Transcripts For CSPAN2 In 20240703

Why other versions of your book adam and eve after the bill and adam and eve after the bill repeated . The first one was written about ten years ago called adam and eve after the pill and a microscopic at the sexual revolution. Individuals, men and women, children and a decade later after the pill revisited looked at the effects of the sexual resolution on politics, society and christianity itself so the aperture has been widenedst and taking in the biggest possible terrain. For some of those macro trends youve noticed . Its a long story but ill try to do the short version here. Ive been interested in a long time tracing the need to society as we know it. I dont look at the surface trying to get underneath transforming our world. One ofor these events is sexual resolution and the collapse of christianity which begins in the 1950s. What is the effect of these trends . One thing is families have gotten smaller. They are more broken than they used to be, many people live alone he just seems to and its been transformative effect on our world. We can talk in more detail about that one but collapse of the family has meant we areas ending more and more people into the world who dont have experience of whats called the Primal Community community of family and this i think is the need what we talkn about on the surface when we talk about cedivisiveness of politics for example. The fact that people seem polarized and at each others throat. I believe underneath this the accumulated factors of six decades that resulted inen children people who know less about each other as humans because they didnt get that in the family. We are going to show headline from 1960 and itsra about the a approving the show you can see on the screen. In your view, did that change the world . Is it fair to say . I think was the most transformative thing to happen sincema the couple and the government and transform relations between men and women personal. We have to go back to the 1960s and that this would be a positive thing and would strengthen marriage for example like giving people more power over and thought it would think in society because women would be able to join the workforce, they were no longer tied to large families but something happened in the next few years. Instead of strengthening marriage, it looked at contraception, suddenly divorce skyrocketed and cohabitation skyrocketed and abortion became legal and there were millions of those so what happened . Is supposed to liberate humanity and its having a negative effect. It Secular Congress have looked at this. A pause here in our book tv programming to bring live coverage of the u. S. Senate continuing 40 year commitment to current congress. Lawmakers meeting this afternoon and whats expected to be a brief session, no boats expected. Live now to the floor of the senate here on cspan2. The senate will come to order. The parliamentarian will read a communication to the senate. The parliamentarian washington, d. C. , october 10, 2023. To the senate under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable mark warner, a senator from the commonwealth of virginia, commonwealth of virginia,. Previous order, the senate stans adjourned until 9 15 a. M. , adjourned until 9 15 a. M. , and the senate now gaveling out from its brief session. When lawmakers return you can see live coverage here on cspan2. And we take you back now to our booktv programming. Guest the latest substantiation of this that im describing the begins in early 1960s. Host Mary Eberstadt, you write in adam and eve after the pill revisited that since the two was introduced, theres been a rise in abortion and an unwanted pregnancy. Guest thats a paradoxical effect. Thats why my first book adam and eve after the pill revisited talks about the paradoxes of the sexual revolution because a lot of this fallout was unexpected and him talk about the sexual revolution, peter, i want to make clear imle not being mono causal. Thats a bad word. Im not saying there is one cause for thehe deterioration tt we were seeing around us. What im saying is that is a one cause that is not been addressed sufficiently in sociology or by church leaders, or by others in authority. Its become the thing that is hardest to talk about. We need to talk about it because splitting the human out in the way that we did in the 1960s and beyond is beneath a lot of the worst problems of our time i believe. Host im going to read four quotes from adam and eve after the pill revisited just to give viewers an idea of the themes that youre talking about in the book. You can expand on any of them you want but the very short quotes. The sexual revolution indoors as a force of modernity second to none. Second quote, six decades of social science have established that the most efficient way to increase dysfunction is to increase fatherlessness. Third quote, christian believers are an open roiling uncharted waters. And finally, post 1960s disorder was indeed generating casualties of all kinds. Anything you would like to expand on . Guest all of it. But i wouldn . Like to start with the idea of casualties. Everyone knows the subjects are difficult to discuss. Everyone lives in some kind of family and it is fact about all of the trends under discussion when i raise the question of fatherlessness im not trying to point fingers andto make people feel bad. I am trying to connect the dots so the generations that come next might suffer a little less from the kinds of trends where describing. After the first adam and eve book came out over ten years ago there was one thing that really surprised me which was the emotional resonance of the book. This is not a selfhelp book. It was i thought pinnacle kind of undertaking to discuss the effects of the sexual revolution using sociology, psychology, anthropology. It had nothing to do with theology. None of my books depend on theology at all. I am not a theologian, but i was very surprised by readers who got in touch by email and otherwise to say this chapter on pornography really resonate with me. Let me tell you my story. Let me to the story about it destroyed my marriage. For example. And there were even harder stories that a hard from all over. So the thesis that the sexual revolutione was having negative consequences that were not well understood seem to be vindicated by these personalbe stories, the raw testimonials of people who wanted to talk about how they were worried about raising their child without a father, for example. So there was a lot of emotional resonance and intensity that i didnt expect and it was part of why i continued to look at that subject resulting in the second book. Host Mary Eberstadt, one of the adam and eve books you talk about a a high school gin 1972 who was pregnant and was quite the scandal. And today that doesnt rate and eyeblink. Guest that is a snapshot that tells us how the world changed after the 1960s. The story goes like this i grew up in rural upstate new york in a series of u small towns, hamlets, villages, and down the street at one point that the young teenager who got pregnant. It was the talk of the neighborhood because the father, who was a young soldier, return from vietnam, did not intend to marry her. That is to say the scandal was not about her. What was that scandalous was that he would leave her as a singlewa mother. She went away and had the baby, and returned to school. There was no social program to my knowledge that was directed at her. 20 years later i went back and was talking to a former teacher. She said a third of the girls graduating high school that year were pregnant. None of them were married. So in this 20 year gap i think we see what was repeated in america, the story by the millions, where no longer was it thought that pregnancy was something that two people were responsible for. Suddenly only one person, usually a frightened young woman, was responsible for it. And that i think is a civilizational step backwards. Host how did you get from rural new york to washington . Guest well, i was very fortunate. I went to cornell university. On a scholarship. After that i i thought maybe d like to be a philosophy professor. I double majored in philosophyt and government but i decided to take a year off and to make a long story short i started writing and i got involved in the world of new york journalism, especially the small intellectual magazines that are not the thing today that they were back then. Back then in the 1980s magazines like Public Interest and commentary were very exciting places to write for and to hang out in. I ended up as an assistant editor at the Public Interest magazine run by irving kristol, a legendary editor and writer. And from there ended up doing some ghostwriting for major officials in the reagan administration. One was Jean Kirkpatrick who was ambassador at united nations, and from there i ended up speechwriting for secretary of state George Shultz for two years. So that was the path. Host what is your fulltime job currently decides author . Guest we have four children, and there is that. I did very little writing for about 15 years as they were growing up. Once they were safely in school i came back to this. Host but you are with the think tank now . Guest yes, im a Senior Research fellow at the faith and Reason Institute and also i hold a chair of the Catholic Information Center in washington, d. C. Host and it is fair to say you are a practicing catholic . Guest i try. Host because the forward of your most recent book adam and eve after the pill revisited was written by Cardinal George pell hereto is at . Guest Cardinal George pell of australia was a great intellectual and spiritual leader. And i would not pretend that i knew him well. But he was kind enough to dig and interest in some of my writing, and we had correspondence about some of the themes in my book. For example, one thing that caught his eye was a meditation that i wrote about the theme of chaos. In 1930 when when the great novelist eva lenoir converted to catholicism, he was asked by a newspaper why he did that. He just threw away this line. He said, because in our civilization now the choice is between kristi indian chaos. Now, the chaos of his time was very different. In 1930 the end of period, it was political chaos, all the carnage of the 20th century to come, world war ii. The chaos in our time is a different i think and yet we are seen it in more detail than he ever specified. Several an essay about that outlining anthropological chaos and intellectual chaos, chaos within christianity itself. And Cardinal George pell, because of that essay, kind or to write a forward for the book. Host you go on or Cardinal Pell went on to write that the Church Teachings over the years have been coherent and consistent. What did he mean by that . Guest well, he meant that the Catholic Church stood as a quote sign of contradiction in the world, that whatever was going on around it, they would continue the same teachings. These teachings go all the way back when jesus tells the disciples that, unlike the jews, his people are not allowed to divorce, for example. The disciples become the first christians to complain that this is hard, these are hard teachings. But there is a consistency there that has drawn people in. All the things available to the romans, you name it, divorce, et cetera, or put offlimits to christians. This teaching has not changed. Of course we talk about mercy and redemption because those are also teachings, but the idea that human beings if they were christians were being held to a higher standard has been consistent. And just as that idea as repelled many people and upset many people through all alle centuries, it is also drawn others in. Host i want to go. Back to quote we read earlier. And talk about this. Christian believers are an open, roiling, uncharted waters. You going to talk about indie book the church of nice and christianity like your what do you mean by that . Guest so under the pressure since the sexual revolution, christianity has buckled. And what i mean by that is that there is always a desire to accommodate these radical changes inn the way people live. Lets not be judge e, lets just softpedal the teachings and christianity that people dont like and lets talk about the teachings they do a like. Now, son churches mainly protestant churches have completely abandoned these kinds of teachings they go all the way back to jesus. They lined up on divorce. They lighten up on homosexuality. They lined up on a much anything that the sexual revolution would cling as a prerogative. And the interesting thing is the result of this has been institutional decline, or the churches at rambus experiment. The anglican communion, for example, comes to mind here. The anglican communion is collapsing. Ive read a story recently with a headline that said for the last person to leave anglicanism please turn out the light . So it is not only the anglican communion. Every denomination that tries the church of nice were split over the question of the church of nice ended up going in the nice direction has not flourished as a result. So here we have a paradoxical thing, right . Because you would think that being nice with make it more likely that people would show up in your church. But instead the opposite is true. Whats been burned is that strong churches, sorry, strict churches are strong, as the saying goes. The more the churches stick to the original foundations, the more likely they are to pull people in. This doesnt mean the Catholic Church is thriving these days. Far from it. We are seeing across denominations, but the collapse seems to have been worse for the churches that he sent to jettison the most unwanted teachings, the teachings that make our contemporaries most uncomfortable. Host so Mary Eberstadt, tie that intoie the 1960 fda approval of the contraceptive pill and the sexual revolution. Guest so the pill becomes the biggest temptation of all time. If you were to ask most human beings what you like most i think sex with a consequence would probably be up there on pthe list. And it was widely embraced including by catholics. And yet, what we saw was that the churches, including the Catholic Church, shied away from traditional teachings because they didnt want to make people uncomfortable in the post orrevolutionary era. So we had this dynamic where the decline of the family brought on by the pill fuels the decline of faith and the klein of the practice of institutional religion and organized religion. And we can talk a lot more about that one if you like. Host lets look at your book, its dangerous to believe. This came out in 2016 i believe it was. In that book if you would expound on this. For more than two centuries americans have prided themselves on their commitment to freedom of religion. Readers who lean in a more secular direction might be surprised to hear that anything has happened to shake that bedrock pledge, yet in recent years that historic commitment to freedom has come under siege. L revolution is on a collision worse with traditional christianity. There is no getting around it. Traditional christianity had a bedrock of that were unpopular in roman times and when unpopular ever sent. Along comes sexual revolution and its devoted partisans obviously, the opinions i am describing our minority opinions, but the question is, how destructive is that fight . I think it is very destructive of the u. S. Lets talk about how christian adoption agent has been shut down in some. Clearly, the pressure coming at them is from people who want to replace the teachings of christianity with the anything goes sexual revolution. I really believe this has become a rivals to christianity. We have to ask ourselves, is it good for those adoptees to miss out on a loving home just because the parents and it our christian . Is it good for the poor among whom the Little Sisters work with lawsuits about contraception, of all things . Well, who does that help . It does not help the Little Sisters or the poor, so my point is, when we see this collision will receive a 10 to cap good works done by christian, we are seeing something that is bad for the worst off among us, and i do not think this is well understood, but people who are ideological about the sexual revolution go after christian good work, routinely. This is not called out the people who it is hurting called out. Host i want to ask you about the Supreme Court decision on roe v. Wade last year. It affected years of eagle abortion. Should abortion be legal, in your view . Mary i am a constitutionalist and turning the question back to the state was an overdue constitutionalist correction. Dobbs was a very important decision and represent the first time the 1960s that there has been serious, institutional rollback on a question involving the sexual revolution. The Supreme Court says that it is wrong. We need to turn it back to the state. I think it may be a game changer, not only in the u. S. , but elsewhere in the world. What happened after roe v. Wade is that country after country came to adopt similar laws, came to legalize abortion red had always been criminalized. Both countries, i think, both leaders are having second. As well. This decision will reverberate, and i would predict that it would have it affect u. S. Because if there are more babies among us, that would be a humanizing thing, not a bad thing. This is another issue that we should talk about. What humanizes people . It seems like a question. Taking care of those smaller and weaker or older and sicker is one of the ways we are humanized. Additional families, up until the interruption of the 19, this was done routinely. Old people are taking care of and everybody knew what to do with a baby, etc. Im not saying we should go back to the 1950s, which is a decade i live in, but what im saying is babies have good effects, not the thanks, just as having to take care of other people has a good effect on people. With the collapse of the family, i think we have seen a generalized it has increased in our society, as people are out of the pack this of taking care of others. Simultaneously, as christianity is in decline, they are not being told that one of their jobs on earth is to take care of others. These two things have impacted us negatively. Host when you look at the election result, it favored those who are prochoice or favored abortion rate. Realistically, did this decision hurt your view, and a sense . Mary no. I am not a politics first kind of person. I want to know what is really going on out there and i would rather be right than to see my party. Host Mary Eberstadt is our guest and is the author of many books. We want to include you in this as well. Here is how you can participate. The numbers are on your screen. If you cannot get through on the phone line and still want to make a comment, try texting. This is texting number. If you do send a text, please include your first name and your city, if you would. Social media, several ways to contact us as well. Just remember at facebook and twitter. We will begin taking those calls in a few minutes. Mary eberstadts first book came out 2004 called home alone america. She wrote the loser letters in 2010. It is dangerous to believe just freedom and enemies in 2016. And adam and eve after the pill, revisited came out in 2023. The first book came out in 2013, and. We will begin taking questions. Mary eberstadt, the subtitle, how the sexual revolution needed identity politics. Put that together for as. Mary not only the u. S. Many countries in the modern world are in the of an identity crisis. Identity is all around us. Where is this coming from . Getting back to the world before the 1950s there were two answers that russian. One was horizontal and could be answered by my relationship with other men being in a family. If you were to say, who are you . A common response would be, i am a mother, and aunts, a sister, a cousin, and we could find our valves relationship wise that way. Most people have had them believe in the cosmos, and a deity, and a vertical relationship. So what happens when the family scatters and the churches go mute . What happens is that mention a wave of answering that russian of who mis off the table for many people. We see this migration into politics, into identity politics. And there is an important point here that i think is not well understood, especially among conservatives. Conservatives like to poke fun at the idea and call them snowflakes and say that jim he and lemuels are impossible to understand and they are so since it is. But when i look at those generation, i see suffering. I see real suffering, on account of not having what most human beings before us had. Robust families to give them connections, protection and love. A connection to organize legend that provides unity and good works, and redemption, words like that, that we do not use them much anymore. These seem to be the things that people need in perpetuity. The fact that so many young people cannot reach these and go into politics and said i think it is a very plausible way of describing identity politics. Deferred with the word was first used in a document by radical feminist said that they were giving up on men. It did not trust anyone to have their back except for each other. It is where that phrase identity politics first appears. This is the generation that first the first move there is that men and women cannot get along longer any longer. It proceeds to black lives matter. The black lives matter manifesto was also again heteronormativity and the nuclear family. It also declared that there were apparently new problems in relationships men and women. This is all to say that identity politics not arrived at nowhere. It is coming out of a shattered, postrevolutionary world, and we should have a lot of empathy for the people drawn into this way of politics, even though this way of doing politics, i think is very device the u. S. Host to subsidize something is to ensure more of it and this is essentially what the sexual revolution done. It has an inadvertent subsidize by raising the penalties for traditional mass. Mary a lot of people are puzzled by how androgynous society come. I am not because i think what has happened is that there is a sense of this thing of the human adam. The penalties for being traditionally feminine have risen. The traditional housewife is widely marked. The idea of getting married and having a family as your primary purpose in life makes you retrograde and makes people laugh at you. Simultaneously, men who are traditionally minded are also exiled for a different reason, because it is thought that they are patriarch and oppressive. These being the limiting cases, what we see is a lot of pressure to gravity towards a more androgynous mean. Therefore, it should not be surprising to see androgyny in beams, to see the hold that it has over the minds of the younger people. Host and from your book how the west really lost god, in a way that we are just getting to understand, it appears that the natural family as a the gradual but recognizable muscling of that is surely an important, overlooked part of the story about how western men and women came not to hear. Mary to make a long soy short, when sociologists looked at religion, there is a tendon for people to think, sure, such an family has a lot of kids because they are religious, because their religion tells them no. This applies across islam, judaism and christianity. The more religious people are the more children they are they have. That is assumed. In that book, i turned the thesis on its head and argue that maybe some of what we are seeing in the decline of her sanity is the fact that people are no longer living in robust, extended families. In other words, there is something about birth that trends many people into a different frame of mind, a trend and didnt frame of mind. There is something about standing at an open grave, that we do less and thus of, that confirms the notion that there is something about the cosmos. It is not just and a dead person. The less we do these things the lasix variance we have of birth, death and taking care of this pick, the less likely we are to get into something more internal than we are. That is what that book is all about. Host i went to read a couple of your quote, and i apologize if these are not original to you, but they stood out to me. You describe the 20th century as men have forgotten god and the 21st century as common men are at war with us mary in 1984, alexander gave an important address, in which he says that the problem of the 20th could be summarized in four words. Men have forgotten god. What he meant was that the carnage of the wars in the 20th century would not have happened, had systems really believed what they said. So, i took that quote and thought how we would describe our time. I think men are at war with in their way of trying to what i mean is that we are at war with the idea of a created order. From birth to death, where we see we want to be in control. There is the basic fact of male and female, which we also to control and there is an anger about this war on the created order that is new and another outcome of these radical changes began in the 19. Host lets hear from wayne in michigan. You are on with officer Mary Eberstadt. Caller i would like to ask about competitive religion, how we have a market of religion in america versus places where there is an official religion or state, which might be one of the reason organized religion is doing better here than in some other place. Specifically there is a rigid based on judaism and christianity with stories from profit and all. Pope john paul ii the i think the following folks viewed his as not so much a competitor but there has certainly been a lot of cultural stuff. I was wondering, what is your opinion on this . Do you view it as more positive or negative . Do you see it as more of a competitor . Host you have given us a lot to chew on air. Mary thank you for asking that russian. I do want to emphasize that in the how the what and how the west lost god, i limit myself to christianity and, to some extent judaism because islam is not something i have studied intense. You can generalize about all organized religion that they should at least they share this in common. They tell us that we have to work to be good. Our nature does not start out good. We have to work on ourselves. And once more, with the decline of christianity, i think theres being another unintended concept , which is the idea that we do not have to work on ourselves anymore. We are perfect just the way we are. If we want to walk out the door in our pajamas, we can do that. There is this radical autonomy that seems to rule in many places now, that would not be willing, if people took organized religion more seriously. Host edward in new jersey we had a good afternoon. Caller i think it is the opposite that secularism is actually better for the world. Prior to 1950, there were lynchings. The second point i will make is all of the godfearing bureaucracies the world are impoverished and the people pray five times a day and something. I think that secularism is the way of the future. Science, technology and logic is the only positive. Host do you consider yourself an atheist . Caller i would say i am agnostic. I am a freethinking individual. Just because he created us does not mean he controls us. Even if you could prove that there was a god, i would be against him. Mary i would make two points one is that the u. S. Became the most powerful country in the world during the years and which the public was churchgoing or synagogue going, or observant way. That is to say that i do not think there is much evidence for a clash between you and eyes capitalism. On another plane about whether it is good or bad first, there is a of evidence that we should consider here about what Church People go what churchgoing people do. Im not trying to romanticize it but it is a sociological stat statistic that people who go to church or synagogue, people who are religious are far more likely to give to charity, for example. As we see less christianity, we will see less of those kinds of good works. They are more likely to volunteer and even to donate blood. In other words, the constant message that you need to do good things seeps down at the grassroots level. It is anyway a way that is good for society. Host edward talked about science versus religion. Are they compatible or in competition, in your view . Mary i think that is a misunderstanding because of new atheism. Over 10 years ago now, on the bestseller list, there were several voices. Daniel dennett, Richard Dawkins what we saw in that new atheism was about religious people, ready idea was, not only were they stupid, they were bad society. It went Something Like this, religious people committed the atrocity of 9 11, therefore all religious people are terrorists. Even without elementary logic, who see that does not hold up. Host you also write in your books that atheist have a strong argument against organized religion because of child sex scandals, it but are a etc. Mary there is a lot of room to criticize the churches. The sex scandals was something that helped to prepare atheism. We are talking about behavior on the one hand and whether something is true on the other. You will get no argument from this order about the priestly sex scandals that i wrote about in length in level essays. However, the question of whether what teach what the church teaches is true is not separable from personal behavior. If anything, with the scandals proved is that people are born with original, and they had to redeem themselves. Host Mary Eberstadt, with four kids and writing, how did you manage to do the . Mary mostly, i did not. I did not write a lot when they were growing up. Host when you write your books, ready right where do you write them . Mary i write them in my head at 4 00 in the morning, and then when i wake up, i put them on paper. I make the notes in longhand and then i type out the argument. Host you are on the air. Caller thank you for taking my call. One question. When things better when youre young or better now . I find that the depends on you are and where you are in society. Growing up my and privileged, it was a totally different world than africanamerican and his panic who are now doing much better. There are people who are also doing worse. I do not know how you make the judgment as to society is better or worse. You have to look at individuals. There are an awful lot of things. I look back and i honestly think that there were some things that were much better and there were some things that were much worse. That is just a comment. Thank you. Mary thank you. That is a nuanced view. I am starting from the premise that what people need connection with other and using a variety of evidence to support the. For instance, let us talk about Animal Science, which is something that i at some length because we have learned things from animals in science. We have learned there is no such thing as the lone wolf. Do not run around by the elves anymore than people do. They inherit the style of nuclear families. This is true other mammal that have been studied. I is this . Because a gives them protection, of a kind because you are safer in numbers and also because from an evolutionary respect, this is where social learning takes is a animal families. Monkeys learn how to be monkeys watching other monkeys and connecting with them. We see this most clearly in the remnant on animal separation that was done under harlow, where babies separated by mothers are quickly become dysfunctional. Usually so dysfunctional that they can no longer be returned to the Animal Society what does this tell us . That animals are notional when they are created from their own. The funny thing is that we can usually indicate of others. We know that elephant suffer if they are separated from their elephant families. This is why elephants are no longer in circuses. We also suffer when we have these article disconnection around us, we do not have friend do not have families to depend on. The Animal Science is one of the most important that supports what i am. Host are you referring to the Catholic Church or protestant churches as well . Mary if i say christianity i am talking about. Host is there a difference when it comes to some of the topics that you are just seeing active mary in general, protestants have suffered the biggest collapse, the denomination decided to with traditional teaching like like marriage. Some of them have also click. I do not want to say conservative and liberal by tradition minded and less tradition i needed. There is no doubt that the trend is affecting all of the churches. Host have you looked at the growth of megachurches the prosperity god will of the jewelss Joel Holstein mary the church in other words, people still need churches with teaching, but they are churches that they come with us on today because we are nice host a host text message to you. My name is ken morris and i reside in richmond, kentucky. My question is, that background is retired usmc and retired instructor at kentucky Law Enforcement academy. I have researchedor societal problems affecting Law Enforcement, consequently society. I believe a majoror contributors secularism. You referenced the 60s. I pin point to november 1963. Furthermore, on discussing leadership issues with the department of Virginia Tech university about the lack of humanities in society. I believe that your writings are on point. Would you please address secularism in sexual revolution . Guest well, first, let me say thank you for your service. Secularism and the sexual revolution. My view in a nutshell is about the sexual revolution became like a Great Big Party that got out of control. And now its two in the morning and nobody wants to call the police on the party, but everybody realizes that something bad has happened and something has to be done. How does that connect to secularism . The revolution became a great temptation, and people wanted to embrace it. And part of what made it possible to embrace it was to stop taking christianity so seriously. And that is part of the street of the decline of christianity. Christianity stood like a brick wall against that party that was going on and people decided they didnt want it. They said they would walk away because the church was in scientific, or they said they would walk away because religion was just more superstitious people. But i think you look at the historical dots, whats making people walk away very often is that the dont want to be told to do hard things, things that became much more difficult after the invention of the Birth Control pill. Host i know the text message. Chris from texas. How does Climate Change fit in the mosaic of your thinking . Guest thank you. I am not a scientist, but in a way the concern about Climate Change makes me hopeful. And the reason i say that is that we see young people who are passionate about something outside themselves, in the example of Climate Change. They will protest about it, try to change lives around it, they will become more disciplined because of it, because they believe thats the right thing to do. It seems to me a short leap between concern for nonanimate creation, Climate Change, and concern for animate creation, human beings, families, other people. So i think theres a lot of potential synergy there. Host men well is in loyal california. You are on booktv with author Mary Eberstadt. Are you with us . Caller yes. Can you hear me okay . Host were listening. Please go ahead. Caller . Yes, i usedd to teach at Tulane Law School as the only latino, my last name is ramos, so you guys can look me up. Clinton invited me to the white house as one of the top, back then they used to call us hispanics, top 100 hispanics for conference, which was a nice recognition. But i grew up as a rich kid in havana, cuba. I was born in havana, and it just had my 70th Birthday Party at my Old Country Club called club havana, and , what i apologize for a interrupting, bt why did you call in today . What you would you like Mary Eberstadt respond . , i want to thank the pope for putting together obama behind the scenes. We now know obama had to go behind the scenes, and raul, because i was born under fidel and i want to thank the pope for putting, and on his birthday they announced this huge change of relationship between my two countries. You can imagine how emotional i was aboute that. I want to ask you, some people say, you know, i am sort of like that john lennon song that says the world would be a lot better without religion and without borders. And they use that song in the olympics in japan and kubo likes to put on tv all the time. But as you know host you agree with that sentiment, manuel . Comics in my question to you is, my theory, ive got a theory, that catholics are dangerous because of the cuban missile crisis. We all know about the cuban missile crisis. That was the closest the world ever came to being destroyed. Now, john f. Kennedy as we all know was our first catholic president. What people dont know is that fidel castrot was also raise my catholic nuns and priests. So we have two very rich, essentially white guys, catholics, almost bringing the world to theal break, i apologi. We are going to leave it there. If theres anything Mary Eberstadt wants to respond to, interrupt me but otherwise were going to move on to add in long island, new york. And, good afternoon. Please go ahead with your question or comment, how are you doing, mary . I happen to enjoy your works very much. Your books are very enlightening, and i would just like tod ask you how you feel about the current or the recent events with on the border and how you also feel about mr. David berkowitz, i believe his name is, his latest works. Host David Berkowitz . Im not sure who is referring to there, but when it comes to the border, is that something that you think about or write about . Guest thats a political question that i havent particularly written about. Having worked in the United States government, i know that i took an oath to protect the United States of america. So i believe in putting the National Interest first. We can have discussions about what exactly that means. But in other words, this is a question butds american National Interest and americann security. Thats as far as i have gotten. Host the last two callers have mentioned borders, manuel and then add talked about the fact that open borders ed your quds force qubits concern, the communists, its a good thing. Anything there . Guest not particularly. Host craig in tulsa. Caller thank you. I appreciate cspan and i appreciate, command Mary Eberstadt for the work she is doing. Its outstanding. I just want to speak about, theres people calling in and they point to members and groups. Members and groups are not the whole group. Serving out the philosophy behind the group or the police. So you know that said, i look at the statement its either christianity or chaos. I think thats absolutely true and for the atheists all stuff i can say okay the principles of the bible were chaos to make it palatable to them. But even the most staunch atheist would have to admit the principles and the bible to create a structure for society that isre not chaos. And so like to take the bible talks about the Family Structure and iftr you hit it with psychology and sociology, put up against it and test it. You find out that the psychology and sociology used in the scriptures really does work. It makes children whoho respect authority and children who respect law about the next generation we need. So you know i think from a functional psychologist or from a pragmatist, it works. And we should use what works. I just wanted to state that and thank you for the work you are doing. Guest thank you very much. That brings up a good point, which is that i have a disagreement with new atheists about this. The new atheists presented a paradigm in which you can believe in god or not believe in god. I think the true paradigm is that everybody believes in something. G. Its how we are made. Its part of our nature. We haveto to get passionate abot something, which is why we need to ask the question that youre asking, which is what is true . Is it true that a religion that tells people to love one another actually has effects on people that makes them better members of society . I agree with you that the answer to that one is yes. Host we have in our life in our conversation with Mary Eberstadt. Er 2027488200 if you live in east and central time zones. 2027488201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. And if you cant get through on the phone lines, want to make a comment you can do it via text or social media. Text line, 2027488903. Please include your first name and your city if you would. And when it comes to social media just remember at booktv for our email address, booktv at cspan. Org. March 26, 2023, the wall street journal. You cant cancel me. I quit. What was his oped . Guest i was invited to give a speech at furman university. Y i i was excited about, never having been there. And i looked at the local museum which apparently has a great collection of andrew wyatt white paintings, and i was generally ginned up for w this. And then before i i got therei kind of typical thing happened in an exaggerated fashion, whicf is that some students decided that i was a fascist. I have a photo advertising my talk across which someone wrote fascist and misspelled it. Posters advertising my speech were taking down on campus and in the t local student newspapei was being called names that i really cant think there was any truth to, like haider. I was called dangerous. You see i look very dangerous, et cetera. So it turned out the speaker before me had a very bad experience with this kind of cancellation. He went to give a talk on of this treatment of people lined up with posters saying that he was a bad person and a hater and a phobia and all this. He had three armed guards who guarded him during his talk on dostoyevsky. Arestin select the talks other students couldnt come in and sit in the seats, et cetera. In other words, this is cancel culture on parade. And i thought about it and i thought maybe it was time to make a a statement in a differet direction. And not to have to play this stupid game. And so instead of going and getting my talk with armed guards ending subject to people calling me names that i dont deserve, i wrote an oped in the wall street journal saying that i was canceling s myself because i think speakers in this toxic, newly toxic environment, have the power not to play the game. Instead, i sent 25 of my books to thety president s office of e university so that students could get them, sent them for free, and wrote the piece and wall street journal and gave a class by zoom. So my point to the speakers out there, or to anybody who is worried about cancel culture, is that you can refrain refrain that situation. Host Mary Eberstadt, the counterculture situation that you face, is that different than it was even 20 years ago, as far as allowing a controversial speaker . I dont need to call you controversial, that somebody with a point of view. Guest its much different now. Its much more menacing because there is an irrationalism about it. Some people show up to students with her mouth duct tape shocked, for example, in some speakers up and subjected to poundage on the walls and threats of violence. What happens is, instead of reading one of my books and taking exception to it, what the people involved in this cancellation are doing is cherry picking anything. They will find a quote from a radio interview given 20 years ago and take it out of context and make you look bad. This kind of cherry picking is very destructive, because it distracts from what an author is trying to do. It distracts from an argument. Again, this is not something th not so we have to do and more people with less of this, thats my hope your book world murray middleburg. So we need to talk about rationalism lucy young among followers of the politics. As an intellectual disagreement and he plain english what happened bunch of ablebodied College Students post your man sent college professor, a woman to the hospital with an injury these things happen . I think the answer goes back to some of what i write about, disconnected from one another religion you are arriving gravitating and unraveling result is something we need to understand as usual about common pdq racist and etc. In these labels back the day and this relation relations to unreality concernedd about agree intellectual dialogue in this conversation that was the facilitator and. From happening on campus todayg is politics self regard. No secret and rising among the young bob published children and adolescents and has a whole chapter about what we see 20 years ago which was the rise and anxiety and panic and depression. They thought young in these that describe intensified, its often a frontpage news story whenever so why the thing is in trouble, theres no doubt social media plays a part the media is throwing gasoline on the fire. I think its about this lack of deception on go ahead with your question or comment. To questions, at one time in American History is top and happen in the late 1800 and second question is where this is all going and we are seeing of the family and law and order. We dont want and nice we need god in our country, resulting in total collapse so i could get your perspective on that. Thank you. I could take that last part, i do want to say there are reasons for being hopeful that i take the years ago the these things and it was just not talking about the press doing to see a number and all is in this new for children. And that episode will for example all london were thinking they went after the this is it for the baby good and the resulte was a religious awakening and social awakening and became one of the victorian euros and stopped people from hurting f themselves. That seems the most likely outcome of where we are whichtcs whyto we draw attention to it. Survey of english anglican tradition. The overwhelming majority said christian. It says god is correct. What happened is collapse of the family and other places and became inexplicable from the collapse of the church even though the anglican communion was trying to say we wont push so hard. Was that religious awakening . Not from the view of sociology but brings up. Theres a tendency to religion is inevitable decline. Certainly atheists talk about it that way people think about it that way by the local village but is that. Religion claims a there was more religiosity the idea that materialism drags out and religion is will supplied by london because was led from the top of the people were socioeconomically more likely to go to church and professing relief. In all the countries of the west including that are today europe people came back from a more he churches you can see offering in the movies and the ten macommandments will usually will will religious room is not the baby boom that accompanied so it tells whats going on and it will go inevitably and it is refuted by this example. Text message from nicole in. Fort lauderdale. Our overgeneralizing. I have two friends who are stayathome mothers, housewives and. I have a moms, the working mom would love to stay home but their families need two incomes to make ends meet. The cost of living is high. Yes. Its impossible to have a conversation about large subjects without overgeneralizing and im sureer everybody think of any given. Being made but to stay mom socially less acceptable option in the dominic conversation i think is eminently defensible because social pressure is on the side of living in two paid workplace and economic pressures. Of city you may be familiar with. Good morning. I think we need to understand that this woman is a science denier. Science deniers if they were to get their way would have i found the standard which would start by exposing jews and then muslims or the other way around and then they would start working on christianity catholics are always at the top of thehe list and before you knw it, while there encouraging you to read your bible at the dinner table, there will be men and maybe women in white cakes writing up and downof in the middle of the night. Weve seen that before and in short running up and down streetsnd last also hot that is what happens when science deniers, the big bang, even in my god. Thank you for calling. The big bank, was a tiny piece of fluff. Thank you for calling in. Science denier, men and brownshirts, men and kyiv. Is a good example of the pushback one can get bring up these issues and the fact that it is largely ad hominem but i want to make a comment about brownshirts the correction, the part of to demonstrate ideologies responsible for mass murder in the 20th century devoid of religious faith and nazis were standby questions, communists were anti christian and to try to connect the dots is not starkly plausible. Are you a science denier . When somebody has said that to you, what do you think it means . I think its a label that is not an argument. I feel the same about transplant for example. Something oftr the split in the world is that supposed to mean . Nobody explains, they just discredit people looking respectful. Glenn washington, good afternoon. Good morning on this end of the world. My ears perked up when she talked about labels and i have come to the conclusion that the word woke is being used by the right and from the left without knowing what they are really talking about so as a 60yearold man sounds like code for the most vile form of love for they are using it as a weapon nobody seems to do anything about it. For what they are really saying. I will just ask about your blog on the word woke. The United States largely founded as a protestant nation and all kinds of revivals including upstate new york with a hotbed of these things are and not one but two awakenings and the word woke show something about politics that has a religious impulse and waiver connected to revival protestantism that was dominant in the country. The author of several books you can see behind her but also will show it to you on the screen. The home of america came out in 2004. The hidden pull off data behavioral drugs and others in the institute. So today we talked about like using the annual the same year dangerous to believe. In 2000 all the pieces which are going to read part two you and its interesting you just. My book, master that i say it correctly . I dont speak russian but i think the. Defined in writing reading and jamesre masters of the genre, what is the master in margarita . It was written in russia by our survive. It is impossible to describe briefly but a fantastic novel about the intersection of proof and writing it also oppression and it is so visibly told the author could not publish it in his lifetime because it would mean death communism there is a famous line in the book, my favorite line from all of literature the author is sitting there in his manuscript thrown into the fire in his lifes work is in vain and another character is supernatural character declares manuscript dont burn and magically comes back to him. In other words, the label isnt for nothing because one, its hard get rid of it. All freedom seeking people so i thought that was a beautiful story and one of my favorite books. Was the best way your view to understand . To see it live and uncorrupted. To see it on stage is my favorite play reading shakespeare. Clearly reading. Here we go. Over the summer. Vote to us, i read an outstanding book by public intellectual called the apocalypse of the sovereign self, recovering Christian Ministry personhood. A gripping indepth analysis of how the collapse of christian apology is leading to social and psychological dissolution. In working through a stack of historical and other books about upstate new york one of the most fascinating largely unknown petrink dishes of the american extremity. All of this taking place against forbidding natural beauty. This is the place you have to understand to understand our country and pioneer history. I grew up villages scattered across the state in the next few years i hope to break new ground in telling Amazing Stories efforts. Who had dinner with me ten years ago and asked me what was on my mind and telling these stories and trying to get this it is one genre, not right in the market. Any genre you can manage, if you wanted to fiction, tell it in fiction or member. Because he said they have mostly known an individual will will i might upstate new york. Your program a while back and it wouldnt necessarily put you two together as friends. Teaching in his life is in a couple of other friends sort of grew up together over the last 35 years or tried to. You talked about this with letters the fact that fiction and i want to say sarcasm, thats the wrong word but satire. Here is a flow. Most of the new atheist guys have made it yours and i respect a lot. St taking it at face value and writing a serious book. Many people wrote things science and here is why it is wrong. I wanted to take different paths because i suspect when it comes to these questions of are you religious, not religious . Therere is more under this these issues believe yes in this she is trying to help them game and make it go in the course their own personal stories the story comes out and rejected the its made her project is so it was a great adventure 17 in this stage and the Catholic University of america. Its good to speak morning. Hes been in the business for years. One of the issues in my mind teaching people in jail cant make medication need to explain how to mitigate and it goes back a ways on the advertising the power of being connected. In this census of all this territory. We wont have anxiety because it tells the land adrenaline so avoid a truck hitting him. I apologize, can you bring this to a conclusion . Yes im there. Conflict of what youre talking about if communications make them thing is drinking. We have more and more people in the world, are we heading toward a huge breaking apart of territory on a massive . I think we got it. Anything you want to respond to this . Well, in the book is a chapter in which i invent a man who came of age in the 1950s and his grandson is about the different social lives between the millennials and zoom in what we see is what i call acts of human subtraction. Its not like his grandfathers because so many people have been subtracted out of his life by fatherlessness, abortion, shrinkage of his family and other things i talk about their so as an example to capture losing the work uses territory but losing connection. Greg from sacramento, are you familiar with Jordan Peterson . What you think of his ideas say i am well recognized those words but i have seen the kind that he brings in, then saw bring a major American City to a standstill and building medium so what i have read and seen of him, he is giving young talk about to be and where is work is, i am trying to describe why he has this artist, hes a wonderful speaker so its not about him. Im trying to describe the high side, where are these young men coming from . Text from jim in university place, washington. What senator proof do you have or know that god exists . Proof, not belief. If i have that, we wouldnt be having this conversation but i would direct you toward how the west lost god because that is the idea that there is deep connection between lived experience and religiosity and the more we live apart from the people, the less we understand why everybody before us as leaned toward god. People want connection with the cosmos, they want connection beyond themselves generally speaking, new atheist and other atheists decidell but this is te human story for the most part. In your view, has christianity from time to c tim, then coopted by politicians in a negative way . Yes. One of the things that might make people believe in the original sin is how correct the relationship we the church and state can be and how confounding it can be when we have teams with divine rights so no argument how the church has often screwedp up itself for has corrupt leaders were leaders with the motivations rather than supernatural ones. Going back the kings and queens with divine rights of rule it was always said that elizabeth the second truly believed she was chosen and a few kind of faded off of these families of divine right to rule. If you are talking about the royal family they are subject to the same trends it would be surprising to hear them claim divine rights. Mike in detroit, good afternoon. I was raised in world war ii generation and when i look at the Democrat Party constituencies, you got socialist and you will get stolen and we, the same types of people, religious values and believe in democratic spoke, they didnt want to ar there so it is hard that wishes above all else and i wonder if you see the parallels there. What i see and write about is the relationship between the family and welfare state. The welfare state has risen in response to the trends i am describing because it comes into broken homes and a political super daddy and homes without a daddy so we see the client of the family and rise of the welfare state perpetrated each other and that is not the way you are used to thinking about welfare but the bedrock underneath we talk about why we need these programs and enacting libertarian, im not libertarian but that is the deepest level. Has the stateco become our nw religion . Certainly will its not the state is its all about. To the pill 1960 and economics today in your the sexual revolution changed. I rely on the work of sociologists and W Bradford Wilcox at the university of virginia who has been great work establishing that if we have the same rate of marriage 1984, most households would be significantly better off. This is the reason we need to talk about family policy in america because it is directly related to economic troubles many people experience. The worst is expensive, single e mother household is difficult and not how hard it is economic problems multiple problems of subtraction, not having as many hands as we need to work of. Mary is going and wanted. Go ahead. Thank you for taking my call. I will start by saying harold berman, formation of western law was christian. My question is about the direction main relations take legal action to return these bills shes taking on think you think you the attack on Christian Charity are usually rather groups aligned with identity, politics particularly lgbtq, how we get back to a better place . Is why we have to shed light on these things because we can have this but its like any situation where there is a patient who got what the problem is that i am describe his problem points to is for the need for family policy. Its state level, federal level, anywhere we can devise incentives that would keep a couple in the same home during the hard work of raising children Financial Life easier. I know there politicians to talk about these options. I am not a politician myself i try not to go there but clearly there is a bowl for government to do overdue experimentation. I found in the writing this trilogy. Father, a, father with a capital s and future. What is that reference . One thing we have not talked about yet is another decline, the client of patriotism. This we see clearly among the young and its one of the most surprisingst because always regarded myself as a patriot and most people who workedwh in government get a sense of patriotism. So what does mean . One of the chapters in the new book, i suggest perhaps there is a relationship between three times. Decline in physician or belief in the supernatural. And decline of attachment country because many people today, its not just they cant find a church or dont want a church not just live in small families will, there is that connection to Community Robert putnam wrote about. This is increased over time so not being connected to communith is another way of being lonely for people and thats my i speculate maybe this attachment or nurture is like a muscle and the less it is exercised in one spear, the less in others because it is lucy simultaneous this attachment. Cornelius from louisiana, good afternoon. Good afternoon peter and mary. I want to wish everybody after heavy labor day and this is picture day on september 11. To celebrate all about. I am for patriotism. Peter, i want to talk to you first and then to marry. In 2008 abraham, he would be greatt if from President Biden o he would be great and he tried to prevent president kennedys assassination out in 2008. Go ahead. Okay, my question, i am 62 years old and remember we were in segregated schools, we had the negro ash National Anthem and they had the bear and legend and National Anthem which is had one. Il believe the democrats are lk at the completed everything. I will the military began aliens which i believe are fallen angels and stuff, that would be a good book to look into because they want in a i got and a. I. To my comments. God bless you. You have a blessed day. I dogy want to go back to the we have had cars and phones and everybody limits no, this will lead to the society seems to be exponentialie in with them. Absolutely and social sciences proven to how do we control it to me its the example of tobacco which was ubiquitous when i grew up, every adult i knew practically smoked and you could smoking hospitals as long asth you work near the oxygen tank. Unbelievable. What makes it unbelievable now . There was afo Reform Movement tt arose and people didnt want to listen to but over time the 60080 showing tobacco can cause harm, started to change their minds and this is why we can no longer smoke in restaurants today and why fewer and fewer people smoke because there was public consensus and im not that to cut smokers, its just an example of re norm in society with sufficient proofoff harm and that day is coming. The army can do will be well understood and strategies for keeping kids off. Cornelius artificial about this . Im still looking for regular intelligence. [laughter] go ahead. Your discussions you left ot one, the eastern orthodox church. The Eastern Church in the relationship between the individual, fallen, and only to serve that relationship and in that sense, it distinguishes from the catholic system which consists on a relationship with the church as the means. He had priest or other problems, the church seems to be falling apart while dealing with it. In the orthodox church, whatever the church says, its only function is to serve the relationship between the individual and god. I think you deemphasized that relationship and christianity which was originally said that a relationship between the individual god can never escape no matter how fallen, its at all times. What do you here . I hear the idea of diy religion, my own religion and its understandable people would think this but people who believe that dont understand our capacity for selfdelusion and i am devising my own religion and i like prey i do. I am not going to devise a vision saying gambling is a sin, i will put that off the table because its not in my interest to come up with a religion that stopped me from doing something i like. We could continue theth metaphor if i have a dinner party im not going to put take on the table. Its to say we have no tendency to do things in our immediate interests that ratify us think anybody designing his own religion is going to make demands on himself. There are Big Questions and we could spend our time, spiritual but not religious, its the same thing of organized religion, absolutely not. In montana, it looks like you might have the last word. I am sharing my search for regular intelligence with you. I dont think its going to be found in this program but i do have a question. The religious right evangelicals believe trump is the chosen one. His donald trump really the chosen one . Before we get her to answer that talk about that, what is your experience with religion next w. I was born and raised catholic and i am covering. Evangelicals, christian rights, donald trump, recovering catholic, anything you want to stress . The question was donald trump the chosen one . This has been given to me to know. what about evangelical support of the President Trump . I dont understand why evangelical rights in this way. There are a lot of people in it who likes what he stands for says hes dance for and during the four years of his administration and they have as much right to vote with they want as president has anybody else yet they are always the ones put in a petri just why they support donaldp trump ande are scrutiny across other groups. Do you consider yourselfacss evangelical . No. And what does it mean actually . Usually a protestant thing and has been in politics and desiring certain political outcomes like the end of roe v. Wade but its not where i am coming from. If somebody wants to read one of your books, which is one you would right . The sexual revolution and decline of religion family, how the west lost god but these no the books are addressed to the general and represented relative stability plenty but here on the air. Its been a great pleasure. Every saturday American History tv documents american stories and sundays tv rings the latest nonfiction books and authors. Funding for cspan2 comes from these Television Companies and more including media calm. We believe whether you the here or right here for in the middle of anywhere, we should up access to fast and reliable internet. Media, along with these Television Companies support cspan2 as service