then, questions from members of the house of commons. after that, discussion on the future of environmental action. ♪ brian: david brooks, in your new book "the second mountain" you have this sentence. gina wondered if i was going woo woo about eight years ago. i hope she is satisfied with the brooks woo woo phase. david: i was writing about sociology and most of my books. i books have never been about politics.

most of my books early on were about sociology. there was a book about the upper-middle-class. now they have gone more into culture and morality. so "the second mountain" is deeper and deeper into spirituality and the inner life. brian: what got you out of the woo woo stage? david: we writers work on our stuff in public. even if we pretend we are writing about something else, we write about what we are going through in the moment. i was going through a moment of how can i be a better person? who are the people leading beautiful lives and how can i emulate them? it was a process to try to be less shallow? brian: we will talk about the book.

what will people get if they read this book? david: i hope they get a formula for rebelling against the culture of individualism. a culture that overemphasizes worldly achievement. i hope they will get a vocabulary of how to lead a joyous life. make a distinction about happiness and joy. happiness is what happens when you achieve a goal. you get a promotion, when life is going your way. joy is when the self disappears. when you are in nature and lose yourself. when a mother and daughter are enraptured by each other's love. and yourself just disappears and you connect with something outside the self. in the book happiness is good, but joy is better. if you orient yourself towards a life of joy, you'll have a better life. brian: there is religion in this book. this one line i want you to explain. "the jews, by and large, did not know how to talk to me." david: i talk about my exploration of the christian

faith. when i started exploring and asking people, every christian on earth started sending me books. i got like 500 books. only 100 of which were christianity. judaism you are born jewish. you pretty much stay jewish. there is no event evangelizing outside. when i started to talk about how transfixed i was, a lot of my jewish friends had trouble. i did not have a language. at least for me. brian: in that area you say, is it fair to ask, did i convert, did i leave judaism and become a christian? tell us. david:'s does not feel that way to me.

i was raised in a jewish home. both of my parents. i went to christian schools and i went to a christian camp, which was the core of my childhood. even as a young kid i was singing hymns and saying the lord's prayer. it was not a problem because i did not believe in god anyway. they were just two cultures. later in life i came to faith. then they both seemed real to me. it did not feel like i was shifting ground, these two stories were in my head. instead of seeing fictional stories, the story becomes true as you live into it. it becomes the phrase i use as the ground of our being. i just felt i was deepening into place, suddenly taking god's presence seriously. brian: when did all of this turn, or when did you get interested in christianity? as you answer that, why do so many people read cs lewis's book?

david: i always tell people to read cs lewis and george orwell because their pros are so clear. if they are doing literary things with it, so many metaphors are wrapped into their pros. they both wrote for radio, so they wrote with a clarity that you could hear with the ear. it was just a perfect prostyle. there has never been a blinding, shining experience. it started with a fascination when i was probably six, and sitting there in church, and going to hebrew school, and then just gradually a series of incremental deepening. i describe it in a book as, you are in a train and you are talking, then you look up and it seems like nothing has changed, but you have traveled a long way. there is a lot of ground behind you. you have crossed a border and

you think, i'm not an atheist, i do believe the world was created by a being. part of it i think was journalism. when you do journalism, i want to do the stories i do about genetic material. i believe each human being has a soul. each human being has a piece of themselves, which has no size, weight or color. it gives them infinite clarity. it is an assault on another human soul. rape is an insult to another human being so. once you get that sensation, then it is a shortly to the sensation that i think we are all joined by something and some

transcendent realm. it is weirder than we can imagine. cosmologists have a theory that we are infinite universes. in one of those universes to of us are talking. that is a weird theory. the idea of a creator is even weirder than that. i stay humble in that weirdness. brian: when gail collins talked about you coming to the new york times, what did you think she was getting then. she no longer runs the op-ed there, but what do you think you are giving them now? david: i think she was giving the more conservative voice. they wanted her desk they wanted a diversity on voices. i was a conservative writer. i don't think i have changed. my heroes are edmund burke and alexander hamilton. a base of conservatism and a basic belief in the immigrant dream that we should make a

society where boys and girls can rise and succeed. that has not changed. conservatism has changed a lot around me. donald trump has become unrecognizable to what it was when bill buckley was my mentor. i have become less doctrinaire he republican, and somewhat of a never trumper. the other thing i have tried to do, my theories of culture is over politicized but never more allies. we talk too much about politics and maybe not enough about how we feel gratitude, how we do forgiveness. the things i think matter in life. i think a lot of us are morally inarticulate about. brian: what we first met you when you were with the weekly standard, i want to run this.

we will come back and ask you about the weekly standard. [video clip] david: i had a group of my friends and we were part of a common project. i do think you change history in groups, not as individuals. magazines ought to be celebrated for that. [end of video clip] brian: in december 15 of 2018 you wrote the following. who killed the weekly standard in the new york times? i have only been around him a few times. my impressions, on those occasions, was that he was a run-of-the-mill, arrogant billionaire. he was used to people courting him and he addressed them condescendingly from the lofty height of his own wealth. that was not like you.

david: i was angry. i would maybe take some of that back. brian: why were you angry? david: the magazine i have found with a lot of my best friend, with andy ferguson and fred barnes, so many good friends, i thought it was a very important piece of the american conversation. it was a literary and intelligent conservatism. there was a conservatism that was not partyline. there was conservatism that allowed for internal debate. we were known as the magazine that started the iraq war, but i would say most of the staff did not. there was a lot of differences and it was a fun place to work. i thought it was very important, and could still be the most needed time. in the era of trump so much of conservatism needs to be re-argued.

he did a phenomenal job in the back of the book in the literary section. it is a loss for culture when a voice like that is -- and other people had written much more about this than i had known, it was especially cruel. brian: you write, they did not merely close it because it was losing money, they seemed to have murder it out of greed and vengeance. david: i asked around while doing reporting, why was it closed? i think they wanted to harvest the list for another thing they were starting. so they could have said we don't want to own the magazine, but then let somebody else keep it alive. brian: what is the volume of a column or a magazine mike that, and how many people care about words? david: a lot of people care about words.

i think the job of a columnist -- i used to think i will write a column for certain immigration reform and the president will call me and say, we should oppose this policy, but now i supported. that will never happen. you don't tell people what to think, you provide a context in which they can think. with a column you're trying to provoke. it is not influential for the policymakers, it's part of our common conversation. you are trying to provoke a thought. maybe they like it, maybe they don't, at least they are provoked into thinking. brian: in your book you have a chapter called "mastery." david: my theory is that our life is made up of four big commitments to a family, a vocation, philosophy or faith, and community. the fifth film it depends on how we choose those commitments. mastery comes in the location section. mastery is getting really good at it. i forgot the question.

brian: mastery. david: once you have chosen your location, how do you get good at what you are doing? brian: we have some video that goes back to the 1950's. you write about this in the book. it is out of context. let's watch a man named ed sullivan, who has not been around for years. [video clip] ed: he has a great all-star show. right now, singing a medley of some of the songs you enjoy, here is elvis presley. ♪ [girls screaming] ♪ [hounddog] ♪

>> all of the correspondence and all of the comments to the country, the unanimous opinion with your -- i think that is exactly the basis of your popularity. brian: break it all down. ed sullivan, do we have anybody like him today? david: there were certain majority that a huge majority of america watched. it was hard to imagine one show getting the majority. there was the honeymooners, at sullivan hosted a variety show back in the 1950's. it relates to my book because a guy i admire, bruce springsteen. bruce springsteen was seven, he was living in freehold, new jersey. he was watching the ed sullivan show and saw that moment, he saw elvis presley.

it was like he saw as he put it in his book, fun, fun of. you saw how radical elvis presley looked here and you have those guys in a suit and tie and presley does not dress like them, he does not move like them, his whole affect is different. that was a cultural revolution. in a book i have a concept called annunciation moments that prefigure all the rest. he gave him encompass any saw the magnetic forces want to study those. he said when he was seven he saw his first jellyfish. so the wonders of the ocean and became a naturalist at that moment. i am a lesser figure than them, but at seven and read a book called paddington the bear.

springsteen begged his mom to go out and get a guitar. he tried for seven days and it was too hard. a few years later he was watching the ed sullivan show again and the beatles came on and he went downtown. the rest is history. he had no plan b. he has been playing that guitar ever since. brian: you are either an elvis fan or a beatles fan, but not both. did you watch them? david: i was probably too young. i remember being aware of the beatles. i was too young to see elvis in his prime. but i was aware of yellow submarine. i was more of a rolling stones. brian: what impacted somebody like ed sullivan, or the

beatles, or elvis have in this country? david: they defined a culture. the culture you see on ed sullivan is the culture of the 1950's. they do big things, like fight the depression. they needed a culture that said we are all in this together. you did not want to stick out too much, you wanted to dress the same. there was the culture of i am no better than anybody, but nobody is better than me. you did not say i am from chicago, you said i'm from 59th and polaski because the neighborhoods were supertight. it was too conformist and too boring. the food was boring. it was also racist, sexist, anti-semitic. along comes elvis pressley and says i am breaking this. the beatles state same desk say the same.

it is much more individualistic. much more open. it was cool to be young and not all. to be a rebel and not an institutionalist. the culture shifted from elvis pressley to woodstock. we needed to go through that change. it was good for america. we have had 60 years of hyper individualism. now we are at a point where the individualism has torn us a part of the society and the bonds between us have grown weaker. brian: you say you change your mind about this in the book. individualism to being more interested in community. what happened during that period to change your mind? david: history solves problems of that moment. i can't remember, the social theorist who said history moves according to a ratchet, hatchet, pivot ratchet. we have to win world war ii and have a collective culture.

it works for a while, but then it stops working. you have to chop it up. because people are ingenious, they pivot over and find something else. suddenly the problem is, society is to conformance. elvis gives us something new and we live more in his way. now we are at a point where we are chopping up hyper individualism of 60 years. some people are reverting to tribe as their attempt to find community. tribalism bonds people together, but over a mutual hatred not a mutual affection. brian: go back to the title of this chapter, mastery. what more do you want to say about mastery? david: it comes about and a lot of ways.

people sometimes think i should find what my skills are. i should just go do what my skills tell me to do. i think that is the wrong question. you should go to where your desires are. skills are plentiful, but motivation is really scarce. the question becomes, what are you so fanatical about you will basically devote your whole life to that thing? i think the research we know, even people like mozart, he said it's not because they were natural geniuses, they just worked phenomenally hard for a long time. springsteen worked on the music his whole life. he did things to remain true to what started him. one of the things i admire most about his life choices is that -- his third album, which was the third superstar blowup album, he could have made a bigger out bum with national sound and becoming global

celebrity. instead he went back to his hometown and wrote a very spare, very particular album about his own place. instead of going big, hewitt back to his roots, the thing that motivated him. the idea that the core of each of us, there is some question that nags at us. there is some desire that drives us. it can be anesthetic. i quote a woman who is a painter. she said, wire you a painter, she said, i love the smell of paint. there is a guy named tom boyce who has a book. they say some kids are dandy line children. he is a dandy line kid. his sister was an orchid. she achieved a lot, but depression and suicide to occur. the comparison between the two has been the animating principle.

to me, it is working on that craft over and over and having the desired to wake up and do the same thing over and over. brian: this comes from your chapter mastery. i will show some video. there are three clips. one is a guy who is deceased from 1994. the next one is shelby foot from 2001 he is deceased. casey shift is alive. that is 2011. over the years i have asked questions about how people right when they write and it has gotten peoples attention. let's watch this. i will ask you about your chapter. [video clip] >> if we could see you in your environment writing this book, what would we see? >> you would see me writing in the nude most of the time. we live in total isolation out in the country. the electric man cannot find the meter.

why where close, they are just a bother. brian: you say you right between 500 and 600 words a day with a dipped pen on paper. how many words can you write and demonstrate. >> i like writing with a dipped pen because it makes me take my time. instead of doing the typewriter and reversing the drama. i don't want anything mechanical between me and the page. brian: what do you write on? >> i write with a pencil on a legal pad for the first draft, by hand. a mechanical pencil. when i write something on the computer it's longer and softer. the pencil in the paper slows me down.

once i have the first giraffe -- a first draft then i will , enter into the computer and edit subsequent drafts from there. [end of video clip] brian: you write about some of this stuff. david: the first story reminded me of john cheever. he would get up in his apartment, put on a suit and tie, go to the basement of his building, take off his suit and tie and right in his boxers. at 12:30 he would put his clothes back on and make himself lunch. brian: did he talk about that? david: i came across that story and it impressed me. toni morrison had a hotel room where she had a bible, typewriter and it bottle of brandy. i like that story too. i am not had a computer or a pen. i have random thoughts that come to me out of order and i write them on little pieces of paper,

post-it notes, or slips of notebook paper, then i put them into a big pile, then i take a big pile. i may have 200 pages of research paper that i have marked up, i lay it out on the floor of my living room or office, there is a bunch of piles. each pile will be a paragraph of my column or of the book. for me, the writing process is not typing on a keyboard, it's crawling around the floor organizing my piles. i tell my students, your paper should be 80% done by the time you start putting into the keyboard. writing is about traffic management and structure. you have to get the structure right. for me, the piles are the structure. i don't have clarity about what it is until i've physically see it laid out on the floor. i pick up a pile, write the

paragraph, pick up the next pile and throw it out. if it is not flowing, i don't try to fix it, i just start over with a new structure. if it does not feel like it's flowing, it's a structural problem showing up unconsciously. brian: how about a book, when you write a book? david: it's the same way. they get into ever smaller piles. so i will have drawers of notebooks. i lay them out and then i will have this chapter, that chapter, that chapter. each sentence has a piece of paper. i pick up the paragraph family -- and then lay out the sentences and copy them down to the computer. brian: here is your column that you wrote about your own book. it was april 15, 2019 in the new york times. five lies our culture tells. you say, we've created a culture based on lies.

explain. david: i wrote the word terror -- character for years r years ago. it had some problems, but it was internal. now it has been revealed the last few years, our culture has bigger problems than i understood. it is the culture of individualism. life is an individual journey. i quote the dr. seuss book. that depicts life as a solitary journey without marriage, friendship, relationships, just a sole person going into life. the second thing is that we are swept up into the system that you are what you accomplish. there is a view, we deny it, but our society points to it, which is that people earn more and work more than other people. that has created poison in our

society. then there is the light we tell our students that success will make you feel fulfilled. you should point your whole life to career and success. we take them at 16, the most privileged ones, shift them into the college admission process and say success will be their lives. i now see the effects of that, just creating this culture of fragmentation and anger. we have lost the ability to treat ourselves well. brian: what triggered this? david: i think it grew up gradually. the meritocracy. purified. it was a rebellion that was done at harvard, it was around 1950, we have to fight the soviets. you looked at harvard, we are just the sons of blueblood

protestant families that have been going to harvard for the last 300 years. we have to change this. he was right. the sat was part of the tool they would use so it would not just be inherited sons of rich men. so they did it based on merit. the median sat score was five something. by 10 years that was changed. it changed to the high 600s. it made society a lot more fair. somehow the competitive pressure of the meritocracy, combined with natural individualism of america -- we have taken good ideas, and taken them too far. if you want the book in one sentence, we've got the culture of the meritocracy, individualism, which is true. you are not completely sucked up by these values. you have a better moral system. there is an attempt to survey philosophers and say here is a moral system to balance capitalism, not to replace it, just so that we are not morally

corrupted. brian: people are asking what is on his lapel? david: i talk about this in the book, but not only in the book. i think culture changes when a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy it. elvis was one of those small people. we have social isolation in this country. i created something that was a social fabric project. it is based that isolationism is being soft on a local level by people called weavers. some just behave as neighbors. there is a woman named sarah in baltimore created in organization called red, which takes 450 underperforming students and surrounds them with

volunteers and creates a social fabric around them. it's a beautiful program. brian: you mentioned baltimore. we don't need to get into this. the mayor of baltimore, and there have been a couple of mayors of baltimore, in both cases they are women. what's the word you want to use to describe what they have done. it typical leave of absence because she was a part of -- i don't want to make any accusations that i can't define, but she basically made a tremendous amount of money off of look sales that really never happened. you know what i am talking about. how can a kid growing up in that environment? david: change will not come from politicians, it will come from the bottom up. brian: but they still are out there and those are the people we see. david: politics matter and we

should have honest politicians, but i think change will come when we have a shift in culture, but then a shift in community. all of us lived a little more for our neighbors. we adopt different habits. you don't change her life and go in be a teacher in an urban school. if everybody in our society invited their neighbors over for dinner, if everybody checked in on old people during the heat wave, if we had a shift in our manners so that we all joined in organization, joined a club that put us in contact with people unlike ourselves once a month. all those millions of changes would have an effect on the social fabric. it would make people embrace a different lifestyle. most care and societies informal. we had a friend who ran into a lady and florida who was helping kids across the street after school.

he said, do you have time to volunteer, she said, no. he said, are you getting paid for this, she said, no. she said i will go bring food to the ill. he said, that's not volunteering, she said no, i am just neighboring. most people do that, they just neighbor. we lost the art of neighboring. we just take the weavers who are great at relationships, we take their values and try to lift them up and illuminate them. brian: where did the term come from? david: we just thought of it. the term is important because, in 1960, nobody called themselves a feminist. by 1975 millions of people said they were a feminist. to me, i look at all the weavers around the country and know it is a movement. we had the feminist movement solve gender equality.

we have the civil rights movement. we have a community problem but no community movement. brian: you mentioned aspen more than once and you talk about it in the book. i have some video. i want to roll this and just ask you how many people really have an opportunity to go to this kind of an environment? this is in new york. how do you get access to that? it costs lots of money, the same thing with aspen. the prices and aspen are astronomical. very few people can enjoy that. when you talk about these places, and norma's number of -- an enormous number of people and the united states could never participate in this kind of thing. david: aspen is very expensive. aspen itself is 40 programs and policies that reach across america and across the world.

the festival has become famous in what aspen is known for. janet runs our rural program. every time i was in nebraska they know janet across rural america. most of what aspen does is not the aspen ideal festival. chautauqua's upper people that rent little cottages. those two places are more above average wealth. one of the things we have done in weave is to go with the problems are, to go where the people are. i spent a year in 2016 trying to understand why i got the trump of election so wrong. then i spent the last year and a half with the weavers in north carolina, in nebraska, in new orleans, all across america where normal america lives.

in youngstown, ohio. that has been a very great experience. while politics has gotten ugly. i met a really good guy who really loved youngstown. he started activism by standing on the towns square of youngstown. i have met the most amazing people not motivated by money, status, they are motivated to do good. they take on heavy burdens, they don't have a lot of money, but they lead very inspiring lives. i have heard so many stories. one woman i met in new orleans, lisa fitzpatrick was her name, she was in health care. she was driving and saw two young boys, they shot her in the face. she recovered. they were victims of something

they did not start. she started doing work with gang members and then she moved into a neighborhood and young kids started knocking on her door who needed community. she let them in. one day she found herself in her 50's surrounded by 35 young kids, teenagers who were hanging around her house. she said, why do you hang around with a middle-aged lady like me, they said, because you open the door. so many people are hungry for community. brian: here is some video from february the 21st of this year. it is only 30 seconds. you will recognize the individual. this is another part of your book. [video clip] >> as desperate as i am for the church to do what it does, in my life and in the life of the society what i am concerned about, the church does not only need to be confined to hallowed

halls. there is a whole bevy of organizations, and famous and nonfamous people who have a common language of the human soul. [end of video clip] brian: who is that woman? david: she is my wife. we were married about two years ago. she is a writer, on some similar subjects, but differently. she wrote a book called "the fabric of character." it's about organizations that turnaround lives. she went to a moving company in salt lake city that takes men and women at a prison and is

reform ancient so they come out two years later totally transformed. it's humbling to be around these people. the funny thing about them is some of them are former burglars. they are good at getting things out of buildings. their slogan is, we used to take things up a window, now we take it out the door. brian: in your book you tell us about your divorce. we talked about it the last time you are here. you say you and your ex-wife have an agreement not to talk about your divorce. but then you tell us everything about your new wife, how you met her, she was your researcher, she is 23 years younger than you are. why did you decide to do that? you get a sense that divorce was a real blow to you, but you won't talk about it. david: i tell my journey of faith. as you can tell from that clip,

ann is christian. it was really only a two-month window in august or september of 2013, we were working on this book and i would write her these emails trying to understand what was all the stuff. she would write me long emails back, that sort of explained the exploration of faith. she got a job in houston. that was pivotal, then my journey of faith continued. brian: you say in the book, and if you did not talk about all this people would be cynical and that story would be told. how much of a fear did you have that you hired a woman conservatively younger than you? david: it was a fear.

we went through a lot of -- especially ann did. love became too powerful to deny. we cannot go through life. this happened in 2016. you couldn't go through life without that person out there and not be with that person. eventually, what had seemed impossible -- you don't think about it when you are just working together and being friends. but eventually what seemed impossible, and the age gap, it just seemed unavoidable. brian: this is another small item. your first wife's name was jane, she was a christian and converted to judaism. she changed her name to sarah.

as a jewish man, you married a woman named christian. it is just the opposite. does any of this stuff bother you? david: i called the chapter on religion the most unexpected turn of events and it was the most unexpected turn of events. brian: you mention and tell us you will mention a lot of different people" a lot of different people. let's start with dorothy day. david: she was a writer, she grew up in san francisco and chicago, then she came to new york think and she would be a radical socialist writer. on the birth of her child she was flooded with joy. she needed somebody to thank so she became a catholic. she started something called the catholic worker movement. she founded homeless shelters. then she founded communes. it also years of organizations, not only to help the poor and homeless, but to live amongst them.

she paid herself no sorry and lived a life of poverty. she is someone who gave her life to others. she wrote a book, which i highly recommend, called "the long loneliness," about her early life. whether you are religious or not, just to see someone taking on the burden of being poor out of the sense of this is what i am called to do. i teach it in my classes at yale. all writers are very moved by her. brian: i had the pleasure of interviewing you for years. you don't seem to ever change when you are sitting in that chair. if you read this book you go back to the time where you say you were lonely, you are in an apartment, did not care about anything, what is the difference

of the feeling you had then, after your divorce, and the feeling you have now every day when you get up? david: as i say, i devoted my life so much to work. i had no weekend friends. somehow that was the way life had become. when the kids left to college, and elsewhere, i just suddenly all had nothing. this vast expanse of loneliness in the weekends, and i realize the void was in myself. i was writing a lot of articles, but i was not really living an eternal life of devotions. i think you become ashamed. i was not doing well. i was humiliated. life just as valleys. my mom died two years ago, that was another valley.

i was with a 94-year-old who said, life is defined by our moments of greatest adversity and how we react to it. you are either broken, in which case you turn bitter by life's trials, or you get broken open, in which you get more vulnerable. hopefully i have tried to get more vulnerable. brian: when you get up every day is there a different feeling? david: i have a joyful life. that is luck. i have fallen on some warm communities where they demand you show up in a loving way. partly it is being blissfully happy. partly it is china work out these issues through the book. we really try to write our way to a better life. i enjoyed writing this book. it was stressful because it was

tough to organize, but it allowed me to be in touch with smart people. some jewish, some christian. scientists, einstein. i just take the wisdom that i found and try to pass it along. this book is like a teacher. these people have wisdom, i have harvested it for five years and handed off to the reader. brian: another writer you mention is matthew, from the bible. why? david: people say there are all these miracles in the bible. to me the miracle is the bible. that some group of people thousands of years ago could come up with genesis, or exodus, or matthew is a miracle. parting the red sea is nothing compared to the and complexity of these books. matthew is sublimely beautiful.

the ideas expressed in the sermon is a beautiful miracle that is a revolution. i quoted in the book, the celestial grandeur shines through in the book. brian: you came from canada and graduated from the university of chicago in history. the time you were in college you despised edmund burke. but you no longer despise him. who was he, and i see this all the time of people who say edmund burke is my guy. why? what did he write that matters? david: i was a college freshman and in chicago they assign you books you don't want to read and make you take courses, you have no choice. i was assigned a book called "the reflections and the revolutions in france."

admin burke was in the late 18th century and supported the american revolution, but oppose the french revolution. this was a book against the french revolution and against the revolutionaries. brian: what was the difference? david: he thought the american revolution was a conservative revolution. the problem with the french revolution was an attempt to wipe the slate clean and create a new society out of nothing. the key phrase i take from burke, or his key thesis is, society is really complicated, so we should be careful in how we think we should change it. you should do change, but do it incrementally and constantly. he is suspicious of rewriting society. he put his faith in the acquired wisdom of the ages that is

embodied in institutions, customs, and in the traditions of the past. weigh those you traditions you're asking for trouble. when i was in 18 her old kid i thought it was horrible. but then i went off as a police reporter in chicago and i saw cabrini green and these housing projects were they hope to improve the lives of the poor and they made it worse. when they tore down the old neighborhood state tour with the connections of the social capital. these were awful places. the unintended consequences of good intentions. now those projects have been torn down and those places are much better. brian: i know you have written some about donald trump, i know you don't want to go over all of what people have said about him. i do want to ask you this, when he is gone, weather at the end of 2020 or another four years,

what do you think will be the legacy? i'm not sure that is the word, but what will have changed in our system? david: i think culture really shapes history. some people think technology, but i think culture, values and ideas. donald trump will have put a tear in a lot of our norms in the culture of how we are supposed to behave. what are the values. brian: give me an example. david: you would not tweet off nasty stuff as president of the united states. you would not pay off a stripper and be unabashed about it. but he does all of this. brian: hold on with the stripper thing. go back in history and name a president. lyndon johnson, john f. kennedy. go back over the list, we just did not know about them.

david: but if we did know it would have been a scandal, so there was certain norms. there was a sense that if a president lied a lot then there would be a price to pay. brian: is there any difference between what donald trump did and what bill clinton did? david: clinton had his affairs, but trump is open and flagrant about it. there is not even paying homage to the norms. i was friends with clinton at the time, but this is a different time. the crucial question to me is, what happens after? is this the new norm? it was clarified for me in the first republican debate in the primary were he already attacked carly fiorina for her faith. then he went after rand paul, and set i will not go after your looks, but i have a lot to work

with. and you take away the norms of politeness and civility than everything becomes dog eat dog. i worry about the decay of civilization. there's a core belief that the crust of civilization is thinner than you think. if you tear away that crust and unleash things you think. brian: are there other things? david: more than we talk about often, our attitude towards china has changed. he has changed it anyway were china has become the more threatening presence in the world. brian: what about military intervention around the world? david: he continues their retrenchment in a different way that had began with president obama. whether we stay in this posture is a different question.

the famous vietnam syndrome happened in the 1970's. by the 1980's we elected ronald reagan and america was more active in the world. america tends to feel they need to be active in the world. the next president will find himself or herself as president and america will have to act and be active. we are talking and there is a refugee crisis on the southern border, it is because we have ignored and now defunding some of those countries like honduras and el salvador. things turn bad when america is not active in the world, trying to maintain basic decency. brian: have you seen the column written by robert simmons? about your book? david: no. i am a big admirer. brian: he says, dear david, the headline gives it away.

"david brooks, let me respectfully suggest: lighten up." he says, i am a big fan, you write beautifully and have insights about lifestyles and beliefs that others had missed. then he says, i really respond directly to other columnists, it's a good rule because it would make commentary more personal and shrill, but sometimes rules need to be broken and this is one of those times. let me respectfully suggest, lighten up. be sure most of your insights are true, but they are also utopian. let me stop there. what do you think? david: i'm not sure where he is going with that. it is about cultural anxiety. i think we are in a culturally

parentless place. 40,000 people are killing themselves a day with opioid addiction. brian: he said, here are a few comments on the lies. he said ambition is america's blessing and curse. it has people try new things. david: maybe i was exaggerating. a lot of the things that i think i call lies our truths taken to an extreme. i believe in ambition and social mobility. but we have taken to the level that we have destroyed our culture. if i sat down with him, we would probably say. brian: this is not a practical goal of public policy, even if government reduces things that make people and happy or miserable. happiness is not a practical goal of public policy. david: i do agree with that. the government can offer services, but we offer each other care.

that is where happiness comes in. brian: he says the meritocracy is not so sinister as per trade. -- as it is portrayed. david: i live in the meritocracy, i have felt at peace and embody it. i think the lack of social trust, social division comes from a meritocracy that has lost some of its values. i see his point. brian: finally he writes, finally there is a matter of work, everyone complains about it, but without it most of us would die of boredom. learning new stuff is inherently rewarding and you and i are paid to do it. his last sentence, let's keep perspective, we don't live in an ideal world, and never will, but things could be worse, let's try to avoid that.

david: i have a chapter in the book on vocation. i think work is one of the pillars of life. but i think you should do it as, what am i contributing here. i don't think you should do it just because it makes you money or makes you famous. brian: when you sat down to write this book, who did you have in mind reading it? david: myself. you really try to work out your problems. my books, popular or not, popularity comes not as you are a genius, but i have common problems. i say them in the book that i am an average person with above average communication skills. when i go through a problem, a lot of people are going through it. i am very typical. if there is any popularity it's because there are a lot of people going through the same thing. it's my averageness that is the key. brian: our guest has been david

brooks. he is a new york times columnist. the name of his book, "the second mountain: the quest for a moral life." thank you very much for joining us. david: thank you. >> all q&a programs are available on our website, or on the podcast at c-span.org. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> next sunday, discussion on would's the presidents, two contributors. that is next sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern and pacific time, on c-span. >> monday night on the communicators, conversation on privacy and internet

with mary stone ra oss. >> the stakes are higher now because we are talking about displaying automated decision-making capabilities and that is the ability or machines to either assist with decisions --ut people who unilaterally unilaterally make those decisions about the. >> they are clearly not meant to inform the consumer about what information is collected and how the information is going to be used. >> watch monday night at 8:00 >> tomorrow, joe biden kicks off his presidential campaign with a rally in pittsburgh. starting at 3:30 p.m. eastern on c-span3.

online, c-span.org, or listen on the c-span radio app. at 10:00 a.m. eastern, attorney general william barr will testify before the senate judiciary committee on the molar report. on thursday, 9:00 a.m. eastern, he will testify before the house judiciary committee live on c-span3. c-span.org. and listen on the free c-span radio app. david lillington filled in for theresa may in the british house of commons. the prime minister and other leaders were attending the funeral of a journalist killed while covering a riot in northern ireland. among the topics discussed, president trump's upcoming state visit to the u.k. and the impact for ireland in a trade deal. this is just under an and the r government has facts in public