the refusal to not associate ideology wish the extremism it produces results in the fact the only people willing to tell the truth about are the liberals and they are not selective enough to call it a radical movement that is dangerous, 1.4 global adherents of islam are peaceful and want to get along. it is important to stop the speech policing because it will not make illiberals go away but only strengthening. illiberals need to stop looking so feeble in the face of terrorism and the threat of post regimes like vladimir putin, they are so hawkish, on eight years they acquiesced. and and i feel insecure. liberalism must return to the center. the obsession with, the a person with sexual minorities as the pronoun game, the rise of vladimir putin, liberals for a lot of people has been produced to talking about bathrooms, and whether you use a pronoun, it makes no sense. the new identity driven liberalism. liberals have to start trying to short-circuit, democratic processes when they don't produce the desired liberal outcomes. i will name a few. the immigration executive order president obama passed down to essentially stop enforcing us law rather than going through congress for immigration reform. imposition of gay marriage through judicial fiat everywhere, all these things build up frustration because people use their parliament and congress and that is where the business needs to be done and not through unelected judges or bureaucracies. liberalism must aggressively promote assimilation especially in europe. multicultural anxiety is not only irrational. i live in london. born in a muslim country, and multicultural anxiety, and needn't be blood and soil identity but needs to be a greater thing that defines us. it eases the anxieties about immigration. nationhood, nationhood belonging shouldn't be the domain of the far right. the crisis of anxiety, the nativeborn population and immigrants. what does it mean to be german, that are liberal and good, and it drives them to the far right and among the muslim immigrants the search for identity, and and they need to talk about nationhood in a comfortable way. what is more complicated than the far right, and liberalism needs, some account of evil. the reactions to world events, tara, economic anxiety, when you talk to liberals there is not a need for seeing it. i can't think for cohesiveness or having a place for conversations about evil or the irrational, containing the west judeo-christian heritage. i interviewed cardinal schonberg, the austrian cardinal who made a similar point, and the heritage will uncover the truth of itself, things that are good about the european union or the democratic societies harken back to the judeo-christian heritage the we inherited. to conclude i do liberal civilization has proved far more resilient when threatened by political forces in the past, a remarkable capacity to adapt, a set of legal norms, and overwhelmingly dominant lose liberal ideas about limited power of the state and inherent rights of citizens have expanded to nearly every corner of the globe since 1776 and liberalism has vanquished every significant rival that stood against it since. the succession of liberal powers even to this day have presided over world order so the liberal idea needed to die in this century and my bet is it won't because it is most attuned to people's natural inclinations toward freedom and the dictates of conscience but in order to thrive in the 21st-century liberalism needs tougher liberals and i will stop there. [applause] >> let me say a word about q and a. that was very thoughtful and bold, stimulated some thoughts and questions out there so we will move into the q and a, a prediction for many years is to invite any students in the audience whatever level you are at in your studies to ask the first question so let me invite students to raise your hand. there are microphones if you hold off until somebody puts one in your hand. right in front, thank you. identify your self. >> the chemical engineering department, i would like to ask a question, you focus most of your talk on the western -- the liberal democracy expanding to the far east, south korea, there has been a bernie sanders person who wants to seek better relations with north korea, you are seeing illiberal is him creep up in china and the philippines, the solutions you presented are the same? do we apply different approach? >> my solutions are geared toward the developed world and western democracies. my diagnosis tends to apply in places like the philippines with the rise of the other developments but what that looks like in that context will have to be different because the development stages are different. there is not a liberal tradition in some of those, certainly in japan and south korea and elsewhere, there isn't one so the answer is to work at a ground up, the same, in some sense we are in the same space as everyone. there are questions about first principles and that is healthy, people are asking everywhere what should society be like, how should we organize society in a way and in the areas you found out about there is a pedagogic opportunity for liberals to make the case of what free society is about all over again. >> other student questions, way in the back corner. identify yourself please. >> thank you for this talk. i am a senior in the woodrow wilson school. you liberalism thrives on the problems of liberalism especially compared to the 90s, there was an ideological history and so forth. my question is to what extent do you think illiberals have a coherent ideology that is not yet to an extent they might acquire one that is legitimacy beyond opposition to liberals? >> that is a good question. they are far more coherent than people give them credit. having interviewed the leading far right speakers and politicians in the west these are ideas they have been developing for a very long time. they have a sense of opportunity now because they have seen that liberalism is under question like never before. in the 90s there wasn't a challenge. the only alternative ideology after communism was making some headway with islamism but no one in their right mind would say an islamist society, so now they are offering an alternative and they thought it through, for example the work of this french philosopher associated with the new right and others. some degree where they say liberalism's freedom isn't real freedom. we are atomized, unhappy, we feel economically insecure, displaced geographically and the people among us who are the newcomers meaning immigrants they are not happy here, there is a natural place for them and it is over there. they thought through these questions. there is more coherence. with from it is different, a lot more shoot from the hip and instinct. not all those instincts are liberal. i am saying i set aside trump, in europe come a very coherent, thought through philosophical. >> is that a student question? back in that corner. >> i am a senior in the economics department. you mentioned we are in a pitchfork and flames era, specifically that micron is a viable candidate in a pitchfork experiment and you said in poland the economy is chugging along but are turning illiberal. i am sure we are at the time that is much better than any time in history. i wonder what is the cause for this change in perception? do you think it is a grassroots movement or movement that is fueled by people with political power like maureen le pen in the far right or donald trump in the us? >> i start by challenging your premise. i don't think everything is good. there is real insecurity in europe where you think at any point something could go. there is a strand if you see it on fox where they just lay out data, judging by xyz indicators everything is good but that is not all people think about and live by. it is both. there is real anxiety but also people who have thought through how to address those with political program and the two are co-mingling and interacting to create the current illiberal ascendance. >> thanks for the talk. i heard you say something, one of the things i was asking myself is the role of your audience. and what they laid out. and academic voices -- discredited by that. >> i want to be a good guest. there is a lot of nonsense in the academy. to start with, this should be a place, universities, academia should be a place where we talk about the islamicists issue and increasingly the conversation is and being had, so brandeis, a really disgraceful dis-invitation to -- invited her, students protested, withdrew the invitation and you can come back but it would have to be a dialogue and all sorts of other speakers coming to single her out. in so many ways, all that is good about the promise of immigration and liberalism and she stands for frankly a form of feminism you would think in academia, to treat her that way so conversations are not being had. i see the university from the outside. the new bathroom thing. that is basically -- i don't think it is contributing unfortunately. there are bright spots and exceptions, this program being one of them. >> in the blue shirt. >> i am hunter, majoring in politics. my question, you mentioned trump -- i think bernie sanders and his platform, he is more moderate than finland or denmark, germany, more moderate than politicians. do you think it is fair to compare that? >> those politicians in europe are having trouble winning elections. they cannot pay for their welfare programs. they are in trouble. a program put forward, political limits on it, i think -- people need 21 brands of deodorant? that is the 1930s socialism where why can't we have one brand, what are we doing with all this deodorant? there is a real point, my colleague wrote a great piece, yeltsin visits texas supermarket and his sense of astonishment, what a consumer society has achieved in the early 90s, and suggesting that our dynamic capitalist system is producing too many different kinds of deodorant and to pick on that one example so much more suggest he is a kind of illiberal, a certain strand of american socialism blended with a crunchy granola gentry in vermont but that doesn't make it illiberal. >> i spent a year in moscow and there was no deodorant. other questions? patrick brown. >> talk a little bit about the role religion plays in the discussion, pope francis is one of the most leading figures of liberalism in some ways but in france people are saying catholicism is experiencing a resurgence, i wonder if you see a role advancing liberalism. >> religion is the best defense against the liberalism and to the judeo-christian tradition, it allows you to see the other person especially endowed with rights and you can empathize with them in the sense that you share a brotherhood across various identity boundaries, because of -- catholicism in europe is pushed in so many places into an alliance with the far right because of the strident secularism. catholicism and christianity more generally needed ideologically over there. i made the point there are some conservatives i profoundly respect who see stridency, bullying religion out of the democratic public square, look at vladimir putin standing up for russian orthodoxy, need and drive those speakers over there. doesn't take much to realize his opponents keep ringing their head in your guns and keep having accidents and drinking dangerous team. they know that, they sent liberalism have gotten so aggressive on issues so foundational to what christians believe and people of faith generally about gender, and delegitimized who speaks to them. it is very unfortunate, beginning to meld a responsible filled within the center program on the center right with catholicism. he had ethics issues that collapsed. >> other students questions? let's open it up back here. if you could introduce yourself? >> i am a phd student at cambridge. i was wondering about russian active measures and how much trends might be related to the fact the west is engaged in a hybrid war and isn't fully aware of it. when you study hybrid warfare, a lot of things are happening in terms of influence operation and other things are exactly consistent with their playbook and incidents at cambridge and oxford and other places where revelations have recently been, there is more activity than expected. my question is how much do you think this is the matter of the russians exploiting preexisting trends, how much do you think they are driving those trends? >> another excellent question. $300 million a year on rt, $700 million, and it hasn't been a while. and things the russians to rt with sputnik, and to some far right european parties, it is dangerous to think that the illiberal ferment is a russian conspiracy, democrats in the us are going in that direction rather than asking what are we doing, what program are we offering, in russia and the same in europe. he is doing all of that but i am convinced with other things that are going on, most notably the refugee crisis in europe and the wider terrorism that is spinning out of ungoverned spaces on europe's periphery, even if russia weren't there, these anxieties would boost far right parties. liberals need to get better at governing, winning elections and persuading people. of course to combat russia's influence peddling operation, but that won't answer this deeper question. >> down front here. >> i am with the madison program. most of the organized illiberal groups tend to be on the right and you characterize the response of liberals as being silly or irrelevant like what happens on campus but what has been happening is we had generations of illiberal leftists who have gained control within the bureaucracy, independent agencies and we are seeing the end game of their illiberalism as they begin to isolate people with whom they disagree. >> i agree with you. i did touch on fat in the main talk when i said liberals -- i was categorizing that issue as well. the sense of institutional capture and something they call the opinion core door on any number of issues especially the hot button ones about immigration, assimilation, there is a narrow range of opinion that is acceptable opinion and social punishing mechanism if you bring up alternative viewpoints, in the mainstream media, the opinion core door is where you see the point of view and range of opinion, that is a bit of the illiberal left getting a bit of a come up -- >> let's go over here. >> thank you very much for an excellent talk. i am a retired pharmaceutical scientist. my background in biochemistry, excuse a naïve question. i would like to return to a question that was asked before about the gentleman in the corner and that is my understanding, we actually are living in just about the most peaceful time in world history. we tend to forget three generations ago, europe, the united states were involved in terrible terrible horrific atrocities. i was here at a panel discussion here on the danger isis late present, it was a james madison program. speakers did not agree on anything but they did agree on the fact that isis does not and cannot present an ex essentialist threat to the west was they present a terrorist threat. response to the previous question or, you said there is a real feeling of anxiety and that i believe is absolutely true. quantitatively, we are living in the most peaceful time in world history and there is a lot of fear mongering that is being done in order to drive that anxiety. what can we do to effectively counter that fear mongering? >> let's talk about isis and jihadi them. the places that have become destabilized. iraq and syria no longer exist as coherent nationstates. crosswalks of africa there are ungoverned areas, some of constantly being reclaimed by more legitimate forces, others not. these places we should mention nigeria, in afghanistan a genuine tele-been resurgence and introduction of isis, afghan expression. if you are living in those zones you are not looking at the data and thinking my life is pretty good. i think the danger from jihadi him in its various forms isn't that they could obtain a weapon of mass destruction and really be an existential threat to western nationstates although that is not something we should rule out and security agencies everywhere are alert to it but the danger is the danger comes from the fact that making people feel insecure if you are in large urban areas in europe you are constantly worried about the next ak-47 that will go off, that itself is a danger and it drives people to embrace harsher and harsher politics and turn to illiberalism. not the scale that quantifying the threat, what would it be, it is the fact that people feel insecure. the way to do it isn't to combat people's perceptions but to combat terrorism and bring order to north africa so to limit the flow of refugees. million people is hard to absorb in any part of the world especially those from a different culture and very not free societies. i say this as an immigrant from a society like that. it is too much. i think quantifying it is not the answer. people are miss perceiving it. that is the reality. >> we will go over there. >> stephen napier, long time fan of the james madison program. looking at barack obama's election, brought him into office, fast forward to the last election barack obama's performance, hillary clinton's message that was rejected, donald trump was elected, simply a trade-off from republicans, democrats, back and forth but simplistic to say we are moving linearly left to right, and donald trump is in office for eight years, how large a seismic shift could we have with the next presidency and which direction could it go? could not be any more different. >> the prognostication, eight years, don't know what is happening, the presidency is so dynamic and intense and driven by his personality, driving on a certain chaos. i cannot imagine what -- what i worry is you will get a very sort of sanders -- identity driven, hostile to markets, what is happening in the dnc right now, i watched from the outside, cause for concern that a certain kind of democratic centrism in the democratic party is disappearing near extinction species. i can't imagine what it would be like, in today's democratic party, under the obama administration, so far to the left. those trends on the left are accelerated. >> the madison program. the first question for the opposition to the trump administration, because you are describing the disturbing trend, if that is the case you made a good case for centrist liberalism, what is the political vehicle for that at this point? the second question, noticing the comments from the wall street journal report, your remedy included nothing -- i think the discontent that fueled the trump phenomenon and sanders phenomena and can't be disconnected. from the collapse of the industrial economy, joblessness, parts of the united states and so on. >> you make a fair point. i didn't put enough emphasis on the economy but we have had the weakest -- the weakest recovery since world war ii. it is not normal for the us to average growth it to present a year, people point and the unemployment rate. it is quite low, just because vast numbers of people have exited the workforce or labor force participation rate. you are right. i do agree at this point, there is something to it, when the gross pie is growing, so to speak, anxiety about immigration and welfare competition are alleviated, not solved, they are alleviated. i don't know if i answered your first question. [inaudible question] >> i'm seeing it elsewhere. in the us i think paul ryan represent something like that and the house leadership which i hope will shape the administration's agenda more than the other way around. in europe you do see some world leaders standing up so tony blair is one example i will name where he doesn't want to come back into politics as such but just started to say you see it in other places where people are saying we need to restore the bill center, something has gone wrong and i know blair makes the point that when liberalism gets reduced to bathroom and pronoun obsessions it doesn't win so i don't look at parties so much as establishment figures starting to rethink but there is much more to be done. >> judge miller with his hand up right there. plenty of time. >> thank you for stimulating a talk. would it be fair to say that major factors in the ascendancy of illiberalism is due to the tremendous influx of muslims? >> i don't think that is the case in the us. the us has historically fantastic ability to make people assimilate and partly because our welfare net is so loose of europe. the refugee crisis in particular was probably the biggest boom to these parties when angela merkel threw open europe app stores and started taking them in in vast numbers. i traveled with the refugees and did a feature series and was very sympathetic as an immigrant. i can never be -- anything but sympathetic towards other immigrants but eventually especially when i followed some of the refugees in turkey before they arrived on the island in greece, this was the root called the balkan core door, they start in the middle east and interact in iran, afghanistan, go to turkey, going down to what was taken to the island. and i lived for 5 or 6 days in a refugee safe house and it changed my view, sympathetic to refugees, a lot of genuine hardship but assimilating these people unless the receiving countries have a very strong assimilation program, and job training for economies that don't -- aren't qualified for that much health and the kind of values driven, this is how we are, is really difficult especially, as you say, and there is a lot of assimilation. they are assimilated out of the desire, and the rising strength as intellectual and real force in the muslim world, the younger generations, the ones who are first-generation or second-generation are being drawn to radicalism. very tragic but no doubt that has been a factor. >> so that we can get everybody's questions in in the next 15 minutes, i would be grateful if you would follow judge miller's example of brevity. it is not bluntness but brevity for sure. >> residents of the princeton area. background is consulting. my concern is the tendency to put things in boxes and call things liberalism, illiberalism, looking at what is going on in the united states, there are similarities that are going on in europe but i see it in a different light. i would see it that a significant number of citizens have lost perceived control of their lives. for example i think professor deaton has done a tremendous job in terms of showing what is the plight of lesser educated high school and graduate and undergraduate whose parents have thrived in our society. i won't go through all of them. >> mortality rates. >> that is a symptom of something, not a cause. in the european situation, it has the same characteristics with brexit. one of them is in the european union you have a governmental system that is extremely remote from the people living in those areas. you also have a situation, that extremely remote system decided to let all the muslims in. i see it as an issue that is very much we are living in very turbulent times, technology is changing. i am going to shut up. from the standpoint of what is going on, there may be some basic issues we are missing. >> the democratic deficit of europe, i will join you anytime in saying the european union governs too much, too much of it every time i deal with one aspect of it i'm amazed there's an entire building devoted to whatever, bureaucrats working. i favor the remains side of the brexit debate, the basic idea of free trade and movement of goods and services is a good. europe is in many ways thriving. i didn't think it was worth severing britain's economy. the supply chains that are there and institutional time and so forth when britain couldn't be any more to say please govern less, make less rules because they have that more common law tradition as opposed to the european union tendency toward overregulation. unless something new comes about, europeans create a law about it to contrast hours, let's see what happens in the law develops. so i agree with all of that. the european union if it is to survive needs to shrink. it is becoming a remote, permanent, undemocratic institution. it can do a lot of good but there needs to be a lot less of it and there shouldn't be this tendency for conservative nationalist government, let's sanction it from a european level, people are allowed in national parliaments, more attuned to the people, stay out of their way in some way and facilitating free trade should be the european union's role and not this larger supertransnational effort. people are rejecting it. >> from the madison program. some people they liberalism and democracy pool in different directions, like collectivist directions where liberalism is a limitation of political power and protection of a credit sphere and democracy would be political form in which political power is not limited. is this where you see the problem? are we looking at a balancing moment where we acknowledge the liberal side in recent times, and in the democratic side of things in the world or do you see things -- you suggest liberalism needs to articulate? i wasn't sure if that was the prior conception of the kind of balance between liberalism and democracy or if it is different existing? >> liberalism needs a new spirit and story that is confidence, responsive and so forth. that was unrelated to that. i have heard the case that in our time world war ii liberalism and democracy are becoming decoupled and that is what this problem is. there is something to it. and it goes with identity politics as well, getting democratic back lash. i worry about the democracy side because a lot of these parties have a tendency when they come to power they quickly do a blitz of retaking the institutions where the establishment consensus liberal, in hungary's case or turkey's case in different degrees taking on not only liberalism but democracy as well hollowing out institutions, hungary is a competitive democracy in the name but very hard for other parties to make their case. likewise in turkey turkey is a democracy. is a liberal aspect of undermined the democratic aspects. it is form but not content. >> in the middle. >> good talk. i am a local resident and a member of the class of 76. you write words for a living, you live in a world of words. i wonder if you ever reflected on the relevance of language and the hijacking of language and leads to this illiberalism and some of it being perpetuated by the academy. how are we communicating? is there something to i think of my fair lady, words words words. and i do this for your jobs. i will do this for the fact that you are hurting. what do the idealists in the liberal world offer to those people when they are crying out for help. >> the liberals, the liberals have solutions, built the world they live in. and liberals by definition are a little more delightful, one definition is skepticism. and should properly have a sense of the limitation and that is what populists don't do. the better policies and to match them and make outlandish promises they can deliver either but they can be honest. to mimic crazy promises like manufacturing back by imposing tariffs. >> let's take one more question. >> thank you for your talk. my name is joy and i'm a student in chemist and i'm curious about your point about national identity, a few years -- i am very curious how you think your perception on the liberal order transformed for coercing the business and how do you think people with the outrageous minority can support liberalism at this point? >> a question in a book, i never strayed even as i become a catholic and preferring a conservative type of catholicism, i never said therefore that means i am not a political classical liberal. that is something i'm trying to work out personally. don't have an immediate answer to it other than to say religious orthodoxy needn't go hand in hand with authoritarianism as i said or illiberalism. it can be a bulwark against those things. up to the liberals to create a space in which people of faith can come back to the democratic public square and not feel eaten out of it because they hold certain views about traditional marriage or gender and sexuality and so forth, so that for people who think that way, quite a lot of people in the west should not be maureen le pen or jo back in hungary and so on. it used to be liberalism was comfortable with people of faith, to negotiate people of faith and draw on them and it doesn't anymore. i hope that answers, it is a deep question i am trying to resolve for myself. i have not fully answered yet partly because i have only recently been received into the church. >> before we thank our guests, i want to mention those of you on the email list will sign up outside the door, pick up our schedule of eventss, very busy spring, just mention our next event on march 30th in this room when we have the rabbi, congregations from new york city, the strauss center, speaking on passover on july 4th, the seal of the united states. with that please join me in our guest. [applause] >> can you email? [inaudible conversations] >> ahead this morning, admiral harry harris will return to capitol hill for