A colossal wreck a road trip through political scandal, corruption and American Culture and you will hear about alexanders fondness for road trips, his enduring quest not really to get through political scandal and corruption but to reveal it and his real love affair with American Culture which comes through strongly in the pages of this book. A little background just so you know, the book is coming at out now. You just heard he died a year ago. He was working on this book pretty much until the day that he died and it was pieced together partly thanks to the process that he and jeffrey developed at counterpunch for every year the the end of year y would publish to greatest hits column of their pieces of the preceding 12 months and this enabled alexander to keep a good track on his favorite parts of his own as they say in england. And the book was then put together with extraordinary help from daisy, from jeffrey and from andrew in between feeding his animals which were brought into the crisis that they talking to perceive his cockatoo on his shoulder and anybody else in the community where he lived who might need his help or assistance or advice on repairing their vintage vehicle. Alexander pulled together a colossal a colossal wreck as well as a wonderful collection of articles about words that should be forever banished. You can find all the information at counterpunch. Org. I will just say that this book is pretty much as he wanted it. Daisy can attest. Im incredibly glad its out here. It reminds us that alexander while he hated cliches he didnt very much live up to the one about comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. You will hear a lot about afflicting the comfortable but i just want to share a little bit of discomfort for the afflict did. He had a critically reliable ability to stand up for the underdog and defend those who are powerless in our media culture and our society. And to sum up the imbalance of power. Workers for example. Out of every 28, 1996 he wrote the newspapers for free trade surely had something to do with the fact that although there has been fierce attrition in the journalism profession at least the loss of jobs here at least the lost jobs here arent reappearing south of the border at a fraction of the cost. The day that column writing is subcontracted to High School Students in guatemala i expect to see a turnaround on the trade issue among the opinion forming classes. He stood up for young people. May 22 of the same year the hysteria about teen violence is more than matched by the alarms and the pubescent running film with children having children and children getting one another aids. Bill and hillary sell them stop sermonizing on this. Adults listen to the boastful lies of teenaged boys and then rush to judgment. In 1970, 20 of boys and 4 of girls and Junior High School reported to have had sects. In 1992 that figured risen to 27 in 20 of girls and if rising legions of pubescents were sexually active how come the pregnancy rate among 10 to 14 euros has been similarly skyrocketed . In 1976, 3. 2 abortions and miscarriages and Junior High School girls in 19983. 3. Amid the supposed junior high sexual revolution, 98 of girls arrived at age 15 without ever having been pregnant. Junior High School Students must be americas most skilled deployers. Seventhgrader should be enlisted to hold seminars for u. S. Grownups and sport the industrial worlds highest rates of unplanned pregnancy. Finally standing up for animals in a charming piece about the Democratic Convention and how conventions in general like to to republican and democratic like to set up in tourist attraction towns. Talked about the Republican Convention in san diego and somehow the story of the convention merged with the story of sea world which is part of the landscape there. World owned by the anheuserbusch corp. And hosted 4 million visitors a year the same as the zoo was the famous venue for convention events. Nursed by the purity and lemaire with dolphins and orca recruited with behavioral techniques to exhibit the fundamental harmony of creation under corporate auspices. World is nonunion with minimumwage levels for the attendance. At least this newest teamster organized though there should be more Interspecies Union work. Why leave it all to the humans . In the polar bear expedition a big new pool with an enhanced underwater availability. Three of the bears had salmonella poisoning and were confined to what the guide rightly termed their bedrooms. This meant compulsory overtime for 18 monthold chinook who was putting in 13 hour days for it i thought chinook looked afraid and angry when i saw him but the guide insisted the cub was doing a quote real good job in exhibiting polar bears to the audience. Chinook to do the same way the elephant had done when it was discovered she was being savagely eaten for disciplinary infractions. Dont snarl, organized. Every now and again orangutans organize the need to fodder. When the apes carefully builtup reserves of rocks and costs 570,000 worth of damage to the one and a half inch glass. Alexander is going to be reported by Andrew Colvin who is not only alexanders brother but washington editor of harpers magazine and the author of rumsfeld his rise following catastrophic and a contributor to many besides. Daisy coburn wrote followup and we will take a few questions but if you really want to get close to any of us or ask any personal family questions you have to have purchased the book in hand. [applause] in master salesman. I think alexander would be very happy right now not just as the happy crowd who came here to review his career and maybe even buy his book. Which is grounds for excitement but also at this glorious past two weeks when the war party has been utterly con founded. The punditry and massed ranks marching in lockstep leading us into serious provac by the derision from the people. I couldnt put it as well as he could but i could certainly hear his tones of exultation and his revolutionary events in the last couple of weeks plus the idiot john kerry and perhaps there would have been a commentary of the prose style of the pond and Vladimir Putin really serving as an example to us all. Alexander those of you who dont know him already well come to know him a lot better when you read the book anywhere where lies what a tremendous influence on excel and alexander our father was who was a radical journalist. It i can read about what alexander said about claude particularly talking about his writing style, gun a first for alexander too. He wrote with a beautiful easy style. His prose could be ironic and also savage. He was learned that never overbearing cultivated that never patronizing. He respected and enjoyed people at all social levels. He loves dogs. Under the example who could resist the lure of journalism. None of his sons did to the initial gloom of our mother patricia who knew firsthand it didnt ring home regular slabs of bacon. His body wore out when he was 77 of his mind stayed sharp until his last. The day before he died he dictated a column for the irish times for patricia. He never lost faith in humanity know where instincts never fail to see the humor in life. I think for alexander those words apply just as well to him including the terminal, at the dictation of a column the very last column in this case to alexanders daughter daisy within days almost hours of his life. Alexander i would say although he wrote pungently about politics and about everything the human condition he had a very welldeveloped sense of theater which he applied and its why his political writing was so entertaining because he considered politics is a form of theater among other things. So in reflecting the disappointments of the Obama Presidency that may strike some of us i thought i would read something from november 24, 2009 his thoughts about obama. One aspect of obama. No one told us it would be boring but it is. The Obama Presidency. Having an adulterer and a at 1600 pennsylvania avenue for eight years of peace plus dick cheney down the corridor spoiled us. Outside of dashwood george fight his way to the end of the sentence in his daily battles battles with a englishlanguage . These days tranquility reigns or seems to in the obama private quarters. Senior white house staffers remained loyal and tightlipped. Small wonder jay lenos nightly show is funny. Its nothing to make jokes about a lease until sarah palin went on her book tour. Their expectations trickling through the hourglass. Whats left . Enforcing private coverage instead of cringing the medicare plan for low income seniors. The pollsters tell us is nothing unusual for a new president in the stage of the game. Whats to stop them from sliding down more . As you know obama came back but nothing much improved really. Life didnt get any more entertaining and michelle never threw a lamp so far as we know at obama and obama does construct a sentence and slice slice nicely. Alexander would have been disappointed at that but he would than i can imagine the exultation recall i would have gotten in recent weeks from him which thankfully since i live three hours update west coast a live of the geese said he would have had no qualms about waking me up in the morning. Given the recent turn of events in syria he would have been pleased. Few spectacles have been more surreal than that of senior u. S. Officials starting with the president the secretary of state in the u. S. Ambassador to the u. N. Aside in his beleaguered government on the need to accommodate rebel forces whose arabian gulf sponsors are intent on slaughtering of all a weak minority are or driving them into the sea. The grimly hilarious moment last friday but just by a message from Ayman Al Zawahiri the head of al qaeda presumably the number one target on president president obamas hit list similarly praising the lines of syria for rising against the assad regime. Al qaeda and the white house in singh. So in some ways he would recognize the world he left a year ago but he would be said. I know he would be said to be missing it all this endless theater and particularly america. My introduction to the book some fool in england some blairite once attacked alexander is antiamerican because he was being properly derisive about the excesses of the clinton era. The political excesses, not the sexual of this excesses. Alexander loved the country and he knew it better than 99 of americans. He traveled endlessly back and forth. In fact he traveled so much and wore out so many cars one of the more touching memorials or letters of condolence with regard that arrived after his death was one from his Insurance Agent signed by people saying they really enjoy dealing with him and it was going to be a sad loss. That was one of the many groups he wouldnt think of who mourned my brother as i do every day. Thank you. [applause] hello. Alex coburn is more than half the reason i got into the prestigious highpaying field of radical punditry. So i have a great deal of gratitude to him for all these many decades of pursuing this strange career. Fresh out of college in 1975 and had a job in abrupt rich firm on wall street that eventually went bust in one of my fellow drones working there said you should check out this guy Alexander Cockburn at the Village Voice. I said okay and i did and i was immediately hooked. It was the first place they learned Reading Press columns that the New York Times did not always tell the truth and i had an understanding a vague understanding of politics but alex, reading his columns helps to fill in the details. Then i went off to the university of virginia after the Brokerage Firm went under in the Village Voice with me into the hinterlands of charlottesville. It was quite a marvelous thing for the boys in the late 70s and early 80s but alex from my point of view was the star of it. I love the style of the press club columns of the rude and loose journalistic direst textile and theyre some of that field in a colossal wreck with observations about this and that, books, food, lines on the tv meandering from one witty observation to another. Then i followed him of course when he went to the nation but i think the style of the column changed somewhat. One tends to straighten ones posture and sober up somewhat and alex flawed against those tendencies and inspirations that all of us who write for the nation but is sometimes an uphill battle. The midto late 80s not only alex was doing great work there but also his sometime friend and collaborator and the cop kind doing great stuff there signed and unsigned. The village missed subscription readers today. Anyway it was reading alex in the voice of the nation that inspired me to think about writing about economics and finance in the foot akel economy that i thought at that time the left writing on that was either dole or out of date or not in tune with the headlines. I thought maybe i could do Something Like this. One day reading the newsletter which was an eight page newsletter edited by dave marsh i thought i have to do one of these myself. I started doing my own newspaper and left the business observer. It actually sort of took off by standards of the radical journalism trade. I launch myself onto a career as a pundit under dismal science. I cant say i knew alex will personally but we would talk from time to time on the phone. His last two page column in the magazine before they cut it back to one page and later cut it back to once a month about twothirds of that last two page column came from a phone conversation we were having in a master class in writing. I would Say Something and he would type it in his own language. It was just amazing to hear what i was saying translated transformed into something radiant. I felt like i was sitting at the feet of a master watching him work. It was really a marvelous experience. We did have our differences and there were few years where we did not speak much. There was a moment in the office where i think the word sects passed through my lips. My memory of that is a little murky. Then i got annoyed about some of the stuff about Climate Change and then we had some disagreements about the militias i went part of the way with him on that but not all the way. I decided to renounce it in several years ago we made up and started talking again. I did an interview with him a year before he died for a radio show. We did it via skype and the video image on the screen was of him with his cockatoo percy sitting on his shoulder. Ipers m. Percy was named by the dash on a colossal wreck. It was right after jack shafer had been fired so we talked about presses. Since alex was the creator of the modern school in this country we would talk some about that. Everybody now is a media critic and it had gotten a little old. It was nice to see people move on from that. We certainly had political differences but what a marvelous writer and thinker he was until the very last minute. I want to reach us a Little Something he wrote in november of 2011 in the nation. I remember when this came out and had arrived in the mailbox. I was so excited with these two paragraphs that i read them about five times. Here it goes. It was in the midst of the occupy movement. I have to admit the start of november after the daily reports of our National Battle food austin philadelphia Atlanta National portland my eyes flicker back to greece in and my heart beats faster. Surely we can see the prerevolutionary situation. It must be the dreaded leninists in me after all these years of therapy surfed with democratic gentility. I clamor to the top Shelf Holding down florida mayors thesis and did then. And confiscate the biggest states to one giant national bank. The blood flows back into my cheeks and my eyes sparkle. Hearing my daughters steps outside library i shuffled back into place coddled him the letter and pluck a copy of e. F. Schumacher though im not at all sure of the weaning lists or twitter menus. The leninists in him is something that still appeals to me. In that last interview i did in the summer of 2011 with percy perched on his shoulder. Alex identified a problem that people dont spend their youth in marxist parties anymore reading the classics and because of that understanding you cant find is lost. But we do have this capacious new volume saver and also to quote aligned from land and that alex like to quote we can be as radical as reality itself. That kind of thinking might not get you on msnbc but who wants the approval of the semi official anyway. [applause] i had a feeling we would both pick the lenon bit. Hello. My name is Connor Kilpatrick and im an editor at jackup and magazine that i helped edit along with my comrades peter phrase in the audience make an erikson and oscar who is looking around here somewhere i believe. Im completelcompletel y honored to be invited to speak here but seeing as how everyone else here is either a relative or a personal friend i would like to talk about what it meant to someone who never wrote or corresponded to him someone as a dreaded millennial arrived on the socialist left during the bush obama years thanks in large part to the brilliant polemics of Alexander Cockburn. Im guessing everyone here knows alex is great at about his hate being pure. Is that correct . If you dont know the story gets from his editor jim goode who tested alexanders morale committed to the good fight by asking him if hate was truly peer . He put his story to the interns at the nation. Miliband replied with shock that now he didnt hate anyone in this alex put it its all you really need to know. It really is. So yes alex is hatred was most certainly pure but somehow for me it doesnt get out what made his writing so wonderful because it was a joyful hate and an inspiring hate. For all the sharp tongue and sharper pen we are after all talking about a man who once confessed to weeping on airplane as a watch 1993 homered sound incredible journey about to talking dogs and a sassy cat trying to make their way back home and i believe he was sitting next to a woman in ad sales who was a little bit freaked out by that. A lot of my discovery of alexs work came as a millenniamillennia l. It wasnt just his writing. It was also through youtube watching video clips of alex on cspan from the 1980s or as i get to later in antiwar rally in eureka california. One time a mid1980s cspan appearance of alex is the callers were hostile accusing him of being a communist of sorts but alex kept up his spirits smiling all the way through without being any kind of snottiness or anything. One critique really angry young man i recalled shout it dont smile at me and alex replied he could smile all they wanted to and then he let him have a tight grin with those marvelous cockburn family cheap loans aimed right at the camera. It really left an impression on me. The man could really just as easily duped delivered a fiery sermon not only to dozens on the shows such as cspan but more obscure bits like alec speaking at an antiwar rally in eureka california site of the humble county part house. Its on youtube. Alex is standing next to a guillotine just to his right and he starts off with a few facts about the guillotine. It was invented by liberal. He then goes on to deliberate defense of the revolution and the guillotinguillotin e itself in a quote with every corporate chieftain United States has he told his employees to break the law as he asked his lawyers to get them off the hook as he cheated people with his products and he knew there was one possibility that the blade would go up in the blade would come down hed have a better society. I remember one of my favorites peels was from the documentary behind the wheel. In the first clip at the peak of the bush of menstruations powered alex said sure everything is gone to hell and theres no hope but bread and coffee in the United States are infinitely better than it was when he first came here. The staples of life and he wasnt joking. There was change we could believe in. One third of lennons peace in the oped. Then he went on you do what you can. We are radicals inside the roman empire and see theres a future for leftism in the roman empire. Actually people would say these people were completely insane in the third century because there arent radical plans out of them but were they wrong to say release of slaves and build a Communal Society . That struck me as the cockburn version of there is hope but not for us which is personally struck me as inspiring. The its just the twin of an im sorry to sound like a total hippie is love of freaks and weirdos and losers in the forgotten. This remarkable about alex is he stayed radical even has the last several decades watching the liberal left reform and something beyond stupidity. I dont know how he did it. As i was telling friends i can imagine what it must feel like to come to the u. S. As a committed left radical son of cop turned and watched the whole sorry affair with clinton and obama play out for decades but think that he was here because in the words of. [crying] carthy carried the fire and when he passed it off i couldnt care less if he had taken a few detours from the proper socialist path as i was half the joy of reading his work. Its a fairly predictable socialist in my generation i am sure you can guess where he differed with alex. When i thought he was training his on the wrong side not only because it was always tempered with optimism and joy. I submit spent the first 25 years of my life being trapped in text. I grew up around fundamentalists and lots of republicans lots of foot wall and churches pointing guns and of course lots of deer and dove hunting expeditions with my fathers drunken cajun buddies. At the age of 11 a defiant printed shirt i accepted an award from the texas young riflemans association for a 12. Buckshot. I hated it all replied most leftleaning kids growing up in places i grew up as i got out of there as quick as i could. Alex despite a healthy love for folks like marx engels and the dreaded lenon never became a snob. He never turned his nose up like i did at the red states. Whenever i would read and talk about encounters in the exconfederate hinterland i would find myself saying dont you get a . These people are racist quasitheoretic. When liberals call it in an authentic astroturf operation alex was quick to call them on their smugness. Quoting a web site world socialist web site alex replied to you think the socialist left can boast 647 groups for any single group consisting of more than a handful of people . And he was right. Alex was right to show no mercy to his defenders. He was right to rebuke them for forward basing what it called fake politics and right to call off the left for having fled the battle together straining so much enthusiasm the right way. When a new radical left began to slowly emerge he was also correct particularly about occupy wall street which he opposed with the right balance of enthusiasm and criticism and while others were sounding the trumpet for the return of the big bold movements of the red sea was far more cautious and he was right to be. I was going to read the bit about taking lenon off the shelf which doug read so beautifully and i thought that went to the core of him and when i first read that the disagreements i had just vanished immediately. Alex knew a smart organized he knew that pass on the back wouldnt do them any good. He decried the collapse of the marxian leftwich in his words used to provide a Training Ground for young people who learned the rudiments of organizational discipline find suitable mates and producing red diaper upon red diaper. Tomorrows radicals marxist not an accolade it by sectarian debate in which by the premier and civic groups of capital open to any infection. In this sense alex played what i think this is most available role for the left and he might perhaps hated this term of being in ardent antimilitarist but he was like our he hurled abuses but beautifully stated and almost always hilarious abuse for every possible direction. Maybe if i buy organic, is flat. If only the democrats democrats, slot. The kennedys were the last, slab. Why was he doing at . Because he was mean . No, because he wanted us to survive and he wanted us to wind obviously we needed it. [applause] hi everyone. Thank you so much for coming out to celebrate the launch of this fantastic book. Which really is a tribute and just filled with such extraordinary and unusual stories. You now my fathers voice is really a live on every page of this book and i found it almost impossible to choose and extract because i would flip through and say this one, no this one. I really hope you find yourself with a copy and enjoy it. Im just going to read the first entry which is actually an extract from the letter he wrote to me in 1995. His letters his everyday speech his writing all came from the same place and im lucky enough to have a collection of incredible letters from him in press notes that he wrote when i was a child. This one he wrote in 95. Last year at a mexican muralist with nothing to do so i got him do an 18foot by eightfoot ceiling mural on the roof of my garage ceiling. I said it should more or less address the theme of the meaning of the universe. So there were horses on the vault of heaven. He had a peasant and lowered a skull looking really bummed out. And some nice birds and an owl with wings extended. After year of looking at this i bumped into daniel the painter back from mexico and said that i was anglo irish so i wanted everything a bit more bushytailed. The peasants not crucified but waiting with a machete no school and excited as though they were off for a healthy picnic. He digested this with relatively good grace and his american wife who i have strong at agreement. Just have the hands reaching out and what about the school the spirit of the eternal feminine. Daniel immediately wanted wanted of mine woman crouching and suffering so i said no and dug up a painting by dante. They said try this one for the pose. He needed to face so i think he would end up on the Ceiling Holding a humboldt lilly but she was nearly the size of latvia was. The lilly would be curved in the feminism ordinary so we will have to see. I hope you survive the final cut as they say in hollywood. I did survive the final cut and there is my face looking very strange that corncobs and machetes and stuff like that. That maybe gives a sense of what he was up to apart from creating an extraordinary paradise filled with art that he commissioned from a local artist so he was up to a lot of other stuff. Im going to read a short extract. When i was a teenager my father used to sit just a dictionary or if i was feeling a bit down. His own father had recommended to dig into marks darkness descended. The point made was a reminder not to collapse to find meaning contra chaos was spared punches get to the root of things in and per mice blow your trumpet from their. That is what he did and i think that is what we are all what im hearing and what everyone is saying a sense of his voice which was like a trumpet. Its just so exciting to have this book out and i have nothing to say except please buy it and please enjoyed it and thank you so much for coming. [applause] i think we have time for a quick q a and two questions are so so let me know if you have a question and i will hand the mic over to you. If you guys have any concluding remarks. Do you agree with everything that he wrote . He would have been very disappointed. [laughter] i did not agree with everything he wrote specifically about Climate Change and i think he was more sympathetic to the militias then he should have been but he was wonderfully acerbic, especially you know i think theres a tendency among people to say things like do you think Hillary Benton would be better than obama and that would have gotten a large dose of hydrochlohydrochlo ric from alexs plan. See this is entirely true. You probably have seen a line or two in his column this week pointing out that the Antarctic Ice has reached his thickest and id thought he might be sporting a smug smile. But yes i would never say he met a man he never liked but there was no feature of American Life that he didnt embrace and explore and take delight in. I think including at his funeral one of the more moving speeches came from a gentleman called dave alla who lives just outside of spartanburg South Carolina who alexander but his cars from. Daisy is now the proprietor of a very long line of very aged vehicles down the side of the road outside his house all of which purchased from dave whose day job is to be an evangelical preacher who has gone around the world and to lassar to bed which is something i cant say i would do. Dave and alexander had a very close bond and many long conversations every week about chrysler and what was going on in the evangelical community. I think if you explored the american beaches of life the way that alexander did. Alexander he always looked at the impact of the policy from the bottom up hed always thought he who would be on the receiving end of the hatchet of regulation of war of conflict. That was i think what brought the passion to his work and sometimes the difference of opinion between those in the pundit world even though the the more journalistic pundit world lived in the land of the comfortable and have a good sense of how some of the policies he talked about would play out in the land. One of the things you get from this book that maybe we have a shared enough is a picture of how alexander actually lived which i was lucky enough to see on occasion in his last year when i went up to spend time with him in patrolling which is in Northern California named after the first offshore drilling that happened off the coast there in the pacific. His community that daisy now know so well was a community that was in many ways outside of u. S. Society. A lot of Community Building and a lot of sharing and a lot of exchange a lot of people figuring out how to get along with each other because they were living by the same river 45 minutes from many local town. Through twisting turning redwoods. I am constantly struck by what happened soon after he died at a Christmas Party actually. We all gave daisy was there in petrolia which many of the master craftsmen that lived in the valley came to remember alexander and as they went around his house talking about the things they had dealt and the vice alexander had given them you got a glimpse of a life that he had given them of care for beauty care for attention care for their craft. I urge you to pick up the book to read about it as its a part of his life that i think was very special and entirely informed so much else that we hear about. It wasnt shown to everybody. I dont know if you want to add anything to that but i think you would be almost embarrassed to hear these craftsmen talk about the love of the work they had done with alexander in their morning for a man who gave them maybe the best challenges they ever had. And to echo connor they were the best challenges we ever had too. I would just add something. I think he did give them challenges in creating a 14th century irish font in the middle of the garden. Its not something you would normally be asked to do. In this case this was brent smith who could do anything so there really were interesting projects that they would have. But also i have been really struck by people saying how they just cant recognize the Alexander Cockburn that they look up on the internet as the kind of generous friend that they knew in person. There are a lot of people who have mentioned what a great guy he was and what a nice man he was and you know not just words of condolence but really a sense of somebody who listen deeply to people and was a thoughtful friend. There are many other sites to him that you wont find you will find acerbic and contrarian and those words on the internet and they bear no relation at all to who he was and how people experienced him. Cynical, not for a second and cynic never. Contrary and . What does that mean . Obviously all those words are just kind of words that people pull out when they dont know what to say to someone and they dont know very much about somebody. So yeah this book really contains a lot of who he really was. Me to set the table and we will answer anymore questions you have and we will share other information. The book table is in the back somewhere. The registers at the front. Lets hear it one more time for our contributors this evening. [applause] if you have any questions or if you would like and if the contributors to sign a copy of a colossal wreck they will be at the signing table against the wall. Thank you so much for coming out to powerhouse this evening. [applause] [inaudible conversations] cspan bus parked on the mall is jeff chu who has written this book called does jesus really love me . A gay christians pilgrimage in search of god in america. Mr. Chu if he would start by giving us a little bit of your upbringing and your religious history. Guest sure. I am the grandson of a baptist preacher and the nephew of two other baptist preachers in my family has always been devout evangelical. We did not as good of Baptist Churches i grew up steeped in evangelical culture first in california and then when i went to high school at a Christian School in miami florida. Host what was your familys reaction when you came out as . Guest i think its safe to say they werent excited about it. My mother cried and cried. He was extremely difficult period and our relationship. I dont think all of my relatives know yet. Its a funny thing in a chinese family the way information is passed around. You have these layers of culture and you have the chinese layer in the christian layer and is between the two i think there is sufficient shame that my parents havent exactly broadcasted to everyone. Host mr. Chu you have written a book with about whether or not jesus really loves you. First of all what is your christianity today . Guest reformist American Church in Brooklyn New York called old first and im an elder there. I think my faith like that of many people goes through peaks and valleys. Their ups and downs and good days and bad days. I think i would be lying if i said faith was for me a consistent thing. Its a struggle. Its something you work on. You look for god where you can find evidence of god and try to hang onto faith in the hard times and you are really joyous when you find high points for me which tend to be nature. They pull me closer to something defined. Host are you a Christian Today . Guest sometimes im troubled by the basics of the language. Like when we say evangelical what do we mean . When we say conservative but do they mean . Christian is the right term. I follow jesus as best i can. Host on your travels and in your search what did you find across america when it comes to establish religions, established christian religions and gay and whether or not that its acceptable . Guest if you look at American History you find reactions across the entire spectrum. You find open hostility and you