And the people inside of washington said our we cant shift power we have to do that. We have to have power in washington. So that is the battle going on. More power to the bureaucrats this is a struggle going on. This is the topic of power to the people the road to freedom and prosperity for the four, seniors and those most in need of the best healthcare. Peter is the author. This is book tv on cspan2. Joining us on booktv is the editor of the claremont review of books. That is the countrys leading and possibly journal of the conservative book review. If you dont see it that often but it is on the newsstands and you can find it at claremont. Org and its a conservative think tank. Tank. How did a beginquotes it again about 16 years ago because of the felt necessity. They are in the new york review of books and the sunday New York Times book review and new Republic Book review pages that were prominent and eminent place for liberals to review one anothers books but there have been no place for the conservatives to engage in Dialogue Forum book reviews and essays about books. It was. 1 and. 2 they needed an intellectual playing field. It would be fairly fought out at a high level among conservativ conservatives. They are a more comprehensive book review because they come out many more times and they have power and money behind but they set out to review all kinds of books for all kinds of academic readers and i would say they have a more academic read in class then we do. They are concentrated in history, politics, religion, the war, classic literature. We did a little less current literature and a little more classic than they do and much less in the way of arts and decorations and furniture and all the kinds of interesting things which in the Times Literary Supplement they take another example from england and it can concentrate with utter abandonment. What are two books that have recently been reviewed . Guest we reviewed Charles Murrays book coming apart which is one of the most important books on the American Social class and society at large thats been published in probably 20 years. We have all kinds of books of course not just by conservatives over Charles Murray is the kind of libertarian writer but we also reviewed you could see the counterpart to his book our kids come and go so i thought received long interesting reviews which said a lot about the peculiar state of american politics and society these days. We havent yet had a big piece on donald trump but im writing it now. That should be published in the spring issue. Host what is the peculiar situation today that you are revealing in the bucs . Guest something strange has happened in american politics. For one thing, the example shows evidence of this, White Working Class people are becoming less democratic and more republican. Upper middle and upperclass people are votinupper classpeopy democratic and very liberal and Neither Party social composition has adjusted to the fact so they are both sort of out of phase with their own sort of social basis and neither is ready to embrace the new voters that want to embrace it or some of the candidates that it could produce. Bernie sanders on the one hand, donald trump or even ted cruz to some extent on the other. But that i think the cold war ended more than 25 years ago now and a lot of things are still working themselves out through american politics and its going to be different after this race the Republican Party is going to be different than it was before. The Democratic Party, a little bit less so i think. But im not really sure where that republicans are going to end up in 2017. Are you a fan of donald trump . Guest i dont admire him. I find him interesting and to some extent, amusing. I think that he is hard not to watch. Theres something about him which is attractive and fascinating in a way that makes you slightly ashamed of yourself for being so fascinated that some of my friends are very upset by him and think he spells the doom of republican government in america. I dont think so. I dont think that he is a caesar personality. Interestinanything hes interesn caesars palace. I think probably if he were to be elected he would prove to be something closer to schwarzenegger. I dont think he is a serious of a politician. I think that if we do have a president donald trump, we will see a lot of drift and uncertainty in his Administration Just as we saw in california with arnold schwarzenegger. He needed a script. He was very good at performing but he didnt know what he was supposed to say or her back as a politician once he was in office and i fear the same would be true of donald trump is fascinating in their pursuit of office but once hes got it, i wondered if hwonder if he will d if he would fail the test of seriousness that obviously any president has to pass. Booktv is here at the Claremont Mckenna college. What is the setup of your . Theres several different colleges that are interrelated; how to support . Articles of confederation. This is not the constitution this is the articles of confederation. Confederation. This five independent undergraduate schools and two graduate schools each one second campuses and they are linked together as a kind of Permanent League of friendship and so each has its own faculty and administration and supported its own fundraising responsibility. We share in common a library which is about the size of Dartmouth Library and we share a steam plant and some property in common but otherwise its every tap on its own bucket and each campus focuses on something slightly different academically. So Claremont Mckenna has a disproportionate number of political scientists and economists. We have many vastly different majors in economics, finance, Political Science, International Relations and those kind of field. But if you want to study classics, if you want to study latin or greek, you have to go to pomona or scripts to take those courses that they can come here and study Political Science if they wish to. And so you have a kind of balance of trade coming i, and l student spends maybe one fourth of his courses offcampus or as we like to say here, a broad. I is this a conservative college plaque . Spigots more conservative than the other Claremont Colleges and more conservative than any other highquality top ten liberal arts college in the country but that means in contemporary terms, we have probably 15 professors who may be republicans, conservative republicans, 15 out of 130. However, if you go nextdoor, you will find far fewer than 15 if you find any at all who are registered as republican. And every now and then, students range outside the campus and track down that data because you can find ou out for a a persons registration is. Charles kessler is also also professor of government at Claremont College and the author of that i am to change barack obama the future of liberalism. In the claremont review of books, this is a quote by you. You cant teach at an American College these days without wondering if at some schools lets face it you wonder when its going to happen. A student, fellow faculty member or administrator is going to charge you with offending them. Spinnaker imagery thats true. It hasnt happened to me or any of my friends here at Claremont Mckenna. But you can see that the National Trends are bad, and they are all moving in that, or mostly moving in that direction. Its a terrible thing because it leads to a kind of selfcensorship, and i do hear my colleagues occasionally saying im nothing t not paid te teaching this topic again, because it is too risky in the current sort of environment whether it is because it offends against income inequality or black wives matter or whatever sort of trending Political Movement of the day that there is. We are aware of that. Professors are aware of that and students are aware of that, too. Last december we had some disturbances on Claremont Mckenna and i wrote a piece about it in the wall street journal in november and within 48 hours it was over but that is to say within 48 hours, the administrative conceded to almost every demand the protesters some 30 or 40 of them at most have asked, 30 or 40 students out of the 1400 undergraduates to put it into a little bit of perspective. But for me, leaving aside my political disagreements in the administration the most worrisome thing is that it was difficult to get the students to talk about what had happened. The next week i tried to have a discussion in my classroom i was teaching freshman American Government and one student gave a very good speech in favor of the demonstrators but no one would sicken him, nor would anyone object to him. I couldnt get them to say anything so i talked to a lot of them during office hours and i asked them why are people not willing to speak and they said they are afraid. And i asked afraid of what, are you afraid of the administrators, faculty, your fellow students . Without exception, each one of them said to me my fellow students. And i had never really heard this before. It was interesting. It wasnt just the fellow students, it was the fellow students on social media that they were afraid of. It was being denounced on facebook were on one of the other comparable sites, and i never heard a student say this before but it is interesting you can see is a generational change for the first time now we have students that have grown up with social media. They spend their whole lives basically on social media at this point. They dont know of a time before social media existed was interesting is that there is something a liberal about social media, which their comments revealed to me in a way that ive never really understood. I name, email and other similar kinds of technologies are not a liberal, they are a continuation of a conversation or a letter just by other means in faster. But theres something more like a mob mentality on facebook and twitter. In a conversation from a thoughtful conversation and that seems to me that they were getting at. You could have 80 people denounced you in seconds and theres something about that which they found deeply disturbing. Todays campuses and steeped in the spirit of the Lincoln Douglas debates. One of the things weve lost and ive come to realize how much we lost it. A lot of kids read john stuart mills on liberty. They read john milton, they read sort of classics of free speech, David Jefferson and de tocqueville. Fewer students do that now although i must say it is pretty sound on the narrow question. But one of the unanticipated consequences of dropping so many required courses and books is that the freespeech classics are no longer as known as they once were when i was in college. I must have read on liberty four or five times for different classes. It kept coming up and now you can easily go through most schools without ever reading on liberty even ones. So one used to be able to assume there was a kind of common culture of liberty or freespeech that you could fall back on and that is less true now, but it has sort of inspired me to begin to assign liberty and the American Government and other courses where i wouldnt necessarily have assigned before just to get in at some early state in the average students curriculum. Whats another book that you assign regularly click the Lincoln Douglas debates. Every time i teach freshman American Government i teach the Lincoln Douglas debates and you dont need to. You could easily teach freshman American Government without it. Its a lot more interesting if you teach it. It is a tough book and a controversial book. The n. Word is used multiple times. Both are used multiple times, negro as well as the other one command that is offensive these days of course the fashion changes on these matters over time. But lincoln and douglas, what a story, what a drama. Seven debates, three hours each, no microphones, no reporters accept the ones taking notes. Just the ones getting up, the one talking for an hour, the other for an hour and a half and the first getting the right of response for 30 minutes at the close in the students love it. I think its the highlight of the year because they were not running for president of course they were running for senate in illinois. Douglas and lincol lincoln withe opposing eacwould beopposing eas later for president. This is with a dry run for that. But it raises all the same kinds of questions, and deep questions about how a politician speaks to voters in a democracy and what the relationship is supposed to be between a politician and a voter especially as it is usually the case you cant be completely candid with them. And you certainly see that with other things. Lincoln doesnt want to confront if he can avoid it, the same thing with douglas. But its a merry debate and serious at the same time. Have you faced backlash because of some of the controversy . That is one of the things that i regard as an eventuality, but it hasnt happened yet. Im glad to say i was using the trigger warnings before they were cool because i think its fair to tell people youre going to be seeing the nwor n. Word anderson. Candid discussions about just how equal are blacks and whites and what should it mean in american politics. But i think the debates are so powerful in the charming that theyve never failed to work their magic so far. What is your take on what has been going on at harvard and princeton about renaming some of the buildings and some of the schools because of controversi controversies . Cecil rhodes is under fire in england, too. I would say if there was any cause that might have tempted me, it might have been repealing Woodrow Wilsons presence since hes one of the founders of modern progressivism. But of course, that way leads to madness. You have nothing but the regime of continual censorship deciding who is going to be allowed into your mind and consciousness and on your campus and whos not. But there are serious issues, which princeton ought to think about in regards to woodrow wilson. His expungement is not one of them thats what his politics were like, where his political principles and values came from, those are all legitimate questions and hardly looked at for a long time. I am the change barack obama, the future of liberalism. What is this about . It was an attempt to to give a serious account by a conservative of a liberal president s political thoughts. I wrote it in 2012, 2011 and 2012. It came out in 2012 and then paperback in 2013 after the reelection. Its not just about obama although it is mostly. Its also about his tradition, which i take to be a president ial tradition leadership so woodrow wilson, lbj, fdr and lbj are the three other main characters in the book. It is a sort of comparison of four great democratic president ial statesman commanded the conceit of the book is whether or not obama is going to be deserving to be placed on the Mount Rushmore after his second term in office and i would say now probably so. He has had a very successful he turned the political situation which isnt all that favorable into a pretty successful liberal presidency i would say. The reelection of was a meager reelection. He lost votes compared to where he stood in the first electoral cycle and that is unusual. That is a sign of president ial weakness, and the party is decimated. I dont think its really seeped into peoples consciousness that at if you look not just at the national level, the senate and the house but also the governorships and state house seats, the Democratic Party is now at its lowest point since the 1920s. I mean, this has been a good two terms for obama. It hasnt been for his party. And thats one of the stories going into this president ial cycle is that its underreported i think. But nonetheless from the personal success as a president , hes managed to take a relatively weak hand and hes played it very well. Host among other things, Charles Kessler is editor of the claremont review of books and hes been our guest on booktv. I try to get people to understand this book isnt about making excuses for the decision i made. Its about explaining what is happening to so many young men and women in communities where we dont talk about child abuse, sexual abuse, Substance Abuse and the things that we need to us taking the path we take. So i want to be clear this isnt about making excuses and i dont blame my mother. Ultimately i was the person that pulled the trigger that night. After words is next. Former inmate discusses his time in prison in his life afterwards in his book writing my wrongs. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison at the age of 19 per Second Degree murder. Hes interviewed by paul butler, the author of lets get free a hiphop theory of justice. Host much respect my brother. This book writing my wrongs is everything. Its visionary, its beautifully written and its even funny. I want to know everything about you, starting with this shaka sengor . Guest i wear many titles fo,the most important of which being a father. Im a mentor to me that the cofounder of host you wrote this book that reminded me in some ways of the autobiography oupthe autobi. Because it is a story about the journey to redemption. So you know, i have a friend, bryan stevenson, who said that we shouldnt judge people by the worst thing that they ever did i want to get your reaction to that. As a part of your journey, tell us about the worst thing that youve ever done because that is a big part of the book
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