Good afternoon, happy tuesday, thank you all spinning your tuesday with us. I am joe and the executive director. The institute here has been here for over three years now. An important member of the institute, things are since our founding, hes been our media fellow and help coordinate some of our events. So far more pretentious event you may have seen, ross was involved in. [laughter]. But anyway we are super pleased that ross is joining us today anything of the day of the really of his latest book. All of you know ross is one of the most important commentators American Culture today the rights of course the New York Times opinion page is written more than a few bucks at this point and they seem to all at least a couple of them is how we became something right. [laughter]. Ross you might want to steer clear that racing is on point. Host anyway today in the format will be i will engage ross in conversation about the book prayed and i had the pleasure of reading it and it really is an interesting book. In my judgment not the sort of typical conservative bring on the way things are but takes a nice tact to explore what is going on in our culture. Once he and i have exhausted each other, we will then open up the conversation to the rest of you so there will be people here with microphones so if you have a question please raise your hand and they will approach you and dont be alarmed in the major question and ross will engage you. And of course, as i always do, important, i am sure you to phrase the question of people, the more time ross has to respond the better for everybody so dont make a speech if you can avoid that if possible just a nice pointed question okay. Again thank you all for coming. [applause]. Ross lets begin, the book is called the decadent society so what is decadent in the book. Ross thank you all so much for coming. Joe thank you so much for doing this print it is a pleasure to be back at here in a situation where i am not moderating between the two embodiments. It is doomed like full as that was, i have promised the midway through, we will have some sort of wrestlemania style faceoff. [laughter]. And give people the moneys worth. So decadent, basically the book they can see around decadent since lifted from a definition offered about 20 years ago of the term by the great cultural critic who wrote a book called from dawn to decadence. And he made the argument that we should think of decadence not in terms of sort of just capistrano moral to instructional in terms of luxury goods in weekends in las vegas, the perks the faculty lounge heres the way and that kind of outrageous stuff but as a kind of clinical term that describes civilization that is achieved a certain level of wealth in development and proficiency. And prices have an effect stuck. Without clear lines of advance. The tip of formal way of putting it. It stuck is the columnist distillation. So the book, is to basically say that decadence, properly understood refers to stagnation drift and repetition and a high level of civilizational development. In the argument is this turmeric very recently by soup america in the west, developed world encompassing of the specific ram sense the 19th of the late 1960s or 70s, and for you know, the sake of convenience, but also i think for the sake of what it evokes. I start the book with the moon landing as this kind of particular peak of american and western achievement was expected at the time to beat nonpeak but beginning the opening of in the phrase, a new frontier and instead it turned out that our capacities were more limited than we hoped and space a tiny bit bigger and colder and less especially once there was not a soviet threat to compete with so the space age sort of petered out and that frontier was closed and at that point, weve really entered into what i am describing as decadence. Joseph reported areas, that they were in a period of decadence preview deemed a few of them, repetition, stagnation, economic and technological stagnation. Political, corrosive this, i think is one and sterility. Tell me and talk about one of those in a similar fight. As you do the book for those who have not read about it. Ross the easiest one to start with his political sclerosis. That is when i think that everyone in the western world and especially the u. S. , recognizes an agreedupon that over the last generations is been a lot harder to effectively govern it western countries into effectively reform or transform or build new or unbilled government programs. Sunnis when it was possible to elect a president and have a Dramatic Program of reform from Franklin Roosevelt and lyndon johnson, really down through ronald ragan has given away tonight were residents, like if they can pass one major piece of legislation across their presidency and if they succeed, as a vomited with obama care, they play pay a political price of it that last duration of the presidency. And overall, politics is dominated by very polarized parties competing with each other without building clear majorities. And we have in the United States congressional application, and an increasing form of government consists of basically negotiation between the executive branch and the Judicial Branch which a lot of actual american policy is made. In europe, somewhat different version, we have the institution of the European Union which has advanced to the point where in effect, too big to fail has all kinds of problems. But no one accepts, the wild and crazy english and theyre willing to actually take the step of living. Even the sort of fearsome populist and nationalist eastern europe, they do not actually plan to leave the e. U. But meanwhile, its inefficient. A race the common currency in all kinds of economic problems that are obvious to everyone but it can either move forward or back i cannot shrink back towards a more sensible arrangement pretty cannot move forward first time actually european super states that many of the architects envisioned so it too is sort of a stalemate. So thats what im describing as sclerosis pretty easy one. Thats the one the people not alone two. The others are a little bit more economically stagnation. It is not as sort of a the real reality as sclerosis. You have Economic Growth, we managed a respectable amount of growth since 2008 but overall, you see a pattern of real deceleration, lower growth rates compared to what was norm prior to the 1970s. And you have this growth rates achieved basically through a kind of perpetual borrowing. We can get to 2 percent growth, massive deficits were as in the 1950s, he could have porn growth with what then were sometimes complained about as massive debt deficits but they werent really deficits at all. In fact mark more sustainable and some sm thing. It takes rich society itself to maine taint a form of progress in his own fundamentals dont really justify. Joseph talk a little bit about stagnation. Technological stagnation. You refer to back to the future. Please exemplify this. Talk to that. Ross this is an argument any of basically stealing from a group of economists and non economists who over the last ten years, and make the case that in spite of the iphone in your pockets, and all of the resources of the internet, technological processes the apollo era has been pretty disappointing so this is an argument that tyler and george mason has made, and very famously made with his line about how we expect a flying car. The laureates, ticking away into the future and said we got 240 o no great stagnation. And at the university of chicago, or northwestern who is written as a sort of swimming, has a facebook the rise and fall of the american growth. The point that they all make, is not the Technological Progress that it seeks. Obviously the internet era has demonstrated a lot of breakthroughs in communications and information transmission and stimulation. That progress is come more mono dimensional all tech and nothing else. In areas like Transportation Energy agriculture coming in the built environment, dont see the kind of progress that we took for granted between 1840 and 1970. And then further, when Tech Companies sort of leave the world attack, and they try to revolutionize realworld industries, this of the companies that often be that supposedly uniforms turn out to be front failures. So the attempt to bring big tech to bear on a very oldfashioned you know, work solving problem of how do you conduct easy blood test. But it is not working enough with the billion multibilliondollar company evaporating before we were trying to revolutionize a similar story. So that i think is the core of that and that piece of the stagnation, is that again, progress hasnt ceased but his progress along a very particular dimension that then feeds back into the larger pattern because it leads people to spend more more time in Virtual Reality and simulation of reality into retreat from both certain kinds of Economic Activities but also to bring us another force, returning from family formations and childbearing which is the aspect of decadence which i call the royalty. And wonderful comparison in these books, both of which involve kind of a sterile escape which i thought was just really brilliant and fun. But lets start to take a look at this critically about what you wrote. So it was a counter indicator. Youre giving a kind of, providing indicators exhume ansari. Thank you michael. Joseph you provide indicators, what might count as cancer indicators in other words signs of life. Ross lets give examples. One of the key indicators to suggest that we are not in fact would be through. Immense technological transformation is that productivity grows in economic measurements that tries to get it and how technology is affecting the way people work. Has been stagnant and kind of pathetic for a long time. And that was not true however in the late 1990s the initial flush of the internet revolution was in fact there was a surge of productivity growth in the developed work world from a site 1996 to 2001. So that suggests one, i would live in, i was a teenager and really was a sort of brief window where the was this sense of sort of possibility of really dramatic growth returning. It had that continued, i think the argument i made today, was entitled to making a different argument that that window was known decadent exception the did not have that cascading effect that people expected it to. Or another example. I mentioned the defining feature of demography in the western world. Since the babyboom, since the 1960s and 70s, is fertility. And people having too few children to essentially replenish the population this is true everywhere. For a long time, america was something, as an exception. So down to, the early 2007 american conservatives especially like to say, because america has retained a more dynamic economy than western europe, is not sort of the social ballistic and sporadic and it has retained certain amount of optimism about the future and religion and artists and that is where birthrate is still above replacement and were still a country and oriented towards future france and sweden or increasingly japan or not. So in essence, the United States was not decadent as long as its birthrate was exceptional but over the past ten or 15 years, it is ceased to be exceptional and we are now indistinguishable at fertility levels. Those are two examples of how is not under my attempt to create a statistical understanding, or things that could happen and have happened that would be on deck intent if they happen again, i would count as at least a shift, change. The point i would make is that it is not, im not trying to examine each of these forces has sort of forces that are just existing on their own, the recent that every society has some in it. What is distinctive about moment is the way that these forces are converging. So that slow Economic Growth, seeks distrust of government and makes it harder to pass effective Political Program policies. Which in turn slows Economic Growth further and try some birthrates because people dont have or feel like they have the economic capacity to have kids. Which interns make society older and more risk averse and makes it harder to make political changes. Anyway you follow me. And this is the sort of convergence of these forces that make our moment more decadent, whatever that would mean but more decadent than periods in the past that only had one of these forces work. Joseph talk to me about that week. How we became the victims of our success. Who is the we hear. It is something that i wondered as i proceeded through the book. At times it could be the United States at times it can seem like it would be the west. In the time seems almost global. In terms of your description but i wondered whether, aside from expanding it, to include more and more, people who might be this week who are the victims of upsets that are now leading to decadence. It might be exclusive, finer grained you go. And excluded, certain communities. It might say, we are not an agent tech, we are actually an age of prosperity or ascendance. Because, africanamericans, and the United States. President was recently elected. More more representation, and what extent white thinking about that refinery analysis. Ross i guess i will work backwards. So take a case study of africanamericans. I think and this is of course a highly debatable proposition but i think that there was more progress for africanamericans and American Life in the period of running from 1942 men monday or 1940 to 1980 are. Like that. Then there has been in the periods sense. In that sense i think, africanamericans have participated to some extent and decadence as i am describing. So this is very little enacting american employment late reach a low at the moment and obviously the election of the first black american president , is obviously a break through but if you look at the gaps in the household with, the blackwhite income gap in the test score gaps, all of the sort of things that the reformers who are thinking are interested in racial equality are interested in changing changing, you get a lot more change and a lot of those cases. In the era of the Civil Rights Era in particular but really the whole zone from the great migration through the king assassination into the 1970s. So that sense, at least in some socioeconomic way, there is a kind of participation and decadence there. And i think, a little more of an open question and culture. Obviously certain lenders minute big increase in africanamerican representation and pop culture and sentiment but i also think that sometimes that too, is overstated and i think theres a little bit tough forgetting of the very recent passing, if you go back to 1980s, the biggest stars in america at that moment were africanamericans and run the most bill cosby, not something that started because for celebration at the moment but bill cosby eddie murphy, is not the case that snow africanamerican representation. In the rise of the africanamerican popculture figure really dates to the 60s and 70s and 80s. Western developed world. Or is a global phenomenon . I feel very confident arguing there is a deceleration and stagnation that japan, south korea and the United States share in common. What is happening with the countries we call developing . China, india and so on . You could make a case that the decadence of the west will enable the nondecadent developing world past us or a nation sentry, that is implicit. At the same time there are ways in which you look at demographics, the demographics of china is in the same low trap, and there are ways china is converging with the west and is the government decays there is a convergence in all our garlicky, it is not the same as the politburo but there is a convergence in stratified low fertility all log guardian and higher cases of wealth, not a case of china leapfrogging past us and what happens with the coronavirus raises a host of questions we can talk about in the apocalyptic portion of the evening. I had a question about that but we can save it. Another thing i enjoyed about your book is it wasnt the end of book. It doesnt say we are in this decadent society and only a matter of time before it is over. It is sustainable decadence. You get shirts made with sustainable decadence. And then of course it leads into what wouldnt one claim the book makes is people hear the word decadence and feel theres an iron logic of history, once you are decadent you are doomed and the absolute cliche version of this is the writing on the wall, the babylonian palace, orgies in rome, the barbarians sweeping in and so on. In fact i make the argument that decadence is a normal condition for successful societies, empires and civilizations to fall into. Once they do it can lead to collapse. If they have a rival who can exploit the decadence, it can lead to a sustainable stasis that can last a long time and however you want to chart a roman decadence it is 400 years from the nero, youll a moment of the fall of rome. However you want to chart ottoman decadence or decadence of the chinese empire to the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. These are long historical periods were prosperous societies look decadent without being tipped over into crisis and collapse. In certain ways that is a more pessimistic vision of the future. There is an appeal to the idea that once your point you are doomed. There is a sense at some level that people want history to follow morality play arc even if they dont want to be, up in the sacking of rome themselves. I quote w h ogden at the start of the book saying i am going to mangle the quote, the book is right here, so convenient. He says what fascinates and terrifies us about the roman empire is not that it went smash but managed to last four centuries without creativity, warmth or hope. That is the dark version of sustainable decadence but lets qualify by saying those four centuries rome lasted under decadence were, from the point of view of the face that founded this university, period of dynamic change from within, development of a nondecadent religious faith that did not in the end save the roman empire but did preserve and Carry Forward roman elements into the future down to the present day and was there when the empire went smash as a powerful force, you can imagine versions of that, renewal under decadence that reinvigorate our civilization, renewal under decadence that when our civilization falls, create something new to carry on the best a legacy and that is the optimistic case. In fact decadence has virtues. There are alternatives to decadence that are a lot worse than the lives we have now and we should regard life under decadence not necessarily as a horrible burden but as something that is not ideal but a gift because it leaves room for creativity and path back to dynamism and flourishing. The path back to dynamism and flourishing i did not anticipate encountering Cardinal Sarah in the book. Even less anticipated encountering exceptionalism. If you havent read it i apologize for spoiling it. No spoiler. If possible, ways of envisioning or imagining some sort of replenishment. If you are thinking about the vulnerabilities of a decadent civilization the vulnerabilities are starker than ours and in part that is because europe is more advanced in my sister sickle decadence indicators, lower birth rates for a longer period of time, they had relatively stagnant growth compared to a longer period of time but also more vulnerable in the sense that europe sits in the middle of the world whereas the United States has always had splendid isolation. Europe is in a deeply unstable equilibrium, not only with islam in the middle east but also the current exception of democratic diffidence which is the continent of africa. We are headed for a scenario where europe had more people in africa, by 2075 or so have 5 million odd people, 3. 5 billion, one way or another doesnt seem like that equilibrium will hold. You can tell a pessimistic story that a lot of conservative and reactionary types tend to tell where europe will build a fortress against mass migration and the fortress will fail and there will be migrants driven chaos but you can also tell an optimistic story, the ones i was raising by referencing Roman Catholicisms most famous african cardinal and the image of the afro futurism that has the appeal in the decadent west as examples, less examples because they are not examples, but suggestions of what a more successful confrontation between europe and africa is going to become could play out. So in that sense that is an example of places where decadent civilizations can be most vulnerable and they are for the most hope for renewal. It is a fascinating example of a very conservative traditional Roman Catholic cardinal from Africa Talking at a monument to the french revolution and in effect trying to call europe back to its ancestral faith while also building bridges to increasingly christian and catholic africa. What comes of that i dont know but it is an example of how history can present sympathies that you had not anticipated 30 or 40 years ago. You seem it is a reasonable argument, a long playing out over time but you do think through the apocalyptic. You wrote a column that talks about the coronavirus as a test case of the thesis. I didnt anticipate it happening when i was literally promoting the book. We could have some sustainable decadence for the book tour. I think i dont think the coronavirus is the thing that ends are decadence but it is an example how unexpected events, it is on the list of potential world transformers. It is something that can hit the week point in a decadent society. Under decadence, our government doesnt work particularly well. It doesnt have a lot of trust in public institutions. You have had a certain amount of naivete the way the western world has exported, in the supply chain this. It seems to be headed towards a more stable of authoritarianism but could be vulnerable to unexpected turmoil or revolution. I would describe the coronavirus as a stress test for decadence. It is quite serious and should have canned goods in your home. How is it a stress test, capable of responding to that, or a stress test i think we will be capable of responding to it in an imperfect but fundamentally adequate way. But i dont think it is guaranteed and puts pressure on institutions that under decadence or least functional and most vulnerable to outside stress. You have this affective stalemate in western politics between some sort of establishment that believed really intensely, the promise of the early Twentieth Century and it is fair to miss govern the western world in various ways. That has conjured up a populist response but the populist response seems perpetually unready to govern the country. The coronavirus is a threat that on the one hand is not consciously except in a providential way exploiting the mistakes of the establishment, the mistake of saying it is fine to have all your supply chains go overseas, find not to manufacture your own antibiotics domestically, we will not go to war with china, it is hitting that naivete but also hitting the fact the establishment isnt running the government, the populists are running the government meaning we have an acting department of Homeland Security head whose testimony today instilled noconfidence whatsoever, the populist who got elected talked about how to police the borders would be the man for this hour. Trumps tweets, he seems convinced he can talk the markets into calm, might be the thing America Needs right now. One of the four indicators responding to this are anticipating technology. We assume the area of technology, when not exploring the stars with human beings, there are some medical responses to this. If not summertime it will be shortly after that. That is reasonable and a counterpoint to some of the stagnation arguments. Not just we dont necessarily have a Public Health response. We dont necessarily expect the governmental side. We have effectively come close. And ebola vaccine, we managed past threats with a vaccine, and not dealt with or responded to. There havent been the kind of dramatic medical breakthroughs a prior round of breakthroughs let us to expect. When next declared war on cancer there were reasons to expect that we would cure cancer. We have very slowly made grinding progress against cancer. The same goes for alzheimers. We havent had the big dramatic victory. There has been slow progress and specific progress on rare conditions that is dramatic and there have been effective responses, somewhat effective responses to new diseases as they come up. I agree that it is not fool decadence. If it were fool decadence we should not expect the vaccine and we reasonably do. Theres a lot of the realm of technology and economics, like you said earlier there is good argument about what is happening. Your book assumes a kind of Technological Progress measured in rep unity is good. Not to have it become the kind of it is not always a good . I hope not. I say in the book that there are ways Technological Progress could end decadence that could be very dark. There is a transhumanist posthuman scenario that as a catholic i would oppose but under my definitions would count as an escape from decadence. It is not that all progress is good but i guess what i do think is the society we have built up is a society that expect them to some extent depends on the promise of progress and it is hard to imagine getting back to a society where that is not a big part of what is expected and hoped for. I dont think, as much as i find a certain pastora list and agrarian perspective appealing in certain ways i dont think there is a pastora list retreat from the modern world. There is for some people in some communities but not culture as a whole. In that sense i do think the alternatives are succeeding in finding new ways to grow or stagnating rather than finding arcadia again. Two more questions before we turn to the audience. What you entertain some alternatives. Is liberal democracy and alternatives . What is happening in turkey or hungary or poland. Is that a response to this . Every envisioning maria livening of society . Or is it Something Else . My take is both the revival of socialism embodied by figures as diverse as the likely next democratic nominee pending events in tonights debate and Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbin or others, the kind of populist nationalist a liberal democracy mixture on the right are responsive to decadence, summoned up as rebellions against stagnation so sanders and other socialists are saying we took a wrong turn in the 60s in 70s with reagan and thatcher and we can get back to a more utopian perspective on what government can do. The scandinavian utopia, maybe something beyond that and the populist, the nationalists in various ways are saying make America Great again, a futurist slogan, we were great in the past, we want to get back there in the future and there is a future we were promised that we havent been given that we want to achieve again. In that sense they are both kind of alternatives to the stewardship of decadence. Michael bloomberg, jeb bush, to some extent barack obama. Not the barack obama of the 2008 campaign, but mitt romney in 2012, they were all promising the same liberal or conservative politics and is stewardship of a prosperous stagnation. Sanders and trump, they are all in different ways saying we can do Something Different and we can do something better. That said, i have some skepticism how far this can go. I think as i said the once the populists take power in the same would be true the socialists they are constrained by their own limitations and the larger Structural Forces to make it hard to pursue dramatic change even if you want to. That is one point. Second, there are ways, a collaboration between people in the media who are terrified of what he represents where he stands up and gives a speech and says i represent an alternative to liberalism and everyone in the western press said he represents an alternative to liberalism. And practice, he wants the organization of the eu that existed 20 years ago rather than today, it wants a kind of 1party situation for hungary that resembles mexico across the 20thcentury or japan at various points more than a represents mussolinis italy. A democracy that is a real democracy but one clearly dominant party. And social conservatism kind of a normal social conservatism of the post 1970s west and liberalism has obviously changed. A standard conservatism can look more exotic in contrast with were progressive seem to be going but i am not completely sure, you see a return of history alternative so much as a slightly more conservative in ways i like, more corrupt in ways i dont like version of the latemodel democratic order and i say in the book if you crowned a king in hungary, if you had these places reaching for a different source of legitimacy even Vladimir Putin pretends to be a democrat. The sanders campaign, if they intervene, sorry, russian interference humor is not there are still elections in russia. It is acquired by one party state with certain freedoms and there is a lip service to democracy even as Vladimir Putin governs as an autocrat. Is not crowning himself or having the russian he is not restoring the romanovs. It seems to me you cant declare in a postliberal world until you have powerful and important governments claiming a source of legitimacy that isnt just a version of the mobile liberal democratic view but i could be wrong, we will see. Someone may ask about it. Final question for me at least. The book starts the moon and ends with the stars. You have an almost sheepish i would be a bad christian if i didnt mention faith essentially, to begin the final sheepish . Humble. I would be a bad the book ends with hope more or less and the way faith can provide hope. Is that really the force of your argument. What is at the root of a decadent society as it is a hopeless society . I ask in part because that would be a theme i would love to see carried out a little more in the book but maybe that is partly tactical because you are not writing simply for believing crowd. I have written two books about religion and i figure i should become a little more sheepish. You changed the church. I think that es, to go back to the definition, the loss of a decadent Society Faces is that a possibility. Implicit in that is a sense that the loss that it faces is loss of confidence that this particular society is part of the story and has a particular destination. And that isnt exclusively a religious idea but is to some extent a religious idea. Other books i made the argument societies cant escape having some religious impose a religious to direction. I think that is true certainly in this case. The more specific thing i want to claim, we should be cognizant we as human beings but particularly those of us who are religious believers, Catholic Christians should because isnt, if we are in a story it is an interesting point in the story. The story starts from a christian perspective with an admonition to fill the earth and for better or worse with some environmental catastrophes along the way and further risks ahead we have done that. From a christian perspective the prior hinge moment of history came when there was not a true world empire but what seemed a world empire that had similarly had a republican period, entering an imperial period and seems exhaustive seeming and that was the moment god entered the world. That was an interesting if that was an interesting moment in this moment of world civilization is an equally interesting moment so what i draw from that is not just the idea we need a recovery of faith and a religious revival, obviously i would be in favor of that and that would be a force pushing against decadence but i go a little further and become a little more speculative and say maybe it will just be a christian revival, this is a moment we should expect a stranger to happen and maybe that Stranger Thing is figuring out a way to leap into the stars. Peter teal in his review of the book said ross douthat doesnt give reasons why we cant build a warp drive. That is fair. But i do think you have this, we sold this one place and dont know if we can go further but there is a huge universe and maybe we are supposed to go further or maybe this is a moment when it is not us going up, it is something unexpected coming down. A strange place where i end the book but a justified place. It really is the case that we have reached a moment of human achievement that seems to have some limit on it and if you believe the human story has a purpose in a direction then you would expect a really interesting plot twist to come along, maybe not now but somewhere in the next 200 years or so. Great place to turn to you guys. I will approach the lectern. I cant see this out of the room. I cant ask everybody to speak of i dont. If you have questions raise your hand and we will bring the microphone. We have one over here that i can barely see. Why dont we start up here . You mentioned decadence and disaster, apocalypse and so forth and the radicalization of politics with Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbin. What kinds where are we going . Are we living in First Century rome or 1788 paris . My best, could be wrong, is it is more First Century rome than late 18thcentury paris. What you are seeing, i was gesturing at this, talking about moribund on the right, but on the left, desire to return to the bliss that don to be alive spirit of the french revolution but the desire that is hard to meet in a society that is rich and old and stagnant and relatively stable. My expectation is you could put a socialist in the white house and the result would not be the french revolution. It would be a leftwing version of the struggles the Trump Administration has had to enact much of the legislative agenda. In that sense, on the religious front i disagree a little bit with my religious conservative friends who see a sort of cultural progressivism carrying all the afforded reducing conservative christians to little readouts. I think cultural progressivism has carried all before it in certain environments but i think there are some limiting principles and in certain ways more likely that the secularism of today is neither as vigorous nor as dangerous as the secularism that murdered nuns in the french revolution and the christianity of today is neither is vigorous from a secular perspective as dangerous as the Catholic Reaction in the nineteenth century. We are sort of beating at each other with weak fists and reenacting on twitter, that is happening online. I am not completely convinced that it is about to break out into dramatic revolutionary chaos but probably there was someone in nicholas and alexanders russia saying the same thing right before lenin arrived at finland station. Part of me expects to be guillotined with pages of this book stuffed into my mouth at some point in the next 20 years. He said we were too decadence, what did he know . In the back, i will get to you over here. Thank you very much for an interesting presentation. National Defense University which is apropos, senator bernie spoke at this university and at my university a few months ago and he has promoted, the term is common good capitalism. The virtues of sporadic decadence notwithstanding, how does that fit in. Is that a possible alternative that is proposed now that resist the excesses of the financial eyes to thinking of the right and distribution is thinking of the left . Full disclosure, with some caveats i basically support some version of that kind of program. To the extent there is an attempt by figures like senator rubio and senator josh holly of missouri to put more policy meet on the bones of trumpian populism im interested in that and i have been interested in that going back to when i had more hair and was young and innocent. I do think the virtues of that kind of program is it is intended to push back against specific features of what im describing is decadence. It contains within it efforts at profamily policy pushing against the turn toward sterility and demographic decline. And some version an emphasis on industrial policy and technological innovation that tries to get us back to if not the Manhattan Project at least the building of the interstate highway system. That the promise a kind of agenda too is it is a goal, to build a real political majority and not just one of these 50 plus one or 47 plus one coalition exchanged power, arguably since reagan, certainly over the last ten years, stalemate and gridlock in washington dc, one of the two Political Parties to figure out how to build a majority that can win landslide and rubios goal is to take existing conservatism and make it more appealing to middle and workingclass americans, black and latino americans to build a kind of panethnic conservative populism, white workingclass conservatism donald trump is managed i am favorably disposed towards senator rubios project. Some of the caveats i offered about populism and socialism apply to the project too, it is hard to make a real headway. I try on the one hand to be optimistic and supportive about their prospects. The policy work in the late 2000s and early 2010s, we were building and incrementalist reform agenda someone like rubio or jeb bush needs to embrace in 2016 and ride to victory and trump came along and adopted those ideas in a different way and blue everything up and destroyed my preconceptions of what happened in american politics and that makes me i would like to see Republican Party led by holly and rubio. We should all be prepared for that eventuality. That cant solve the decadence you are describing. The convergence of factors, some are outside our control. You talked about limiting principles, ingenuity and what you can do, foreign policies getting us out of decadence, the rubio approach is not sufficient and you need a Dramatic Development we are not looking for, innovation being prepared that push radical change, religious revival that cannot be engineered from above. The answer is no, my expectation is decadence, takes more than Political Programs to end decadence but it is not an either or. You can mitigate decadence, you can reduce decadence. The dot. Com boom was temporary but did create a nondecadent window and there was only the trying, the rest is not our business. We should applaud the trying and we do seem to have hit up against the ceiling and how to extend human lives. What we can do with space travel and so on. It is a bottleneck. An expected range of innovations on the other side. We have a question in the front. Back to the discussion of whether decadence is a western or global phenomenon if you look at the world of 50 years ago you have tremendous disparity between the western world and the western world of wealth and all these barriers to transportation and communication and commerce coming down and this is a pro decadence question. Can the case be made that maintaining any level of minimal but positive growth in the western world, is a significant achievement, but nobody can see that. Economists can say it. I might be getting it wrong, he had a suitably germanic name and has written a book, called fully grown, makes the case, we should not expect economies to develop to a certain point where it is unreasonable to expect them to achieve dramatic affect. We have resource constraints, we are a one planet species, our goal should be to be convergence. We want to get india as close to the per capita gdp and avoid the disruption of the coronavirus or anything else and be comfortable with the fact, the best we can do since the great recession, 2 growth, and we can maintain those deficits and it is a great achievement. It is worth taking it seriously, not just decadence is the worst thing in the world. If it really is the case, there are technological feeling, we wont a invent the warp drive and so on, we shouldnt be totally unhappy with that scenario. Of that being said, it is a little bit, there is a tendency for that counsel of reasonability this is all we could ever do. We have to have limits on our imagination on one side and an aspect of decadence we talked about a little less. The brave new world scenario. There is slowmotion dehumanization where horizons are narrow, small families, dont want too big a carbon footprint, and simulacra, you are on soma and it is tough territory. That is why i dont think we are there but there are elements in our society, drugs that are soma a lot of online pornography, a substitute for real life, and the part of me looks at that and if you dont have people pushing against decadence, whether it is politicians looking for an agenda, they are fertile and creative in our own communities and lives, along way towards the brave new world end point and you wake up one day and you are hooked up. I wont quote huxley sufficiently. The head is up earlier and so on. How does this decadence analysis apply to Catholic Church today and what should the Catholic Church response to the present decadence status quo look like . You can see this the analysis of the controversy of the church in the first 4 or 5 years. It is critical in certain cases of the holy father but arguing some of the changes they are pushing for, a dramatic moment in catholic history with potential to create schisms down the road, a qualifier to that analysis that to the extent the evidence of 2 and half years since i wrote the book, decadence and catholicism is more powerful than i thought when i was writing the book. As a conservative who was doubtful, i was rooting for decadence and rooting for a return to the liberal conservative stalemate rather than sweeping transformation. That is the story of the last few years pending events in germany. If not francis himself, figures around him had a dramatic reform agenda that was stalled but pushed forward to some extent. Whether it is homosexuality, or in this case of the last year or so, in celibacy in the priesthood and the holy father backed off returning to a version of the status quo. The Catholic Church is clearly decadent in various ways. A Large Institution struggling, with slowmotion decline and decadence rather than crack up, even the francis pontificate ended up. As for what the church should be doing, it is a tricky question for the hierarchy, and an archbishop supervising the church, or on high for politicians the conditions of decadence. If you throw yourself into revolution or dramatic transformation it may make things worse. Trying to steward the ship as it exists for as long as it exists. That makes it much more important for catholic institutions and figures who have the capacity to be more number and adaptable to think about what renewal from within looks like and you can take the roman case study, and forces of catholic renewal as christians within this imperial context. And the vatican is not necessarily going to persecute reformers but there is still a sense you are trying to breathe life into an institution from within and that means figuring out, i will give you one example, context. What does the American Church need . A lot of things. Maybe it needs a missionary order, new or revised or existing order capable of essentially treating significant portions as mission territory. That is something as a newspaper columnist to write about the church im not in position to invent were found but there are people who are in position to do that, the world of decaying Catholic Diocese may need an order where we have three priests living in an oratory, handling 7 parishes between them as the diocese fails to generate, that you are not trying to save the structure. And amid the dk. I wonder if you are commenting on the topic of risk. Want around the neighborhood, parents didnt we didnt wear helmets except when we made it look cool. If it is meant to be a tiny metaphor i want a society is riskaverse. Yes. I dont think that is a tiny metaphor at all. It gets to those core questions which is not just bicycle helmets. Teenage life in america is safer than it has ever been in spite of fears of predators on the streets and the files on the internet. If you look at teen behavior, drinking and driving and most drug use, almost every form of drug use, teen pregnancy, how early kids have sex, all of the substance of 1000 rock n roll songs everything is safer than it was when i was a kid and even safer, we are two years apart in age. People had this argument on twitter the other day, david french, circulated a version of this chart and said the only thing kids are doing more of is playing call of duty. David french is in favor of call of duty but in fact in fact you knew it would come back to french in the end, something about the spirit of this place. I dont think that is a sufficient analysis, not just what kids are playing more video games but also more depressed, teen suicide rates have gone up steeply as all these other indicators have improved and beyond that we will see how things look in 10 years but it seems like these anxious iphone using videogame playing teens have more trouble than past generations forming meaningful relationships figuring out how to pair off and get married and have kids. That seems to me to be the crucial decadence tradeoff. We have more safety and stability than america had in 1969. That is what conservatives wanted, they looked at the 60s in 70s and said there has been a terrible collapse. The dynamism of the baby boom generation was destructive so we need a recovery of stability but the recovery of stability we got can feel more like death than a return of fruitfulness so things are not the tarantino movie once upon a time in hollywood is a portrait of a moment in time that in many ways cultural conservatives deep for, the sexual revolution reaching its peak at the moment the manson family shows up and people are murdered and the dark 70s begin. It is a fantasy with roots in reality. Young and garish and vigorous and vibrant the america that this time is up degree and part of the theme of this stuff, i am a cultural conservative who is not down check for a certain degree of chaos. The ability doesnt seem to have real fruitfulness about it. Final question. Thank you for an interesting conversation. You referred to a number of artworks, cultural products. I am curious to reflect on the relationship in a decadent moment. I was thinking about the decadent a very confident and overconfident moment and sees itself as rejection or critique of a kind of but now confidence in progress. If i am right, if there is not a 1to1 correlation between a decadent culture and decadent arts, what kind of art might we expect or dread in the decadent culture . Under my definition, the decadents were not really decadent. They were overripe, and experimenting, the 69 moment in American Culture, transgression for its own sake and they are in effect renewing the increasingly sterile, bourgeois, smug, late victorian moment. I dont think you really have that in the arts today. The transgressive nest that conservatives deplore has reached its end point and given way to a sort of early adolescence culture. That is my impression of where a lot of cinema has ended up. It is in a space that is perpetually 14 years old. Not childish but the superhero origin story that never ends, coming into your powers and have a lot of adolescent honest about it but never move on to adulthood, no sex or romance in the superhero romance, always that scary adulthood and you never quite get there. In the same way, what distinctive about this era is their retreat from cultural significance mostly. I dont feel that i am wellversed enough in the state of contemporary painting or opera. I dont feel like i am completely equipped to comment on the aesthetic quality of certain areas of the high arts but i am equipped as a cultural observer to say their place in society has shrunk dramatically and what has taken their place, even for the very welleducated people in an earlier era going to the opera, sustaining Art Galleries and so on is a sort of algorithmically generated entertainment content that is pretty good. Every netflix show is pretty good but it is not it is in its own way stuck doing the same thing over and over again. I see the golden age of tv the way i see the internet. There was a brief moment where a bunch of old turkish figures were able to create some impressive works of art on television and that lasted about ten years and it echoed the author driven cinema of the 70s. It is over and the algorithm is creating our television. Parts of the book are about culture, mostly about that, the ways we are in a sort of period of repetition and an creativity and appear go were Something Like the internet has not had the Effect People expect. It homogenized things further. The promise of the internet that im old enough to look back on, instead of big newspapers you will have bloggers and instead of huge pop stars you will have 1 Million People playing the guitar and some of that exists in the way teens use ticktock and youtube, doesnt completely not exist but in terms of cultural production the internet has been a consolidating force. Now you have a few big newspapers like mine that are doing well but the small and midsized ones are weaker and it weakened smaller midsized recording artists so taylor smith and kanye are bigger than ever but the more eccentric figures have less commercial viability. It is pushed in different ways, everything towards a marvelous asian of culture. And represent the kind of versions the repetition im talking about in the book. Thank you. The book is fantastic. It is an easy read. Ross douthats style is accessible and funny. It is easy and sophisticated. The goal is to write dan brown. That is how it plays. Glad to hear you have goals in your life. Apparently the rest of us dont. We live in a decadent society. Thank you for coming out on a tuesday night to be with us. We are grateful ross douthat joined us tonight, privilege to have you here. [applause] you are watching the tv and cspan2 without nonfiction books and authors every wee