big picture of -- ourexperience is on experience is on a small stage. host: discuss economic ,lienation, religious, social people often use that as an

excuse to make their decisions. guest: people feel disconnected. life is about making good decisions it is easy when mombody ends up as a single or drug user, you make bad decisions, it is all your full. -- paul. -- your fault. you are responsible for your decisions, but you build a strong community around you, it is easier to make the right decision. this is why we try to make our neighborhoods better. making the good decisions becomes easier to do. the short-term incentives that align with making smarter decisions. you are not going to say it is

not your fault. you are going to say it is harder in some circumstances to make good decisions. this is as much is sociology book as it is economics and political science. guest: i am a journalist. i am steeped in the american enterprise too. vance's billability elegy. my experience a look at china's model of governance and ho i