been reading the decline of the roman empire at this same time i ve been reading your book. given the point is i think when a civilization falls it is said to have a point in something that many volumes long and many years is that the collapse of the civilization can seem sudden when the barbarians are the gates but it s the result of a long process of stagnation political errors and cultural decay of all kinds. the point seems to be the opposite in civilization. that civilizations can collapse faster than we generally think. and for a moment the ultimate question is whether we are going the way of romo d.c. what is happening now do you mean the whole toxic broth of news that is our lives every day and western europe, united states the you see this is relatively sudden or is the result of the factors that go back at least as far as the second world war? guest: farby it for me to disagree with edward gibbon probably the greatest historian of all time but one of the points i
religion in u.s. politics. this is about two hours. [inaudible conversations] i want to welcome everyone here today. i me j. dionne a senior fellow here at brookings. it is very good if you to come out and be with us and this is a very exciting survey. we have said a lot after 9/11 that we had a new normal that this had changed us in extraordinary ways and it is always in the survey that you are about to hear, more about, talks about americans attitudes 10 years later. we feel more safe marginally but we feel we have less personal freedom and less respect in the world but in many ways are halves we didn t change and indeed some of the divisions among us before 9/11 have only been aggravated. one of the things we will talk about a great deal are partisan and ideological splits that have spread from issues such as taxing and
education. you know, as robbie s charts clearly indicated there does tend to be a very strong age and education effect influencing attitudes towards islam, immigration and a number of other cultural religious issues as well. said the survey indicates all of the expected correlations with regard to african-americans, hispanics, muslims and immigrants patterns of social relations and the importance of religion itself. but, and this will be my concluding point, there were some surprises. we did not we expected to find a much bigger divide between the youngest and the oldest americans on the issue of whether reverse discrimination, discrimination against whites has become as important an issue at as discrimination against minorities. we expected to find a significant gap on the question of whether discrimination against minorities remains an important issue in american politics and society today and also on the question, the very dramatic question of whether muslims who commit
a majority of people agree that american muslims are an important part of the religious community and the united states, but are divided over whether the values of islam are at odds with the u.s. values. this is part of a report by the brookings institution and public religion research institute, which looked at the role of religion in u.s. politics. this is about two hours. [inaudible conversations] i want to welcome everyone here today. i me j. dionne a senior fellow here at brookings. it is very good if you to come out and be with us and this is a very exciting survey. we have said a lot after 9/11 that we had a new normal that this had changed us in extraordinary ways and it is always in the survey that you are about to hear, more about, talks about americans attitudes 10 years later. we feel more safe marginally but we feel we have less personal freedom and less respect in the world but in many ways are halves we didn t change and indeed some of the divisions among u