Transcripts For CSPAN2 Timothy Carney Alienated America 20240713

Watch after words with Jonathan Karl, sunday at 9 p. M. Eastern on book tv on cspan2. [inaudible conversation [inaudible conversations] good afternoon everyone, welcome to the American Enterprise institute. My name is ryan streeter, the director of domestic policy studies here and its my pleasure to welcome you to this event featuring tim carneys new book and a discussion about its findings and claims and i think youll find both tims remarks and the panel of interest, particularly timely given the moment that we find ourselves in historically right now. So i look forward to the discussion. Tim is going to come up and offer a few words and then he will be followed we will follow that with a Panel Discussion with Charles Murray who is known to probably everybody here, ais own fa chair and Cultural Studies here at aei. And megan mccardle, a Washington Post columnist with a lot to say as well. Tim is a visiting fellow here at aei and hes also the commentary editor at the Washington Examiner where hes been a columnist for while and youre probably all aware of his columns. His previous books on cronyism is probably what many of you know tim for. The big riffoff in obamanomics and thats where tim carved a name for himself in the milieu in space in washington. This is a New Enterprise for him, a deep dive into whats going on in the heartland and im holding this book up because you need to buy it. Its easier for me to say that than for tim to say it and you should go out there and pick up a copy on your way out, if you didnt pick one up on the way in, theyre for sale out in the hallway. So tim will give us a few remarks followed by this discussion and well allow time for engagement with you for question and answer period to follow and our rules at aei, youre brief and your questions are in the form of a question. Id like to welcome tim up. Tim, give us your thoughts. Thank you so much. [applause] thank you, ryan, thanks everybody for coming, again, my name is tim carney, im a visiting fellow here and also a fulltime journalist, so what i did in alienated america was try to find out new things and tell a story with my reporting and lots of data. And a lot of you guys noticed, probably in 2015 and 2016, there was a sudden surge in interest among the Political Press in looking at working class places and going to appalachia and going to parts of the rust belt, places where the American Dream seemed dead. In writing this book, i started at the opposite end. I started in the opposite place. Near my house in chevy chase, maryland. A lot of you guys heard about chevy chase while Brett Kavanaughs confirmation was going on. Thats lesser chevy chase d. C. , d. C. Including a majority of men and women. Youve got half the population has advanced degrees in chevy chase. Heres an important thing and you would know this if you have read Charles Murray leaves coming apart. Its not just wealth, not military ways in which theyre doing this. Theres all sorts of positive outcome. 95 of the families have two parents at home. I visited there a few times and at the hotel that all these events. They have a daughter dance. You go there and they have kids movie night with the teenagers in the ten watch your kids of the parents can go out and have actual data in town. This is of immense value that they have there. Im a dad. My wife, happy valentines day, is here. With six kids. Something that allows you to get awake every kid is one of the best way to foster your love for your kids, my opinion. They have have classes with the elderly in chevy chase. They have sports teams for the kids and again the outcomes are excellent. They kids get married. The kids were the most kids stay away from drugs. They go off to college. They avoid unwed pregnancy. These elite villages like chevy chase all around the country produce these good outcomes because as a wise woman once said it takes a village to raise a child and a village like chevy chase is exactly that sort of village. Speaking of Hillary Clinton if you look at our list of top fundraisers, people who raise six figures, a dozen of them at least live in chevy chase. This is a liberal elite town that practices the values that conservatives preach. If you Pay Attention to liberal wonks you will find what theyre trying to do is make more of the u. S. Population be like chevy chase. They wish the elites at such good outcomes maybe we could make more of them like us. If we throw more money at Public Schools may be your kid at a Public School in Silver Spring can have the same outcome as Langley High School in mclean, virginia. Or they say maybe it would make college free because college is associate with so many good outcomes just make college free and everybody was up all these good outcomes. I would argue at a not going to the labored. You cannot make everybody in america be annually. The village is not a scalable model. In chapter one i visit another tillage in wisconsin. 50 of the population claims dutch ancestry. When i i was or i sat at the dr the chevy chase meetinghouse is 1. 5 million. In whose birth its 150,000. You can go by ten homes for the price of one in chevy chase. The immediate income is slightly above average but not if you control for the fact that the number of family households is way above average. Windows are sitting at judys diner on a sunday, in walked a big crowd leaving the 9 a. M. Service at the First Reformed church in the night in service at bethel orthodox church. Then a little while later by the way im a catholic so i thought church always lasted an hour but some of these things go on for hours and hours so theyre they are coming in with all the kids. 9 15 First Presbyterian Church Service let out a later and after that and came across on the ninth 30 at the first question reformed church. This small tent village of 2000 has four four different reformd churches plus an Evangelical Church and a bus to take it to the Catholic Church out of town. This village has the same great outcomes as chevy chase. When asked one of the guys sitting at the counter, a mechanic, i said what do you think of this village . He said ill tell you one complaint. I went to the Christmas Concert the other day a few months back. There were no seats at my kids Christmas Concert left because all these people who didnt even send the kids to the Public School were there watching the Christmas Concert. I yelled at my neighbor i said why are you youre taking up i see. Jimmy who any kids said we had to, watch our kids, and so the phrase, Robert Putnam used it as a title, in oostburg the kids are our kids to everybody. These are the two models. How is chevy chase like oostburg or like Salt Lake City or these other conservative religious places . They both have very strong institutions of Civil Society. Whether its the Chevy Chase Country Club in the sports teams or the First Reformed church and first question reformed church or our home Christian Ministries which but out of all these churches together or the Christian Schools or the Public Schools. The strong religious community and the elites did good outcomes not because of Government Programs they run but because they have strong institutions of Civil Society. What is the plate of the working class with her struggling in america . Its that they like those institutions. Alienation is the plague of Middle America. We talk about the factories shutting down and thats a factor. The real problem is the Church Closing cut. As a talked about all the secular institutions, but the middle class and working class, the church has always been, the church, the cynical, the mosque has always been the Central Institution of society. Secularization of america has been tolerable for the elites although they have but not second life as much as conservatives think. Secularization has been deadly for the working class and the middle class. Thats what it argue, thats what i think i established in alienated america and again i want to thank you all for coming and i couldnt think of to better people to talk about this with than Charles Murray and Megan Mcardle live written on these themes a lot. So thank you, guys and lets have a conversation. [applause] [applause] maginn, ill let you go first. I have so much on what to say but this book which i loved, not just because my husband is thanked in the acknowledgments. Full disclosure, i did not see this book before publication. He withhold it from me so i could penalize on it. I will read my favorite passage from the book because i think this really sums up both the insight in the challenge of what tim points out. Talk about the death of diners. I saw this in my mothers home town. The Dunkin Donuts opens up theres a drive to and as fast as a grandfather who got up at 5 30 a. M. For decades and decades and went to the diner to get his toast and his eggs, that place is slowly dying off. He says, tim says losing the diner means losing and meeting place. Over the years this would weaken the connection between neighbors. You may say theres nothing keeping davis and getting together anyway after they finish their breakfast and coffee at home. Now they can beat at apartment where they want because we are liberated from the need to go to a diner. This sounds rational and ignores how human social interaction works. Are more obvious and more immediate needs of bring us together, and the come together fills the less obvious but still very real needs. We come together for food, drink or security and put in the beginning from camaraderie. Deprivation in these less obvious needs is often not noticeable in the short run but its devastating in the long run. I read that i think about an observation that sciencefiction writer Robert Heinlein of all people once made which was as when complained about the suffocating nature of extended Family Networks in small towns. If you read fiction up to about 1950 this is like a dominant theme is how terrible it is. Then it went away and we suddenly realized that it had indeed been suffocating and it also provided about the stuff that we really missed when it was gone but you couldnt see it like fish in water until it was gone. I i see as in a lot of ways, ani will say that i think, im a great admirer of tims book and i think the weakest part of both books is whether the week as part of almost a book which is the obligatory what is to be done chapter. And if i had my way we would just ask that chapter of the books because i think describing the problem is often all by itself incredibly valuable. I think kim and charles of both recognize the difficulty of this and with proper humility rather than the one you see good thing that will fix this problem. The question i always have at the end of recognizing problems like this, because it really is a problem of in some of the ways welfare, the old welfare systems arguably create a situation which people were making clearly rational shortterm decisions that welfare was economically better for them in the shortterm but because a stint at labor market in the longterm it made the more unemployable and created more problems. In the same way all of these things are rational shortterm decisions because the cost of building that camaraderie, the cost of building that network on any given morning when you are deciding whether youre going to drive to spend an hour at the dieter or drive through the Dunkin Donuts in five minutes, at any given moment the costs are more appeared. Its own over the very longterm that the benefits you are losing become a parent. The question i have, this is not a question i expect to exit but a question we have to answer collectively, is what do you do when the incentive structure of society is setting things up so that people are not writing, but in which how you alter that incentive structure is, the government cannot mandate that we go to church, so where do we do the work and how do we do the work . Youre a libertarian. Im a libertarian, and this works. It doesnt work that it gets a laugh usually can which is what comes to solutions, im a libertarian, libertarians dont do solutions. [laughing] it is true, however, that everybody continues to ask you. As i was thinking of coming on the panel today, and i was deciding just how gloomy to be, because in many ways the book is upbeat and see functioning communities. I applaud that. I does one if you looked at the problem closely enough, if you still retain that much optimism. I go back to coming apart, one of the least discussed parts of coming apart was my chapters on the founding virtues, where i was going back to the founders and saying they disagreed with a lot of things. All of them said that there were a few things were necessary for this society to function, for the constitution to work. If there were religiosity and honesty and industriousness what was the fourth . I hate it when that happens. These were characteristics of the American People that were going to enable the constitution to hold together and you take a look at the trends in the workingclass and they are devastating. You said briefly but correctly that secularization has not progressed as far in the upper middle class as people think. The point of intellectual, you go to the faculty at Harvard University and video survey and they are all atheists basically. But you go to the upper middle class and theres been some secularization but its kind of level off and you still have maybe 30 who have a a strong affiliation with the church or a place of worship. You go to the workingclass where i thought was the backbone of religious support, its just, to use General Social survey, you you are down around about 12 of people in the White Working Class, which was the sample i was looking at, doing the White Working Class about 12 and a meaningful attachment to a church. When you only have 12 in that community then they do not provide a kind of core around whom various kinds of civic functions revolve. They are kind of oddballs when you reptile. 5 whereas 30 you are still in the game. Okay so thats a religiosity has diminished. The whole notion of morality, that was my fourth one, these are moral people. I dont know if youve noticed. Nobody talks about virtue anymore because the left has always been a little down on virtue as being preachy and judgmental and so forth. May i just observed, its very embarrassing for conservatives to talk about the importance of virtue and character these days . Im not going to get into an argument about any national leadership. [laughing] oranges going to observe that if you said, well, im just going what you really need in a political figure, starting out before anything else, is character. Because everything ultimately stems from character. Character is destiny. Apart from that you want something you can hold it to your kids. Theres that conversation completely silent and it will continue to be silent for the indefinite future. Guess what . Madison says the idea that a free people can exist without virtue in the people is a a chimerical idea, and it is. The United States, our communities dont function in the absence of a strong sense of virtue. And heres where maybe we can get into an argument of some kind here or a least a backandforth. A central theme of tims book is importance of religiosity. Steve, i wish you were on the panel because it would be fun. It would be fun jeff steve on the panel with enlightenment now who would say no, you dont have to have that. I think tim is right. Ill make one other comment before we make more of a backandforth. And that is that, this is what happens when youre 76, you forgot what you were going to say. [laughing] thank you for bringing up virtue because thats i think the theme throughout the book and i grew up, came up with a classical education and aristotle teaches us, virtue is a habit. One of the things about habits is they require like this. So a few different times i use idea sort of what about, what if you lack the gymnasium in which to practice virtue . And what is a Strong Family . What is a good elite Public School . What is a good Church Community . These places where these can be practiced. Now, i think Church Communities are the only ones that did very well because the elites wont call these virtues. They are sort of best practices. The reason you stay married and get involved in your kids lies is because your kids then have the best outcomes and yet the best outcome. Which is what sociologists talk about it and thats the thinking in the chevy chase, the grosse pointe, ann arbor of america. You worry about the fertility of the virtue to pass down through multiple generations. As you put in, others put it, too many of the liberal elites are unwilling to preach what the practice here but its a good line but its not just about preaching. Its about building the infrastructure where the virtue is being exercise, where people are being trained to it. Where family formation is only possible in a Strong Community because it does take a village. I do think virtue is most important thing and again the unwillingness to talk about means the people who have these virtues and know that their virtues are two likely to keep into the cells because they sounds preachy. Let me push back on a couple of things. First on the virtue idea and second on pessimism idea. On the virtue idea i will say i dont think its true the left doesnt believe in virtue. The things that are becoming sacred in that space are different and its about fighting oppression. That i would say is a leading virtue that uppermiddleclass, liberal people are extremely interested in imparting to the kids and the schools and all the rest of it. We can argue about whether that is a good virtue or not but it is a virtue. It has a lot less to do, however it is true with family formation. It is a less personal virtue. It is less likely to make you personally try for more likely within a community but very possibly more likely to make other people who are struggling to thrive in a larger systemic oppressive architecture so you should take that seriously as a claim to virtue. I think it is one. Im not even sure this is pushing back on the pessimism. Perhaps reframing the timeframe. In a lot of ways this book like every book on the topic in step anchored in the 1950s. Theres a real simple reason for that which is where a lot of good data from the 1950s and we dont have a lot of good data from 1910. What we do know about 1910 certainly paints a different picture from what we see today. For example, i would say geographically what you see in 1910 is highly dense social communities in rural areas and extremely fractured communities much like the ones described here in urban areas and in the sort of outposts were a lot of immigrants arriving, all from. They dont have the thick network. If they havent ethnic cohesion they may develop one but often the dont and for those initial ten years it is a brutal experience for those immigrant groups even after discount the brutal physical labor theyve been shipped out to the middle of pennsylvania what have you to do. So we have had these problems before and they get better. Religiosity, for example, attachment or defining that, you can find different ways by but defining as attachment to a church, post the puritans if it peaks in the United States in the 1950s. We tend to get these declined narratives come the sister of progress narratives, like theres an idea the sexual revolution is issues going ever forward in one direction. In fact, it was an 18th century sexual revolution in britain and then it was followed by which they were stopped, back, back. The idea that this is all going in one way and it is, i think that is very possibly false, is we are in the middle of the big economic dislocation that it think is fraction communities. When the middle of a big cultural dislocation. I think technology is fracturing communities and in a way weve got technology is really good for the outlier and not good for the needy and get if you think about what 1950 society is like, to be the society that is organized around making the best off. Thats just true on every level from economic to political and so forth. We have a society that is organized around the outliers and thats both outliers on this end and that in. Thats what social policy ends up organized rent and our economy organized around. It neglects the means. But thats what you would expect in a time of dislocation but weve had these technological disruptions before. I remarked that its sort of interesting that these big disruptive social movements in the 20th century basically followed by that ten years Disruptive Communications innovations. Radio, then the 20s and 1930s we get fascism. And in the 1920s in italy. Tv comes in the 50s and the 60s we get the 60s and not to share but all over the world. Society is probably eventually these things when they disrupt a break patterns that were sustaining and people figured out how to maximize to make their life better and communities better. People are incredibly robust. Think about what frontiers were like. They were terrible in the 1880s. They were horrifying. There were shooting each other. There were serial killers and they were like by 1925 wyoming is a kind of familyoriented nice place to live. The fact is people have instinct for doing this and they will rebuild new forms but that doesnt mean like the transition could be decades. In particular and the no stop because i know ive talked a lot but in particular a very interesting conversation i had with a colleague of mine at bloomberg who grew up, who had dissented from if anyone is familiar with our wells the road, which is about total desperate poverty in the north of england during the 20s and 30s, he had grown up very near their. Its no longer there but the area and his grandmother had lived in these just, like gross slums. If you read this book you are just horrified by this physical description of the conditions People Living in and his grandmother moved out in her 60s to a Council House when the government was renovating everything. He said a kilter. There was outrage in his voice and he said she had all their friends, she knew everyone as they moved into a Council House wishes in middle of nowhere and did know anyone and she decided to die. She discussed sick of life. If you think about that, these houses that are like two or four tiny rooms, squalid, crawling with bedbugs and vermin. They have toilets that are at the end of some little back alley that you have to share often with other families. If you think about the community and a commute in which whole mining and were sort of industrial manufacturing and decades of unemployment was binding this coming together. These were people are who nonetheless an almost the worst conditions that we can imagine compare to somewhere like oostburg had built something that was sustaining them and was so important that when it was forcibly taken from them by a covered those trying to make their life better, they declined. Think about that, that is a optimism is that is what humans do. We do sustain ourselves. I want charles to talk. Humans do that unless there are forces that are actively and continuously polling us apart. In other words, youre describing almost a gravity of bringing people together and sometimes there are forces that pull support. Right now we do have a lot of those with technology and government that i worry will persist for at least a generation, the Big Government being as de tocqueville predicted hating other gatherings, other things that can be a locus of love beside itself and i just worry this will have staying power that even going to overcome that it would be a couple generations. Thats right. We went through dickens and what ended was with this vibrant community in the north of england like it took a long time and it was miserable for generation or two while they transition. May be it wont work everywhere, ever. We have the community, like whether its Chevy Chase Village or oostburg or whatever, but those kind of human connections are really important. I fully agree. The 50s were about the mean, not positive of the outliers. Why is it that you have in the 20s and 30s and 40s main streets and these of the books and all of these decrying this stifling, conformist, boring Middle America . Its because the people who are writing those books were intellectuals over really bored hanging out with those people. They go off, but now you see the intellectuals have their own communities i can go to. They have communities that work. What about the megalopolis . May be there is no such thing as going home again in terms of cohesive communities in the modern american megalopolis. I just put that out there as a hypothesis but i will say this, that a think if you talk about the great divide in the United States culturally its not left and right so much as people who live either in small towns or small cities of people who live in megalopolis is. Ive got to tell you, my wife and i were in maryland but we are near frederick which is maybe the 2000 people now. That place functions like a 1950s small city. Its filled with all kinds of voluntary associations, people knowing each other and you can get folks to gather in one room to make a big difference whats going on in the community. Its ozzie and harriet in 1950s all over again in the best kinds of way. I think thats true of small cities across america. I think its true of smaller towns across america where basically for a great many people in those communities it works really, really well and the problems are concentrated in a majority of the community that still is manageable. Maybe we say lets make it easy as possible for people who like that kind of place and to be given a lot of freedom to run their lives as they see fit. Maybe the citys are going to be run differently and people will want to be in a kind of environment are who will never restore the kind institutions youre talking about. I do think, and argue in the book that part of what makes america exceptionally good at having the small communities be so productive is exactly the federalism, the mobility, the ability i describe orange city island which is another one of these dutch towns would have these reformed churches underwent and i started reading this online Message Boards orange city, iowa. Embryos your business. Anytime you things happening with your family, people knocking on the door and asking that im thinking the sanskrit but also understand how for an 18yearold, this could sound smothering. Then you just realize its so easy for him to get up and go, but at the same time the irony of this is that what makes these little platoons of the platoons, what makes institutions of Civil Society valuable is they are not simply transactional. The freedom to move about is part of what makes American Communities so great but communities, its like my conservative idea of marriage, thats not just a transaction, that something you into as long as its use on to pull out. Its an actual commitment, a putting down of roots. We need to have a combination at a think america is just generally good at having accommodation where you can leave where you are but theres lots of good soil in which to plant roots if you are not sort of feeling inclined immensely to get out and go. I will point out what im edging toward with my statement about those two kinds of americas, libertarian works really well in small city in smalltown america. It really, all of the feedback loops that you need to run Civil Society pretty much still occur there. Ill tell you where i i get shy in my libertarian principles is as a look at the megalopolis is and ask myself, is it any other way to run these except with a great deal of interventionism and control . I think there has to be. I wrote a column, im basically return but if you look at things can look at the north easton northeastern corridor. They had to be focused around because you cannot move the necessary number of people. I understand why my readers in texas are mad when im like we have to do highspeed rail here but or we have to do something that is going to move more people here we need more Public Transit because it doesnt make sense for the lies but, yes, i think there is a much greater need for regulation and law in cities. That concept is why there can be what i see as a vicious circle where more centralization begets more centralization. The more that people the more the government is taking over roles, because member Jonathan Gruber of obamacare fame. Hes in multiple studies on government crowding out and it is really clever studies that found the places that got more money, more appropriations during the new deal, they sign much a good drop off and have churches spent money on welfare. One of the things you talk about the diner there pointing that draws people to church is thats where they get to serve other people. I remember thinking about this as a game at its church as an adult and youre reading the bible and its as yet to feed the hungry. Im thinking how on the going to do that quite usual for church and they said sent tuesday werg to the soup kitchen. As the churches lose those roles they lose some of the draw and some of the membership. An institution disappears and is not just a church, that disappears and then you need more government. There is a study that showed the inverse correlation of regulation and social trust, and that the argument is the causality goes both ways and they say there are two equilibrium. Theres lots of regulation and low trust, or low regulation and lots of trust. I was imagining this guy walking on a razors edge if youre trying to walk in the middle of moderate regulation, moderate trust your gut some point you slip a little, theres less trust, you need more regulation. More regulation, less trust and you just go down one way or the other. If you talk about social trust, by the way, that is the glue that holds communities together. Its almost as if its a perfect storm. Youve got the regulatory relationship with social trust. Youve got the thing that nobody is happy about which is as you get multiethnic groups insane committee, social trust tends to go through the floor. We live in a multiethnic nation. We are not going to change that but its a fact, its a problem with social trust. Video games which are now, you can project that became ten years from now. Use see how attractive they are not as way of escaping the real world. Imagine that extrapolated. There are all sorts of forces at work from technological to cultural to economic, all of which are fighting against the very kinds of social interactions you what. Social trust is really important and ill be the devils advocate for this panel. I belong to a bunch of different online groups for discussing various things and on one of them i watched people who have never met each other in meat space reaching out to each other to talk about their marital problems. People are going to a hard time. I said to one person you should go talk to us of the person who went through this and talk to this third person. None of these people have ever met in the flesh. These are actually, these communities videogames an example, fortnight which is this big thing parents cant get their middle school boys are fortnight. It turns out they are playing a game but, in fact, hardcore video gamers so im told by another adolescent boy who is a hardcore video game, they dont play for that because fortnight is just for chatting. This is actually this big, its a community. These committees are not like physical communities. Maybe it will not be as thick. I think this is a thing of outliers versus the median is the median is probably better off with meet space connection with the outlier who has weird preferences like i dont know, want to be a libertarian blogger can do stuff that they could not have done 20 or 50 or 100 years ago. But that may not be the equilibrium. We shouldnt extrapolate out what we see now. It is very possible we will find new ways to form thick and durable connections with committee online. We havent yet. I think that is true and theres a lot of toxic stuff going around but on a scale of global human history, this is like an infant technology. It took us a while to get a hang of the printing press. We had a bunch of words about religion of salt that we eventually settled and are doing pretty good now. I agree with a lot of that. Currently the best thing technology does is facilitate people getting together physically. I was able to have 20 High School Reunion all because facebook existed. We built the group, at dans people and we together physically and otherwise think about my parish and her kids school and makes it easier to plan a 5k, plan the tball team took all that is facilitated by also think as we were taught about the immediate desires that getting together physically with other people is not, its not always obvious what the gains of that article one of the perils of technology is that we are actually have to get together. When you dont get together you lose the serendipitous encounters and conversations that end up being so valuable. This is what new urbanism is about. Lets get people so they bump into the neighbors can have big courtyard in the middle of the block, have a third place, coffee shop, a barbershop a bar where people can go and that the more both technology and wealth and the ability to have sort of a lifestyle where you only, everything you do and ava rico is deliberate, deliberately planned and you dont get to axially bump into people. Why was called the best time in so many peoples lives . You were just there living next to people who have the same shared sort of aspirations and undertakings and the same procedure engaged in and so thats when my big worries about technology is if it makes you think that we can plan our lives, thats the fatal conceit for your own life. Thats taking away from the things you didnt realize were going to be so important to your living her life, building virtue, being happy. You have a situation where we are going to have some really good outcomes because the technological revolution and some really bad ones. I agree with megan. We are just getting used to the capacities we have now in Information Technology and we will adapt, some of us, will adapt. Some of us will do exactly as you would think about using this as way to facilitate actual communication. Things will get stronger and we will have a combination of virtual communities and real communities. There will be another set of people who do drop out altogether and are sitting in front of the screens, a Virtual Reality machine that is a whole lot more exciting than the humdrum realworld they otherwise live in. Maybe the reason everything is so murky is we dont really know what the sizes of the different kinds of groups are going to be. We dont and i will say, i think ultimately technology is going to have to foster in order to contribute to human thriving. I do think that is right. It is breaking up thick community in the real world and that humans do need those things. Maybe answer is computers will get so good at simulating that we can all pretend were living in a small town in 1910 and then it wont be a problem because well all individually feel very happy. We havent talked about politics yet. I wouldnt have written of this book it donald trump were not running away with republican nomination while i was looking at it. Those places i chevy chase and oostburg, trump got 60 in chevy chase what you would say its a bunch of in the primary. A bunch of liberals they will vote for kasich. Trump cut 16 in oostburg. A bunch of christian conservatives, they all voted for ted cruz. Trumps worst day in the primaries, secondworst state was utah and biggest drop off from mitt romney to trump was in all these places including western michigan were again there are all dutch people go to charge twice on sundays and is incredibly strong reformed churches, so the elite and the strong religious communities in the primaries rejected the guy who was saying the American Dream is dead. The argument that the American Dream is dead was appealing to the alienated american. That was not the people who chosen over hillary but the people who when they were 16, 17 guys on the stage, however many terms of governorships and send it or ships, thats the only guy whos willing to say the American Dream is dead. It wasnt just because the factory shutdown. If because of the net shutdown because they were not connected to other people but the next question is how is trump fixing that . The definition is its not just being disconnected from community and society. Its not even seeing the point in it. Then again they turned toward the Central Government and the potential strongman. That was my political analysis. I want to know if you guys have anything different . I am so befuddled but american politics now i have nothing useful to say. I am appalled. I think that there is a real sense in which as these communities have broken down, and i think they are broken down for liberals, its just that, even a places like chevy chase i think that communities less thick than it used to be. The difference is they are all offsetting benefits that asked a lot of that in some ways. I think that there is absolutely a phenomenon that your simple sides, like people expect in politics to be everything. Politics is not National Politics. Its not just even politics is going to make you healthy and its going to take your all your needs. Politics is going to fulfill all of your emotional needs. Its what you belong to. It is what you belong to, the only thing that matters and i feel like i i firmly against this field politics. It is both an error in the politics cannot possibly fulfill this need and also fairly unhealthy for our politics. But i will say this and i will say things like you shouldnt lose a friend over politics, right . Look, if you are a nazi german in 1933 that does not apply. We are not living in nazi germany in 1933. But in general, right, if your friend is a decent person before they decided to go for trump, or before the decides to hate trump whatever is your mad about, you should understand they disagree with me about something and we can talk about that. We can argue about it but ultimately i know all of these other things about this person beyond their vote. But i think we just dont have anything else that fulfills that placer people and was fascinating to me is how angry people get when i say that. They will say you understand people another choice. Right. Thats true but the purpose of politics is to make People Better off, to make the most possible people happy. They cannot be true that the most possible people will be happy if they spend every waking hour angry about politics and hating our neighbors. I pull on, i love poley on the greek. I pull on the greek definition of politics sort of meaning the public thing, and that man is a Political Animal. A lot of my libertarian friends dont like that if they take the idea, if you take to mean this. Were supposed to be legislating and regulating and all that. But no, a libertarian friendly way to put it, we are not supposed to live our own lives according to what we think is right and wrong but we are supposed to shape the world around us. This is something i dont think i wouldve said in my teens or early 20s but when youre raising kids you realize whats going on just and your own house and your little backyard is not shaping that is not enough. You have to shape the world around you. We have a parish, we have two other schools that our children go to. We belong to a swim club a couple years back that was incredibly strong, and there we could push and change rules or just change it by physically being the guy to be there and carry something from one side of the pool to the other. Even the intersection near our house, my wife and i lobbied our county government that they should change the way the lanes are set up and a look at it and he did it and it was an amazing thing for me to write about National Politics on how only the special interest get their way. Heres the guy delivering the course said they did it because it was on a local level, accessible. We could get in touch with the people. These Different Levels were, ive so much ability through these institutions to shape the world around me. Thats whats missing. Thats what we have an american thats whats missing in the alienation, in a country that is the irony is our politics is so broken in part because i dont hate each other so much. You cant do anything to National Politics because everyone is so angry. Their 330 million people. Thats true but you could look back to the new deal and say we got angry, we elected fdr, we did something. If thats what you want to do. You can look at that and say lets accomplish something. But the fact that we hate our neighbors so much has created gridlock in congress are everyone is just waiting to try to get control of the whole thing so they can do whatever. Everything they do is nondurable at best and often just doesnt happen at worst. Everyone is pouring their hunger, i wouldnt say man is a Political Animal so much as a moral animal. We need a moral community. People pouring all the hunger to moral Community Something that exists outside and beyond them and longer than they will especially as they get older, pouring that hunger into the one thing in america right now which doesnt promise, hold of any promise of action and by the act of investing so much in it are making sure that it cannot do anything because people are so determined to block the opponent. Theres a lot of arguments to be made that, in fact, politics does the role that religion used to, that it is the thing that to talk about the great religions. Ill refer to christianity which is my tradition. This, these are religions that teach the right lessons in terms of loving and in terms of your moral responsibilities, so if youre deeply engrossed in those, and their best traditions you are not filled with hate. You are not filled with anger and so forth. And politics by its very nature tends to make people angry and hostile and so forth. So insofar as that is the common the religion of a secularized society, the longterm outlook is not good. Politics, the lesson of the indictment was that religious institutions to make good governments and government doesnt make a good religion. I think that that is something that America Needs to relearn. Again people want to just are naturally without even knowing it want to exercise and flex their political muscles and they think, i think this were very sad and occupy wall street came from. They say why dont i have any ability to exercise my political muscles in the shape the world around the . He goes all the know, all they of his washington, d. C. They say it must be because the special interest have too much control. Of course special interest have too much control but sort of the promised at the end of this is, at the end of the bernie i spent the night sleeping occupy wall street and i tell the story in the book of how i just didnt understand what theyre talking about because there was an occupy d. C. , a couple of them and would ask people what youre upset about. The limitation of the volcker rule [laughing] it was these wonks in drum circles here often speak most of whom worked at omb. [laughing] what you upset about . Well, its that the wealthy and the banks have too much control over washington. I thought, ground, they will be against wars, against bailouts, against corporate welfare. What are the policies you dont like . Well, the lack of Campaign Finance reform. But what else . Well, citizens united. Then im like fine, all the special interests are in a closed room. Its a smoke filled. You are locked up because all these other laws. What are they doing in that room that you dislike . They said we are making sure the voice of the people is heard. To it seemed like theres no there, no bottom but it took me years later writing by the information to realize thats a real complaint that you dont have the ability, its like youre reaching out, the image of the gym again. Theres nothing to provide resistance, nothing to reach out and grab it its just sort of you are there standing alone alienated not able to shape the world around you and you think the problem is that there are super pacs that are spending too much money. Sure we could to questions . Question from the obvious. We have microphone that will come over to you. Are the microphones working . Why dont we start right up here in front. Red jacket. Im going to get to the subtitle of the book, why some places thrive and others collapse. And identifies and midwesterner, actually from wisconsin. When i was back there last summer i was in a town called griffin. The home of the Republican Party with a wellknown small liberal arts or some kind of college. The Elementary School in downtown had been converted to small independent Senior Living because there are no kids and people who live in the country with farms, et cetera, were moving to town to live collectively. Thats whats happening in sort of rural iowa, rural wisconsin. Doesnt really matter where. So the question is heart of it is because there used to be small manufacturing throughout wisconsin. Factories with 100, three, 400 people. They filled the paper industry, the coffee but interested. These small factories, not were increasingly bought out by Big Companies like kimberlyclark that became global companies. So im wondering when you talk about why some places thrive and why they collapse, if it isnt also in part the loss of small farming and small manufacturing . Thank you. I think thats a huge part of it. Often its the first domino but i have a shuttered Church Rather than a shuttered factory on the front of the book for a reason. Because i think that the real efficient cause, the main cause is the collapse of the other institutions that follow. One contrast i i paint in the k is between its burden and then uniontown pennsylvania. Uniontown is in fayette county. Its about 45 minutes an hour south of pittsburgh here both of these places were devastated by the Steel Industry moving over to first europe and then china. Pittsburgh is doing well now. Fayette county and uniontown are not. Uniontown, uniontown was a real city 20, 30,000 thousand back in the day. Why would they not able to survive the downturn . My argument is if youve been to fit. You know theres all these little neighborhoods, a lot of them are built around church. A lot of them are ethnically distinct. You have a jewish neighborhood of squirrel hill. Your polish and italian neighborhoods and irish neighborhoods. Youve got all these different neighborhoods and all discharges and his other institutions including an local Public School or anybody thinks of the kids there as our kids, while the places that are just a little more spread out, fenner, they have church or two but when the factory shuts down, theres just less resilience. I40 imagine it, the Rural Communities were resting on a thinner membrane those easier to stop because they didnt have as denser networks of Civil Society. You cant tell the store without telling the story of the shutting factories in chapters two two through four i go to a lot of them. But you are skipping a step if you go from this factory close to the opioid epidemic. You are skipping the step of this factory closed and it could Stay Together because then the other institutions closed. So yes, right there. I had to back clarifying questions. Two clarifying questions. I had [laughing] let me try this. Technology is a problem. [laughing] we are still adapting. So i had to back clarifying questions. Theres one part where you said theres an increased social distrust because of videogames but also the influx of ethnic kyrgyz and i was when it nicu could explain, into that more . What was i referring to there . The research that initially establishes is actually by Robert Putnam who wrote bowling alone. So he was subsequently doing additional work. And what he found was when you multiethnic communities come that social trust became very low. Its not just that one ethnicity did not trust another ethnicity. Trust within the ethnicities also declined. And that this was a very consistent finding and it at sentencing a lot of replication. I have seen a couple of articles that seem some glimmers of hope, that some communities it is not as universal as was initially thought. The bulk of the literature continues to say this seems to be a builtin problem. There are lots of reasons that it shouldnt surprise us but its the problem in a multiethnic country. Its much less of a problem in very affluent communities because it is a kind of come if you socialize the college anywhere, you have a lot first of all your more likely to have a common language but you also just have that, there is globally a fairly Common College ethos. Thats that with the bulk of immigration in the United States is and so this always seems like a very surprising finding to uppermiddleclass educated people because thats not the finding you would replicate in the suburb that has a very diverse population of College Educated people. Its a finding you are more likely to have in communities that are a lot thicker, have been there where one Community Something like charlestown in boston where he had basically this is where my family came in 1850 and squatted until about 1940. Its like people a been there for a long time and education levels are lower, they are very the ideas about the to do things that are theirs and they dont like outsiders. Its hard to have cohesion and Strong Community if you dont share enough. If you come to my parish, incredibly, ethnically diverse. No, not in chevy chase. If you go to blessed sacrament, the only diversity is which president nominate you to the supreme court. [laughing] if you come to Saint Andrews in Silver Spring it has got incredible diversity. Strong cohesion, because even the noncatholics have invested in the Catholic Education of their children. So that is that strong cohesion. I write about this problem. The most shearing followup study that sort of disagrees bit with putnam says maybe its not the diversity that leads to the loss of cohesion but its a transition period mac. Thats an uplifting interpretation of it but i talk about the talk about. Its hard to build community if you dont speak the same language but also the difference in customs. I have a neighbor who lives next door, mr. Patel. And so just quick, quick passage. After two months of driveway chats, mr. Patel give me a ride to the metro, i invited him for a beer on my back deck. This is a most normal way i get to know a guy. For mr. Patel for religious reasons, he is a hare krishna, doesnt drink alcohol. That creates a barrier to our bonding. So coffee. No. He . No. Herbal tea . Sorry. After months from frustration i approached him with a very awkwardly direct question. Mr. Patel, i would like to have you over for a drink, but what liquids do you actually consume . I have some wine lacroix in my house. No thanks. The waste of putting water in cans and bottles violated his religious obligation. Im he suggested water with some limit online in it. I send my kids off to the Grocery Store to pick up a limit and a line. But that it takes a lot more effort and has potential pitfalls. It is reasonable to infer cultural differences we can community bias. What if we are serving pork, can we invite muslim neighbors, we live in a jewish community. There was one time we used our grill, by mistake i bought a third one at a paris auction where they also had beer because we are catholic. We kept it at the kosher grill for one cookout. These beautiful cultural differences that make diversity as thrilling and exciting as it is also make it a little more work to build the cohesion. That is why if you all want to cover it or we are all catholics raising our kids, might be easier to get over the hump. In the 50s the big thing, the italian and irish catholics, High School Football games and they are united in their hatred of the hipster. It is totally possible to overcome these things but it takes work. Lets go up front. Is that a working microphone . This book is fantastic and Everybody Needs to buy it. Multiple copies. Come back to the ethnicity thing. You talk about race in the book and the towns you hold as models of workingclass civic cohesion to me as a northeastern are coming out from my parents generation but my generation a sound quite, we dont have much white ethnicity left. My dad grew up in an irish neighborhood, no longer the case. Of these places that still have this, this kind of remarkable blast from the past, ethnic cohesions, what hope do you have, ethnic and religious overlap, Communities United it is dutch reform. What do you see as the most plausible sources of quote . This forwardlooking thing, in the past we have the italian neighborhoods in pittsburgh etc. And a quick political point one of the in an early primary, a number of people went after and sister he, not having ethnicity made you more likely to vote for trump because it enhanced the sense of alienation. Megan is more optimistic, they replace it. One thing use the, we see a lot of people developing pride in a specific neighborhood. What side of capitol hill you lived on, there is no pride, we are pet worth people and i would never live where carol gardens people, or grand rapids. Grand rapids is another one, a ton of twentysomething hipsters, real grand rapids, Walking Around there, love the local food truck scene and all that stuff. We are a neighborhood and we have real pride in that. I havent gotten my tattoo yet. It is complicated. Americas racial legacy is original sin, it is not going to be extirpated very easily. It will require some incredible heroic sacrifice. Are we willing to make that sacrifice . What form does that sacrifice take . It goes beyond where we go. I think there is absolutely hope but periods of enormous social change are not good periods and we are in a period of rapid social political everything change, technological change. I dont know where it ends up so i dont know how to frame how to fulfill these needs and for which groups but i will simply say that i think it is obviously americas great moral obligation to make the benefits available to help in what ways we can. I dont know what the answers are but in what ways we can to make it possible for africanamericans to form places that are not just that socially stick because there are socialistic africanamerican neighborhoods. The challenge is the stable Economic Prosperity which has been much harder for africanamerican neighborhoods to achieve because a legacy of racism. There has been a lot of social capital in innercity africanamerican neighborhoods i talked earlier about forces that act to pull people apart and when you look at it is easy to think of our racial history, slavery and segregation and just talk about taking away rights from black people, taking away their access to other institutions but part of it was a deliberate attempt to prevent solidarity. To prevent family formation and solidarity. In other words a huge part of the racial oppression that happened to blacks in america was the powers that be keeping them from forming little platoons that would provide robustness. It was the black church in the end that provided, it was an institution. We talk about Martin Luther king. It was institutions that ended the worst of the segregation and that is why there was distrust and effort to break up the family. Right here in the middle. Thank you for mentioning that. It is usually glossed over. Explain why in a 0sum world what you are talking about is not just a useful tool, what needs to be addressed, maybe there isnt much use for these populations we are talking about . I have heard that said. This is one of the worst things you sometimes encounter in the world of policymaking. The economy grew while our factories overseas, these people lost their jobs and failed out of usefulness but we are doing fine. Because we have a bigger safety net and we can catch these people as they fall. I have friends say explicitly that because it was their argument against trump in protectionism of the factories. To let these towns collapse with the safety net. So i said before i am a catholic and a christian and i think every human being is of infinite value and we cannot allow that to happen. That is why i am passionate about this question because i think the price of alienation is not loneliness and people are sad, i think it is a dehumanization of people when they dont have the ability to connect to others. The economies that allow small factory towns to exist and form local diner and local church and all that stuff, those were literally lifting people up, lifting up their souls to be aspiring and not letting them aspire if we are not giving them the avenue to pursue these greater goods, if we get wealthier when we let people slip through the cracks we are failing as a country. One more that we have time for. You have both of them . The discussion reminds me of Russell Kirks comment that piety dives on pavement, maybe it is true. I have been looking at studies of the Nineteenth Century and twentieth century, contact with primitive tribes and when they contacted everybody, alcoholism not working, all very isolated tribes, when you find them on amazon in new guinea you dont just going with tv sets. As the pace of modernity making all of us like those primitive tribes so it keeps coming so we have the same future shock if you will even though we are modern . There is a brief passage in hillbilly elegy where he talks about his ancestors from kentucky and there is no privacy. Some sisterinlaw telling you how to parents, they get on the hillbilly highway and go to the suburb where everybody has a house in the yard and the fence and the world is completely different yet the same. It was different because you are separate and not so connected but the same because we are so hillbilly. There was that Culture Shock. They hadnt adapted to a different way of living and without that intense connection that was one of the passages that made me realize i had to write this book but they are living in a culture that theoretically was survivable and could lift people up but not if you are brought up with different have attended different set of deeds and a different way of reaching out and aspiring to something. Those of you who are optimistic, can i end on an optimistic note . Maybe it is like the amazonian tribes confronted with all this new weird stuff, we forget what is important but that doesnt mean it isnt important. If you say it is true, it is objectively true that human beings flourish in contact with other human beings, marriage objectively is one of the most rewarding forms of human intimacy. You go through a variety of other things about basic human needs and how human beings work and these are true so we can afford to say a lot of what we are seeing is behavior that has been pulled out of shape by Culture Shock and technological shock and sooner or later those things which are true about human beings will shape human institutions. I think that is right. It is valentines day. My former colleagues, including one that i wrote on a disastrous relationship i had, the reason i live in washington dc instead of new york where the relationship took place, i talked about it on npr, valentines day Economic Issues so every year they retweet it and go to great length about my bad decisions but the interesting thing is every year it triggers an argument between the feminists and advocates that takes place without me unfortunately sitting in the middle of a really angry tweet storm. Ultimately a lot of what you noticed from the conversations back and forth, both 5 are trying to get the same thing, they want the other side to be committed so they will have something to fall back on and make a full commitment as they can because that would be better if they could get someone else to commit to them without doing the same thing. In return i think ultimately we are humans, we want silly things like this but that eventually you weve all social more that figure that out and that is true of a lot of things. Ultimately you have to have norms that enable people to get what they need, if those norms dont work long event as it happens in my book i looked at an amazonian tribe, they were hunter gatherers, they have huge collective sharing norms but their terrain was so encroached that they couldnt support themselves as hunter gatherers so they were moved onto forms, they were so high on sharing that they had rules a man could never meet the initiate the meat he himself had hunted. If a8 it they would lose their virility and be unable to hunt. So they tried to do this when they are farming. They would every morning ring a bell to go out on the fields together. 3 mornings and they rang the bell and no one showed up. They had to evolve new norms about property. This is my patch, my patch is mine and you cant have it. Me and my family here and it happened rapidly. That is the amazing thing. It wasnt that they didnt really believe these things. It was fundamental to their belief system and our belief that my yard is mine and you cant come on it unless i let you is fundamental to our society. It changed because circumstances changed. I have tremendous belief both in the kind of shortterm wisdom of people but in our longterm ability to evolve and adapt to new shocks and build things that do work and are enduring and connect us to those moral communities that take us outside and beyond ourselves. A good note to end on and a great discussion. We could go on all day. [applause] for our usual practices will be available, it is live stream, it will be Available Online for you to send to various social media preferences. Dont leave without a copy, thanks for coming. [inaudible conversations] weeknight we feature booktv program showcasing what is available every weekend on cspan2. Tonight, books and reading. Pamela paul, editor of the New York Times book review offers her thoughts on how to get children interested in reading books. Then Marianne Wolf explains how we process print versus digital media. After that bookseller and publishing executive james mustard on the 1000 books he said a person should read in their lifetime. Watch booktv every weekend on cspan2. This weekend on booktvs afterwords, chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl provides a behindthescenes look at the Trump Presidency with his new book front row at the trump show. He knows the reporters, he reads the stories, he watches the news coverage, he want he once privately said tivo was the greatest invention of mankind because he has all the shows on his dvr and he watches and he sees how he is being portrayed. I recall him as one point, phil rucker with the Washington Post, really good reporter, press conference, the president made reference to a story that phil had written before the New York Primary in 2016 about the Staten Island ferry and basically went and interviewed people on the Staten Island ferry and a lot of people really liked donald trump and he wrote a story about it. I didnt even see the story. Trump not only saw the story and read it, he becomes president , goes through these and he sees phil rucker, not exactly a household name, great reporter, we all know him and is like that story wrote about the Staten Island ferry was a wonderful story. It is mind blowing. You can see that interview on abc news chief correspondent Jonathan Karl and former White House Press secretary mike mccurry sunday at 9 00 pm eastern on cspan2s booktv. As part of the Program Series in conjunction with our exhibit, we welcome layla saad