Shell take your questions tomorrow from noon to 3 p. M. Eastern on booktv. On after words, Washington Post columnist e. J. Dionne talks to Juan Williams about washington politics. Also this weekend, sonya shaw reports on the spread of Infectious Diseases over the past 50 years. A report of teaching in a new York City Public High School and booktv visits anaheim, california, to tour the citys literary sites and talk to local authors. For a complete television schedule, booktv. Org. Booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors, television for serious readers. [inaudible conversations] good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming out tonight. My name is candace, i work with some of the events here at the store, and on behalf of the owners and the rest of the staff, thanks for coming out, and welcome to politics and prose. Right now i just have a few logistics to go over. If you could turn off your cell phones or put them on vibrate so that it doesnt disrupt our time here. We are recording this event this evening, and so any interruptions will be remembered. [laughter] the way its going to work is this will be about an hourlong presentation with half the time given to our speaker and the other half given to your questions with. We have one microphone on the side here. If when you have a question you could go up to it, use the microphone so we can all hear and it can, again, be caught on the recording. Afterwards if you wouldnt mind folding up your chair and setting them against the shelves, and then well have a signing immediately following the presentation just going down the aisles here. And now it is my pleasure to welcome Stephen Prothero to politics prose. We at politics prose really love having events like this where we can open up a discussion about things that are perhaps not often talked about or are considered taboo topics, religion and politics. This evening were going to talk about both of those things. Stephens new book is titled why liberals win the culture wars even when they lose elections. And in it he lays out for the reasons this claim which, by the way, is generally acknowledged by conservatives to be true. Taking in the Political Climate today, the very polarized nature of it and the conservative grip on congress with both houses controlled by republicans, one has to wonder sometimes at the Progressive Social strides that have been made in the recent years. In his new book, prothero offers a comprehensive look at the flashpoints of cultural and religious divides in our nations history to demonstrate that our Current Situation is notten precedented. Ultimately unprecedented. Ultimately, it demonstrates that grappling with divisions have been integral to the shaping of what it means to be an american. With a ph. D. In the study of religion from harvard and currently a professor of religion at Boston University, Stephen Prothero has in order other books, two wellknown titles of which are god is not country and religious literacy. Hes appeared on npr, cnn, nbc, and hes also been on shows such as the daily show with jon stewart and the colbert report of Stephen Colbert which are no longer shows, but Everybody Knows them. So please help me in welcoming Stephen Prothero to politics prose. [applause] thank you all foring. Im glad to know that politic is the a taboo subject here in town, and ill be breaking that taboo. [laughter] but its lovely to be back in washington d. C. This is where i had my first job after college which was as a doorman at the hotel in ammon, new hampshire, i think its called the renaissance hotel. But let me start, though, with that great question from admiral stockdale at the Vice President ial debate of 1992. You know, why am i here . [laughter] and more to the point, why are you here . [laughter] havent you heard that the culture wars are over . Just months after pat buchanan warned delegates at the 1992 Republican National convention that a culture war was being waged for the soul of america, neoconservative columnist irving crystal remarked, i regret to inform pat buchanan that those wars are over and the left has won. In 1999 7 New York Times reporter janny scott said the term culture wars has become as anachronistic as a leisure suit. Some of you will remember that reference. [laughter] cultural wars had arrived, she said, at appomattox. More recently in a 2015 book, intellectual historian Andrew Hartman wrote that culture wars are history. The logic of the culture wars has been exhausted. The metaphor has run its course. A week ago i was in spain visiting my daughter, and whenever anyone heard that i was from the United States, they asked me about donald trump. [laughter] or, as one man called him, el loco. [laughter] why is a businessman so obsessed with mention cans, muslim mexicans, muslims and menstruation . Or to put it more broadly, why in the midst of runaway economic inequality and the threat of Global Warming are americans so obsessed with immigration and islam and abortion and homosexuality . Why is the 2016 president ial election shaping up as a culture wars election . This book started a few years ago during the ground zero mosque controversy, this controversy about whether a muslim gentleman who owned a skyscraper near ground zero could retrofit it to become an islamic cultural center. And i was sort of naively and foolishly surprised and disappointed that mainstream political figures on the right were somehow opposed to this project when it seemed to me that two bedrock principles of conservativism religious liberty and private Property Rights were arguing very forcefully for his ability to do just what he wanted with the building. And so i started to look back on the history of these sorts of battles in this case, battle over islam and i looked back at what i now call the contemporary cultural wars, the culture wars of the 70s, 80s and 90s, things like abortion and homosexuality. And then, historian that i am, i decided i had to look back farther still to make sense of the ground zero mosque controversy. And thats how this book came about, and thats when i discovered one of the arguments of my book which is that the culture wars are perennial in American History, as american, in fact, as apple pie. Early americans were united in their hatred of the british and their love of George Washington. But after washingtons farewell address of 1796, an address we might remember when he warned us about the mischief of spirit of political parties, after that date americans turned on each other in a series of culture wars about the meanings and ends of their notso indivisible nation. Free thought, polygamy, homosexuality and the papacy in the saloon, americans denounced their fellow citizens as enemies of the state and also of god almighty. You might remember reagans culture war along with the moral majority against the moral relativism of the bad 60s, as he he called them. But these had an analog and a precursor in the attacks on the moral relativism of the roaring 20s. The 1928 election featured anticatholicism aimed at the new york governor, al smith. But that anticatholicism was a recycling of sorts of 19th century smears on catholics as traitors to to god and country alike. But the culture wars are not just enduring, theyre also expanding their footprint. In recent years the modus operandi of the culture wars has spread from cultural politics to politics in general. The term culture wars hinges on a distinction between cultural politics and ordinary politics where cultural politics is about religious and moral questions that stand on matters of absolute morality and biblical truth. So negotiation and compromise are difficult or maybe impossible, but ordinary politics is supposed to be the stuff of taxing and spending and horse trading. In recent years, as you may have noticed, this distinction has broken down. As moderates were purged from both major parties or left office disgusted of their own accord and as institutions that benefit from Political Polarization became more influential, those who were left behind fought life and death battles now with their socalled enemies over matters that used to be resolved unanimously and without debate. The outrage that had long been reserved for disputes over family values bled into debates over marginal tax rates and president ial appointments and the debt ceiling. This expansion of the footprint of the culture wars, call it the culture wars of everything, has made our politics each more polarized even more polarized and our politicians even more partisan. And so why liberals win is an effort by historian of american religions to make some sense of this. So first things first, what is a culture war . What do i mean by this term . As i see it, culture wars have four features. Theyre public disputes recorded in such sources as president ial speeches, the congressional record, popular magazines and newspapers. These are not just, you know, a private argument youre having over your dinner table, although they can extend there, of course. Second, these disputes extend beyond economic questions of taxing and spending to moral, cultural and religious concerns that are typically less amenable to negotiation and to compromise. Third, they give rise to larger questions about the meaning of america and who is and is not a true american. So the country or as its sometimes said the soul of the country is at stake in the culture wars. And last, theyre heated. Theyre fueled by rhetoric of war and driven by the conviction that ones enemies are somehow also enemies of the nation. So the term, in short, refers to angry, even violent public disputes that are simultaneously moral, religious and cultural and address the meaning of america. Thats what i mean by the term. So my book looks at five episodes. I could have picked a lot more episodes. I think there are more culture wars in the United States history than this, but i look at five episodes. The first is the election of 1800. And as weve had the last couple of president ial elections, a lot of people have said, boy, these are the ugliest elections in American History. The most vicious elections in American History. And, you know, this is one job historians have, you know . They always raise their finger and say, well, you know, there was an uglier one. [laughter] and the election of 1800 was that uglier one. It pitted john adams of the federalists against Thomas Jefferson of the democratic republicans as they were called at the time, and the backdrop, the bogeyman of the election was the french revolution sort of the way that the bogeyman of the contemporary culture war with is the 60s, what do you think about the 60s. Here the issue is what do you think about the french and the french revolution. This culture war included a battle on the house floor that started with a spit of tobacco into the eye of another congressperson, it led to the use of a hickory cane and fireplace tongs also on the floor of the house, and it happened at a time like our own in which all newspapers were partisan newspapers. Federalist paper called the jeffersonian, the very refuges and filth of society. A jeffersonian paper called adams blind, bald, crippled and toothless [laughter] it went on to say, it went on to call adams, and this is something, a putdown that, you know, makes you wish that donald trump was calling you low energy [laughter] in this putdown adams was called a hideous character which has neither the form and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman. [laughter] meanwhile, jefferson called federalists enemies of our constitution and their time in power a reign of witches. Alexander hamilton, some of you may have heard of him, hes the star of a musical [laughter] spoke of saving the United States from the fangs of jefferson. But the key issue was jeffersons religion. Was he, as a federalist opponent from massachusetts said, the great arch priest of infidelity, or was he as the connecticut current federalist newspaper said a believer in the quran . Obama was not the first president to be accused of being a secret muslim. [laughter] the second culture war in the book is anticatholicism of the early 19th, into the early 20th century. This chapter starts with the burning of the convent outside of boston in 1834, and it moves on to the philadelphia bible riots of 1844 in which dozens of people were killed. And here protestants labeled catholics moral villains, theological imposters and traitors to the nation. In other words, they had an ethical, a theological and a political critique of catholicism as a danger to community, to nation and to christianity. The third culture war i looked at was antimormonism which occurs in the United States both before and after the civil war. And this, this cultural crusade was initially a critique of the book of hour mono, which appeared mormon, which appeared in 1830 as a fake, and Joseph Mormon as a faker, someone who was a former golddigger who decided to dig up some fake gold plates and create a book that would make him rich. But it extended over time to questions of polygamy and theocracy in the utah territory. Mormons called their critics unamerican for warring on religious liberty and trampling the constitution. They defended polygamy on sociological and biblical grounds. If youve read the Old Testament has anyone here read the Old Testament . [laughter] a couple of you. Okay. You will find the Old Testament is in fave of polygamy. In favor of polygamy. So this was something that was pointed out by mormons. Another person, by the way, who was in favor of polygamy was martin luther. Some of you may have heard of him. He had something to do with the founding of protestantism. He was in favor of polygamy also on biblical grounds, because he had read the Old Testament and it seemed like god was in favor of polygamy there. [laughter] critics of mormonism said there was no constitutional cover for this form of fake religion as they saw it. The Latterday Saints Church was an enemy of the state. They were perpetrating treason against the government. And a total sub discretion of sub subversion of republicanism, an echo that we have in the contemporary debates about islam where the claim it isnt a religion at all, its a financial scheme or a political demonstration. This culture war against mormons involved all three branches of the federal government. Five president s delivered speeches against mormonism. The First Supreme Court opinion on religious liberty was delivered against mormonism by the Supreme Court. A governor issued an extermination order ordering the death of all mormons in his state, and a mob assassination killed the founder of the most successful new religious movement in American History, joseph smith. The fourth culture war in the book is the battle between wets and dry, the battle between drinkers and tee totallerses in the era of prohibition and reform, the 1920s and 1930s. Here the evangelist, billy sunday, who was principally famous as a former outfielder for the Chicago White sox when he would come to give his revivals, he would come running from the side of the stage and slide in behind the podium. [laughter] he was supposed to be the fastest base stealer in the major leagues before he quit his sporting and boozing and became an evangelist. He denounced prohibition as the mother of all sins. Carrie nation famously performed what she called her [inaudible] against saloons where she would go in with a hatchet and break up saloons and protest against drink. But this culture war was not just about booze with, it was a wider culture war about jazz, about organized crime, about the automobile, about sex and racial mixing in the speakeasies that emerged in the 20s and 30s. The core tension here, as i read it, was between diversity and homogeneity, between monoculturallists, people who affirmed a sort of centrifugal culture where they were holding onto a unified past, a vision of a unified nation, versus multiculturallists whose vision of culture was more centrifugal; that was, people who thrilled to the increasing diversity of the country. And the last culture war i look at are what i call the contemporary culture wars which started, as i read them, in the 1970s and are still going today. These began, i argue, with a 1978 irs tax ruling that decided that the segregation academies that emerged in the south after brown v. Board of education and particularly after the Civil Rights Act of 1965 were no longer able to claim taxexempt status because they were designed specifically to undermine a federal policy of educational desegregation. But the issue of the culture war is that this time quickly pivoted from this question of race and education to questions of gender and family. In other words, to abortion, to homosexuality and to defense of the patriarchal family with its breadwinner male. But they also shifted from this racial beginning to religion via accusations that the irs was discriminating against religion, that it was a vehicle of an unconstitutional attempt to prosthelytize for secular humanism. And in this way, the cultural conservatives including many evangelicals cleverly redefined themselves not as bigots, but as victims of bigotry. And here again we see two different understandings of american culture. Is there one sort of American Family or many . Does an artwork like the infamous artwork like andrew serrano, does it have one meaning or many meanings . Is the United States a christian nation or, in the words of president obamas first inaugural, a nation of christians and jews, hindus and muslims and nonbelievers . Is this a country in which only one race is at home, or is it in the words of Frederick Douglass a composite nation . So thats the form of the book. It looks at these five different episodes. Along the way it makes a few arguments, and i want to touch a little bit on these arguments, and then ill open it up to you all for fun and comments and easy questions. [laughter] the first, the first argument ive already mentioned is that culture wars recur throughout American History. In key compromises meant to smooth things over between the original states in the United States, the founders left unsettled key questions that would foment discord and even rebell onin decades rebellion in decades to come. One, as we know, was slavery, another was the relationship between church and state. And so americans have been engaging in the cultural equivalent of war at least since the elections of 1796 and 1800. New england puritans, the forebears from massachusetts where i live, likely played a role here by twisting god and governance tight and transforming their america into a land of moralists, ever on the lookout for demons in their ranks. But whatever culture wars were prosecuted in the colonies were muted in the Early National period until, as i said earlier, George Washington exited the stage and we were free to start going at each other tooth and claw. So how did these culture wars proceed . My second argument is that culture wars are conservative projects. And here i want to realize a little bit of the to read a little bit of the book, because i understand at book readings youre supposed to read a little bit [laughter] from the book. So instead of summarizing this argument, ill read a little bit from the introduction about this argument that culture wars are conservative prompts. So this projects. So this goes like this. Americas culture wars are conservative projects instigated and waged disproportionately by conservatives anxious about the loss of old orders and the emergence of new ones. What liberals see as progress, they see as loss, and theyre willing to fight to defend what is already passing away. Culture wars are battles between conservatives and liberals over conflicting cultural, moral and religious goods. But at a deeper level, they are conservative dramas in which liberals are merely props. If liberals werent there, conservatives would have to invent them, and truth be told, they often do. [laughter] theres much debate about whether americas recent culture wars began on the left or the right, almost as much debate as there about what the terms mean. Liberals argue over the 60s movement, the new left lobbed the first shots in the culture wars this much argument is also. This argument is a table among conservatives, pushing for multiculturalism in universities or agitating for feminism or black power. Conservatives are merely defending their turf. I object to the suggestion which i see everywhere that conservative christians started the culture wars, writes fantasy author lars walker. Say what you like, we are the indians, youre the settlers. A longer view reveals that conservatives typically fire the first shots in our culture wars. Anticatholicism and antimormonism were not backlash movements against revolutions from the left, he were rightwing reactions to catholic immigration and the invention of mormonism. And to the moral, theological, social and economic threats those communities posed to protestant power. Similarly, the cultural wars were conservative responses to the rise of the saloon, to mixed drinks and the culturallism brought on by rapid immigration. Many now view the culture of victimhood on the right in bill oreillys war on the socalled war on christmas can, for example, as a pale imitation of the victimhood culture of leftwing identity politics. But this tradition goes back much further to protestants who saw themselves as victims of deism in 1800s, of catholicism in the 1830s and 40s and of mormonism before and after the civil war. Those who insist that the contemporary culture wars started on the left can point to angry radicals, black power advocates are one with example who wanted to fundamentally transform american society, and in so doing, resorted to a discourse of war. But they missed this crucial fact. Cultural conservatives do not need a revolution to go to war. All they need is enough change to activate the anxiety that their world is passing away. This anxiety can be activated by a cultural revolution, but immigration can also do the trick or a Supreme Court opinion or a talk show host. In the response of the culture wars, conservatives almost issue the call; liberals do the responding. As cultural projects, culture wars are not just instigated by the right, however, theyre also waged disproportionately by the right. The metaphor of war conjures up two relatively equal sides, blue coats and red coats perhaps, advancing on each other in relatively equal numbers. But most of the shots in the concords and lexingtons of our culture wars were fired by those who had the most to lose as the nation opened its borders to irish and italian catholics and its arms to gays and lesbians. To be sure, the left responded in each case and provoked skirmishes of its own. But if you are looking for the infatuation with violence, both real and imagined, that characterizes the culture wars, you are going to find it more often and more floridly on the right. It is the right that is enamored of the rhetoric of war. Culture war is its invention and its signature mode of politics. From the french revolution forward, the rhetoric of cultural decline is the most characteristic and consistent way conservatives have expressed their conservativism. So it should not be surprising that the annals of anxiety that give voice to americas culture wars are weighted heavily toward thinkers on the right. And then, lets see, just one more paragraph here. Many have attempted to reduce modern conservativism to antie intellectualism. But modern conservativism has at it heart an idea. That idea is not states rights or individual liberty or free markets or limited government or federalism. Over the course of American History, conservatives have argued for and against all these principles. The big idea behind modern conservativism is this a form of culture is passing away, and it is worth fighting to revive it. What activates this idea, transforming it into alaska, is a feel into action, is a feeling. This feeling is akin to nostalgia, but it runs deeper and is more fierce. As americas first conservatives looked across the atlantic to paris, they saw the french revolution not as a victory of equality over hierarchy, but as a victory of chaos over order. They feared their own reign of terror, so they fought to restore their beloved past. They turned fellow citizens who supported the french into end enemies, and they labored to banish those enemies from the American Family. Animated by this narrative of loss and restoration, modern american conservativism has elective affinities with modern evangelicalism which also offers meaning amidst uncertainty via narratives of losses and restoration, of lost souls at revivals and of a Christian America stolen away by secularists. Modern conservativism has elective affinities with biblical narratives too. As adam and eve look over their shoulders on their expulsion from eden, as they mourn their loss and plot its reversal, they become the first keys. [laughter] the first conservatives. [laughter] so thats the argument that culture wars are conservative projects. But culture wars, and this is another argument of the book, are won by pluralists and multiculturallists on the left. Culture wars may be conservative initiatives, but in the end gays and lesbians get marriage, a papist and an infidel get the white house. In every case those who declared war on jefferson or catholics or mormons of the sins of the 20s or the abominations of the 60s go down to defeat. By the way, i did not know this when i started the book. I figured this out, and i was surprised by it as i was researching. I thought that conservatives were winning the culture wars because i live in massachusetts, and that thats what all my liberal friends tell me. [laughter] but thats not how it goes. So theres an obvious paradox here. Culture wars are conservative projects, but theyre won by liberals. How can this be . Well, theres philosophical reasons you can invoke because, for example, the constitutional principle of liberty would seem to be on the side of the left. There are also practical ones pause the nation is becoming because the nation is becoming more catholic or more brown as these stories are up folding. But the most Important Reasons liberals win, as i understand it, is because their opponents attach themselves from the start to lost causes. In culture wars from 1800 to the 21st century, conservatives picked fights they were already losing. And once any given fight was over, surprisingly, they had lost. Conservatives mobilized against catholics only when it was becoming clear that the catholic population was growing the too quickly to remain on the margins. They attacked gay marriage only when attitudes toward homosexuality were gravitating toward acceptance of homosexuality. In this respect culture wars are, to quote from Washington Post columnist michael gerson, a revolt from reality, a cry against what is coming around the next corner. This strategy of prosecuting lost causes makes no sense if the goal is to win. But that is not the goal of culture warriors. Their goal is to gain political power by preaching a gospel of salvation to the fallen and the lost, by demonstrationing just demonstrating just how far america has descended and by promising to restore forms of life now threatened with extinction. The strategy is to speak of losing just enough to keep the base perpetually girded for battle but not so much as to demoralize them. In this way, the culture wars are perpetually rising from the dead. Rather than being killed by any given defeat, conservative culture warriors seem to be revitalized by that defeat. A loss on man man marriage, as Stephen Colbert calls it, only underscores the conviction that the nation is going to hell and stiffens the resolve to fight a new enemy in the name of a new cause. To conclude, i see in American History a culture wars cycle that propels the nation from one cultural conflict to the next. The cycle begins on the right with conservatives anxious about some kind of cultural change that they are experiencing as a loss. This anxiety is different in each case. During the election of 1800s, federalists were anxious about the country falling into french revolutionstyle chaos. During the anticatholic culture war, property stabilities were anxious about the ways protestants were anxious about the way that immigrants were remaking their society. The anxiety catalyzing the antimormon culture war concerns the breakdown of family values as represented by polygamy. The drama of prohibition and repeal is about alcohol, of course, but it is activated by an anxiety about the blooming, buzzing confusion of modern life. And in the contemporary culture wars, conservatives give voice to their anxieties about the browning of our population and with it the demise of white, christian, patriarchal america. In the space of each of these anxieties, conservatives launch an attack blaming their political opponents for the loss they are experiencing and for threatening the health and welfare of the nation. After this first ten in the culture first step in the culture wars cycle, i dont know why im telling you all this because whats there left in the book . [laughter] i should just leave, like, a cliffhanger, like theres other steps in the cycle. [laughter] so the next step is some sort of counterattack from the left, some kind of response from the left. Then, next comes some sort of accommodation. We tend to think of culture wars as no negotiation, no surrender, no negotiation kinds of stances, and and theres a lot of truth to that, but typically the way these are resolved is through some accommodation. For example, the Catholic Church softens its stance on its refusal to acknowledge the separation of church and state, mormons give up on polygamy. Some sort of accommodation is usually involved. And in the contemporary culture wars, conservatives lost on Tax Exemptions for segregation academies, they lost on clintons impeachment, they lost on school prayer, they lost in their efforts to kill the National Endowment for the arts, they lost on the counterculture which became culture, they lost on marijuana, they lost on casual sex, they lost on the traditional family, they lost on samesex marriage. But liberals did not just win the contemporary culture wars. All the culture wars explored in my book went their way. The federalists lost, the anticatholics lost, the antimormons lost and prohibition was repealed. So this may all sound like, it may all sound like gloom and doom, that were sort of locked in this perpetual culture war cycle. If youre a liberal, it may sound like good news, right . If youre a conservative, it may also sound like good news because one of the tenets of cultural conservativism is precisely that the liberals are taking over the country, and we need to fight with them. But i do see a little hope in the story that i tell in the book. One piece of it, for me at least, comes from the fact that individual culture wars actually do come to an end. The culture wars, as a mode of politics, seem to be perennial. Individual culture wars, individual cultural battles we might call them, do get resolved. And when they end, the conflict typically leads to some sort of consensus, and that consensus almost always involves some greater inclusiveness in our understanding of what america is and who are real americans. We no longer question whether catholics or mormons can be good americans. The fight over prohibition is over. Gay marriage is now settled lawment if we look law. If we look through the lens of this culture war cycle at the battle against muslims being waged by republican president ial hopefuls in this election cycle, it is reasonable to expect that this too shall pass. Cultural conservatives will continue to rage over the threats posed by islam to the american way of life, but eventually these populations will become large enough, and the american principle of liberty will resound loud enough, and muslimamericans will be welcomed into the American Family as were protestants and catholics and mormons, at least thats my hope and my predictionment of prediction. Of course, this path is typically pockmarked with poisonous partisanship, with hateful language and sometimes with lethal violence. Still, to look at our culture wars over the long term is to see not only how americans have been divided, but also how they have eventually agreed, however grudgingly, to define their nation in increasingly inclusive terms. Its no longer liberal to include mormons as fellow citizens. That sort of toleration is now an american value. And soon it will be simply american to embrace gays and lesbians as our neighbors and friends. And the time may not be too far off when americans will also agree with my spanish friends that efforts to exclude our muslim laborers from the American Family is simply loco. So those are my comments, thank you very much. And we have time for questions up here at the fancy microphone, right . Right here to my left. [applause] thank you. [applause] one of the, an issue that conservatives are quite anxious about right now is Climate Change, and it does threaten it threatens, i guess, to such an extent that some conservatives have, just dont talk about it or deny it. And im wondering if you can just extend that to where we are now with liberal and president and 190 nations. Like, where do you see that, you know, how do you see that playing out . Okay, thank you. Well, i know in when the International Summit on Climate Change came up, the main argument that republican president ial hopefuls gave was that that was a waste of time. Why are we going to talk about this nonissue when we had more important things like terror at home to deal with . So it seems to me that, at least my perception is that the conservatives as represented by the Republican Party president ial hopefuls are ignoring the issue and that they dont, they dont really see any good to be gained from talking about it. You know, for me, the way i understand the Climate Change question, is it seems to me a matter of science rather than a matter of politics. But one negative effect of the Political Polarization that has come as a result of the culture wars is this what the reverend Stephen Colbert refers to as truthness, right in it used to be that we would all agree on matters of, you know, questions of science and truth, and then we would debate politically what to do about them. But the culture wars have pushed back so far into our conversations that now, you know, its legitimate to, you know, have a Major Political party and a major western power that doesnt acknowledge the fact of humaninduced Climate Change. Were the only country, you know, in western civilization that does that. So i guess thats how i would connect it to the issues tonight. Thank you. Hi. Hi, how are you. Good. Very interesting. Do culture wars whats the relationship between culture wars and institutions, established institutions . Do they strengthen them or do they deteriorate them in your opinion . I think it depends on the institution. I mean, i think one source of the power of culture wars is we now have institutions that benefit from them, right . So i think both fox and msnbc benefit, fox news, benefit from the culture wars, right . Because you get a culture battle going like the ground zero mosque controversy, right, or Donald Trumps going to build, you know, the wall or even donald trump himself, and that can just draw people in, you know, into your news station to watch your news programs. So i think you do have institutions that are dedicated to the culture wars. Now, we also have an institution right now thats really worried about the culture wars, and thats called the Republican Party, right . So the Republican Party is in a little of a pickle because, you know, republicans have benefited at the local and state level and even at the primary level from playing the culture wars card ever since ronald reagan. And its become a kind of a reflex. But as the country has changed or as the demographics have changed particularly with regard to the participation of africanamericans in our politics and of latinos and hispanics, thats become, thats become more problematic. So you had, you know, a couple years ago you had so many Republican Party leaders saying, hey, you know, we need to get out in front on the immigration question, we need to figure out a path to citizenship, etc. But now that were in this election cycle, thats when this stuff pops up. So the ground zero mosque stuff was also popping up in elections. So the antiislamic pushes, usually they come every four years. They dont just come randomly, they come every four years when republicans are running, you know, in the primaries, because theyre useful at that level. So i think, yeah, its important with any of these cultural questions to look at kind of who benefits, what individuals, what institutions, and i think one of the really interesting institutions to look at now is the Republican Party and to see how its going to be deal with the rise of donald trump and even with the rise of ted cruz and with the fact of this culture wars election where so many of the messages that are being put out there in the debates are messages that the Republican Party doesnt actually want to go forward. And its really fascinating. Those of you who live in washington with access, you know, to the Washington Post and some of the conservative columnists who write out of this town, its really interesting to see them just each column by george wills gets more and more mad at trump, you know . [laughter] and really there is this palpable sense that initially i think it was a sense that the party was in danger of splitting. I think now the palpable sense is that the partys in danger of coming to an end. And i dont think that thats purely apocalyptic. Im working on an oped piece myself where i talk about this possibility. One way that culture wars end in American History is the party who prosecuted them just goes out of his because it pushes so hard at a lost cause that is so clearly addressing a minority population that is increasingly becoming a minority that it goes out of business. We saw this with the federalist party, we saw this with the nonothing party in the 1850s. So thats not out of the question. So, yes, the culture wars affect the congress and the presidency and the Supreme Court many our conversation about politics, but they also affect a lot of different types of institutions. Im always interested when a historian refers to the American Party as the Knownothing Party. I mean, its not the Knownothing Party. They did not call themselves the Knownothing Party, they called themselves the American Party. It was everybody else who called them the knownothing thats actually true of most political groups and most religious groups. I mean, christians didnt call themselves christians. Mormons didnt call themselves mormons. The Republican Party doesnt initially call itself the gop. The knownothings was how people referred to that party, and that started with horace greeley. And so im not going to apologize for referring to the Knownothing Party as knownothings. Well we can disagree. But they dont ever refer to it as the American Party. Anyway, my question had to do with a current battle in the culture wars, and that is the socalled gun rights advocates versus the socalled gun control advocates which does not seem to be one that the liberals are winning. And how to you foresee that going how do you foresee that going and fit in with your general thesis . Yeah. Do you think thats a culture war question, the gun question . Yes. How so . Because there are different cultures that have different attitudes, urban versus rural and conservative versus yeah. Okay, good. I agree with you on that. I think its a little tricky because it is a constitutional question, obviously. [inaudible] sorry . Which the conservatives won. Yeah. And i agree with you. I agree with you. I think there are issues on which conservatives there are culture war issues on which conservatives have won throughout American History. The one i would put ahead of the gun question is the role of religion in the public space. You know . So from jefferson forward, people who we now refer to as liberals have wanted the public space to be, essentially, a secular space where religion would occur in the privacy of peoples homes or in the privacy of their churches. So people wouldnt invoke religious reasons for Public Policies. That was sort of ruled out of bounds. If you wanted to bring an argument into the public space, it should be a secular argument. And the Democratic Party really went along with that all the way through the kerry election. So we had, you know, once the Republican Party decided it wanted to be a religious party, it wanted to be aligned with white evangelicals in the late 1970s and they decided they were going to bring, they were going to talk about moral values and talk about the bible and even about jesus something they hadnt really done before that we had this one religious party. And then with the kerry loss, there was a sort of soul searching that went on among the democrats where they said, look, you know, why in a country thats 95 believers in god, why are we the antigod party . That seems to not be a very good strategy. So democrats like Hillary Clinton and barack obama started to connect their Public Policies to the bible, you know . Making arguments, for example, against making arguments for Immigration Reform on the basis of the Good Samaritan story, right . Youre supposed to take care of the foreigner in your midst, shouldnt we take care of the foreignest in our midst . Foreigners in our midst . I think on that issue, too, conservatives have won. I would agree conservatives have won on the gun issue, maybe most powerfully won on the gun issues. Conservatives also won on the e. R. A. Even though the Republican Party was in favor of the equal rights amendment for 20, 30 years in the middle part of the 20th century, particularly with betty ford who was out in front on the equal rights amendment. Conservatives won on that. So its not that they, its not that liberals win every single time, but liberals win most of the time. Hi. Okay. Im not sure how im going to phrase this, but there are certain aspects that im going to have to take issue with now. Theres something weve all heard of called Political Correctness ive never heard of that, actually. Could you explain to me what that is . [laughter] okay. Im just kidding. [laughter] and what seems to happen in the public sphere that many universities that im aware of is theres not merely an attempt to disagree with ones political opponent, but to shut them down, to ban them from public discourse. This seems to be more a function of left as far as i can tell than of right. One example which is actually a canadian example is that these human rights commissions which if someone speaks biblical verse against homosexuality, they can be find. It seems like ive heard theres been retributions on universities such as marquette for that type of behavior. Thats an aspect of the culture war where liberals are reversing their old stance on such issues as free speech, due process and so forth. Let me ask you something about what do you think the effect of the complaint about Political Correctness is . In other words, whats the goal . When one complains about, oh, those people are just enforcing the canon of Political Correctness, what, whats the operational effect of that kind of argument, do you think . Whats that argument trying to do . Okay. Well, ill tell you how its affected me. I believe in free speech for everybody, okay . I dont believe in political retaliation, i dont think people should lose their jobs and so forth. And what i see Political Correctness as doing is enforcing a dialogue where people lose such issues as freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Now, if someone asserts that about somebody else, of course, id want to hear the other perps side, but i cannot be approve of anybody who would abuse political power to suppress freedom of speech and due process. Okay. So im a big religious liberty person, i probably write more about religious liberty than any issue ive ever written about. But i think the claim of Political Correctness strikes me as somewhat specious in the sense that it seems to me that it purpose is actually, ironically, to shut down the claims of the other side. In other words, it has a weird mirror kind of doppelganger effect. The complaint is youre shutting me down from saying what i want to say, but the purpose of it when we hear it from donald trump, for example, who mentions it in every single one of his speeches is that its to tell the left to shut the hell up about that particular issue that its complaining about. Now, that said i am, as a university professor, i am very concerned, im opposed to speech codes on universities. Some universities have adopted. Im very concerned about the sort of arguments that seem to be liberal arguments or left arguments that are going against free speech. And so i share with you, i share with you that concern. I also am aware, though, that theres a sort of, you know, political advantage to be gained from harping on these events. I mean, at Boston University where i am i dont think theres a problem of i mean, we had a forum recently about islam in the public space, and the first person to stand up stood up and said, you know, and he made a kind of Political Correctness complaint. Theres no venue for conservatives here to talk about our views about islam. We think its a dangerous religion. Its kind of ironic, because he was standing there in front of everybody saying what he was saying. We gave him a microphone to stand up. We cant ask people ahead of time we didnt ask people ahead of time what they wanted to say. My sense is im not really worried about this yet at to Boston University, but i am keeping an eye on it, and im worried about speech codes that are going to be telling people, well, you can say this, but you cant say that. That said, i think its largely, maybe 70 , just an effort to rule out of bounds certain liberal claims in the same way that the socalled Political Correctness people are supposedly just ruling out of bounds certain conservative claims. But with i would rather talk with you about this afterwards rather than okay. Continuing this. See if we have other questions, but id be happy more to talk more about Political Correctness. [inaudible] this is our last question. Okay. This will be the best question [laughter] saved for last. Okay. Yes. Id like to know how the, how you see hispanics in this president ial election, how do you see the Democratic Party and the Republican Party battling over the votes of hispanics . I think the battle has already been won and lost. I think the Republican Party was hoping for a battle for the votes for latinos. They were hoping that marco rubio would emerge as a kind of establishment candidate who would show that the Republican Party was open not only to white people, but also to hispanics. And i think that that hope is now naive, and marco rubio is racing as fast as he can to the right as his numbers are going down in the polls. Ask can just within the last week and just within the last week hes been trying to get to the right of ted cruz on the immigration question which is a very, very, very difficult thing to do. [laughter] and so i think, i think there was even a piece, there was even a piece i think in the New York Timeses yesterday about how, you know, which i hadnt thought of but its kind of obvious once you hear it. Just because youre mexican doesnt really mean you want to vote for a cuban. So thats another issue. [laughter] so i think, i think the country, i think that latinos are actually very well positioned the become republicans. If the Republican Party could get it act together to appeal to them. Latinos are more christian than white people in the United States. They tend to be catholic, they tend to be conservative catholic. They tend to be conservative on abortion. They tend to be very much devoted to education. In other words, they tend to be if you gave a list of seven or eight features of this population in terms of their politics and their culture, they naturally belong more in the e Republican Party than they do in the Democratic Party. But the republicans have done so much with the immigration question and the mexican rapist issue and, you know, whatever trump is trumping up that i think theyve really lost entirely for this election. And by the way, weve seen this, weve seen these shifts before. The muslim vote initially went to george bush. Overwhelmingly went to george bush. And then the muslim vote went, i dont know, peter, can you tell me . Like 88 or something in the following president ial election to the democrats. You cant tell me but, okay [inaudible] yeah, thats about right. Thank you, martin. I asked the wrong person. So these swings are very, very possible in a short amount of time k and i just think the republicans are kind of botching it right now. Well, i just want to say as a native new mexican whos a dyedthe inthewool democrat that in new mexico a lot of hispanics are republican, and there are still some that are democrat. So its, like, 50 50. So i do believe that there are a lot of factors to consider for the latino vote. Yeah, i do too. I would guess that the hispanic vote is going to go something close many this election, in this in this election, in this president ial election, i wouldnt be surprised if it goes close to 2 to 1 or 7030, Something Like that. I think its going to be just overwhelmingly on the democratic side. And if the republicans had played their cards differently, i think that could have been much closer to 50 50, but i dont think thats going to happen this time around. Thank you very much for coming. [applause]
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