Good morning. Good morning and welcome to nashville and the southern festival of the books. Behind the curtain, money, politics and imperiled republic. We are fortunate today to have two authors who are really addressing some issues we deal with today. Weed to live in many ways in imperiled times and dealing with the concentration of economic power and political power, so again we are fortunate to have two very renowned speakers today after the session is over we will have a signing session that will take place on the war memorial section between the capital and library. We will go there and also have questions and answers, a q a session after the presentation this morning to your right there is a set of microphones and if you would like to ask questions of the authors to your right there is a set of microphones. Each speaker will speak about 15 or so minutes dealing with their books and then we will open it up to questions. If you could, you may want to take a moment to silence your c
There are seats on the wings of the room who need a place to set. Sit. Youre welcome to see it of course. It is great to welcome everyone to this evening of conversation in discussion about our christian witness in the 21st century. The occasion is of course his new book on the benedict option. But before i introduce the imminent speaker i want to thank the cosponsors of this event. One of the sponsors is first things manganese magazine that i edit. And the other sponsor is plow and i would like to think peter munson for contributing so much for making this evening happen. It was really peters idea to have a big event like this to mark the publication of this important book. I would also like to thank the folks at the american conservative where he is a Senior Editor and a tireless blogger. And as we all know. In fact right now he is posting the folks at the american conservative in the folks at plow and i would like to thank those of us for trying to think about how to move forward in