>> please let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area, and we'll add them to our list. e-mail us at [email protected]. >> coming up next, booktv presents after words, an hour long program where we invite guest hosts to interview authors. this week, harry stein, author of how i accidentally joined the vast right wing conspiracy and found inner peace, discusses his latest book, i can't believe i'm sitting next to a republican. mr. stein uses humor to explore the partisan divisions he sees in many aspects of u.s. society. mr. stein discusses his book with author and former time magazine writer and editor stephane kanfer. .. >>host: it has the strange side that people don't acknowledge very much. it is revealed in henry stein title. >>guest: the title of the book is "i can't believe i'm sitting next to a republican" which is what somebody's said to me at a dinner party. i have been searching for a title for this book which is really about being a rich state conservative marooned in a blue states. it was a book about those kinds of people. from the new york times. these things are handed down. and it a sin to be given. i started out as453 a liberal. i was a liberal most of my life. when i made that transition i've found that a lot of people i knew could not only not understand it, but are quite appalled. that situation. and i wanted to write about those environments, places like new york, was angeles, and the professions where one ne could totally -- >>host: what professions? >>guest: journalism, social work, psychiatry. >>host: what had happened? you were a liberal. did it change your did you change? >>guest: i don't think i've changed. i grew up believing what martin luther king said. a person should be judged by the content of his character not the color of their skin. in the schools. it is quite appalling. so i would argue that this was an unjust to other liberals and be regarded as a fascist. >>host: at this was promulgated by the academy as well as by journalism? where do you turn? everyone believes as you do? >>guest: certainly in the academy everybody believes as this. let me get back to the start of this book, the start of this question. that decided that wanted to write a book. my initial thought was to call it red manhattan. and i was really searching for a title. i considered for a time, behind enemy lines. i've thought of the deepest, darkest, among the savages, the deepest darkest blue america. i was really struggling with that. i happened to be at this dinner party. it was early on in the campaign, the obama, hillary campaign. everyone at the party loved either obama or hillary. and i made the mistake. this is a mistake when you live in the kind of place we do. very tentatively raising some questions about obama is experienced and was he really qualified several years out of the illinois state senate to be the leader of the free world. this guy turned on me. a guy i'd known all of 15 minutes. exclaimed, i can't believe i'm sitting next to a republican. i'm not a republican. i'm still registered as a democrat. one finds that when you are a conservative in a blue new york people make all kinds of assumptions. they don't know much about us. all they know is what they have learned from the media. we know everything about them because we are awash in the new york times. we can't avoid npr. we can't avoid the network news. they don't know anything about us. what they know about us are the characters that are put forth in their media. >>host: i've noticed something else. that is, it is almost impossible to have reasonable debate. when i was in college you are on the debating team. i made my statement. the opposition would make their statement. i would rebut. you would rebut. now it is all shouting down. >>guest: absolutely right. this is the second book of this kind that i have written. the first one is called "how i accidentally joined the vast right-wing conspiracy: and found inner peace." and i wrote that book really to have a dialogue with people on the other side and to try to explain why i changed the issues that motivated that change. the book was very successful. i expected it to be read by a lot of liberals. i don't think as a liberal -- on not exaggerated in. i don't think as in the liberal read that book. at the they saw the title and was identified as the bad s the bad guy, and that was it. when i say it not a single person, friends, families, people are not close to did not read the book. >>host: do you suppose it is like that on the other side as well? >>guest: into a certain degree that is absolutely for sure. i was not to buy al franken. i'm not going to buy various bush-bashing books. you know, i know what those people think. i thought i have something to impart that they were unfamiliar with. of course, i thought the book was funny. >>host: now with this book you have abandoned that idea, trying to change minds. >>guest: very true. i actually write in this book that this book is only for people who agree with me already. and, you know, there are a lot of us out there who feel very isolated, whether we are living in communities like ours, new york suburbs, which you describe so beautifully, although i've never actually stepped of fraud apparently you have. >>host: middle america. not that easy to find comfort. >>guest: that is true. we're talk about people in areas like we live in. >>host: even more so. san francisco. to some extent big cities where you won't find many conservatives. >>guest: no, you don't. one of the interesting things is there are a lot more of less than generally analysis. i looked at the stats for the past elections, the numbers. even cambridge, massachusetts, you have five or 6,000 people who voted for mccain. now presumably every single one of those people has been called a fascist at least once, but there are a lot of them out there. >>host: how about at san francisco where you expect no republicans. >>guest: absolutely. i put together our roundtable. hosted by a lovely guy. a gay couple. they were talking about, very amusingly, how much harder it is to be conservative in a place like san francisco, than to be gay. >>host: a wonderful story about a guy who wears a t-shirt, and the t-shirt is in san francisco, says war has never solved anything except fascism, communism, slavery. people see that t-shirt and say right on because they don't read it. he says they can't process it. that is an interesting mind-set they don't know. >>guest: you're absolutely right. he was absolutely right. they can process it, but it is also a matter of ignorance. they don't know who we are. there really don't. they believe their own character. they believe we are racist, homophobic, all those things that tell one another about us. somebody said to me very recently talked about affirmative action, you have got to hate by people. it is really deeply upsetting if you take it seriously and allow yourself to be defined by the people. actually, one of the things i mentioned in the book, i actually looked it up to get it right. i quoted a column about what the liberalism has visited upon the nation. the reason so many of us actually moved to the right. >>host: talk about denis for a minute. the guy doesn't live here now. he lived -- he broadcast from the coast, but he was on the radio in new york. >>guest: he is broadcast from l.a., but syndicated in new york for a while. >>host: yes, he was. >>guest: in any case i think he's very good. he also writes. >>host: a conservative jew. >>guest: yes, very conservative and very jewish. the catalog of disasters that liberalism has visited upon the culture basically: restrictions on free and honest speech in the name of sensitivity, the remaking of american history for minorities and women, a general decline of civility, the absence of fathers in countless homes through the welfare state, the stigmatization of man as potential creditors, and all the other mischaracterizations of man by radical feminism. the corruption of childhood through an aggressive the sexualize culture. and that is just for start. >>host: one thing you could point out early on which is the absence of debate. the absence of civilized commerce and ideas. >>guest: that's right. >>host: and i would lay that on the left, would you? >>guest: i'm sorry? >>host: you lay that at the feet of the left. >>guest: and specifically at academia where the left flourishes which they consider a left liberal agenda are simply not allowed. they are either literally criminalize by speech codes where people are kicked out of school. >>host: columbia when a spokesman for the minutemen came in to talk about why they feel threatened and why they are trying to drive the border between mexico and the u.s. instead of talking he shouted down. obviously very well organized. some of them not students. so there was never any debate. okay if somebody said, all right. i'm anti. here's the way i feel about it. he would be cheered. there was absolutely no debate. they don't want to hear anything like an opinion that ventures outside their main. >>guest: right. and of course it carries over to cluster activity, as well. you know, if one voices an opinions in class with many professors they are the definition of a liberal. they don't want to hear it, and they were penalized, students, for voicing it to. >>host: what else would you give? >>guest: look at harvard. larry summers voiced an opinion which is widely held in this country about why women are less successful at present time than men. >>host: a job with the government. >>guest: he certainly did. he essentially lost his job with harvard. he was booted out of academia. you now, one of the things i do in this book. from the various professions, which are particularly obnoxious in this regard. >>host: tell me another one. >>guest: well, i point was making is that track down people who are trying to survive and make their way. really quite heroic. >>host: we get to that in a minute. social work. >>guest: social work, i call -- the dregs of of profession. there is a show on tv called dirty jobs. this is like the dirtiest job he could possibly have. trying to be a conservative social worker. >>host: there is a requirement that they had. you pretty much had to believe and redistribution of wealth. >>guest: exactly right. i call it the scum of all professions. there is, indeed, a code of ethics that has been issued by the council of social work education which is the exclusive a creditor of the school of social work. this is a quote. social work education programs must integrate social and economic justice contents grounded in understanding of distributed justice, civil-rights, and the global interconnections of oppression. >>host: as if it were written like a text. >>guest: exactly. there is an example i cited here. one person who tries to go it alone at a school in rhode island. he and his fellow students were obliged to sit through "fahrenheit 9/11," michael moore film. and he found this objectionable. he had the temerity to say something about it. he was hounded out of school. it's true. he would not have made much of a social worker. he would have gotten in trouble constantly. there are people that i identified. i created the icons. >>host: showing bravery behind the lines. >>guest: heroes of the resistance, we call them. by the way, i also created a web site on my behalf called blue state resistance dot com. in which i am welcoming people to tell their own stories, both in terms of social problems, getting a date, meeting a woman wore a man if you are in one of these areas. i have friends to actually move to different parts of the country in order to meet somebody. i have a very good friend to move from upstate new york, very liberal community, to stanford, north carolina. . >>host: just in order to get out to like minds. >>guest: exactly. it can be very difficult. particularly he was unmarried. he was divorced. he had gone on a match dot com. he always ended up with the problem. he was thinking of putting on his match dot com profile, i'm a raging fascist. get used to it. if you can get passed that maybe we can have a conversation. he still couldn't find anyone. it is one of the chapters i most enjoyed writing, talking to people, trying to make social connections with the opposite sex when they have -- when they are regarded as not the politics. >>host: something melancholy about that. our country which is founded on liberal principles. you can't even date somebody who might be outside your own view point. >>guest: well, maybe it can happen. but i think you care deeply about these issues as i do and many of the people i no do. it is hard. politicized and angry. as wide as the gulf has been. >>host: yearbooks, why are people who have the right thing that want, they have said, they have the senate. why are they so angry when it seems to me that peres has arrived. >>guest: that is a very interesting question. it has been -- people have wondered why they keep hanging on to george bush and cheney. i think they need them. they need to be angry. liberalism in large part is motivated by than a year. driven by that anger. they are not happy people by and large. they need something to complain about. in their minds the culture is seriously flawed. they need people to blame. >>host: but on the right most people on the right believe the culture is seriously flawed. can't talk anymore. marriages. i don't think either side feels copacetic. >>guest: you're probably right. i haven't started out on the left. i had a very distorted image of people on the right, as well. back in the mid 80's i did a piece iece for the new york tims magazine which is of very important step in my transition to the right. and the piece i was doing was about why we on the left as i thought of myself had surrendered the values. and because it was new york times magazine i had access to everyone. i went down to washington and met a lot of people in the reagan administration to, to my amazement, were not only reasonable and incredibly likable, but agreed with me far more than i agreed with all the people who were on my side. very well adjusted and happy in their lives. unhappy now, of course. the culture is getting away from us. there are a lot of very disgusting things happening. in the privacy of our lives we tend to be pretty well adjusted and happy. >>host: privacy of our lives. did you start out in a liberal family? >>guest: very much so. my parents were both very left. my father gto this day identifies himself very broadly in public forum as a man of the left. ninety-six years old. he is incredible. he is much more alert and active and professionally driven and successful than i am. my father writes broadway musicals, among them "fiddler on the roof." you know, it has been a problem for us. this is my father. a couple of years back he and my stepmother. a lovely woman to tick wonderful care of them. there were honored route to cont for a work project. he started feeling a little ill. she called ahead. there were some ems workers. one of them said, how do you feel? he said, that don't feel so good. he said, what hurts you? he said, it hurts me that bush is president. that is my father. and my father is an incredibly funny man. it was a problem for us for a while. in particular my first book was published. it was very public. you know, he had to deal with his friends. i think it is very hard for him. in a way it is very good for him, i think. because although conversation was difficult for a while we overcame it. probably closer now than we have ever been. >>host: well, you were out of the closet at that point. >>guest: yes. >>host: tell the story. >>guest: well, i was making a point. i think this is a very important point. people on the left think of themselves as incredibly liberated and incredibly open and, in fact, they live in absolute an abject terror of being seen as the liberal, as having instant pure thought and proper thought. they live in this kind of mental straitjacket. and this is a story told by a woman who lives in brooklyn heights, which is a very liberal area. she was at a dinner party. they were all talking about a marriage. everyone was in favor of it, including her. very socially liberal. she said, wouldn't it bother you if one of your own children said he was gay, he or she was gay. i think she further expanded. it created a distance. matters that are most importance to you their experience would not be your experience. she said this ominous, deadly silence fell over the table. they all, of course, agreed with her. finally someone said, i would be a lot more worried if my son was a republican. they all laughed and agreed and felt okay about it. she added that afterwards one of these people came up to her and whispered, i would be very disturbed. >>host: sub rosa whispered. >>guest: well, you cannot have an honest conversation in all kinds of ways if you are a victim of that kind of really self-imposed political correctness. it really is a weight on your shoulders. >>host: upper west side from manhattan, totally that way. a friend of ours says he loves washington because even now there are conservatives in washington. we know this. and there seemed to be nine in new york. if there are, where are they. >>guest: well, there are some. you know, it takes a sort of a bravery to be a public conservative in places like new york or san francisco or cambridge or any of a thousand other places in this country. and washington, i don't think it takes that much bravery because politics, it's a company town. everyone knows there are going to be people on the other side, and they have to socialize with them. they can be genuine friends with them. >>host: whereas the assumption in new york and other places is that we all think alike and if we don't think alike we are really not welcome at certain places. >>guest: right. one of the things i try to do, i wanted to find the biggest conservative i could possibly find. i did a kind of search. i started out with the murder our people, all the people who work at 1211 6th avenue, where fox is located. they are paid off. and i looked at some of the people, the catholics who were very involved in the anti-abortion movement. god knows they are despised and hated. i've finally found the most despised people in new york, even by the new york post, which is the conservative paper, landlords. i tried to get a bunch of landlords to talk to me. few wuld kind of start and then they would back away because their lives are miserable enough as it is. then i found the perfect person. he was actually a guy he was even by landlords standards, a pariah. a lawyer who only represents landlords. he was happy to talk. >>host: he was outspoken. >>guest: this is a guy that, one of his parents was a holocaust survivor. how much worse could this be? he was totally fearless. he knows what he is dealing with, and actually i was very worried for him. i said, you sure you want to go on the record with this? and let him read the chapter, which is something i did not let anyone else in the book to. he does, fine with me. >>host: why don't you read a passage. i think the guy is so strong in his opinions. >>guest: let me see if i can find it. i already mark this. another field where to be a conservative is to be really out of step is psychiatry. my favorite "in the whole book, this is something the guy wrote. a very well-respected university of chicago-trained psychotherapist in new york who wrote a book about liberalism as the mental illness. and this is quoted from that. mistrust of operations. false perceptions of victimization, intense in the and underlying shame, a need to vilify and blame others, the deficit in self-reliance and self direction, a marked fear and avoidance of responsibility, and content of the madness, an intense and paranoid and hostility. and n