this is about two hours. >> good evening and welcome to our program, and perfect union: has america lost its moral center? my name is david gibson. i am the director of the department of religion and culture here at fordham university. we are pleased to see you here this evening and to have coverage by our friends at c-span at this event tonight. so look sharp. try to behave. cell phones on mute. but do feel free to tweet the event as you like. maybe even our resident will between eating the event at some point -- president will be tweeting the event at some point although it seems he's more involved another matters. we began to conceive of this program shortly after mr. trump was elected last november on the famous campaign slogan make america great again. and of course, we were taking something of a risk by having this program, because we were betting in the course of one year he would not in fact have achieved his goal, an achievement that would have made this evening's discussion moot. we could have just center on anton asked amongst ourselves. -- and talked amongst ourselves. but it does seem the issue of national greatness is still very much in play and in our case very much in doubt. ugly nationalism, a service of hatred, rampant rampa\nt propaganda. they are all problems that if anything have gotten worse. our operating thesis is shouldn't donald trump, he who shall not be named in some respects, is really more of a symptom than a cause of our crisis. but it does raise the question of what national greatness means. what that value that is so important to our national identity really means. it has been said america is great because america is good. ronald reagan uses that line in a speech. attributing it to tocqueville. one of the earlier examples of fake news, i guess. it was fairly instantly deployed. as we say it's too good to check out so it has become the standard trope of stump speeches ever since. what does it mean for a nation to be good and have we all been good? did we simply fall short of an ideal? and have we bailed on those ideals? is there a path back, is it a path we even want to follow. these are the questions we wish to explore with our distinguished panel this evening. a former editor at the chicago tribune and a columnist for chicago catholic, the newspaper of his own archdiocese. observer of the national scene. don will introduce our panelists and guide us through the presentations and discussions that follow. a couple of housekeeping notes. on your chair as you will find two cards and one pencil. it's for writing down your questions. after don moderates a discussion we will collect your questions. i will sort through them by theme and hand them to don, who will pose your questions to our panelists. please be sure to write or print legibly. there is also a second yellow card, asking how you heard about this event. you can check one of those boxes. as we seek to better serve you. don: thank you very much david. i hope everybody can hear me, i have a tendency to speak softly. i am honored to have moderated the distinguished panel. all of you have a brochure. something about he or she begins to speak. with a personal reflection about the topic tonight. back in the fall of 1965 i was a college at the university of notre dame. wanting to study politics and political science. for two reasons -- the presidency of john f. kennedy had inspired me, as had the civil rights movement. both are examples of how politics can make the world, the nation, better. i had a professor, the first thing he had us read is aristotle's ethics. i think it was on the education of this. i found myself wondering what does this have to do with winning elections? smiting bad guys? making things better in the society. i began to understand. every policy is the citizen. ideally well-informed, ethical, disciplined who participate fully in the life of the policy. year, americans did something that has shaken the faith of a lot of people. that's why we are asking this question. has america lost its moral center? the evidence seems to be all around us. we have elected a president that seems to have respected none of the traditional norms. maybe things need to be shaken up but calling into question the respect of the rule of law is and other basic principles is fairly radical. right now we are waiting on the result of an election in alabama appears that a man who -- accused of pedophilia may win. he's being supported by one of the major parties. we live ideologically segregated lives. and different political parties and opinions. the question of the health of our society and moral center is up in the air. with powerful and important thoughts on this issue. a featured columnist and has written for the new york times, the washington post, the l.a. times. dissent, democracy, and other publications. she will tell you more about herself as she arises. each of the panelists will speak initially for eight minutes. and then we will have some discussion and back and forth. i am glad to be here and part of this important conversation. i'm going to talk about the problem of fake news. it's among the many things that we are all worried about. almost a year into this administration. the truth needs to be at the top of this list. i mean just take today, this morning, with trump tweeting out those islamophobia committee of us. these are videos that came from a convicted right-winger, somebody who is totally discredited as a hatemonger and when a white house spokeswoman in sarah huckabee sanders stands a up there, they ask about whether the videos are really authentic, she says it doesn't matter. it could well be fake and asked us to dismiss that. doesn't matter if the videos are real. and you know, the idea that someone is speaking on behalf of the president, frankly this is not that surprising. we have a mission to celebrate and defend free expression. we viewed the spread of fraudulent news in terms of the many events of free expression in this era. in this, some people have argued, why is it an expression issue? fake news is protected under the first amendment. you can spread false is him as it rises to the level of deprivation in this country. we argue if you care about free speech it's not just the first amendment. we see ourselves as guardians. we think fraudulent news represent a real threat to that. first the scale of the problem. himr and him himecent polling last year by gallu andp, -- in recent polling last year by gallup, only 32% of americans have even just a fair amount of trust in the media. that is down eight points from a year before and 20 percentage points from 1997 over the past 20 years. the pew research center has done a study showing that 64% of americans felt fabricated new stories are in confusion about the basic facts of current issues and events. we see the press -- virtually than any other institution in our society. even worse on the index of trust. false news is widespread and spreads uncontrollably. the pew center found one third of americans found fabricated political new stories online. there is also an assault, being mounted from the white house on the mainstream media with the aim of denigrating and discrediting the confusion about what is fake news. what we call fraudulent news, news that is not substantiated, that is not factual, that a spread with the aim of deception. party much the exact opposite of what president trump calls fake news. to him fake news is coverage he finds unfavorable. he labels it that way. the result has been a depolarization and media consumption where half the country is watching foxnews. reading breitbart. the rest of us are tuning into cnn and nbc. between this pattern of denigration continues relentlessly. we have documented over 100 examples of it. i think the case is going to be even higher. what are the applications for our society and democracy? i'm going to run through a series of them in my limited time. it is understanding the breadth of this is that of this potential impact. first off, obviously is citizenry that doesn't have the facts and information and data they need to make sound decisions at the ballot box, to formulate views on policy. james madison said a popular government without popular information or a means of acquiring it is a prologue to a farce or a tragedy. i think we are willing to that farcical tragedy. the second is unending the second is unending political polarization and gridlock. if people expose information that only originate from politically aligned sources, they lose the ability to see issues for the opposing size or deal empathy. when policymakers are politically split, the result is paralysis. decisions can be delayed and cause dysfunction. a third consequence of the rampant spread of fraudulent news is the undermining of legitimate news media for government accountability. to be an outlet for whistleblowers and others who misdeeds ande as a way of weeding out ineffective leadrs. i think that is a reason why the president has attacked the media. he is laying the groundwork for the time -- perhaps how he got its office in what he's doing in office and what the consequences will be laid bare. to be able to say it it's all a bunch of falsehoods, on a pack of lies. fourth up is the long-term risk to the viability of serious news. the traditional business model that supported them based on advertising and television advertising has come under enormous strain. most people get the majority of their news through social media outlets that don't have the same level of support for the revenue for the newsrooms that generate that content. an erosion of trust and leadership. we see a boost in leadership and all rally around the washington post and the new york times. that comes from the eastern seaboard, the urban centers. it's not coming from the heartland. we see an erosion of interest in the mainstream media and ultimately that will affect our bottom line. a fifth consequence relates to policymaking and the risk to evidence-based -- fact-driven policymaking. whether it be a economy, health care, education. they digest the analyses that are coming out in the academic centers. we depend on our news media to interpret, analyze, and what to credit. i'm going to finish off with rattling off a couple of different issues. manipulation of our discourse by private and foreign interest. big digital media companies shaping our discourse. we depend upon the media to expose that. if the credibility is undermined, a cannot play that role. distort facts from fiction, helping to guide us on how to react from a health scare, pandemic, the credibility has been eroded. then they cannot perform that role. handle emergencies. hurricanes. misinformation is rampant. fema is telling people now how to address falsehoods that are spreading and how to find real news about the crises. the plague of cynicism. of citizens cannot discern what to trust and what to distrust, the moral center of our society crocs open. -- cracks open. quoting someone who lived in russia in an authority in society -- authoritarian society, said that i do chronic power requires moral authority. the defeat of moral principles are as such. i think that is what we are facing her. thank you. [applause] is a senior fellow at the ethics and policy center. he is currently a contributing writer for that new york times. >> thank you very much. .hank you for moderating thanks to my co-panelists for being here. i was given the problems with our political system. don said i had 10 minutes, i thought i had 10 days. eight minutes, ok. you can go to two ways. you can either dilate on one or two points and some depth or cover a lot of ground quickly. i will go the letter route which will hopefully catalyze conversation during q&a. my supposition is that the political system is on crisis. it is not in unprecedented crisis but it is serious. i think the public perception confirms that and sodas reality. of the perception side, there was a poll done earlier this ofr at they universally maryland, washington post, starklyd that " pessimistic view of politics is what the public has, widespread fear of the leaders and their ability to compromise. -- the numbers are pretty striking. seven out of 10 said political divisions where the new norm. seven out of 10 said the political divisions in this country are as great as they were during the vietnam war and the share of americans are not brought of the way our nation's democracy is working has doubled in just the last three years. public trust and government is near historic lows. republicans and immigrants have for each other is growing. can sense it.l it is in the air. politics occupies a place in our minds and imaginations that are greater than it any time i can remember. ofo think these perceptions the political system failing, the sort of dark mood the public has is not simply a problem of morel. it is a problem of reality. i could point out a lot of things. i will do a couple. any nation that elect donald trump as president has a remarkably low view of politics. he ran for president with no experience, no obvious qualifications for the job and that manifests itself i think every day since he took office. what is interesting is that his supporters, and i talked to a lot of them because i am a lifelong republican and conservative, their arguments were that things cannot get worse so it was worth a roll of the dice and that he was really no worse than any other politicians. he won because he was viewed as an outsider in a nation that perceives politics is thoroughly broken. the second reason i think peoplesense the political system there is a lot of economic stress and anxiety and a sense of vulnerability the public has. it situation is not making better. we have had stagnant wages, skyrocketing health and tuition costs. a. of economic disruption. to the degree that economy is growing, it has been asymmetrical growth. most of the real wage growth has lastto the top 20% of the 10 years. it were past 20 years, the temper laid not benefited a and that is exacerbating income inequality. unnerved, deeply worried about the long-term trajectory of the economy in the country and they believe the governing classes let them down. hence they were willing to gamble the presidency on a world wrestling hall of famer with no experience. we are living with the consequences of that. i think peoplesense politics has become an arena for conflict rather than a place for problem solving. it has become kind of a forum for invective. jonathan heights and sam abrams, two professors cite several destructive long-term trends that explain why our national politics are broken. i will mention a few of them, as the political scientist referred them to. to appear for themselves ideologically over the years. not just ideologically, in terms of personality and lifestyle. the urban-rural divide has grown into a golf which reflects and values.terests immigration is rising and that is leading to larger rasul and ethnic divisions. divisions.nd ethnic cultural changes in congress make it harder to maintain cross party friendships. it's much easier for partisans to confirm their suspicions and put pressure on politicians than to play to the extremes. to complicate all of that, politics has entered what could period.d a post-truth wants toump not only attack the truth, he wants to annihilate it. there has been a debate on college campuses for about one year. constructionm and is. we've never seen an assault on the truth like we are seeing it now and i think there's a huge cost to that. it is disorienting. we see acute political tribalism. as my team right or wrong? we've seen the demoralization of key verges. on the right there has been an extraordinary valuation of ideas that has occurred over my lifetime. i think there is a blossoming sense of national identity. people are defined by race and ethnicity. you get the sense you're heading toward a collision of sorts, making its way to fracturing disagreements, to contempt and anger and rage. it does not seem at this moment that there are a lot of breaks there that can be applied. so there this kind of downward cycle of we combination. hasthe bond of affection been frayed and severed, to use the words of lincoln. what do we do about it? i will drive them out of the we can beat them up during the discussion. first, keep perspective. don't romanticize the past. we are the civil war, jefferson, make some1800 which of the elections we have had look like a walk in the park. the second thing is, i think we have to find a way to attain what i would call inclusive as 30. that is, prosperity which will begin to drain some of the anger and frustration and fear that people are. greater social mobility and inclusion. i think we need people in politics to make the case for politics which they don't do anymore. what it is, what it is not, why it is as such a. theers need to argue for dignity and this is the of politics. it is interesting how don was speaking about his history which tracks in part with mine and what i thought about politics and why i got in. to argue what it is, give, take on compromise. those things are necessary and appropriate. there are also limits. i think politics has become a replacement for community and meaning and a sense of belonging for a lot of people and i think that explains in part the tribalism we are seeing. i think we have to recover the deep purposes of dialogue and debate and it is not to win, but it is to move a little bit closer to the truth and reality of things. i think we have to listen to each other. we should listen not just to hear, not just to respond but to hear and to spend time with people they are actually disagree with and here where they are coming from and understand their perspective. we need people with authority within a particular political tribe to challenge their own tribe. it does not help to have a liberal challenge conservative or conservative challenge liberals, you have to political leadership willing to take people on within their own community. in the last thing i would say is we should not despair. people are not happy with the situation we're in. i think that is a good thing. viruses sometimes great their own anti-bodies. you saw that after watergate. i think it can happen again. you have to find people willing to fight for the ability of politics and what politics is about which is justice. this is not out of our reach. these are problems we have created and they can be solved. i want to end with the quote not from john kennedy but from his brother bobby. a lovely speech he gave in south africa in 1966 when he said "few will have history itself but each of us can work to change a small portion of events and the total of all those acts will be written as the history of those generation. each time a man stands up for an ideal, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope and those build a current rate can sweep down the mightiest walls. that speech inve south africa 1966i think each of us has to try and our own way to send forth on a daily basis tiny ripples of hope. >> thank you. [applause] is professorchout of law here at fordham and of thel former director sunlight foundation, former candidate for governor of new york and if you would -- >> thank you. thank you all for coming. thank you to my co-panelists and to don. if you are here tonight, probably like me you have this profound love for this country know,can tell you, you i'm recently 46-years-old, halfway through my legs journey realo much of it has been passionate love affairs with what america can be. so i think the questions we are asking tonight to our absolutely essential. i'm a langston hughes patriot. in 1935, think, about this, this is a black man and 1935 talking about america. america let america be again. leaded be the dream the dreamers dreamed. .merica was never america to me and then he goes on to a beautiful poem where he says let it be that great strong land of love where never kings connive, that any man be crushed by one above. america to me.er sometimes, that poem is taught to talk about just how terrible american people is but if you read all the way to the end of the problem, what he says is we the people of the rocked and ruin of our gangster death, out of the rape and rot of stealth and hate and lies, we the people the reclaim the rivers and endless plain and make america america again. and useon i am a likes patriot as he tells us a way to think about our country, our past, our future. both to be non-sentimental about what we have been. haveter was saying, there been plenty of bad times in america. this is not the worst. i do not think that many of us, i hope many of us would not choose to live in 1850 america over right now. i hope not many of us would choose to live in jim crow america. we have been a tough times before so don't be sentimental. at the same time, it is incredibly important not to throw out the best parts of our aspirations. langston jews has been calling on this aspiration of love and freedom. these dual goals of love and love of the public good and the goal of not being crushed from one above. freedom, moral freedom, really meaningful goals worth returning to at this moment. i was privileged to run for congress in the last election. i was not obliged to win. i ran in the hudson valley in the district that voted for barack obama by about six percentage points and for donald trump by almost nine percentage points. and i can tell you, to peter's defendersthe need for in politics. but even when you lose there is nothing a story and strange and weird and human as running for office in politics. and, i, you know, really feel honored by that expense. i will type what i saw and i realize i did not send my timer of the beginning so you'll have to wait for hand when i am about at seven minutes. i saw them believable amount of loneliness. loneliness, both in the older people that i met who had often relatively little human contact. you might kind of expect that but also incredible amounts of loneliness and young people. people who did not have anyone they could ask to cosign a loan. people who did not have anyone they could talk to if they were having trouble in their marriage. people who did not feel like they had a community to fall back on a tough times. i think loneliness is an incredibly part of understanding where we are in this particular moment. anng with that i also saw enormous amount of powerlessness. powerlessness sent loneliness are connected but they aren't the same thing. there is sort of a freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose attitude but helplessness is when you don't feel for her, you feel constrained and trapped. i was in a district with a reasonable unemployment rate, 4-5%. you can always do better but the jobs were jobs were people file talk. -- dealt stuck. -- felt that. stuck. that loneliness and powerlessness exhibit itself downtown and so many areas of the hudson valley, with a the country. i don't want to speak for the whole country but i do think that is what you would see. question i started to ask when i traveled was, is there anywhere you can buy socks and underwear downtown? in most, there were not. drug stores. the places of community and coming together, the small businesses which i think the left sometimes ignores, are really essential as a building block in our collective society, .ad really been dragged out so, what do we do about this? i have two minutes for the solution. often we turn to civic civic was.solve our in the 1950's, 60% of americans were president of their societies. commerciallook a societies and incredible loneliness and powerlessness it has created by the cause attrition of power and a handful. so the other politicals torilla of 2016 is not donald trump comet is the year when we had more mergers then we have ever had. it is the year we were in the middle of handing over the keys to facebook,e google, and amazon, which are powered not just in the social media realm but in the cloud. power of her small businesses of a kind we've never seen before. so i think there are two really key policy focuses which i would like to focus on. one is a focus on reviving the important as i'm an aptly traditional at the heart of our politics left and right up through the 1970's and returning to a row commitment to decentralize power in the economic sphere. is a changeelated in the way we fund elections so we have more decentralized power in the political sphere. are, bythose together the way, proposed a republican 115 or 110 years ago. a both of these are ideas that in the langston hughes tradition call upon ideas and traditions we have the past to deal with the very real serious contemporary problem of power and isolation and the fear that comes from that. .> thank you >> director of the thoughtve on catholic at georgetown and writer for american magazine. john. >> thank you. a pleasure being here. at our thanksgiving we passed on but a cold, sood i apologize for my boys. they say it thanksgiving the one thing we should not do is talk about religion and politics so that is what i'm going to do, talk about religion and politics. the other thing, after hearing these eloquent speeches reminded me of the line -- when everything that should be said has been said that not everyone guy.aid it, i'm your several people made the point we should not exaggerate the glories of the past nor minimize the challenges of the present. it is great to be at with school. it is great to be at the center. peter and peggy built in. ava does the holding on that and is buildingdavid that. i now work at a jesuit university then sold 272 people to pay our debts. that -- i now work at a sold 272iversity that people to pay our debts. so there is a problem at the moral center. whatsoever you do to the least of these you do unto me, i will pledge for a sign -- we liberty and justice for all. i would suggest that our politics and frankly the intersection between religion and politics is not getting us there. the firstound anniversary of president trump's election. the fifth anniversary of pope francis election. probably the two most important things that have happened -- surprising things that happened in the last years. they could not be more different. one builds bridges, the other wall. one says i am a sinner, the other says i'm dusting to be forgiven for. one demonizes immigrants, when raises some up. one says, wealth can be a problem. the other glories in his wealth. that they both represent something important, they were both outsiders and they both challenged the status quo and they represent something that i think both authors -- offers problem and promise for our situation. what happened at georgetown in dealing with the slavery matter constructively was we had a set hadrinciples and we leadership. if we want a path forward, think we're going to have to be clear about principles and we are going to have to develop leadership that we don't have. i would suggest the moral center , would have to say i'm a product of a mixed marriage. my mother is from a republican family, my debt from the democratic family. explain that confusion. i think what is at work in our politics is two different but complementary kind of excessive individualism. some of the right is economic individuals. libertarianism that makes the market the measure of everything that says, we are in this on our own. good luck. now we have added a -- of nationalism manned racial specialnt to that and a way. to the left, it is kind of a lifestyle individualism which makes personal autonomy, choice, and in some situations consent the measure of everything. neither of those leave much room for the common good. care for the poor, the vulnerable. or dealing with the injustices of racism or economic educational disparities. in one, we're really on our own. in the other, we are a collection of interest groups and i think that kind of individualism, when you edit the polarization and the ideological isolation that peter talked about, it leads to kind of tribalism that is based on resentment and feeds our anger and makes it very hard to pursue the common good and i think that tribalism is best reflected or right now in the alabama senate race were apparently christians have put a person who is credibly accused of being -- a --ester of young women cardinal george of chicago who had a way with words was quoted once as saying that democrats have lost their souls. i never believed the republicans had a soul. [laughter] >> pope francis says we should not be judged mental different version. i think republicans have lost their mind and their heart. in many ways, trump is the academy of this individualism. it is all about him. he's the biggest, the best, the only and anything that gets in his way whether it be the media, institutions, other republicans, , people in they white house, he will destroy them if he has to. you make it. there are no boundaries, no standards. incidentally, everyone he touches is diminished. i worked for many years, peter was part of it, with paul ryan. has anyone suffered more from association? think of general kelly. how he has been diminished. party, i think they lost their way, their voice, and there capacity to compete in large parts of the country. donald trump is right about one thing. this election was lost. it was not one. democrats are doing what parties always do. they first blamed the candidate, and there's a lot to work with their. then they blame the campaign. maybe it would of been good to go to wisconsin. , they blame the voters. i think that is the most destructive. the district that suffered talked about that voted for -- 206ants, there are voted for obama twice and then trump so i know racism is alive in america but i do not know if it is the only thing that can explain this election. inhink republicans have gone a direction that their rhetoric, peter, they talked about lifting up the poor. right now they seem to be responding to the rich. democrats written off working-class white voters. there's no outreach to voters of faith. no evangelical catholic outreach in the last election. ask yourself, who has more salt than the democratic party in planned parenthood or the labor movement? we have gone to no restrictions, abortion.tions on whether you're running for mayor of omaha or for senator in alabama. is the an alternative leadership we got from pope francis. it would be important to say what a difference, what is surprise that was. if you say, here's my book about the catholic church -- i need to wrap up but i will tell you my story and that a word about pope francis. the pope is going to resign. jesuit from argentine is going to get elected, he is not going to move into the palace and he is going to spend holy thursday washing the feet of women and muslims. what do you think they would tell me to do with my book? that is an alternative form of leadership. he looks the world from the bottom up, from the outside in. it is not only his words, it is his ways that make a difference. francis ision to strong, powerful, and narrow. but we need to find way to deliver us message. two days after he talked to the congress, was privileged to be in the hall. i met with a group of senators and said, how come you don't talk about the board at all? he said, well we sort of do. at all?ord they said, we don't gets right. i said, you are all in the teens on a good day. 80% one francis is that a bad day. what you try it? i think we ought to try it. it is a path to the moral center. [applause] you to each of the panelists for really stimulating statements.ng i want to focus on a question ford in the program tonight. can our institutions and values save us from this crisis. i would like to focus on two of the institutions. our two parties, we well, is it too late for the republican party? is it too late for the democratic party? anybody want to address those? >> sure. i will address them. want tohe press, i elaborate a little bit what i was talking about earlier. suzanne suggested but i want to be very explicit. 98-99% of all i think all of the new digital ad revenue that is coming in because of the work of newspapers like new york times or your local newspaper, all of that money is going to facebook and google. it is like the troll under the bridge taking the tax and taking the value that is created through our press organizations. i don't have a clear answer to that but that is the serious from. that is what economists who i rent-seeking. just taking away the cash from essential public features. so one thing i think is really important to addresses to use the hope of not playing of laws we have traditional used and reviving the rend icn tradition of saying with companies as it would become so large they are embracing us in all of these ways and really hurting our access to press, and by the way they are not neutral. there are not neutrally delivering news by using algorithms that shape and reward the most base kind of behavior. totally separate from the russian news question. totally separate. so i think we're taking on these intermediaries that are sucking away a lot of the power from our news organizations. terms of the parties i can tell you more about the democratic party than the republican party. absolutely the republican party has a strong writing chance. i believe in institutions. part of the reason i'm so worried about loneliness is i think those arise in the belief that our political actions are expressive is supposed to people coming together in communities. that little credit party, since the 1980's, has a lot been sold on the middlemen it used to fight against. so fdr once stood up against the princes of wall street who were thieving from the people. standing up against the middlemen for the small business owner, for the laborer, for the producer. early 1990's,e the democratic party made a conscious choice to try to face -- basically sell itself out to large donors. i don't think the democratic party can win with them and i think it can win without them and it is and is scared about losing the money. but it hasn't been working the last few years while taking the money and no longer taking on the power. if what voters are looking for -- rightly looking for, not wrongly -- correctly looking for, is someone who will genuinely listen and fight for them against the people who are stealing their paycheck and their power. so i think it's an essential, critical, crucible moment for the democratic party, but it has to make the right choice. go-ahead, thank you. that was compelling. i'll say a couple of things about it. let me start with a broad point about institutions. one of the important features of this era and modern life is the almost across-the-board collapse of faith in institutions. those are institutions of every kind, from the press and political parties to churches to large corporations to many others. if you check the gallup poll numbers on that, you will see that over the course of 20, 30, 40 years, that has happened. i think it has happened for a couple of reasons. i think it is serious. i think some of it has happened because these institutions have, in a lot of cases, failed. but i also think there has been a loss of authority and the kind of expressive individualism, and people have decided to go about life themselves. they don't put their time and energy or commitment behind institutions. of the two that you mentioned, don, in terms of which institutions will save us, the press and the political parties, those are two that are among the least trusted in american life today. they have a role to play, for sure. and i think in the trump era that our institutions, by and large, have done pretty well, actually. our judiciary -- i think the press is finding its footing. and i think the kind of attack on our institutions that i worried might happen with donald trump so far hasn't been realized. my concerns are different. but i think they have stood up pretty well. but those two institutions are not going to save us. they will if they do their job well, i think, act as a check potentially on the worst impulses of the president, but if the supposition here is that we have a moral crisis, then the answer is going to be in the moral formation of individual human lives, and that is ultimately what we have to focus in on. zephyr mentioned a couple times about loneliness. i think that's quite right. a former surgeon general did a tour of the country, because he was curious about finding out what explains this distemper in the land. his finding was that there is an epidemic of loneliness. i do think that one institution which could do a lot more than it is is the church itself. i should say i'm an evangelical christian. so, probably the most painful thing of a lot of pain in this political season is just seeing what has happened with a lot of prominent public evangelicals and their support for donald trump, which i think is inexplicable and discrediting to the faith. i also think that the church has an enormous opportunity. i think if you look across the landscape, what you see is a fragmentation and isolation in american life, and you do see it among the elderly and the young. it is striking if you see the statistics about suicide rates and loneliness. the young. people are crying out for community and for wholeness. that's what the church is designed to provide. yet, i think, for a lot of throughthey look at it the prism of the culture war and through the prism of a sort of which often manifests itself in sexual morality to the obsessed.eing so i don't think we are going to get saved by any single institution, but i would put the church at a higher -- not talking about salvation, just about the repair of human lives and dignity. churches and individuals, people of faith, are doing a tremendous amount. i don't want to be unfair in painting with too broad a brush brush -- when i take my son to soccer, my wife and daughter go to a homeless shelter. so there is a lot that is being done quietly that makes a difference, but i don't think nearly enough. just one more point on the republican party, since zephyr talked about the democratic party, and can they come back. political parties can always come back. the question is whether they will or not. i think both political parties are exhausted, and i think that was manifest in this last election. and i think the candidates they nominated exemplified that. the republican party is, i think, in a terrible place right now, and i think it is being corrupted every day because it has made a deal with a figurative devil in donald trump. you can see it. you can see standard after standard after standard being worn down. goalpost after goalpost after goalpost being moved. the solution to that is if they lose. may well happen. >> suzanne and then john? suzanne: these discussions are always more interesting if there is a little bit of class. -- clash. i'm going to disagree with peter and say i don't think our institutions are faring as well as we might hope. my feeling is -- the idea that we should trust in our institutions is inherently dangerous because we need to animate and inhabit and push those institutions. trusting in them i think implies a kind of passivity. what i see is, yes, we had some good judicial decisions, but we also have judges who are unqualified, who are extreme in their views, being confirmed at an alarming rate because of the end of the filibuster. i think that the shape and ideology of our judiciary is being transformed, in my view, for the worst. institutions like the state department, where i've worked, is being hollowed out with a mass exodus of senior foreign service officers and career officials who have served both parties with loyalty and professionalism. we have a secretary of state who has called for a 30% budget cut to the state department and our diplomacy with no rationale, no explanation of how he will confront the conflicts that we face around the world. the e.p.a., you know, goodbye consumer financial protection bureau. lost that this week. church -- you know, the credibility of the church i enormously last year because of the political taken.ns they've i think, yes, in theory, churches and religious institutions should be a corrective to loneliness, but we can't wish away the things that push so many, particularly so many young people, away from those institutions. we have to address that. we can't turn back the clock. we have to look at what people are searching and seeking for now. i do think there can be solutions in our culture and in community that we need to look to, but we have to address the populations that we face and not look back to an earlier -- in a a dewy-eyed way to an earlier where people hued toward different institutions for rationale that aren't necessarily compelling .oday >> no more dewy-eyed. >> people have every right to be skeptical of our institutions. i worked for 25 years for the catholic bishops at a time when they were facilitating a horrible scandal. in the last week, few weeks, roger ailes, bill o'reilly, two morning talk show host, two people from n.p.r., and for god's sakes, lake woebegone, theireen fired for behavior towards women. let me give an example. i've worked a good part of my life on the child tax credit. the child tax credit in the senate bill will be increased to $2000. it will not help people who make less than $30,000 because of the way it is constructed. they will get $75 or less, those children. it now goes up to $500,000 in income. so somebody who makes $500,000 get $4,000 of help. the republicans designed this -- senator rubio and senator lee have tried to fix it by saying, let's take 2% of the 18% reduction in corporate income taxes to pay for this, and the president opposed that today. and, guess what? you can watch cnn, msnbc, anything but "the new york times" and "the washington post" on page six to find any the child tax how credit has been designed to not and to helpr wealthy people like me. so i think there is reason to be skeptical of our institutions. don: zephyr, in your initial remarks, you talked about this loneliness. assigned the reason -- commercialization. clarify, if you would, if i've gotten it wrong. if you would. zephyr: ok, yeah. there's loneliness and one of the causes, not the only cause -- there are many causes. but one of the causes is the radical concentration of our economy in a handful of hands. so, that does not mean that one of the causes is the existence of an open market. in fact, it's a total distortion of the market. the reason that i quoted the extra part of hughes, is langston hughes is talking about tyrants, kings, but also private tyrants. there is a long tradition in american history that understands the importance and the danger that comes from highly concentrated power. but i think the easiest way to explain it is i will give you a story. there is a store in millerton, new york. anybody know millerton? wow. do you know saperstein's? have you ever bought pants at sapperstein's? your shirt. ok, good. it is a department store in a small downtown. a miracle, right? and sapersteins sells pants, shoes, socks, in millerton. two years ago, ray saperstein got a note from oshkosh that they would no longer sell to them in bulk less than 200. now he's a small town. he is not going to sell more than 200 oshkosh per year. question is why? because oshkosh, we think, was told by walmart, don't sell in smaller bulk, because then we cut out all the small towns. the same thing happens with small pharmacies. you think, oh, they are competing and losing. no, this is unfair competition. this is big pharma saying we are not going to even sell you what you need to survive so that we can support the companies that we are related to. now, the impact is that it guts downtowns. we don't have the small business downtowns that have been the heart of america for so long. loneliness has a lot of sources. commercial life as well as civic life has always been a way together, check in on someone's health, make sure someone's checked in on hasn't been seen for two weeks. it's one of the essential ways. i think that we have forgotten antitrust.nce of not just to take on these big guys who are taking our tax dollars, but also to support a thriving small business community, which is the heart of our social community. does that make more sense now? don: sure. suzanne, i've been concerned personally with the state of the news media and, frankly, the state of news literacy in the country. for some time. talk a little more, if you would, about what can be done to allow the ordinary american to find their way through the thicket of this miasma of true, false, some made-up. suzanne: i'm glad you asked, because i do think when you look at what are the possible solutions to the problem of fake news, there are some that risk -- where the cure risks being more dangerous than the disease to empower either our government or these social media platforms that already have such overwhelming control over the ideas that reach us, the channels with which we communicate, to ask them or call upon them to censor and constrict and arbitrate what is true and what is false i think is really risky. i do think the answer lies in an informed, empowered news consumer. we laid out a bill of rights and responsibilities for the new consumer, centered on this question of how can we inform, equip, and empower the consumer to be conscientious, to make thoughtful decisions about what to credit, what to pay attention to, what to forward, what to share online. there are terrific news literacy curricula that have been developed. when i was growing up, i read a magazine, a book. there was something called an encyclopedia. it had gone through layers of editors and publishers and fact checkers. not that it wasn't biased or was necessarily free of error,r indiciae was credibility before it would even reach me. that's not true now. we are all swimming in a vast ocean of all kinds of data and information from unknown sources and we are drowning in it. these curricula that teach you things like, what's a dateline, what kind of proper sourcing methods does a credible news organization utilize, how are corrections handled, what kind of training does a journalist undergo. when an investigation is published into somebody like roy moore and his misdeeds, what goes behind that? what has to happen before "the washington post" is going to put that on their website and in their pages? so educating children and adults about all of that. nobody wants to be fooled. people don't want to have the wool pulled over their eyes. i think it would require almost a revolution. a couple states have passed bills to mandate news literacy. i think we need them in all 50. it has to be part of the core curricula, teaching kids to read and do basic math. they need to understand this as well. [applause] don: thank you. david, you have some audience questions there. >> while you're looking at the rest of the panel a question? this.t know the answer to we now have developed a practice where very wealthy people on both the right and the left are sort of setting the agendas. i'm not just talking about the usual and the bad guys. but bill and melinda gates, warren buffett, george soros, the hobby lobby, the koch brothers -- they're not investing simply in campaigns. they're investing in universities, in "time magazine." they are investing in a lot of our major institutions. we used to set our priorities in a more collegial, governmental process. that seems completely dysfunctional. the odds we're going to have a -- congress hasn't passed a budget in 10 years. meanwhile, the very, very wealthy on the right and the left are deciding what's important and they are creating the agenda. and some of it, they are offsetting each other. but how healthy is it that these people, some of them are great people, some of them i don't agree with. some days i'm happy they are in charge, other days i wonder who the hell left them in charge. what is it mean to have private philanthropy at this level buying a business school, buy buying a business school, buying a piece of "time magazine," buying a good part of the left? left.is all over the what's it mean to have people making these decisions? zephyr: it's extremely course.y, of somebody said after citizens united, there will be a clash of different billionaires, so at least we will get a clash of ideas. [laughter] but the individuals -- it's extremely unhealthy. a recent contest i got in recently was an organization i'm involved with said one, tiny, politely critical thing about google, who, by the way, has also invested heavily in our schools and in our politics -- i think they are largely seen as left wing. you might think, oh, i'm ok with eric schmidt's politics. i'm not ok with any individual or company having that level of power. we said something critical and aey fired 10 people from think tank. 10 people were fired from the new america think tank for challenging google's capacity. so i think there is a real danger, especially right now. you -- i'm making a guess from where we are. those of you who are slightly on the left to say anybody who stands up to trump, we should arms and thank them for standing up against tyrant. i think we are at a different moment where there is a corporate monopolies and wealthy individuals on one side and trump on the other and both of them threaten this basic idea of self-government. i'm not a monarchist even on a good day. basically, that's the model here. >> other comment? suzanne: i guess i have a slightly different view. yes, i think there are dangers and risks and excesses. we've always had, at least for a long time, a very significant role for private philanthropy and what we consider the great -- maybe it's in quotes but i'm it's in quotes -- institutions. this city have been built up, a large extent, by private philanthropy. is a religious panel, which setting. normal i think back to the serenity prayer, that which you cannot change. this is heretical to zephyr. because she's going to change it. i'm not sure this is something we can entirely change. i do think a lot of these actors -- let's take something like the open society foundation. i think they do absolutely extraordinary work around the world, as a bulwark and buttress for dissidents, a source of support for civil society organizations, trying to hold open the space for discourse. i think that's extremely important, so i think we have to look at what they are doing, the role they are playing. yes, if we can empower citizens in movements, i think that's essential, too. i think the press needs to hold them accountable. there are risks in every distribution of power. i don't think it's inherently -- i wouldn't lump them all together and draw a conclusion that they are all collectively nefarious. john: george herbert walker bush, great supporter of israel, challenged the israeli settlement policy. as long as sheldon abramson is alive, no republican will do that again because of the that.ial consequences of that's jumping to philanthropy, though. zephyr: i love the open society foundation in a lot of ways, and i can still say there is an incredible problem with this concentration of power and the shape of philanthropy today and always been this way. there was a great book about how philanthropy has changed in the last 40 years and become a handful of people with extraordinary political power. ago.s written 15 years so i don't think we have ever been in this steady-state, and we should never assume this is a steady-state of concentrated power. don: i want to move to some audience questions. [indiscernible] don: we have a question, somewhat productive -- provocative. do the panelists think that a clinton win of the presidency would have helped america regain its moral center? if yes, why? [laughter] peter: i will go ahead and start. i'm happy to. no, i don't think that the clinton win would have helped america regain its moral center. i'm not a huge fan of hillary clinton. i'm a conservative, and she's a liberal. so, as you can imagine, i would have differences with her on policy. i do want to say one word, inject this on behalf of the people, or at least to qualify a word on the people who voted for donald trump, at least to ask people to try and take a perspective of theirs. i say that as somebody who spent most the entire campaign criticizing donald trump and getting a lot of incoming fire because of my own political history and my association and the local tribe i've been part of. i did hear from a lot of people who made the argument, if you are a liberal, this won't sway you, but you need to set that aside for the moment, which is, if you are a person of conservative beliefs, let's say your pro-life and you think there is something damaging and destructive going on in the act of an abortion, and you felt like she would push an agenda that would undermine what you believed to be the moral good, that was on one side, then you had donald trump on the other. you said, look -- i have friends who said this. they were bothered by him personally. they were troubled by him. they said, look, i think that his court appointments and the other things that he's going to do is going to be better for the good of the country. i didn't agree with that argument. i didn't vote for donald trump, but i understood it. there are a lot of people out there who had concerns about it. i don't think hillary clinton has been a paradigm of virtue or her life.hroughout so i don't think she would have done much at all to repair the moral decay. i do think that donald trump will probably do more to accelerate the moral decay than she would have, however, because of the reasons that i stated. i think that his nonstop assault on truth and on reality and his example is really problematic. i think he is tearing at the fabric of the country. i think he is doing tremendous damage to that, in a sense of national identification. i don't think either one would have done a lot to repair. i think donald trump will do more to undermine it. the last thing i will say is, there are moments, for sure -- i worked in the white house seven years. i studied political history. i care about politics. presidents can make a difference, and politics can make a difference, because politics is an imperfect way of advancing justice. but i do wonder whether we are investing too much hope in politics. and its capacity to revive the moral impulses of the public. a lot of that has to go on in other spheres of life. and we are failing there. donald trump didn't appear de the way. he won the election because an awful lot of people pulled the lever for him. i think that was a mistake, but it is not as if the american people are doing swimmingly well in their own moral views and we can just blame politics for corrupting them. this is a synergistic process. this is a self-governing republic. you basically get the government that you want and desire. that's the way it works. i know there are qualifications to that, but that's roughly what you get. it seems to me that when you look up and see the problems with politics today, you can't -- you have to take into account that people themselves have some complicity in creating that, and it's not going to be politicians or presidents who are going to repair it. don: has america ever, in fact, center?ral we've made the assumption that it does. somebody wants to know, has it, in fact, ever had a moral center? zephyr: can i briefly reply to the prior question and to peter? i don't even know you are going to disagree with me on this, but i want to make a real distinction here. donald trump has been, i think, a real disaster and brought out the worst in a lot of people. and brought out, even in our best in moments of panic and it's not a good best. but, uh, small-p politics, where you are fighting about whether to have a windmill or a solar panel in town, can be quite vicious, of course. i don't want to romanticize it. but i think small-p politics, local politics, has a lot greater opportunity for bringing us together and forcing us to confront each other as real humans. and also -- so the focus on the -- the top-heavy focus on the presidency, as if the presidency is politics, or even as if what is happening in congress is politics as opposed to what is happening locally is politics, is a problem for a bunch of reasons. one is that i think we got lazy after the wall came down, thinking that democracy could kind of work with people just being hedonists in their private life. and it can't. it actually does take a lot of work. that's where your aristotle out.d you there is no better training for commenting thoughtfully on national politics than getting involved in local politics. so, local politics has all of these salutary functions. either.an bag, it's not like you're going to end up loving your neighbor. you may end up hating your neighbor more for a little while, but at least it will force you to see how and important it is, instead of lazily getting angry at others who are doing a bad job. john: just a quick comment. my friends know i am not reluctant to criticize the democratic party, but if hillary clinton were elected president, we'd have a very different health care debate, a much better one. we would have a completely different tax bill. and we would have a very different budget. and we would not have congressional hearings about what can be done to stop the president from going nuclear without someone else being involved. [applause] i share the pro-life cause, the shift among the clintons and others to satisfy the extremes on this debate has been extremely unfortunate substantively, morally, and politically. but, there would have been a way to lock paul ryan and hillary clinton in a room and come up with a proposal to do something about poverty in this son -- in this country that could have been an example of bipartisan cooperation. we not only lost that opportunity, we blew it up, and it's going in the wrong direction. zephyr: talking about a moral center, talking like it is a singular center that is all encompassing, i don't think we have had that. centers of gravity can move in a positive direction. we saw that in the civil rights era, over the last few years when it comes to lgbt individuals, gay marriage. the center of gravity in our country shifted in the direction of inclusion, respect. i think we are also seeing a generational shift in gravity. one of the things i most -- i am most hopeful about its young they have a broader perspective. they are more conscientious. toy know how to relate people from different backgrounds. >> they are not voting. suzanne: they need to vote in higher numbers. zephyr is right about what mobilizes people. it's local. they have to be able to touch it, see it, relate to it to understand why it matters in their daily lives. this new democratic movement that has arisen is very exciting. it is a movement of young people, it is dispersed, happening across the country, politically oriented, digital. i think that is exciting. there's a lot of potential. there is a moral center of gravity. it can move in positive directions, and we shouldn't lose hope in it. don: this is somewhat related to the question about if hillary had won, and it's a personal thing with me. has the republican party become the preserve of people who don't accept the fundamental american proposition that all men are created equal? [applause] don: has that become the case? i'm sorry. it strikes me that the republican party has become the captive of people who do not accept the fundamental american proposition that all men are created equal. all people. [applause] don: thank you. and i just want to know how panelists react to that. peter: let me go ahead, as the republican here. [laughter] peter: you know, i don't -- in part, i'm conflicted. because i spent so much of my time over the last two years criticizing the republican party, but i'm going to rise in defense there. let me begin by saying some, which is, i actually think that critique is part of what the problem of our politics is. it's a complicated question. the idea that the republican party or the millions and millions of people in this country who are republicans have given up on the central proposition of this country, which is the equality of all people -- i just don't think is fair. i think part of it is when people, whether your liberal or conservative, it's not simply a difference of policy, but it's a difference of morality. one of the things we've seen happen in american politics is the idea that not simply you are wrong, but that the people that disagree with you are wicked or morally defective. there are people out there -- i know it's maybe a memo to the people at fordham that are republicans and they are good and decent people. they are conservative and they have a different point of view. and a lot of them voted for donald trump. i think that was terrible. not a majority, by the way, in the primary. and he was elected by the american people itself. and there were real grievances these people had. and there are people who had a conservative point of view that felt like hillary clinton was going to advance policies that were wrong. i understand a lot of people disagree with it, but this was not out of a kind of maliciousness. so, the idea that republicans have given up on the proposition that all people are created equal, i don't think is fair. the difficulty in politics is when you try and take these principles and get into particular policy debates about it. i'll give you an example of one that has been for a lot of years, during the 1990's. republicans were championing welfare reform. liberals and democrats were against it. there were people saying, if you were advancing the welfare reform that republicans wanted, it would lead to widescale inhumanity and millions and millions of people would be left on the street in the cold. and it would be like a dickens novel. and that they were cruel and they didn't care about the poor. actually, some of us argued for welfare reform -- the evidence, we can go into it, was that welfare reform did a tremendous amount of good, not just in getting people off the rolls, but the people who were on welfare and for the poor themselves, and bill clinton eventually signed that. that was an honest disagreement about practical ramifications of policy. it didn't mean people who were in favor of welfare reform didn't care about the poor, and it didn't mean the people who were against it were idiots or didn't believe in individual responsibility. public policy is difficult and complicated. all of us come to these things with different histories and different predilections. one of the things we are missing is the capacity to listen to other people and to hear a point of view. i want to end with one story which may bear on this. i said earlier in my remarks about the importance of debate and and about debate not to prove one side is more in the -- one side is morally superior to the other, but to try to help us in large our understanding of truth. c.s. lewis, in his biography "surprised by joy," had what he referred to as first friends and second friends. your first friend is your alter ego. it is the person that, when you start the sentence, they can complete the sentence. they see the world the same way you do. lewis described it as "shoulder to shoulder." we all need that. we all long for it, we have to have it. there was the second friend, in his case it was owen. lewis said a second friend is a person who reads all the same books you do and draws all the wrong conclusions. [laughter] peter: he said, you know, owen and i would go hammer and tong, late into the night, debating all these issues. here's the punchline. lewis and barfield treasured each other because of their differences, because of deep differences. because they felt like, in that dialogue, in that debate, they were able to see the truth of things better together than they were individually, which goes to a very deep, i think conservative and christian notion, which is epistemological modesty. it's the sense that no matter how right we might be on any particular issue, none of us has a full apprehension of the truth and we need other people to help us to see it. and we need other people who have different points of view than us. and we have actually got to not just hear them to respond to them, but we have to listen to their experience. don: thank you, peter. [applause] suzanne: briefly, i think, you know, we are not necessarily all talking about the same thing when we talk about equality. i think that's one of the reasons why this debate becomes so pitched. i think there is a different conception of what equality really means within those in the republican party who would say that i am a proponent of equality. maybe equality in a formal sense, that, for example, opposing affirmative action because that's, in some minds, a form of unequal treatment or preferential treatment that is unjustified. to treat everybody absolutely equally is without affirmative action. whereas others focus on equality of opportunity and equality of results. there are arguments for a friend -- affirmative action. four another piece of it is how much of a priority is achieving a more equal society. that's where we are seeing republicans right now fall dramatically short. this tax reform proposal would be devastating in terms of intensifying income inequality and deprivation in this country, denying all kinds of opportunity and programs that people have that people have that give them just basic standard of living. points that have been made about the tax credit, same with health care. the equality of health care outcomes would be grievously set back if current republican proposals were brought forward. i think that the tolerance of racism and advancing racist ideas out of the white house and, really, we have become accustomed to -- i don't know if anyone spoke out today about those videos, but we have seen so many other incidents where it is just radio silence in calling that out. i think you have to own up to that reality. [applause] don: i'm not supposed to be participating here, but i just have to clarify one thing. i share your view, peter, about not labeling people as hopelessly immoral, etc. but i see a huge difference between the welfare reform debate in the 1990's, for example, which is about a substantive issue, and what happened last year with a man who, um, began his rise doing the most cynical possible thing, the birther business. and everything about that campaign screamed, um, dishonesty and lack of belief in the notion that all men -- all people are created equal. everything about it screamed that. and, um, and -- the party allowed itself to be enthralled to this man. something radical has changed with with the republican party. on that point, i have probably written that more publicly than anybody, so i wouldn't disagree with you on that point about trump. like the republicans and americans who voted for him, it was not as if it was a state secret. people knew what they were voting for. i think that is in a very different category than the debate about health care or the tax bill. i can name you -- i don't want to get into a health care debate that if you went to the enterprise institute or the ethics and policy center, they would make a much different conservative case for health care reform and they would argue that i think it is more humane. trumpith this stuff with and the racism and that whole collection of sort of nietzsche nietzschean- ethics, i think it is horrible. the republicans that support him, i think there's a range in there. some are reluctant supporters in some are enthusiastic supporters. i'm happy to say that i am deeply discouraged by what the party did and by what is now represented in donald trump. i'm not sure how much longer i'm going to hang around either. if i come to the conclusion that this is not an ugly parenthesis, that this is the rejection -- the trajectory of things to come, that this is the heart of the republican party represented steve bannon and stephen miller, i will leave that train soon. from myit is too early position to say this is done. i hope that more people who have a different view of what the party of lincoln should be and what conservatism is will fight for it. but i don't know that people who have my view will prevail. i don't know that by any means at all. there is a way that trump has of the ugliest instincts and the darkest impulses of people, which is horrifying. it can't be denied. it also willing to say that was much wider spread than i imagined. i may be suffering from my own -- i may have been suffering from my own confirmation bias, i do not know. but if you had asked me five or 10 years ago if this was what the republican party represents or if it would produce donald trump as the nominee, i would've said, that is not the republican party that i know and those are not the republicans i know. that party produced him and i think it's a travesty. >> my uncle was a republican leader of the minnesota senate and the author of the civil rights bill in the 1960's. we need two political parties committed to equal opportunity. there used to be a big problem and the democratic party, and now there is a big one in the republican party. i think there is something worse than sincerely believing that people are not equal, and that is cynically using that belief to gain power. it is athink coincidence that every time -- i don't think it is accidental that every time trump is in trouble, he tweets about black football players, or muslim terrorists, or whomever. there is a little bit of stockholm syndrome going on here. that once trump took over the republican party, a lot of people in the republican party are not afraid of trump, they are afraid of trump voters. that is what paralyzes them. we need a sanity caucus in both parties. the numbers are very small. it is really important for people who are republicans to stay republicans and fight for the soul of their party. because if we end up with this as the base of the republican party, it will not only do damage to that party, but it will do horrible damage to the country. >> donald trump right now is doing ongoing damage by calling on -- the people in the party i have the least patience for, the people who cynically will do anything, to serve in their donor masters, to get the tax legislation they want done, and therefore, not to stand up and be a moral voice against donald trump. populace, i think it is a lot more complicated, and people carry with them lots of different impulses, some of which are very bigoted, and others which are extremely egalitarian. i am committed to being generous with people, with the public, and saying, ok, you have a bigoted impulse once, we are going to continue as a country to insist unappealing to your generous impulse, and will not forever write you off, even if we find that troubling, you were not a troubling person for that. >> probably not helpful to call them deplorable. [laughter] don: in order to bring back belief in our government, how important is it to teach civics in our schools? [applause] suzanne: it ties in to the point about news literacy, the issues we do a lot of work on at penn america is free speech on campus. we have done a lot of studies and analysis, whether it is in a safe spaces or trigger warnings, dis-invitations to speakers, or what to do with richard spencer or milo kinopolis wants to come to campus. one of the things we have learned is that we are at risk of raising a generation of young people who are alienated the protections of free speech -- alienating a generation from the protections of the first amendment. i was having a discussion with a young woman, and we had floyd abrams, the renowned first amendment lawyer, and she said, the first amendment wasn't written for me. she means that her forbearers, at the time the amendment was passed, were treated as two-thirds of a person at the time. and the ways she sees the first amendment being invoked on campus is to protect racial slurs and speech she considers offensive and marginalizing to her group. she is deeply alienated from it. what is missing is the understanding of how this protections have been at the heart of what made the civil rights movement and every other social movement in this country and around the world possible. it protects the right to protest, speak up, for her to mount the kind of leadership she did on campus. there is a huge gap that really exposes us as a society, and is part of the reason we are seeing these principles eroded. i don't think it is going back to old-fashioned civics. i think we need to think hard about how to make these principles and values relevant to a rising generation. [applause] zephyr: i talked civics this summer. we always talk about how we need more civics in schools. think about what it is we are talking about teaching. it is not that easy. yes, of course we need to teach civics in schools. there's something much more fundamental. teaching civics in schools is secondary. seeing schools as a place where we actually develop citizens, that is essential. said, left and right, schools are for creating workers, and we're going to justify everything, even arts, in terms of how they enable you. this is the language and rhetoric we use for public education. if we see civics as an add-on to a worker creation tool, as opposed to a citizen creation tool with some nice features, those are two totally different views of education. [applause] don: i have to add one personal note. the last six years of my working life, i have been teaching at a jesuit university in chicago. pretty good students, but i was astonished at the abysmal level journalismowledge students brought to their work. they didn't know basic things, like how laws get made, the kind of stuff i thought children learned in high school. come to find out, two years ago, the state of illinois instated a requirement for civics in high schools. a lot of states in this country do not require civics education, and i always thought that part of the reason for public schools was to teach citizens. we don't have that agreement, it seems. how are social media sites like facebook not considered broadcasters? broadcasters need licenses, so they must fact check because they serve a public purpose. -- i can read -- i can't read the last part. if you could -- zephyr: social media sites want to be seen as totally neutral platforms that have no editorial control, and therefore cannot be sued or held accountable for anything on them. they also want the capacity to use algorithms, which doesn't change the fact that it manipulates the source of what we have. it is a really new public policy challenge, and they are trying to get the protection of being seen as neutral while themselves not being neutral. my own view is that it is actually quite dangerous -- it is very important to deal with the real pathologies information, but very dangerous for us to be begging these platform monopolists to be our censors. we should go more in the direction of disagreement with the person who asked the question, more in demanding neutrality of these platforms, instead of asking them to censor for us. don: does that address it? what is the impact of citizens united on our moral center, on our republic going forward? there has been some discussion of citizens united. suzanne: we talked a little bit before about the role of philanthropy. i think the role of money in politics is a separate thing. it is one of the forces i do think is significantly to blame for what we are talking about is -- talking about, the sense of disempowerment and disenfranchisement of individuals, and we need campaign finance reform that is going to put more ordinary citizens into more of a central role, where they feel a sense of agency that they can actually participate. we know how empowering that is, where you can get involved, have some influence with all the limits blown out, corporate money playing such a predominant role. i think that withers away and is why we see such resentment, why people felt they were willing to resort to anything to see a change. john: i think this is contradictory. it struck me that neither donald trump nor bernie sanders had money problems. they did not depend on take -- on big givers. money is not everything. jeb bush had more money, and i don't know what he is doing, but he's doing it with a lot of energy, i'm sure. lot is think it hurts a in congress. one of the untold stories of this period is the rise of the religious middle. there have been stories about the problems of the religious right. peter has been a profile in courage with others in calling out his evangelical associate and brothers. there has been stories about the rise of the religious left. the most surprising thing has been the u.s. conference of catholic bishops, the national association of evangelicals, a host of mainstream christian groups that have organized into something called the circle of protection, who have worked together and worked successfully and effectively to help defeat the healthcare bill. they're working tonight to try and defeat the tax bill, who have been working for years with remarkable success to protect programs for the poor and the budget. yet, i bet there isn't anybody read thatom who has the mainstream religious community, including some of its conservative voices, the national association of evangelicals, what the bishops conference has done consistently , they opposed the repeal of the healthcare bill they are opposed in the first place because it would lead to people losing their healthcare. on immigration, who was on the front lines but the churches? frankly, it is hard to get in the congressional offices these days. you used to have the credibility of what you believed and what you did back home, and you could get in to see a member. it is really hard to get in to see members for two reasons. one, sometimes they don't want to talk to you. having a republican say why daca kids should be deported is a difficult conversation. other times, they are too busy raising money or talking to people who give them money. i think that is where it hurts. there is some hope in that one thing trump has done is united the religious community in a principled defense of the poor and the vulnerable. but it runs through the power of the entrenched interests in washington. i can say as someone who ran last time, there was about $18 million spent in my race. a congressional race, not a senate race. this is only six years after citizens united. the majority of that money was raised neither by myself, nor by my opponent and spent neither by myself nor by my opponent. but, by super pac's, most notably, robert mercer, and a singer, and aer, few others who gave over $500,000 each. in 2016, people focused on the presidential and said super pac's didn't matter. donald trump is partly a result of the cynicism that came out of citizens united, people's radical disconnection that had already been happening, but also that money and politics mattered enormously in 2016. many republican congressmembers are now running as if the next election will be decided with enormous amounts of outside money. what this does, as we are at sort of a catholic event but talking about ourselves as moral agents, is that it removes a lot of moral agency from a lot of places where moral discussion used to take place. you see congress members as beggars, not as moral agents themselves, but really serving as courtiers. that really degrades our politics in lots of ways as well. [applause] don: thank you all for being here, for your wisdom. it has been a delight to listen to you. we look forward to seeing you on c-span. [applause] >> let me join don in thanking everyone. this was really insightful. we had some amazing, wonderful comments and insights. i daresay, inspiring. this is the kind of thing that models what we need to do if we are to truly recover. -- recover that moral center that i believe is out there, robert kennedy said, it is a tiny ripple of hope. please join me again in thanking our panelists and moderator. [applause] >> and thank you all for supporting the center on religion and culture. have a great holiday and we will be back again february 13, where we will pick up this thread with another great panel discussion, 50 years after robert bellow's famous essay on civil religion, we will have a panel "civil religion: road to redemption, or american heresy?" maybe the things that once united us can again provide a way forward. have a great evening. thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] >> nice to be with you. >> all this week, washington journal is featuring authors of key books published during the year. join us for our live conversation with authors about their possible books. tuesday morning, ken stern with "republicans like me: how i left the liberal bubble and learned to love the right." then, angela davis with her book, "policing the black man." 729, author and friday, the -- fight for ciber's privacy. on saturday, december 30, jessica bruder with her book, "surviving america in the 21st century." then, how the white house chiefs of staff to find every presidency. authors series all this week on c-span, c-span.org, and c-span radio app are in -- radio. created79, c-span was as a public service by america's public television companies and is brought to you today by your cable and satellite provider. c-span's student cam. video editing and slices for constitutional documentaries. this group showed us how it's done. two stellar interviews in one day and they ask some stellar questions about immigration reform and the dream act. we are asking students to choose a provision of the constitution and create a video showing why it's important. it is open to all middle school and high school students grades six through 12. $100,000 in cash prizes will be awarded. a grand prize will go to the student or team with the best overall entry. get contest details on our website at studentcam.org. professors cornell west and alan dershowitz debated the israel-palestine conflict, specifically whether the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement will and the conflict. the political center in dallas hosted this hour and 10 minute event. [applause] >> good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here. it is my privilege to moderate this evening's event. a few housekeeping notes, you saw signs on the door when you came in. we are being recorded by c-span. they will be occasionally panning the audience. if there is anybody who does not want to be seen on c-span for whatever reason please go over to the con room, you can see and hear the entire program there. our contractual agreement with our guest requires that no one record either audio or visual of these debates. please respect that.

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