Before the womens march last year that said this was the boldest most intersectional platform that is ever come out of any march historically, and that was one, the moment i was most proud. After words airs every saturday at 10 p. M. Eastern and sunday at 9 p. M. Eastern and pacific. Founded in 1747, its one of the oldest libraries in the country. This building is essentially the first purpose built Library Structure in america. We often talk about franklin and his Library Company of philadelphia where, we are a freestanding purpose built librarystructure so thats important. Unlike any of the others, we are still operating as a lending library. People have been coming for that building 270 years. I have said and ill say it here that besides a church, the library is the single oldest Cultural Institution that is unbroken to the colonial period so when you walk inthat door and you borrow book, youre doing it as theyve been doing it for nearly 3 centuries. Newport was of course one of the key five commercial ports of colonial america. It was on par more or less with adelphia and new york andothers , charleston and so in many ways the Redwood Library is a sort of culminating civic structure that represents the ambitions, the aspirations of newport as a city that isnt just a mercantile powerhouse but also an intellectual center. That was really the conception. Then and now, money and commerce is always tainted with a certain kind of greed, its too commercial so there was a strategic decision to in a way civilized newport and its mercantile operations. And make it not only a Financial Hub but also a learning hub, so to speak. The library was built between 1948 and 1750, conceived in 1747 and it is the first of about 15 years of sort of discussion among the newport intelligentsia. Its the forerunner of the Redwood Library was the central tropical society founded by Bishop Berkeley who came to newport in 1729 in the hopes of eventually gathering his thoughts, his resources to create a college in bermuda. He made it to the check of england but never came but in his friendships , he created a group that would meet weekly and discuss philosophy , pressing issues of the day and over time that became a sort of core group including Abraham Redwood that pool their resources and conceived of the library and 47, 48, 49 and it opened in march 1760. Abraham redwood was a plantation owner in the caribbean. He owned a sugar plantation in antigua though he was indeed a slave owner. As you can imagine, in colonial times, america was tied culturally to england, especially and also the continent of france and italy so newport being an english colony, the book trade very much centered in london, the major European Centers so Abraham Redwood had an agent that was sent over to london with a booklet and its important to think about redwood was practical and they had pressing needs for knowledge and learning, so we have the kernel of the collection and of course as you can imagine, antique texts, 18th century additions both in the original language and in translation of important antique texts, then theres also a more practical strand of the original collection which includes such things as beekeeping, Animal Husbandry , carpentry and all that kind of thing. So its very democratic in that sense, very deliberately democratic so that, but of course it wasnt. 46 of redwoods friends all of a certain class, white males of the commercial class. But in their intent, it was to provide a forum where interested citizens could come and get basic learning on just about anything. It is important to note that literacy in colonial america was just picking up after 1760 so the Redwood Library is part of that movement and it was open to everyone but with the sort of tacit understanding that it was men of a certain stature. It was opened on thursday afternoon for two hours. And you would come in and put a deposit down on books and you could only borrow onebook at a time. And it was in that way very much a community resource. Although one has to, a public then is not public now and that has always been the critique of the public sphere in the 18th century in the enlightenment is that it was in fact exclusive in a lot of ways. Over the years there has been a renewed cycle and attention on maintaining the library and thats an important point. Redwood library is of undeniable importance. The oldest continuously operating, earliest in the classic structure, all of that but it has in normas symbolic value today when we are besieged with fake news, tweets, soundbites. It really stands for intellectual pursuit, lifelong learning, curiosity and ultimately really for an educated citizenry as being the basis of democracy and thats what redwood intended and thats what we try to continue in the mission that we are pushing currently. We are outside of Newport City Hall in Newport Rhode island finding more about the areas literary scene. We speak with author peter cannon about his book american mojo. Particularly for an economy like the one we have in the United States, the middle class has been the centerpiece. Its our dna. It has become our Central Nervous system and when it prospers, the rest of the economy prospers and when it doesnt, what it tends to do is create sort of a barbell effect where a few people get really rich and the poor get really poor. And the balance between these two, the key fulcrum position is the middle class. Any questions about the size of the middle class have made compounding the tricky because its almost impossible to identify now. In the beginning in the 50s and postwar 40s , the middle class was kind of a chunk of granite that waslargely white. It could be defined easily by what people earned , where they live and frankly what they spent and with two or three indicators you could say here is the middle class. The face of america has changed so dramatically in the intervening 60, 70 years that all of the attempts to map out the middle class have gotten much more compounding. Theres some people who do it on earnings power area but earnings power is an imperfect guide because what you earn in new york to be a middleclass person is different than what you might need in tempe arizona or montana. The other pieces some people say what can you earn plus borrow area and the trouble is availability of credit comes and goes so i think the most effective definition came from a task force that president obama and Vice President biden set up where they took a look at all the ways that youd imagine looking at the middle class. The Heritage Foundation says break the entire population in 2 5. Cut up the top fifth and bottom fifth and Everything Else is in the middle class. I get that but what the biden panel came up with was theres a useful way to answer the question which is lets use aspiration as a way to define this group. What did they aspire to . What are the aspirational elements of the middle class . I house, a car. College education for you and your children. Great healthcare. Vacation, retirement and one more thing. The satisfaction of knowing theres a high likelihood that your kids will be better than you are. I think thats a much more useful definition. Most people watching this will be or have been members of the middle class. But its become a much more dynamic organism. Theres much more flowing in and out of the middle class. Everybody knows there are Something Like 40 to 50 million poor people in the United States which is entirely too many. But whats changed is that just above the seam of the poverty line, there are another 40 Million People at least who are what i call hovering poor who are just a twist of life away from an experience in poverty. One of the leasing causes of bankruptcy in the lower middle class is a cancer diagnosis. It can be a car accident or illness with your child or loss of a job so whats happening is the middle class has gone from being an chunk of granite to a very dynamic kind of molecule with people coming in and out of the middle class there are charities and Public Policies set up to say lets take people and push them above the poverty line and then we can say our job is done. That no longer is sufficient because this hovering poor will find many, many people in our nation having an experience with poverty so some 40 percent of our children were in some part of their life beyond food stamps or supplemental nutrition assistance programs so that volatility, that moving in and out makes working with the middle class a lot more difficult. One of the things you ask is how did the middle class happen . One of the great things i discovered in researching this book is ive had in my own notion that the middle class in america is so intertwined that it must be a natural thing. If you are in america with our economy you must be in the middle class. Nothing could be further from thetruth. Postworld war ii, when 16 million american men and women returned from various theaters of war or wherever they were working on the manufacturing cycle, suddenly everybody came back and when they came back , they faced something extraordinary. The rest of the worlds manufacturing was largely in ruins. Moms or some form of elimination and all are mainland cities were being attacked but what happened at the time was there was an overwhelming sense across every demographic, across business, government, the law, education, religious, everyone had a sense that we need to do Something Special out of respect and a sense of duty to these 16 million men and women. As an extraordinary demonstration of unity, we all pull together as one. There was everyone feeling we want to welcome these people home and give them a chance so we invested in their education across the board. We invested in many ways to help them build, create, buy homes. We did things to help these people start out. What did the American People do . They rose to the occasion. And as we saw our Economic Growth from just after the war to the next several decades, we went from a 200 billion gdp to a 500 million gdp in 30 years and kept going so by the endof the 1950s we were the number one agrarian power in the world. No one had more agricultural produce. We were also the number one in manufacturing power. And by the late 1950s we were the Number One Service provider in the world. So by 1958, most of the people who went to work in the United States were whitecollar. These were middleclass jobs and people educated and work and found their way out with lots of support from the government. It was anything but a Natural Organic thing. This was a self designed and created attempts to bring these 15 million men and women and later their children into the flour of the middle class. It was created and thats important when you look and see what other nations around the world are doing now today we are letting our middleclass founder for itself. Were not spending a lot of time or a lot of vocalization about tax cuts for the middle class but tax cuts alone will begin to satisfy the need of this middle class that i described. The first crack in the facade of the middle class happened in the 60s and it began with social unrest. There are a lot of people who were basically uninvited to the middle class and it was an africanamerican issue at first and then it became a youth issue as people began to divide along the lines of vietnam and the ways that racial and other kinds of equality were being embraced. Women and other types later became the same sort of issue and that is you cant have a chunk of people who are supported by all to be in the middle class and a lot of other people with their noses pressed against the glass. What happened at the time was our economy started to falter just as other economies in the world were coming on stream and we didnt adjust very well. Then in 1973 something happened that shivered all of our timbers which was the Arab Oil Embargo and suddenly congress is locked in a battle with the preuglies. And from the 70s to the 80s we faced double digit unemployment. Double digit Interest Rates. And in the end, doubledigit inflation. Those three uglies conspired along with social unrest to bring some of the middle class narrative to a grinding halt and ill give you an example doesnt get reported, 30 years after the crash of 87, we are very good at analyzing crashes that happen in one or two days but if you look at it from a broader context which is how i like to write my book and think about this, from 1966 till the early 80s, the stock market lost 25 percent of its value. Thats a big number and thats pretty toxic but when you factor in doubledigit inflation, when you look at it in real terms and in real terms, a dollar invested in 1966 had lost more than half of its value in 1982. That was a longterm agonizing crash you will not see widely reported because it happened an inch at a time. So here you have an economy thats stuck and worse, you have wages and inflation and a whole lot of other things taking off and so the economists were totally be welded. They said what can we call this . They came up with the name stagflation. It was stagnant as other things are taking off and we dont know what to do about it. How does that show itself west and mark it shows itself in appointed way. That inflation is runaway and yet wages for year after year or decade after decade are flat. You have this incredible gap thats created where all the things you want to buy cost more money and in fact, their prices are going up over a percent a month and your wages stay essentially flat for three decades. That wedge, that wedge came home to roost on the heads of the middle class and that was part of the big issue that brought us in the position like, what do we do now in the early 80s . One of the things Ronald Reagan figured out when he got into office was you cant have wages flat and unemployment at double digits. And Interest Rates at double digits. And inflation at double digits and hope to do anything other than pontificate from your bully pulpit. What weve got to do is take some difficult, austere measures. So he and his team decided, paul booker particularly was that the first and ugliest of the three uglies we have to take on his inflation. You can have prices going up a percent a month because that builds an expectation that my income has to go up like that i have to figure out another way around. What he did is he said were going to do what every candidate does which is slow the economy down. Not just the United States but he says slow the economy down. Used like Interest Rates so Interest Rates, the prime rate went to 21 and a half percent. If you were borrowing to buy a house or a car, your Interest Rate which might be two percent or less, your Interest Rate went up. It was a two percent per month payment. If you bought a house, you had to pay basically 25 percent of the value of that house every year. Naturally, what it did is it killed any business that required borrowing to prosper so the Automotive Industry went right to health and as you know prices ultimately failed but the housing industry came to a screeching halt and people were just provided impact. But the extraordinary thing and reagan gets maligned for a lot of things but the extraordinary thing is inflation went 12 and half, 13 percent so by 1983 it slowed to three percent. People are saying what can we do . How can we, we have no one else to send to work. Youre working at donald but we dont have a way to create more income. How can we as we entered the 90s , how can we possibly sustain our middleclass lifestyle . Then like a song on a clear day, the idea came to them. Borrow. So in 1957, there was but a handful of credit cards. By 1957, there were 100 million. By 2007, there were over 1 billion credit cards. By 2008, Consumer Debt was at 12 point eight five trillion. And last month, from 2008 it went down, weve now exceeded that number so were talking about 13 trillion in Consumer Debt. That means every american old well over 15,000 and some obviously a great deal more. They borrowed their way out. That what worked well. You could continue to sustain your lifestyle and if you add the virtue of owning a home, the value in your home was so great you can refinance. And you can reborrow or do a home equity loan. You can borrow and borrow and that worked fine until 2008 and the bottom fell out. That was the most single devastating thing that happened to the middle class because the one percent came through that just fine. But they were crushed before and only more crushed after. But the real pain, the real agony that people felt after 2008 was the middle class. And if you look at and dissected by some of the members, as i told you middleclass is a lot more amorphous and more like a molecule. You look at the africanamerican middleclass, they lost a generation of wealth. With no apparent real signs yet of their return. The hispanic middleclass and there are 50 million hispanics in this country and 16 would qualify by any measure we talked about as members of the middle class. They retreated as well and the recuperative power was not even across the middleclass. Certain parts of the middle class rebounded pretty well since 2008 to today and others are still struggling so what happens with public policymakers when they talk about middleclass , like its one big giant thing that behaves the same, nothing could be further from the truth. So one of the great frustrations when people talk about jobs, they dont really do it from a sophisticated perspective and no one is less sophisticated than some of the people what the talking heads running for office so for instance, i used to go all the time on the friday jobs report and this job report comes on. People would ask me about it, i stopped doing it because its such a meaningless number. First of all, the most important ingredient in the jobs report has been left out. Which is the market value of the job. We have been exceptionally threatened over the past five years at creating lowwage, low opportunity jobs. Some of them with very little benefit. Weve created a lot of those that we havent created as many of the really high paying jobs. Weve been pretty good that to be honest but the notion of matching people with the higherpaying jobs is not a skill that weve gotten down every well. The other thing you will see is they talk about wage growth. Wage growth is still under enormous measure and its frustrating a lot of the people at the Federal Reserve and other economies because the economies expanded but wages are expanding. So productivity and technology play a very big role in people are not willing to face it. If we were running up in Youngstown Ohio or somewhere in pennsylvania, you and i would have said our grandfather worked in steel and our father worked in steel but i dont see them employing nearly as many people so i think im going to get a different degree if i go to college or Junior College or if i get trained, im going to train for a different skill because the mill and the plant dont seem to provide the same robust opportunity as it did and you and i talk about it and we make plans and we might move to austin texas or someplace else where there are different kind of jobscreated. And we had a generation that figured it out. We landed on her feet and the government didnt need to do much to protect us. That dynamism of having a generation that said, a genteel generation that figured it out is gone. Its obliterated from the landscape and this is the cold reality that youre not going to hear talk about much on television but the fact is jobs instruction, job disruption, job interruption is moving far faster than this lugubrious generation to figure it out. Ill give you one example. There are 3 Million People more or less earn their living driving trucks. Its a great middleclass job. You can afford a lot of the elements of middleclass life if you are a hardworking productive provider of trucks. But those men and women face a near certain threats and that is driverless trucks. There are dozens of companies around the world doing experimentation right now, today with driverless trucks. I dont know if its going to be five years or 10 years but i know its not going to be a generation where many of those Truck Drivers are going to see the risk of disruption. And once the disruption occurs only one part, particularly in the long haul, but that always does is underlies always is put wage pressure on the other two who have been disrupted yet. And so what you see is injustice one slice of our market and is not insignificant, there are many state among the lead, job categories are Truck Drivers. Weve seen this with people who drive now, gm is trying to experiment with Autonomous Vehicle that we are going to see this disruption caused by the ruination of certain kind of job and the creation of other kinds. In a very short period of time. A few years ago, i started talking about this and researching this book and talk to a Senior Executive of retailers. And man after woman after man said the same thing. What we need is more stores. Or square footage, more choice, more selection, more merchandise, greater merchandising, greater advertising and conductivity and more coverage. And in category after category, thats what they said was the answer. And all of a sudden they said oh my gosh. Thats not only not right, its 180 degrees wrong. Amazon and ebay and others have figured out ways to deliver like Kind Services or Better Services cheaper and faster and better and where this matters is one out of 10 americans work in the retail industry. And some major group of them is going to be disrupted. Already 100,000 lost jobs in the last year or so. Probably 8000 stores have closed. Thats only the beginning. As it turns out, retail if nothing else determined 8000 stores have closed and i think over the next year or so nothing like 1000 new stores are going to be opened. So they are determined to find another way through brick and mortar and im not seeing today is the end of brickandmortar but what im saying is in the space of a year or two , 100,000 jobs have been lost in retail. With that in context. Will call president truck when hes campaigning and say we got to see the coal miners and i understand thats feeling. But there are not 100,000 people who work in the coal industry in the United States and that many jobs have been lost in the week just in the last 12 months. That as i say is just getting warmed up. This kind of disruption is occurring everywhere. People would say oh my gosh, im not. They are all kinds of extraordinary new Job Opportunities being created and they give you a sense to put a number on it. There are roughly between four and 5 million great, highpaying, high benefit middleclass, high skilled jobs. That are all available and open. In the United States. They dont require the genius of job creation. What they require is getting filled and matching, challenging skills with open jobs. That is if you want to know, there were no more inflation where politicians have failed to understand whats necessary, care of the Business World here. President trumps speech was great blue business fluency. This is in a democrat or republican problem, this is a problem of management. What do i mean by Talent Management . Over the next decade were going to create about 1,000,000 and a half Computer Science jobs in this country. There is no country in the world thats going to create that kind of extraordinary opportunity, those are great jobs and better than just being a great job for you or me to have, they carry another element which you will never hear mentioned in these job reports that im aligning. That is these are multiplier jobs. If you get hired and in one of these Computer Science slots, likely over the next year youre going to not need to hire me or somebody else to do that job effectively but its a pebble in the water. Hire you and see if the other people get hired. How are we doing, if were creating 1,000,000 and a half or million six of these jobs, how are we coming on the Talent Management side. This year we look across our universe of college graduates. Going to graduate about 30,000 Computer Science majors. If we do that for the next 10 years and we increased a little bit, we are still only get going to get four or 500,000 Computer Science professionals but were graduating over the 10 year period, what that says is we are going to be 1 Million People short. Were going to create 1 million more great jobs that are the quintessential middleclass jobs. That are multiplier jobs which means they create other middleclass opportunities and we are by design today going to be 1 Million People short so where are they going to come from . Theyre going to come from the holders of some kind. Theyre going to go unfilled. Heres the problem. With them going unfilled. Picture microsoft and i talked to the people at microsoft in writing the book. They dont have the luxury of saying you know what . Usa, you didnt have all the Computer Science jobs we need. Were going to stay here because we like the United States. What theyre going to say and ive served on the boards of companies where you have to ask these questions and make these decisions is if the United States cant provide those jobs with the skilled workers we need, because weve got the job open and available for years, we are going to have to take that job and move it elsewhere where theres india, china or europe or japan but im going to have to move that job elsewhere because i cant leave it unfilled. I microsoft or oracle or apple or amazon, you name it, i cannot be naked. I cant be without filling those jobs. Heres one where the United States is literally creating the job. This is not something measured in the monthly job report. Weve created this job and every city and town, everyone has got these jobs. So i say to everymayor out there, every governor, do you have a list of the jobs, the high skill , wellpaid well benefited jobs in your community, in your municipality, in your state. You have a list of those . Do you know the companies and what their job openings are . If you havent, you havent done your job. Youre not serving the public because those jobs are in your backyard. They could help your real estate values, the people who are running businesses that will feed the needs of that family. But instead, what do you do . You go after mayor after mayor, what are the unfilled jobs and they havent a clue. How can we solve the problem . Having been someone whos hired people in my life, jobs are not being discussed in a broad brush. Its a pointtopoint persontoperson relationship. I hire you. I dont hire you. Thats how this happens and until corporations, colleges and universities and local governments, particularly cities,orchestrates the filling of these unfilled jobs and the creation of new ones , we will not solve our middleclass problem in this country. New rhode island to learn more about the literary history. Next we visit a Redwood Library, the Oldest Library in the country. Were here at the Redwood Library and apnea in Newport Rhode island. Weve been here since 1747. We were founded and the library was built in 1750. We have a collection of ranging from that release. Up to donations of rare books. To the present of about 15,000 volumes. But my colleague and i have pulled out today some of the treasures of the Redwood Library. Growing from some of our oldest holdings into our original founding collection. And then documenting various manuscripts, accounts of newport and its history. But the foundation of the Redwood Library and atheneum, Abraham Redwood, the founder asked for books to be brought back from england that were useful in everyday life and would be useful to the members in addition to just not being intellectually stimulating. With that b 500, the agents of the Redwood Library, john had a list of books that the numbers would like to see. And he parked it purchased those books. Organized here in this catalog which was had written in 1750. At the same time that the Library Building was completed. The books are arranged by size so it starts with books and folio which are the largest and then it goes on into porto, not hope. You will see as you go through some of the things the members were interested in. There are a lot of history. Theres a bronze crown in the original collection. There are books given by various gentlemen. Who were paid for the books. Purely a donation but they were over some of the original members of the library and upon his return from england collecting the list of books John Tomlinson was also given an honorary membership. Religion was one of the confounding interests of many of the members of the library but also not just for personal use but as a means of studying the world and of studying different parts of the world. And in 1774 ezra stiles who was the library of the Redwood Library for a time got cemented together to donate money to purchase a particular version of the bible. On the front page we have the names of the men who gave money including Abraham Redwood and upon hisezra stiles. With the date january 5 1774. And it is a polyglot bible which was printed in antwerp. It is Christopher Clinton by and the miss printing, there is hebrew and greek. The greek is a translation of the hebrew earlier time and in the festival. And each of the languages have their own latin translation. Down at the bottom is an aramaic translation of the bible and on the opposite side of the page is a latin translation of the aramaic so you can see on just one page a variety of different languages that were here. As russ stiles was actually learning hewrote the time from a story and the leader of the synagogue. And a friend of his who was helping him learn hebrew and because he was interested in studying and so you can see how early Redwood Library members were interested in forming a community of study and collaboration to bring these books to newport and to Work Together to study. At the Redwood Library and atheneum. Some of the earliest settlers of rhode island were leaving the Massachusetts Bay colony which was at the time heavily puritan and not tolerant of other religions and so many of the people who came down to rhode island came directly from Massachusetts Bay colony and formed new settlements in rhode island they hoped would be more open to different religions. They were the large Quaker Settlement in newport, a large Jewish Population moved here and founded the torah synagogue so newport and rhode island more broadly became a source of religious tolerance for the 18th century. Newport was a thriving port city. Of International Trade and importance. This is a beautiful and rich example of just such a useful book. Its an astrological and astronomical chart that matches very nicely with some of the see charts which were also bought. This is a beautiful record of the kind of book that would be both a mark of status for wealthy merchants and have utility in their work and in making navigation possible. And as you can see here, there are extensive instructions for how to take with twodimensional representatives of the heavens and turn it into a threedimensional model for navigation. These three diaries are part of the miller, collection of diaries. Miller, whose real name was Thomas Benjamin hazard was a man who lived in kingston rhode island just outside of newport and he was actually the grandson of our founder, Abraham Redwood. He documented his daily life in these diaries. They range from 1778 to 1830 and these are a fraction of our collection. They have been digitized online and the earliest one which is the one right here from 1778 to 1782. Includes a note about somebody who visited newport on march 6 of 1781. Tom writes westwind, he went to teller hill, federal washington and the town was illuminated. You can see how something that was probably a big event for a lot of people was just a note in his diary. His diaries document from the weather, wind patterns, births, deaths, minor events, town gossip. He mentions over 6000 people in the collective diaries they are all slightly different. This one is bound in paper, this one in sailcloth which was cheaper than leather. But they are all written in a similar form. Our collection is not only about the most valuable pieces or about the wealthy men who brought them to us here but it is also about revealing different pieces of newport life are the centuries that we have existed here which is possible through the journals, through the letters , through maps and manuscripts and photos and whatever has found its way to the Redwood Library and atheneum. Book tv is in Newport Rhode island to feature its local literary community. Next we all interview author bill lewman on the founding of the Naval Academy. I think when people think of military colleges, they think of places that are very much identified with american patriotism, american nationalism. These allamerican institutions that are supposed to attract the best and the brightest among the young people in the United States. Institutions that are very much devoted to service. I think institutions that are historic and are landmarks that millions of people go to visit every year. Its not always the case that americans viewed academies in that kind of allamerican image. Going back to the earliest decade of the countrys existence after the american revolution, you had the majority of americans believing that institutions like military academies were inherently unamerican or inappropriate for the type of country theUnited States was supposed tobe. Mainly a simple republic. The concept of military colleges goes back to the american revolution. Both for the army and the navy. So there are various individuals who were politicians or in the Continental Congress or army or navy who believed that academies were really important institutions to establish or military effectiveness during the revolution. So i would say probably the most notable proponents would be henry knox with George Washingtons chief of artillery in the continental army. He was in favor of establishing a military academy to draw up a plan for that. On the navy side it would be John Paul Jones was considered a father of the american navy, a great naval hero coming out of the revolutionary war. Owns himself advocated establishing naval academies on American Shipyards during the revolutionary war to educate the officers of the navy. On the politician side, john adams was very much an early advocate of academies for both the army and the navy so the idea goesback to the countrys founding. Military academy built in america was the United States military academy in west point. West point was a series of fortifications during the revolutionary war. Before the military academy it was most famous for being the site of Benedict Arnolds treason against the United States. He was the commander of the fortifications at west point and actually plotted with the british to hand those fortifications over. Unfortunately he was not able to do that before being discovered. The academy was established at west point by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to educate mainly the engineers in the u. S. Army area and west point when it was established was the first school of science, mathematics and engineering in the United States at the time. The reaction was kind of mixed area in its early years west point was a small school. Did not have many cadets, didnt have a standardized curriculum, didnt have a standard discipline code for the cadets. The cadetsvaried in age quite a bit. West point really starts to come into its own after the war of 1812 where their most significant superintendent, a man named salinas bear was superintendent from 1818 to 1833 and hes referred to as the father of the military academy because it they are that turned west point into a Prestigious National institution. Standardizing the curriculum, improving the system of discipline, making west point americans were familiar with and began to take pride in but even after ayers rock forms and west points growing reputation, you have a element of the population that wonders if military education and academies are appropriate in a republic. And theres often many politicians, especially politicians who sort of decide that americans are natural warriors, but they dont necessarily need a great deal of formal military education to be successful. Some politicians also, particularly those that follow Andrew Jackson had this idea that west point was elitist, aristocratic and not appropriate institution and republic that was supposed to be defined by democracy. The idea of the Naval Academy has been with the country as the revolutionary war. At the time that jefferson established west point he took action to try to establish a Naval Academy as well. He also decided it wasnt worth spending the Political Capital of congress that he would need to do in order to make that a reality so he dropped the issue. The other Naval Academy still goes on. You see various people at various points advocating for one so for example, john quincy adamswhen he was president in the late 1820s. He made the establishment of a Naval Academy one of the centerpieces of his agenda. He came pretty close to being able to establish it but ultimately failed. And in large part due to s in politics with jacksonians. Then theres this basic attitude of the navy which is different from the army and theres an attitude that when it comes to naval officers and their education, being on a ship at sea while the best way to educate them. So before the establishment of the Naval Academy, a young man who was in the navys midshipmen would go out on active duty ships at sea and the training and education they received was a combination of classroom instruction on board the ship. And subjects like mathematics, astronomy, foreign languages. And then also practical training and navigation, seamanship, gunnery. Along those lines. So its meant to be this combination of the theoretical with the practical. It didnt work all that well. Some people were slow to realize it didnt work that well. People would fall back on the argument that the British Royal navy which was the most popular one in the world considered the finest navy in the world but at the time they educated their officers exclusively at sea. Not in an academy at that point. So thats kind of the ornament, its very much this idea that part of the naval tradition is to send young men out there and its possible to see if they can handle the rigors of naval life and sort of this idea that an academy of education wouldnt really train officers that would be still, and leaders. Essentially, theres several things going on. The war of 1812 was a dividing point in our countrys history. Before the war of 1812, you have Many Americans feeling not exactly secureabout the United States in the sense that the United States had several National Security threats. So threats from the british, threats from other european powers area threats from pirates in the mediterranean sea, threats from native americans in north america. And theyre very much into this idea that particularly naval officers have to be wellsuited to be able to defend the country on the high seas and they need to be first and foremost skilled mariners and skilled combat leaders. After the war of 1812 which is sort of seen by Many Americans as a threat to the world as well to an extent, it seemed at the end of this idea that the United States is not going to survive. American independence has been confirmed by americas performance in the war against the british. Americans feel more secure in that regard. And they start looking at other activities so commercial expansion, scientific exploration. Using scientific exploration and diplomacy to increase the Economic Opportunities that the American People could enjoy and prosper from. And in that context, the whole idea of what an effective naval officer was again to change. Though yes, they still needed skilled, leaders but they also need officers who are capable of conducting scientific exploration, capable of conducting diplomacy and to do those things, you cantjust learn that on board a ship at sea. You need an academy onshore where they can study those subjects in depth. Particularly once you get into the early 1840s you see the rise of the american middle class and the middle class becoming more prominent, more politically influential. One of the things the middle class was in favor of was using education as a means of character development. So the navy unfortunately ends up going through a period where a lot of reformers are examining the navy and various social problems going on with the navy whether its dueling, or the kind of environment that midshipmen were learning in the profession in, excessive dont miss, gambling, things along those lines. And the Naval Academy remained very much gets an mesh in this whole idea of middleclass reform and providing learning environments that were more engineered, more controllable and more safe. To a large extent. The navy ends up having a very public incident called summers affair in 1842. This is when a u. S. Navy midshipmen and not being hanged on the yardarm of the Navy Training ship on the charge of mutiny and it received a huge amount of press, the midshipmen in question was the son of secretary of war. And it really turned into a trial of the mid19th century, the captain of the ships courtmartial and its just through a lot of public attention to this idea that maybe a ship at sea was not the best initial learning environment for midshipmen. The Naval Academy established in 1845 by secretary of the Navy George Bancroft and cross took a very novel approach to accomplishing the Naval Academy different from his predecessors. He used his own authority as secretary of the navy. He ordered all the midshipmen that were on shore to go to annapolis maryland. He had secured from the War Department and obsolete army force that the army didnt need anymore and bancroft had arranged with the army you have transferred the navyfor the purpose of establishing a school there. Bancroft hired instructors for the academy but put everything in place. The academy opened on october 10, 1845 at four summer in indianapolis and bancroft did not Tell Congress of the schools existence for two months. And at that point in his annual report as secretary of the navy in december 1845 he finally informed congress he had put together this school, that it was operating well and congress did appropriate funding to keep the school going. I think the main thing that i want people to learn from my book is that the image we have of the academy today, particularly the Naval Academy is not the attitude that americans initially had toward the institution. Some of that contradiction between how americans view the academy today, how americans view the academy during the countrys founding and decades after the founding, to me that was a very interesting contradiction to explore and thats really what i hope more people get enjoyment from and learn a lot from. Book tv it is in Newport Rhode island features local literary community. We speak with author Thomas Hilliard on his book the jurisprudence of police. Regarding the role of the police, this has been a subject involving considerable debate as perceptions of the role have shifted over time. Of thinking about the role of police really goes back many, many centuries. This occurs in platos great work the republic where the guardians are essentially a group of people fulfilling in part a policing function. In recent years, but because theres been a certain shift in an understanding of that role, a movement away from what was called a professional Law Enforcement where the role was more narrowly defined as principally the making of arrest, taking the book oflaw and enforcing it. Making arrests, catching criminals, detective work and that sort of description of that role. It gave them both a more narrow function but also a function that centered on their coercive powers. Back paradigm, if you will in more recent years has come under criticism. Particularly as a result of the troubles within the urban centers. Where at least conforming to that role rather than solving the problem contributed to that problem. If i were to ask students today or even the Police Officers and ive police in graduate courses over a couple of decades and ill ask them a couple of questions, one is how would you define the police but the question that you would ask me, or how do you define law because theres a connection between police and law. But it gives me a certain answer and it will be in terms of you know, the familiar, the police that we see on the streets today and what they do. But what i wont get from them is the idea that the police are agents of police which is defined in terms of a certain social condition that they are responsible for. Preserving, maintaining, fostering and so if you go back, ill give you an example of relatively recent in terms of the great expansive historical times but if yougo back to the 19th century , you would read edmund burke, the Great British politician saying oh, the church are a barbarous nation. With a barbarous neglect of police , fatal to the human race. And by police, he doesnt mean they dont have officials or soldiers enforcing the turkish law. What he means is that they lack civilization itself. So if you go back to the origin of the world police, in various languages in italian its police yacht and in spanish its also similar, police has its origins in the ancient greek term polis. And the polis, its aristotle as understood that, is that condition of life, its the act of civic life in which he viewed being participates and finds completion or flourishing. So it is then the basis of the greek word politicos which in cicero translates into latin as civility cost which then becomes the basis of the word civilization. So cicero said what is the role of the police . Recovering this ancient description of it and seeing the other mileage of the word, the police are agents of civilization. That different from a military force in a mechanical fashion, using its coercive powers to perhaps in the pathological sense of press people. Its a very different conception of it. And when i drew a contemporary police, when i informed them of this earlier conception, they have no knowledge of it. Concentration, focusing their attention on the incidents of crying. And only being active when crimes are committed but not fulfilled any kinds of preventive role. That would enlarge the role in such a way as to threaten what the political philosophies referred to as negative, the interference from the police. Typically in suburbs citizens dont really expect or want the Police Officers to be knocking on the door. That might seem to be too intrusive, when a particular crime is committed they will make a call. In the urban centers where there are, where the troubles are more complicated, where there are divisions within the community, i think that police are needed and often called for to play more preventive function. The danger is they would exceed proper authority, and in a a wy that is more harmful than helpful. So the delicate balance that has to be struck, what we dont want out what i dont think would be helpful particularly in the urban centers is to see the police as essentially focused in on a militaristic role where the respond with force. So you put down the problem as they see it. Thats not going to be a solution. So what you need is to expose the officers to the philosophical text, the literary text. In literature theres a lot that is very helpful. Merchant of venice is very helpful. Victor you goes Les Miserables is very helpful. Crime and punishment, they are looking at the bigger picture, and my impression is, after a few years of teaching the police is is they tend to lose sight of that bigger picture. A miss the forest for the trees. Him him and i think the challenges confronting police today require that they be deeper thinkers, that they be encouraged to be more philosophic. Twice a month cspan cities tour take booktv and American History tv on the road to explore the literary life and history of the selected city. Working with our Cable Partners we visit various literary and Historic Sites that we interview local historians, authors and civic leaders. You can watch any of our past interviews and tours online by going to booktv. Org and selecting cspan cities tour from the series dropped out at the top of the page or by visiting cspan. Org cities tour. You can follow the cspan cities tour on twitter or behind the scenes images and video from our visit. Cspan, where history unfolded daily. In 1979 cspan was created as a Public Service i americas cabletelevision companies and is brought you today by your cable or satellite provider. Up next on after words, former Clinton Administration official and georgetown law professor Peter Edelman argues that courts are exploiting by charging sissified and fees for minor crimes. He is in use by georgia congressman hank johnson. Congressman johnson serves on the Judiciary Committee and is a member of the out of poverty caucus. After words is a weekly Interview Program with the relevant guests host anything top nonfiction authors about their latest work
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