i debated christopher hitchens on cnn once. for about 11 or 12 minutes. and he edges said some vicious things about jerry falwell. arry falwell had just died few hours before. i thought to myself, i have never been a great fan of jerry falwell but it is unseemly for somebody to go on the air and spew vitriolic hours after they died. it really was -- he had unfortunately had moments like that. brian: 7 billion people in the world and 30% of them are christians. 1.6 billion are muslims. buddhists and hindus are large. put that all into context as you look at the world, why are there this different religions and who do you believe? eric: "whom" do you believe? [laughter] eric: i got you. people know me know i make a mistake more often than you make it. brian: you have to come back more often so i can learn from you. eric: i am very at the medical. -- i am very ecumenical. i think doctrine is important, but as i have learned after writing bonhoeffer there are people out there that worship and title of theological perfection. they are not worshiping god, they

christopher hitchens, he really attacks him for that but he also has many enemies on the right. whether dÉtente with the soviet union was a --. >> host: so the book is called the idealist with is a rather country and taken kissinger who is even the most timely description is described as the ultimate idealist. so your choice of the word idealists which are explained in the book is really not a wilsonian notion of idealism. it's more of a kantian notion of idealism. can you explain for the audience at home what you mean idealist when it comes to kissinger and why are notion of course traditionally is wilsonianism but that's not the description you give. >> guest: it's true that most people think of henry kissinger as the realist and then names they throw around our macular aid. maybe it's not surprising that people have fallen into that fat but i'd like to show in the book that he really wasn't a realist. there were realist who argued that the united states should follow its narrow national self-interest but he wasn't one of them and those who were realist were often critical of

in your book you even quote the departed christopher hitchens saying, and he says it in anger bill clinton walked in the revolution and to take criticism from even the central centrist democrats to get >> this is one of the struggles that hillary clinton is having now do you want the one hand hold onto your ideology while being sensitive to the voter changes going around and when bill clinton talked about the third way it was building on something that blumenthal and others in the old version of the republic called the conversation and it popped up in 1991, 92. how do we take the white house and there were two sides to it which bill clinton brought together. one was tactical they were so disappointed in michael dukakis and with his suspense of liberalism and george j. -- h. w. bush that he wasn't selling ideology and he brought willie horton and they promised themselves that they were going to find a candidate that would fight like the dickens and they found up one but they also said how do we look under the hood and make sure that we can update it for the 1990s. >> while also keeping the

and christopher hitchens was a cruncher again. that's what he did. that's the way approach the world. he was always against -- a contrary can. i take exception that he wasn't writing to be provocative. i think he was writing to be provocative. and i wasn't happy with his challenging, you know, sister teresa. but in any case, i wanted to go to one of the things that i loved about your book, rabbi kushner, which is your interpretation of god, of genesis, your we interpretation of genesis, talking about the early christian interpreters understood the garden, even adams relationship that god originally created a double creature, a double creature who created them, man and woman. you actually quoted as being one of the interpretations. that's the way i've always thought of it. i always thought of mother god. that the gods were so jealous of this double creature that they split it in half and that's why most of us go through much of our lives looking for our missing piece. and i've always loved that view come and i found my missing piece. you did, too. uni