Welcome back to firg line, dr. Cornel west and dr. Robert george. Thank you. Ha you. And we salute you for your show building on the great legacy of this historic firing line show. Well, i am honored, because you are both celebrated scholars and public intellectuals whoma come from reably different world views and profess different perspectives dr. West, you are a professed nonmarxist cialist. And, dr. George, you are a movement. The theoconservative im not sure id say that, but at least im not a marxist. like cornel in that respect. [ laughter ] and were both christians. Were both christians. Youre both christians. And you respect each other enough to disagree and to engaga erious and rigorous contest of ideas in a civil andy respectful you teach a course at Princeton University and you also have in common that youes were both on the original firing line with william f. Buckley jr. Mmhmm. Ita very great honor. Very great honor. Well, whats clear is, as you nod when you speak, youred nodding ce versa. Youre leaning in to one another. Theres a clear affection between e two of you. Hes so lovable. And im so glad you guys [ both laugh ] its true. In fact, actually, i think its deeper than civility and its even deeper than respect i think weve got a genuine love for one another. I revel in his humanity. And it seems to me ive heard you say the common denominator is love. There are just so spects and facets who we are as human beings that cannot be subsumed under politics. So when you love somebody, you loveheir qualities, their character, their laughter, their gestures, the things you have in common that dont always fall into politics. We can argue over aquinas versur kierkeor we can argue over his bluegrass versus my funk and ythm and blues. You see . Theres things that bring us together. Then we reach politics and we say, oh, my god. I think youre dead wrong, my brother. I think youre dead wrong, my brother. So the Human Connection, that rich, deepuman connection thats what is so very important. The other thing, margaret, that we were talking about was the importance of honesty and integrity and those sorts of virtues. , wenot only love brother cornel, i admire him and i admire him f those virtues for honesty and for integrity. And he setan example for me. Hes inspiring to me. We may disagree about potics, but i admire integrity, a person who ss what he means, means what he says, who does not succumb to peergroup pressure. Cornels been under pressure fr the progressive side, sometimes, to do things or say things that he actually doesnt agree with, and he refuses to yield. I try to do that on end, and i look to him as a model for that. And, so, the viewers know you both did that in 201 where you refused to support hillary clinton, even though there was enormous pressure fro the democratic side to support hillary clinton, and for you, as well, dr. George, toes support ent trump and to vote for him and to throw your weight behind him. So both of you have really walked that walk. Dr. George, you have said of dr. West. Can you give me an example of something he gets wrong when hes asking the right estion . This sort of thing. Asking about, say, an economic systemnot or not exclusively, does it work to elevate overall prosperity . But is it just . Does it honor the principles that we ought to honor, given that human beings have a profou, inherent, and equal dignity . Now, we reach different conclusions about that. Cornel leans in the direction of a more socialistic st of system. Im more in the direction of the freemarket sort of stem. But hes only gonna give twooc cheers for slism, because he sees the downse and the danger, as well. And im only gonna give two cheers im like irving kristol. Two cheers for capitalism,se c realize its a system that will ll you anything if its not constrained by mol principles that are, themselves, reflective of our understandinga we shoul of the dignity of the human person. Shouldnt be for sings that so i believe in the market, but just two cheers. Cornel believes in the socialist system, but just two cheers. Both of us acknowledge that theres got to be some publicgu tion of markets. Yeah. Theres got to be fair regulation of markets. Itsonna be a matter of degree. Its gonna be a matter of gradation. Its the predatory capitalism in which greed runs amok. Brother robbie iagainst greed, whether it comes in the form of corporate greed, poor peoples greed, working peoples greed, white greed, black gbrown greed. Isnt that right . Yeah. Like cornel, i want a system that works for the common good, that works for people, and espeally those who are at th lower end. I think the market system has lifted millions and millions of people out of poverty. Im very skepticalket system. Biggovernment programs. I want to empower the etinstitutions of civil so families and churches and voluntary associations. I want them to carry the bulk of the load when it comes to health, education, and welfare, and transmitting to each new neration the values and virtues that are necessary for people to lead successful lives and to be good, contributing citizens. But i know that a market thats unleashed without regulation, without moral constraints is going to do much more harm than good. So, have either of you moved the other closer to your position in any issue . I think theres bn some movement. Yeah, i think so. I think when weve taught f yek together, friedrich hayek, and his critique did it bring you closer to the road to serfdom . ] [ laugh well, i was against serfdom from the very beginning, ande ive becre intensely im glad you mentioned that, that 1944 classic of his, i think theres beement, but a lot of our movement has to do with, also, intellectual movement, that is to say, reading great texts. It could be A John Stuart mill. It could be a w. E. B. Du bois. It cou be a hayek. Itould be a leo strauss. Our conversations are oftentimes intellectual, and we wrestle but are you saying youve expanded your readin . Well, no, no. We had read the texts together, but its how we read them. Its how we read them, i think. Youve said, both of you, that the unexamined life is nstantly being unsettled. Aolutely. And that this ithe challenge in the couu teach to your students. Your challenge to them is to atunsettle their ideas so they examine their assumptions. Wherhas dr. West unsettled you . Ill tell you where. On issues of race. Mm. My inclination prior to our ep engagement on these racial issues was to suppose that the fundamental problem is that people are raceconscious. They think of themses white or black, when race is really something ephemeral,me ing that, strictly speaking, doesnt even exist. Its a kind of artifact of culture. Mmhmm. Mmhmm. Wouldnt it be better if we just were colorblind completely in all of our dealings, didnt think of ourselves as black ore wh brown or anything like that, and we just had a Colorblind Society . E d that sounded, to me, l problem. D way of solving the what cornel has driven home with me is, yes, theres a see in which we should relete racl categories to the ash heap ofnd history,yet, we have to deal with the facts of history, which include the emergence of cultures bas on race so that a program in africanamerican studies is, for example, studying a tradition, one that makes sense. Cornel sometimes refers to africanamericans as a people. He says, i come from a people that has suffered for 400 years, been treated unjustly, been hated, and, yet, has tthe world so much to love. I now understand in a way that i didnt, i think, previously, the sense in which it makes sense to refer to, lets say, africanamericans as a people. I mean, theres a policy prcription that encompasses many of the problems that youvt utlined, and thats affirmative action. And you have said that brother geor im sorry. [ both laugh ] that dr. West you have said that brother cornel. You have said that dr. West has really influenced the way you thought aboutfi ative action. Lets take a look. Cornel asked a set ofth question made me think a lot more deeply about that. Would our camp be not be worse off by virtue of t effective absence of people from the Africanamerican Community . And when you think about that question. Yeah. The answer is, of course, we would be worse off. So, how do you handle the policy prescription th . I mean, have you thought about what the next step is . Youve conceded that he rely affected the way you think about the issue. Have youhought about thepo cy prescription . I have. And my judgment of it is we certainly dont want to lower andards. So, weve got one set of standards for africanamerican or latino students and another set of standards for those who dont fall into thoseri categoes. We dont want to do that. I dont think we want to give preferences based on race. That sounds too much like the disease as cure. But it does mean that we need to make an effort to make sure a serious effort to make sure that minority students feel they are lcome at Princeton University, theres a place for them at Harvard University or ohio state or anywhere else. We need to be reacng out and looking for the talent in those communities that maybe, had history been different, would have been in those institutions, but, because history is as it is, are not in those institutions. Ms that so me to be the way to go. Dr. West, were you trying to change his opinion or just help him arrive closer to the truth as you see it . You know, my dear sister, i come from a tradition of lifting every voice. I dont want anybody to be an echo. I want people to find their own voice, just like a jazzwoman or bluesman. And my brothers got his own voice. Re i want him to find his voice, and hell land we lands. When i see my brother, i dont have to eliminate his nstructed whiteness. Hes a human being in a particular body, but hes madege in the ind likeness of god. He has something there that is worthy of a certain kind of treatment, no matter who he is. And so the history is there. White privilege is there andem white suy is there, all these things. The same is true with gender and so forth, right . But its that Human Connection thats crucial. And when it comes to affirmative action, the question becomes we want to make sure our students connect at a human level. Mmhmm. B we want to make sure its fair, the conditions under which they enter a college is fair and its just. And we know all these institutions of Higher Learning have traditions that were deeply racist and sexist and andjewish and antimuslim a whole host of other things. Rdey were anticatholic, in terms of thear. Oh, sure. And the yales and so forth. Princeton. And princeton, too. Absolutely let me ask you about another policy healthcare. Youve been on the record that healthcare is a human right. Absolutely. W is healthcare a human right . Because i think that human beings are so precious and priceless that they ought to have access to the highest short move from mamas womb to tomb. Many other nations already have been able to institutionalize. The United States is vr behind in this regard. Thats a preference in termsf ow the policy should be applied to every individual, but explain to me the right, the humanright part. Do you belie that healthcare is a fundamental human right in the way that freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and freedom to practice your own religion that are enshrined in the First Amendment is healthcare a fundamental right in that way . I hink it is. I think healthcare is fundamentally a human right. Just being born warrants a certain kind of treatment that society can provide, especially for the children, espeally for the vulnerable, especially for the elderly. But i think it holds acrs the board. Dr. George, i know youve been on the record saying you ardont believe that healtis a fundamental human right. Well, not if by fundamentali humat, we mean an obligation that the government provide it, no. S therlooser sense in which im perfectly happy to speak in the language of rights when it comes to healthcare. Ths means i think human bei have profound, inherent, and equal dignity. Ted we should work for a s that may have some public elements but may also have private elements that will make healthcare affordable to as many people as possible. I think there shou be a safety net, if necessary, provided by but on the whole, d much rather rely on the market. I dont like government running things unless its absolutely neceary. No one else can run i dont want a private military. I want the government running that. But what can be done by private initiative, private action, voluntary work i think should be. And i believe in the magic of the good thing about markets, properly regulated, is they pust quup and they push price down. So im not, in principle, arguing for a strictlyse lafaire libertarian system no government safe, but ivement, am arguing in favor of a system that will, to the extent possible, take advantage ofit private tive, rely on private initiative, precisely because i think the best way to t healthcare to as many people as possible is to drive quality up and prices down. And you see now the overlap here, because at the moral level, were very similar. What youre both saying is theres an obligatioof Civil Society to provide somehow, that society ought to provideo the best of its ability, because, morally and spiritually, human beings haveec something us that needs to be attended to that results in how they behave. But then, at the level of policy, then you say, oh, well, lets see ich way is the best way of going about doing this kind of thing. T and its tnd of discussion that we need more of in the country so that re not at each others throats but, rather, at the subject matter, t tryideal with the suffering and social misery thats out there. When itomes to positive goods, like healthcare, like education, there are different ways oproviding, different mixes of private and public, and reasonable people of goodwill can disagree about what is best. Well, a subject that you do free speech on College Campuses. Has it become even more difficult in rent years to speak freely on College Campuses . Oh, absolutely. Oh, oh, yes. El absol no question that it has. Cornel kindly praised me for my witnd work on behalf of free speech. Bui want to say its easy for me now, as a conservative, because right now, the conservative side, bei so often the victims of repression of speech, is in a high freespeech mode. Conservatives werent always so jealous and protective of free speech. When the communists, being repressed. Chists were today, the difficulty and this is why cornel deserves more n i do. T today, the difficulty is on th progressive side. There are lots of progressives who aren so excited about free speech, who want to restrict it, who think there are good reasons to restrict wh they call hate speech and so forth. And cornel has stood up in the face of that and said,. Free speech is for everybody, and its important and its got to be honored on our University Campuses andr society more broadly. Dr. West, why that shift, that progressives seem to ben a place where theyre shutting down free speech more now than fore . Thats a good question. Its hard to say. I think its partly generational. There is, in fact, also a certain kind of orthodoxy that sets into any group. And thats why socratic energy is very important, no matter what the context is. You have to have anac owledgement that not only you could be wrong, but you can learn something fromomeone who you have deep disagreements with so tt any kind of orthodoxy an adolescent or anor underdevelopedjust doesnt want to listen or hear from anyone they disagree with. In now, keeind, you got a lot of progressive young folk who are very socratic, so i dont want to engage inra gezation. But i think that, in part, it has to do with the generationala issu the second has to do with the increasing orthodoxy. I want to emphasize, margaret, that when cornel and i defend free speech, both on campus and in society more broadly, were not defending it as a mere abstract right, just a right at falls down from heaven, that exists because it exists. No. Were defending it because its essential to truthseeking and to running a republican democrac you cannot be a truthseer if youre in groupthink. You cannot be a truth if youre unwilling to be challenged. Because of human fallibility, we are all wrong about some things. There is nobody whose head is filled with nothg but true beliefs. All of us have some false beliefs in there. And if were gonna move from falsehood to truth, with respect to any subject, were gonna need somebody poking and prodding and challenging and engas, and we need to be willing to listen. And we certainly cant shut them wn. The same for running a republican democracy, constituonal democracy like ours, because were running a great experiment in democraticcr order and deic liberty and selfgovernment, and you just cannot do that if someeople get to suppress the speech of other people. Yeah, i think were living not just in a highly polarized moment in this society, but its a gangsterized moment inur society. What do you mean by that . Gangster what i mean is the eclipse of integrity, honesty, decency. A hypocrite hypocsy is the tribute that vice plays the virtue. So when youre a hypocrite, at ast you still have standards. Youre just falling short. A gangster has no standards at all. They do anything they want. Its thrasymachus in platos republic. Its the grand inquisitor in dostoevskys the brothers ramazov. No standards, i do what i want to do, impunity, lack ofty accountabi and that is the most dangerous thing no democracy c survive. Sounds like yre describing president trump. Well, i mean, hes one example, but hes not the only gangster around. All of us have some gangster inside of us. So, gangsterism is not just ari twing thing. It cuts across our human conditio progressives have enormous cultural power. Progressives dominate in academia, in journalism, in the professions. Weve got a problem across thero board, and theessives cant point fingers at the conservatives, and the conservatives cant point p fingers gressives when it comes to this. Everybodys got to stop and start showing some respect respect for each other as human beings, and respect for each othes rights to disagree. Okay. So, i think i mean, as regular viewers take heart and inspiration from the model that you demonstrate, how do they also applit to their own lives, to their own families, d thanksgiving dinner tables right . Ere, know, they have a deep love and shareu historoften fundamentally disagree, and that can get in the way of the love that youall have discussed that ultimately needs to triumph in order for us to be able to really move forward in this periment of Representative Democracy . Let me tell you, margaret, osat i think the first and necessary thing is and it begins with each of us and that is recognizing our own fallibility. Urwe are frail, fallen cre. Humility . Yeah, intellectual humility, recognizing that we could be wrong about things and someone we regard as goofy or misguide or bigoted might actually be right about those things. Its easy to acknowledge that wg might be wbout things that dont matter that much to us. The hard thing but its necessary is to undstand the complexity and difficulty of Great Questions and to understand that i could wrong about deep, important things. I could be wrong about values ih ish. I could be wrong about identityforming beliefs for myself. But the only way im gonna figure out whether im right or wrong is to lien to somebody who has a different point of ew and challenge. Im not gonna learn anything from somebody im shouting at. Im ju not. Theres not gonna be any learning in that conversation. I want to learn from cornel. He has things to teach i have things to learn. Even when hes wrong about some things, i want to know what his reasons are, because theyre gonna deepen and enrich my derstanding, even if hes not actually correct. So if were shouting, if were not listening toach other, theres not gonna be any learning. Do you think people are les likely to lien on the issues and the beliefs they hold most deeply . Of courrs. Of ctheyre gonna be less likely to. And we do wrap our convictions, wr our emotis, more or less, tightly around our convictions. Thats just the human condition. And so we then perceive challenges not as intellectual or moral challenges, but as assaults on us persolly, because now our very identities are caught uin what weli e. Of course we want to be improvisational. Being improvisational doesntou meanive in. It just means youre starting from a certain standing point and then youre seeing whether theres wiser, more persuasive arguments put forward for you to move in a place where you stand on something stronger. Thats all. Well, id like to sort of wrap this up by taking you on a trip dn memory lane, dr. West, and ask you to reflect on your former self from 1993. Lets take a look. Really . Well, no, i think we recognize at princeton that its always been difficult make the life of the mind attractive in american culture. Were simply trying to acknowledge the fact that there is this very rich tradition in which the attempt to delight and instruct and inspire and inform ought to be at least made available. We recognize it will appeaonly to a small number of students, but to ensure the quality of those students who make that kind of choice. Ot youteach students harvard, at princeton, at princeton together. Ma ho students are you finding, these days, are interested in the life of the mind . Got a good number. Yeah. Weve got a good number its a good slice. But we have to inspire more. Yeah. Absolutely. See, theres a lot that youre competing with when youre trying to preach the gospel of the examined life, the life of the mind. Thats right. Youre competing with status, power, money, prestige. Absolutel those are just means. They are secondary things. Theyre good because of the good thingsou can do with them. But they are not what really matters. Ite things that really matter are things like family, friendship, love, compassion, reaching out to other people, exploring the great mysteries of life and of the universe, what, summarily, we callheife of the mind, whh we might also, at the same time, callhe life of the heart. Theyre what reallmatter. Buthere are competing values, and i think are the rit valuesl is a cllenge, cause youve got a lot working against you. Youve got a whole culture working against u. But, i mean, i think the point i was trying to make 27ears ago there its amazing to see me so young that love of truth, goodness, critical minority, because you a had to pay a heavy cost. And so its no accident that, often, its the great artists who have been the va of the species, willing to pay that heavy cost. It could be a coltrane, a methoven. It could be a torison or virginia woolf. Thats what it is. Thats how were constituted as human beings. Mmhmm. Wed rather take the easy way out status, moneywealth, and so forth. And, yet, the real spiritual and moral wealth that really does provide a deep joy, not just a superficial pleasure, is something that we provide as a door opening for young folk who want to enter this love of truth, beauty, goodness, and then, as christians, even love god, you see . But thats always the critical minority, but thats alright. N our classes, cornel wi often tell our students that, you may not understand it, you might not even believe it, but let me tell you the real reason that you have co to princeton or harvard or whatever university it is. The real reason you have come is to learn how to die, because if you dont learn how to die, youre not gonna be able to know how to liv we learn how to die in order to learn how to live. And its only in theerspective against the horizon of our own death that we can really get our values straight. Absolutely. I mean, iant end it any better. Its been one heck of a bromance. [ both laugh ] thank you for modeling how to do this. Thank you. And thank you for coming toin fline. Thank you, margaret. Its a great pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thankou so much. Firing line withma rgaret hoover is made possible in part by. And by. Corporate funding is provided by. Youre watching pbs. [dramatic music] hello everyone and welcome to amanpour co. Heres whats coming up. Im running as a proud democrat, but i will govern as an american president. [christiane] bidens starkly different message of unity na for on divided under trump. I ask evan osnos about his new biden biography and whether its third time lucky for this democratic candidate, and we areeralking about a veious offline threat in terms of the number of women who have been killed by these men. [christiane] not just everyday sexism, but radicalized misogy. I talk to activist and writer, laura bates, were at the precipice of one of the mostn important elections of our time. No one knows how this race is gonna go. [christiane] our Walter Isaacson speaks to the only femalethis network news chief,