i'm always very fortunate that i

have a panel that turns very lively and i think this will be one of those because the people who are here today who've written some outstanding books on political social issues in our country have really given us some things to think about. so we'll be talking with them about all of that. so our first author who's sitting next to me, this is his book if you don't recognize it, hard not to miss mitt on the cover. it's called a reckoning by mckay

coppins. this is mr. coppins right here. he's a staff writer. he's a staff writer for the atlantic, amazing magazine that we love, i think graduated brigham young university, where he was the editor of the student newspaper. his previous book was called the wilderness deep inside the republican party is combative, contentious, fierce and chaotic quest to retake the white house. and it's still going on right. so he's also the winner of the aldo beckman award, the white house correspondents association, for his coverage of the trump. that is mr. mckay coppins. the next. yeah you can applaud as many times as you as you are able. these guys have traveled a long way to be with us and we want to show them a really tucson welcome and appreciation. and so thanks.

the next book i love the title is called how elites ate the social justice movement. it's by fredrik deboer frederick, who's sitting in the middle over here. his. frederick is a has a book, a previous book by the name of it called the cult of smart. he's got his doctorate from purdue university and he's written extensively as a purdue person right there. he written extensively with a focus on education policy. cancel, cancel and policy reform. he is a self-described marxist of the old school variety and will certainly want to know more about that. frederick i hope you'll mention that a little bit. so how elites ate the social justice movement by. frederick de boer right here. and the third book and third author is robert jones.

he's written a book called the hidden roots of white supremacy and the path to a shared american future and is the third person to my left. we have arranged the the speakers in order of political leaning no, we have it. it's just not true. but you got to start with something. so here we go. i some questions for each of our panelists and i'm going to start with in order of folks next to me to my right to my left. i mean and let me start with mckay coppins mckay has written a really intriguing it's a fascinating read. if you haven't a chance to pick it up. i really encourage to do that and he has written, as you about senator romney and his history as a politician and his history as a family man, as a man faith and he as he's really gotten some intimate details that a lot

of times book biographer don't get. so my first question, mckay, is your research for the biography of senator romney in your research you gave him access he gave you access to personal journals emails and interviews with him family, members and colleagues. what do you think the senator to sit with you and authorize your use of his answers and deeply held personal views about trump and other elected officials? why do you do it? what was he trying to do unburden himself? yeah. thank for being here and thank you for the question. i his. he had a mix of motivation. and like all politicians do when they cooperate for a biography or profile. and i do think it's important as a writer to understand motivations at the outset. they often are you know only somewhat aligned or often misaligned with the incentives,

motivations of the writer. in his case, though, interesting, is that when i first approached him, it was just a few weeks. after january 6th, 2021, and he was in a kind of unusual headspace. he i had covered him for a long time. i covered his presidential campaign. i had profiled him for the when he arrived in the senate. and so i had in touch with him for a while. and i could tell after sixth that he something kind of shaken loose in him and he was in this really interesting stage of soul searching and he was asking himself difficult questions both about what was happening to the country, what was happening to his political, but also about his own career and his own complicity and what had had become of the republican party. and as a biographer, kind of

like the best place you have a subject in, right? where he's he's kind of vulnerable and, asking himself difficult questions. and so i think that a part of his motivation was that he just wanted to vent. he wanted to unburden himself. i could tell that was the case because, you know, when i went to him to pitch this book, i said, you know, i only want to do this if you feel like you're ready to be fully candid. and if you're not i understand, maybe we can revisit down the road when you're out of office. but i think this book makes sense if you're going to be guarded and trying protect relationships and all of that. and he almost took that as a challenge and immediately started blocking off weekly interviews. me every time he was in d.c., it would usually late at night at his house. he was done with his work. i would meet him at his townhouse near capitol hill and he sent me his journals, his email correspondence with top.

in many cases he didn't read through the material before he gave it to me. and later expressed little bit of dismay at that fact. but but what's interesting is i tried my strategy at the beginning was to keep the interviews under an hour because i didn't want him to get sick of me right. and what i found was that he was often trying to get me to stay longer. like i would try to wrap things up and he would he would keep going and keep. and so it was clear he had a lot on his mind. he also, frankly pretty lonely in washington. he didn't fit in his own party, his own caucus. he didn't you know, most democrats viewed him with suspicion. so he didn't a lot of friends. he spent most nights alone in his house where he had this giant tv on the wall and a in front of it. and he would just watch, like ted lasso while eating dinner by

himself. and so i think another motivation for him cooperating was frankly just because he had this guy who willing to talk to him when he was in washington. very good. well, what do you think about unwritten emails? that's quite a concern. so now next our next my next question goes to fredrik deboer. so, frederick, in your book, you call out the nonprofit industry as one of the entities that co-opted the justice movement in 2020. could you describe for all of us what you believe? is there a complicit city in taking over the black lives and the metoo movement? and what is to be done about it? yeah, i mean, i about this a little bit at my panel yesterday yesterday. i think it's really essential thing to understand is that i'm not arguing for the like. duplass of anyone involved in nonprofits. most people in that world are genuine, only idealistic. but the problem is like the

nature institutions, right institutions are self-serving and self-perpetuating, which means that everybody this job in an institution ultimately becomes an the protection of the institution rather than the fulfillment of its aims. and then hopefully you can fulfill your aims to. now, this is this is ineradicable. it's always going to be true. and you can just make some things better and make some things worse. the problem is, is that, like as it's currently constructed, american nonprofits typically have very little incentive to do better, even years and years of attempts of reform terms of opening up the books and seeing what they're doing and where the money is going. the average american nonprofit is a black box and we know essentially nothing about what's going on with these organizations that are taking in donations are effectively acting as tax shelters for people who many of whom are primarily

motivated just not to give their money to the taxman. and they often pay themselves extravagant salaries, and they develop typically very vague, sort criteria for what they count as success, which is just a recipe. even if you have people who really care in the abstract, right, you're going to be producing conditions that are not actually conducive to changing anything. so one of the funnier anecdotes i that chapter in particular was researching for three months. one of the funnier anecdotes i found is that. so one of the complaints about these organizations is that they never want to actually solve the problem because if they solve the problem, they would cease to exist. right. and one thing that people don't do, they don't put themselves of a job. right. and so i found to exist american nonprofits, which are still registered, still accepting and still receiving tax that are dedicated to the eradication of

smallpox. the last case of smallpox, i believe, was in 1976. right. you say, how on earth can that? well, they just got kind of vague. right. like from we're to eradicate smallpox to more and more vigor. vigor, sort of general public health goals. right. and they may or they may not do a better job of taking some of that money and putting it into that direction. but the point is, they were never going to say smallpox is a solved problem. that's our doors. and let's sort set this thing up so that someone else get these donations and do good work. right. and unfortunately, the government sort of mechanisms that are in place to police nonprofits tends to be severely understaffed, under muscled and just don't have a lot of incentive often to close down these things especially because

the people who donate to in general are, by definition, people with a lot money who don't want to see their pet project go. so the sort of the many, many, many nonprofits don't sort of oriented around racial justice are filled with a lot of good people who care a lot. right. but who have terribly goals. who have performance indicators that are inherently self-serving and. self-interested. right. who lack outside accountability. be able to say this is what we're actually doing with the money and very often feel that they're doing a good job because everyone in the building is really dedicated and passionate. right. but the precise with the american nonprofit industrial complex is that it has a surfeit of and a deficit of results. thank you, frederic.

next question for robert jones. robert, you've written in your book that in order to understand history of discrimination and racism in our country, we have to go back further than the new york times series, which many of you have read. i'm sure 1619, which was when slaves were first brought to america. your date robert is 1514. and why is that. actually i go back little further. the date is 1493. oh. and the book and that that date may sound familiar to many of you. right. because it's a to a date that we all learned about in school. right. in 1492, columbus sailed the ocean. right. i haven't quite come with the right rhyme. jingle like that for 1493, but i'm sure some of you could come up with it and let me know afterward. but it's 1493 and. and what was what i'm doing in the book and in many ways like to kind of connect it up to my case conversation with romney is

trying to you know so yes we have like a republican party that's introspective and some of its leaders trying to figure out what happened and how did we get here. and there's that kind of conversation happening inside, predominantly white christian denominations, churches. right. how do we get there that on january six, not only do we have just the capitol being stormed but it was being stormed by people singing christian choruses, marching crosses, carrying bibles. with t-shirts. with christian messages on them. so how do we get there? that happened. so part of what i'm is trying to trace this back and, making the argument that part of why this happened, it happened in particularly with christians of european descent. right. and that the the contradict are deepest inside of those traditions that can trace their christianity to europe and that one of the, you know, the title gives gives us some of this way or that what's buried in that tradition is this old assumption that christianity is the only legitimate religion superior to

all others in the world and that european civilization is superior to all others the world. like those assumptions run very, very deep into the dna of even contemporary christianity. you lest you doubt we just heard last week president trump addressing the national religious broadcast meeting where talked openly about saying the biggest thing we need to do is we need to bring our religion back. we need to restore the power of christianity in this country. and what does he mean now? who is he talking to? he's to a group of white evangelical protestants. that's who we saw. that's who was in the room when he says we need to bring our religion back. so it's like front and center out there in front. but i'm trying in the book to kind of trace back. so how deep does this go. you know, this division, this this struggle between a vision the country as a pluralistic

democracy on the one hand and the vision of a country as a white christian nation on the other. how deep does it go? and turns out you could trace it all the way back and. in fact, it is the dominant version of christianity that lands on the shores of the americas. has that claim that these are essentially a promised land for european christians. and so that goes back to this set of documents in the 15th century actually called the came to be called the doctrine of discovery. and they they basically claim this they explicitly have it in. the documents, in fact, the it is columbus actually in 41 reasons 1493 is because columbus is appealing to the pope and rome, who at the time he was the head of all western christendom. right. this is before the protestant reformation, as before the break of the church of england with the roman catholic church. so this is essentially the closest thing international law and moral legitimization as you're going to get. and he essentially gets this set of things that called him, culminating in one in 1493 that basically give the blessing of

the church to the entire colonial project, including the kind of genocidal and displacement of indigenous people and the transatlantic slave trade. it's all there. and in fact spells it out in black and white. there's actually great website called the doctrine of discovery dot org. if you read these documents in latin or in english or in spanish, i think they're in three different languages there. but it spells it out in black and white. it literally says like this from the you know, it's a papal bull. right. so from the office of the pope literally says, you know, that you in the question that he asked people, he says here, here's the question you have to ask yourself about whether these people have rights that ought to be respected by european christians. and the question is, are they christian? right. and of course he knows the answer to that question. right. and the answer is no. that a whole lot of things follow right from that. that means you have the right take their goods, take their lands and it even spells it out. and to submit persons to perpetual slavery. right. it's right there in the in the documents. but that that sounds like far

afield. but it has come through our traditions right in terms that we know manifest a new zion. right. all these things. right. these are not far back. and so that's kind of what i'm trying to sort out in the book and trace back 1493. oh, great. thank you for. i want to come back to the doctrine discovery in a minute. yeah. so back to mckay. you have that romney's defining trait is a meld of moral obligation and hubris. could you could you explain that a little further and what you saw when you made that description? yeah. so. i mean, it's actually, i think wrapped up in his participation in this book. so, you know the thing that he wanted to get off his chest more than anything is that over the last 6 to 10 years he seen he had been behind scenes in the republican party as donald was

completing his conquest of it. right. and he had seen republicans who he knew and respected and and thought very highly of almost a person, sell out everything that they had believed to get in line behind the this guy. and so it caused him to start to think about, well, what does my party actually stand for? and what are the kind of extreme list roots of the party? and how far did they go back? but he also was asking questions about politics more generally, right? he had seen what he believed was a depth of and hypocrisy, especially inside the republican senate caucus during his time in the senate that he wanted to warn people about basically. i remember the first sort of tangential, but it's related. the first meeting i had with him once agreed to do this book was in his senate office and he

showed me this map he had on the wall called the the histo map and it the idea of it is that it to kind of chart the rise and fall of the most powerful civilizations throughout human history. so you have the assyrians and romans and the greeks and the mongols. you know all all throughout throughout human history and he said, you know, the thing that that strikes looking at this now is how i almost all of the most powerful civilizations throughout history are autocracies some kind right. they're led kings or kaisers or emperors or rulers and the idea of self-government of democracy is fairly new and kind of a radical experiment. and it's it goes against almost all of human history and. he is of the belief now having

seen what he's seen that american has american democracy is in much graver peril than most people realize. and so that that's what he wanted to talk about but the thing the thing about him is that he will he has this this sense in him that he wants to rush toward a crisis. and he always feels he's felt this way. his wife actually said this about him that the thing you have to understand about mitt is that he loves emergencies and catastrophes and and of it is this sense of obligation he has to, you know, do his part. he wants get in there and try to fix things or, solve things and use his talents to make things better. but and i remember conversation where he he we had where he encouraged him to kind of reflect a little bit on why he was always rushing toward and. he said, you know, there is an

adrenaline to it and and if i'm being honest, there is, you know, like i he didn't call it hubris, but i would call it hubris where he has sense that he wants to be at the in middle of the action. he he wants the the kind of celebration of, you know, having saved the day. but also likes when the stakes are high. he told me this story about his friend who is free soloing, a cliff, a rock climbing without any ropes. right. and he got, you know, i think 100 feet up or whatever. and he he he his hands started cramp and he had to decide whether to go back down or to try to get to the top. and he decided to keep going. and what mitt said was like, i don't really care about rock climbing, but i totally get the that that to just keep going and more risky it gets the more dangerous it gets the more exciting it is in some ways and

i think that explains a lot about the decisions he's made throughout his his career and it explains why. in 2018 after he had been retired, was living comfortably with his hundreds, millions of dollars and dozens of grandkids. he decided to come out retirement and run for the u.s. senate right. the time that donald trump had taken over his party. he this idea that he could get there and turn things around, he could steer his party away from trumpism. he could help if there was a crisis he had all these i mean, he literally showed me the notes he took in and the pros, pros and cons list he made when deciding whether to run for four senate. and know he decided to rush toward the crisis. and he realized that he very quickly realized. and now very definitively realized that he had very much overestimated the influence he could on his party once he got

there. but i do think that meld of moral obligation and personal hubris kind of the thing you have to understand and understand what motivates him. well, thanks. thank you for that. next to you, frederick second question, you have that the left is afflicted by elite capture. i believe this comes from other author. i hope i pronounce the name correctly, both for me, taiwo. yes, olufemi. taiwo. yeah. thank you. and you have written that the left should organize around class, not identity politics. said that this would be a winning strategy. why do you say that? and what strategies do you believe the left could utilize to pursue that goal? sure. so the first thing i should say is, i mean, i'm up on stage at a book festival. i am part of the elite that i'm talking about one, i'm not, you know, going to the factory with my lunch pail every day. yeah. so i, i it's inevitable you

write a book like this that you're going to get questions like that. and also i cringe because the book is about sort of pulling apart. that means what it means. argue for organizing around class rather than for identity categories. and what it doesn't mean because there a crude of this that has been described, i think correctly racist in the past, which is. i mean, i would love to say i've never any leftist say this, but i have, which is that, oh, it's not about race or racism is just an epic phenomenon, classism or whatever, etc. and none of which are things that i believe. and i also think that is really important to address racism. racism structurally. the is is to in order make good changes, you have to a democracy, you have to do things that are popular, right? and 70% of the electorate in the

american in the united states is white. right. only 59% of the people who live in the united states are white. but because of various things like your naturalization status and the immigration process or felon disenfranchisement, etc. 70% of the americans of americans who vote are. and even higher of americans who consistently vote. who come out. election after to vote are. white and white. are disproportionately found in. these kind of states that are overrepresented the sentence. right. so i'm sure does not surprise anyone in this that for example fact that i don't know what's california have like 40 million people the 40 million or whatever californians are represented by two senators and, the 700,000 people in wyoming are represented by two senators, which means that, you know, the math is very hairy and

unfortunately, the way that the electoral is broken down in the senate, but also especially in the electoral college. it has a tendency to overweight the interests of the kind of rural white people that the democratic party has had such a hard time pulling into the coalition. and we just know that while i do think that many people in this country have a sincere to oppose racism who who have a visceral rejection racism. it is also true that we have bucketloads of political science data showing that explicit appeals to racial justice to make things less popular than more right. so, for example, the student loan issue is a good one. we could the merits of student loan, but let's not do that for it's just talk about us getting this thing passed. if we wanted this to happen, if we wanted to forgive student

loans an approach that a lot of left leaning activists and writers and journalists have taken is to say well actually black and hispanic students hold a disproportionate amount of the student debt, which is true. and there are racial injustice implications to this, which is absolutely true and i think is a problem. therefore, we campaign by calling it a racial justice issue, which is absolutely true. and it's not true because as sad as this is to say it is generically true that when you tell that something is a racial injustice issue, they are less likely to support the efforts to ameliorate. that has been shown again and again and again over the course of decades on issue after issue, if you choose to frame an issue as a racial justice issue, it makes it less likely that you're going to. right. so if we recognize. right that there are the sort class dynamics to race that we already we should understand,

that if you address underlying economic inequality that is its nature a racial justice program. right. the flip side of what i'm saying is that if we don't particularly racialized message to fight for student loan debt and it is in fact true that black and hispanic students a disproportionate amount debt, then it is true in fact. right, that there is a racial justice component to student loan forgiveness. if you think that it's cynical to hold the idea of what's effective and the idea of what's in your head, then you're never going to get anything that you want in politics ever. right? that's just what politics is. and so the idea is you approach the country from the standpoint of saying, hey, look, everyone feels fact that housing has become impossibly expensive in

this country and that there are generous loans of middle class young people who will never own their own home after been brought up in a country where defined as like one of the key stations of life, of showing that you're a successful human right. that is an appeal that can be made to everyone. thus the fact that black and hispanic americans are less likely to be homeowners already and a muscular approach to addressing our housing crisis would help black and hispanic people disproportionately is something that we can know and appreciate, but we don't have to campaign on. and i would say that not only is it not racist to do that, i would say that if the effects that you're achieving are anti, it would be racist to emphasize the racial caste argument because the only racism matters is a racism of material reality. and that's what we need to fix. well. i just want to do a follow up on

what you said, frederick you i think quite correctly that if you put an issue out as a racist issue, the percentage of people in this country who will say that's a great we ought to do that is relatively small. why do you think if we put wrap our heads around the idea and i'm work the idea that there should be a class or economic issue that would be more willing interested in supporting it. i mean look. i don't want to do a redo of the same thing i said yesterday at the last panel, but i to bring up the 2016 election right. it's the end. it's the end of the night. no one thought that donald trump would be in a position where he could win. it comes down to michigan and wisconsin might the last states to report the states that hillary needs to win. states that she was considered be an absolute lock to win. to the that she did not

campaign. she she she she came to michigan twice during that entire campaign. they were both very in the campaign and never came back. never once did she go to wisconsin. she did not step foot in wisconsin. 2016 presidential election campaign because they were so sure that they would win. chuck also had said the general democratic strategy, which was for every voter we lose in the rust belt, will gain to in the affluent. right. which is a direct statement of we're going to pick up more fancy pants, rich white people, then we're going to lose a downwardly mobile rural white people. and we're that's why we're going to win the election. and it didn't really work out for chuck or for any of us. right. if you in winning elections so that you can do things like appointing supreme court justices that will protect a woman's right to an abortion in this country. right. you have to say, okay why did michigan in wisconsin, the

democratic agenda? and i would argue that the reason that they did is because for, i don't know, 20 plus years the democratic agenda for people in the decaying rust belt was in pardon me -- you. right. because the democratic did not have any kind of affirmative economic agenda to make those vote for them. and when you as a party say -- you to those often enough, eventually they say -- you back. and that's why donald became president. right. you can appeal class because everyone out there knows what it's like to say --, how am i going to pay the mortgage this month? everyone out there knows what it's like to say got the eggs cost, how much? right. everyone out there. what it's like to experience the sticker shock of looking at how much your kid's college education is to cost and how much you're saying you have to pay, and how much debt your kid

is going to take on is going to cripple them. for a decade. right. those things are very, very broad based. there's many, many more people who experience those things than are people who, you know, are going to go and into the streets in a lives matter protest, in a major city. right. as as beneficial as those protests may be, they are just it's just a slice of humanity. and there's many more black and hispanic americans who suffer the same economically than there are in the activist class. it's just reality, right? and finally, i'll just say like that, the inability to do this, to use class and a class agenda and i have to say, i have to give a lot of credit. i think that biden's domestic agenda has been the best of my lifetime of any president that the reinvigoration of domestic policy and in domestic investment is we need. but hispanic voters since the

2012 election with mitt romney and barack obama have moved dramatic to the republican party. nobody wants to talk about it because so contrary to people's basic ideals, how politics work in this country. but that's happening. it should terrify. and you need to come up with a really good economic for them to say. we're going to stay with the democrats. well thanks for the. so, robert, i want to go for a little bit here to the doctrine of discovery is something i hadn't i didn't know about until. read your book. it's it was endorsed by the pope. and i believe it's only in the last couple of years that the catholic church has rejected this as concept, that there was an apology last year. last year. yeah, it takes a while. you got to pray. i'll have a little bit more to say about that apology.

but yes, they have to have a lot of confessions around that one. so so talk i really want to explore this more because as a concept, i mean, how many of you do you see a show of hands? how many of you have heard of doctrine of discovery before? right. that's pretty good. would have thought. yeah. what about about 10%, maybe. what was that? oh, because you were listening, right? that's that's cheating a little bit, i think. you know. but anyway, i just wanted to poll that because, i mean, i thought, god, i should know this. why why don't i know that it's not taught in schools. i guess that's one of the reasons. and so i want to explore it a little bit more about the impact of that concept. when, when, when christians came to this country that, doctrine was in full effect. right. and it influenced how they thought about the land how they thought about the people on the land. but some of them were poor escaping persecution because of

religion because they they didn't have a place at home left. i mean, was it or a substantial number them who who kind of clung to this notion of this this doctrine, just how did it become so influential in terms of the movement with i just want to make a point the the other night you saw the perhaps the state of the union. you saw the response. there was a line that response that really struck me. and it's not one that's been reported very much. and and she said to the effect of our came to to tame the wilderness. to me that means taking indigenous people. i think that's how i would interpret it. so that's an idea that maybe she hadn't put it in there for that, but i think she probably did. or somebody helped to do that because that really is affecting how the trump works these days. so dive into it a little bit

more for us, if wouldn't mind robert and talk about it really influenced those early colonists. and then down through history how we know it's affected racial nations and racism and all the rest. yeah. so i'm going to say. so i grew up southern baptist in mississippi. right. so that's where i come from. i am the first of my family. my my siblings are are the first in my family in six generations not to live in either one of two counties in middle georgia, bibb county or twiggs county. we got there down we came down from virginia and around 1850 and 18, 12, 1815, because they were handing out free land. all right. so where did that land come from? right. this is right at. the beginning of the quote unquote, indian removal policy in the early 1800s. and so the state of georgia had set about clearing the land of cherokee. right. and them off to oklahoma.

all right. the trail of tears there. this happened all over the south, all over the southeast where i grew up in mississippi, alabama louisiana, all all across the southeast. this is the story. and then effectively, like divided it up into 200 acre rectangle and handed it out to people of european descent. right. so again, what was the justifying for all that? it actually anchored in this idea that this land was given by god. right. it's a theological moral claim to owns the land who properly owns the land. so the real answer is it's kind of i think for our, you know 21st century ears. and i think for many us who grew up in church and thinking christians as the pillars of the community and all of that, it's a shocking thing to hear. right. but this it was ubiquitous. it is the very rationale. we are a settler colonial country. right. we're of take that in right. and in many ways, we're kind of the survivors of an apartheid

state. right. that still trying to untangle ourselves from. and where does all that come? and it comes from this this christian doctrine, i think, kind of really sitting with the reality of that is is is quite and it's with us i'll give just two quick examples. thomas jefferson writes, i was on a panel yesterday about first amendment freedom of religion. so thomas jefferson becomes president 1801 an 1802. he writes the letter to the danbury baptists in connecticut where you are who are worried because the state of connecticut does not have an explicit religious liberty guarantee its own constitution. right. he writes them and that's where we get the phrase separation of church and state. he uses it in that letter to the danbury baptists in connecticut. right. and he's saying that's how you should understand this that the u.s. constitution effectively built a wall of separation between church and state. so it kind of settles their consciousness. so that's 1802 1803 is the

louisiana. right now i taught that their louisiana purchase was the greatest real estate deal in history. right. so we doubled the size of. the country paid less than a nickel an acre for that land is essentially $0.04, but and i've thought of it it's thought of as a real estate deal where we literally get titles right to this thing. but they weren't he wasn't for $15 million. the to those lands. he was buying the right of preemption to those lands. and what does that mean. the right of preemption it means that france didn't control those lands? right. those names were settled by indigenous people. france had outposts here there in lyon, but they were in no way in control those lands. it was like the entire you know most of the drainage area of the mississippi is a huge plot of land so what he was purchasing for $15 million wasn't acreage. it was the right to the indigenous people in that land. that's what he was from france. right. and that where again, where's

that grounded? it's all grounded back in this doctrine of discovery. there it actually gets, embedded in u.s., caselaw in 1823, in a case called, johnson v mackintosh, where they're trying to settle who can buy land from people. and the court basically in 1823 and this is how it actually entered u.s. they base it on that. and as chief justice john marshall writes the opinion and he says the superior genius of europe and, our and our religion gave the right to take land from the indigenous people because of their religion and their character. right and it's directly drawn from this doctrine of discovery in so been with us in ways that even we didn't know it by name. it very much has not only our culture know. and again we're going to be hearing a lot about is america a christian nation, right. people, by the way, always mean white christian nation when they say that. i want to be very clear about that. when we hear a about that. so it's still very much this and

i think this contradiction, which we've allowed to exist is is at the of still what's really pulling the country apart. wow. well, one thing i wanted to just follow up on and that the connection or the relationship between manifest destiny and the doctrine of discovery, i mean, i think most of us, if not all of us, heard about that or learned about that in school, never heard doctrine of discovery. but it seemed like the two are really connect in in some ways. i mean, manifest destiny means we are entitled to take your we are entitled to settle this area. we're entitled to give away land to people who want to settle. is that is that a correct connection, would you say? oh yeah. you only have to ask. well, by whom or by whom i give away. by whom do we have? whose right do we have? this manifest. oh, i see. right. it's a theological whole concept. at the end of the day. right. so providence, whose was god? right. whose god?

the christian god? which christian god will the european one. right. that's you kind of answer doubt like that. and so it's it's kind of like gloss on the doctrine. right. but city said on the hill, john winthrop. right. is is very similar here. so winthrop, you know, again fleeing persecution, as you note and engages in with the local indigenous population. right. that that that colonial does so if you had asked the indigenous people who lived around winthrop's settlement whether it was a city set on the hill, i don't think they would have agreed. okay let me go back to mckay, as you know, and your book it well, romney has gone back and forth on trump and his presidency. he was lured to a dinner, for example, where purpose, it appeared, was talk about romney becoming secretary of state, which he couldn't get and he sought and received trump's endorsement when he ran i

believe in 2012 12. yeah. later he voted both impeachment convictions and really become the one republican senator who challenges. so how do you understand his about trump. i think just personally i'm glad where he landed but why back and forth. yeah well i think that this speaks to kind of the theme of the book which is about the compromises our political leaders make in pursuit of power. and this is a theme he returned to again and again in our conversation. there was something he was he was honestly with. and i think he he didn't have like a prepackaged answer when. we started our interviews at. it was, you know, sometimes when we we talked for two years. and so there would be some meetings. he would kind of confess complicity. and then the next week he would become defensive. when i suggested he was complicit. so we'd go back and forth. i think i'll tell you his the

way he his evolution. trump and then i'll give you my view of it. so hit his story is basically he first met donald trump in the mid-nineties trump was kind of a new york city fixture and celebrity businessman. he had this really surreal weekend at mar a lago in the mid-nineties that i write about in the book, where he came away basically thinking, donald trump is not a serious person. he's a ridiculous character and was kind of his the impression he had of trump all the way up until, you know, the new hampshire primary in 2016. and so a long time and this includes 2012 when romney himself was running president and found himself standing on a stage in las vegas next, donald trump accepting his endorsement for the presidency the way that romney rationalized that he you know, he knew trump was a

buffoon. he at the time trump banging on about, you know, barack obama's certificate. and he wasn't really born in the u.s. and and romney found all of that embarrassing but the way he rationalized was, you know he's not a serious political figure. he's a ridiculous celebrity. you know, every politician accepts endorsements from ridiculous celebrities. why can't i? that was his his theory. although it is funny. i'll just say as an aside, you go back, i write about it in the book, but the moment he actually had to go up and accept the endorsement on stage in las vegas, it's really funny because you trump goes up and speaks first and he's basking in all the attention. there's reporters there. he's about how great as hotel is everything and romney then now romney's turn to talk and he goes up to the microphone and and he looks kind of just like shell shocked and he says there are some things in life you just can't imagine happening to you.

this is one of them. so you know what he says is that once donald trump started running for president and shot to the top of the polls and kind of stayed there in the republican primaries, romney started to take him more seriously, a political threat. and that's he came out against him and he spent the whole 2016 election working behind the scenes to try to organize some kind of, you know, republican coalition, stop trump and then in the general, he you know, he wouldn't endorse or anything. he didn't vote for him. but so that's his story is he didn't take trump seriously then he eventually did. this is the story you from a lot of the establishment, right? what think and i think there's some truth to that. i think also mitt romney, the mitt romney that accepted donald trump's endorsement in 2012, was trying to become president.

he was in he was pursuing the most powerful in the world and he made a thousand little moral compromise stacked on top of each other to try get that job. and that is kind of the reality of running president now. you know i don't know that everybody makes the same of ethical compromises, but all of our political leaders confront ethical lines when they're running for office. and most them cross them because that's what they've told themselves. they have to do to get the job. and then say, once i'm there, i'll be able to do so much good at that at all. it'll make it worth these these ethical compromises as the mitt romney that up voting for trump's impeachment twice became the first senator in history to vote for the impeachment or conviction. a president from his own party was the was who had given up on becoming. and i think that explains the

difference. you know he told me that when he looks back on his something that has become glaringly apparent in the republican party, especially, he said, is that you the as the party has radicalized the party's base has become more you as like a political leader in that party confront these lines that you're told you have to cross and you tell yourself can cross this i need to cross this line because if i don't, i'll lose and i'll get replaced by someone who's crazy right. like a real a, real crazy person will take my job. so it's for the good of the country. i need to cross this line. and these are the problem is the line just keeps getting pushed further. and further and further back until you're doing things, you never have imagined that you would do right. and that's where he sees a lot of his his colleagues now, you know, in this political moment, they're saying and doing things that if you them ten years ago, they would say and do, they

wouldn't have believed you. but that is the nature of this political moment. and i think it's kind of a dispiriting one. it is, indeed. i blamed it. when i ran for office, i blamed other consultants, you know, so because they always you you got to go here when you really want to go there. well, i would love to ask more questions, but i'd like you to have a chance to answer ask questions now. so if you have a for our panel, could you take to the one of the microphones, just line up and we'll take in order on both sides, both aisles. so we'll go with the first person up. could you say who you are and what your question is? please. it is not not. nope we get some help? oh, yeah. it went on. i was about to say oh yeah i think it's working now. i think it's working. this is submitted to br we know that you're sort of making an argument that we talk to voters based on their analysis of their

position, what's going to help them advance in their in class. but there's tons and tons and tons of social science research that says people don't vote by a rational analysis of what's to be in their economic benefit. they vote with guts, with emotion. they vote for person who they think is going to lift up in some of, you know, make them feel wonderful about themselves. your answer who you're directing it to. yeah. mean to do. fredric look like. i mean to a degree. absolutely. that's true. but like if we take a sort of maximal list reading of that, we should all just go to bar right now. right? there's no to a certain extent, like once you once you acknowledge like, let's just say that like there's a spectrum of voter irrationality. right? and we want to sort of believe that voters are sufficiently rational that this country doesn't go plunging into the but

if you if you like, just sort of pitch everything to the sort of lowest common denominator of it's all about vibes. then there's campaigning to be done, right. there's there's, there's, there's very little to be done in terms of like policy work. i absolute agree that voters are not reading policy papers right. i absolutely agree that, you know, personality plays a huge role vibes and what they call thermostatic dimension of politics, which is that when the country is ruled conservatives for a while, it tends then move to the left and then it moves back to right after etc. but. look, it is it is not disputable that the death of roe v wade led to a bump in democratic prospects in all kinds unrelated elections across country. right. we have a lot of great data demonstrating that wave of good results in elections, elections

that not in any direct sense about that that stemmed outrage and anger over. roe v wade. i mean, something that sort of like smart republicans would tell you for many, many years is quietly that like they didn't want roe v wade to be overturned because it was such a good fundraising and vote gathering issue for them, which is a big of politics. so you're right, i'm certainly not going to tell you that you're wrong. i do think, though that, you know, consumer sentiment really does have a influence on the sort of how well an incumbent party does. and so you want to be in a position where you can have the power to do things and then try to take credit for them while accepting that right. like half of your votes going to come from people who have no idea what you actually think. right. thank you, frederick. are there other questions from the audience?

if not, i've got some for the panelists. go ahead, please. i want to know why romney speak out more, especially with a political threats and violence. that was coming from the constantly from the republican and now it's just sort of normalized and accepted. i just can't understand that you in reason like in last few years why why haven't they been more republicans or somebody like romney who was not really at risk or had given on the presidency to call out all the constant threats and violence that are now coming upon themselves, not just the ds or the public health workers or so he. i talked a lot about the threat of violence. i don't think he has been actually that quiet on that issue. but i can tell you others don't. and it's and it actually i think speaks to a grim reality of our politics. he told me that it during the second impeachment trial. so this is after january six trump was was charged brought

articles impeachment around the insurrection and he spoke multiple republicans in both the house and the senate who privately told him that they wanted to vote for impeachment and conviction, but that they wouldn't do it because they were afraid of what would happen to their families. he told me one one story specifically about a member senate republican leadership. so a high ranking republican senator who after in middle of the senate trial, told a small group of republicans in the caucus room, you know, i think i have to vote for conviction. so clearly guilty of these things. and the other senators in the conversation said, no, no, no, you can't do that. think about what could happen to your wife? think about what could happen. your kids and this senator decided they were right. and his rationale was there are too many trump supporters with guns in my state for me to, vote for conviction. so i don't think he actually these conversations with him were where i learned about just

deeply embedded in the psychology of elected officials and especially republicans is this fear of political violence from their own constituents. i i don't know, you know, how long a democracy like ours, a pluralistic society, can sustain itself when elected officials are making decisions based on fear, physical violence from their constituents. but i think it's one of the defining questions this era. absolutely. yeah. well. we have time for one more question, but i just want to make a comment relative to the question, and that is in arizona, we have 15 counties, as you know, ten of those counties, the officials direct. there are directors elections, the county recorders or post have resigned out of ten out of the 15 counties. they've resigned just because of what you said. and that is they were getting threats, their home addresses

being broadcast. scary thing. and we've been through it as a family, too. so i understand the threats can be really awful and you want to run away and hide if you can. yes, ma'am. what is your question? my questions for robert and, i'm wondering, is your book banned in florida and educate and. what how can we go about? how can you get it banned? no, no. what can we do to? allow it to be taught there or everywhere? well, thank you. no, it is not to my knowledge, ban. i do talk about that in the last chapter of the book. i have a whole section on critical theory and book bans and how that is an expression of this claim right. that we are a white christian nation, that the standards are based on actually what one group of white evangelical protestants in particular saying. one thing i'll just say about that is white evangelical protestants. one of the reasons why we're seeing such a backlash there,

because they have been losing numbers in droves over the last two decades. right. so 20 years ago, they were about a quarter of the country. there's one in four americans identified a white evangelical protestant, christian today. that number is 13.7%. right. just over the last 20 years. so that explains, i think, some of the what we're experiencing here is a kind of desperate, apocalyptic politics, the kind that goes for violence. so when you when when democratic means, including even, you know, shady ones like gerrymander. right. and stuff, when those kinds of things cease to be effective. and you add to that a divine mandate for a particular outcome. right. then you get move. and in fact, we see it in the data that, for example, we did a study on christian nationalism, which is kind of the contemporary expression of this doctrine discovery thing. we've been talking about. and it what we're is about three in ten americans today qualify

as either christian nationalism adherents sympathizers. that means a 2 to 1. the country rejects that idea. but among that percent, they make up 55% of republicans. and then they get two thirds of white evangelicals in the country. and so what and when you look at that, nearly four in ten tell us that they think political violence may be justified to save the country. yeah, right. that's where we are. it's like i think we got kind of wake up to the real threat because it's linked to this idea. there's only one legitimate outcome right that god wants to happen. it's literally fight between the devil and evil and god the good right. but that is such like fundamentally poisonous thing for right. we can't have a democracy, but that's if you think about your political opponents as, existential enemies and instruments of satan, which is really how this kind of has devolved. robert what you were supposed to say is that it's been widely banned and to counter that, you need to go by the book. that's right. yes, right. only by buying it here.

let's write let's just say for that purpose that all of these books are banned or will be. so go buy one and you can go and have book signed at the u of a bookstore tent on the mall. let's give it up for our panel, please.

the focus of this panel is a soothsayers