start making sense

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Start Making Sense: How To Talk To AmericaThose who dwell in the nation's progressive oases must learn to communicate and

connect with a much broader swath of Americans. Our panel of progressive thinkers

tackles the problem.June 7, 2005 |

Editor's Note: The following is Part II in a series of transcripts taken from a standing-room-only book panel in San Francisco for AlterNet's new book, Start Making Sense:

Turning the Lessons of Election 2004 into Winning Progressive Politics. Already in its

second printing, SMS brings together some of the best-known progressive thinkers and

doers to map out a realistic plan for building a new movement for change in this country.

The panel included Van Jones (executive director of Ella Baker Center for Human

Rights), George Lakoff (linguist and best-selling author), Wes Boyd (co-founder of

MoveOn.org), Adam Werbach (executive director of Common Assets Defense Fund),Lakshmi Chaudhry (senior editor of AlterNet) and moderator Holly Minch (director of

the Spin Project).

PART II

Holly Minch: Thank you very much for joining us to celebrate the release of the book this

evening. And our hope with the panel is to really explore many of the same themes that

emerged in the book. Sort of 'what happened, what do we do about it and what do we find

when we look to the future?' So those will be some of the questions I will be posing to thepanel....

... I would like to pick up this thread about not just being a thorn in the side of theestablishment but becoming the establishment; becoming a force of people, a community

that is able to speak to the middle, that is able to speak to a much broader swath of

Americans than we have been able to do and I want to ask that question in the context ofthe culture of increasing polarization in this country.

You know, coming out of the election we had a sort of either/or dynamic set up in this

country; red states, blue states; hawks/doves and never the two shall meet. So, how do wein that context of increasing political polarization and how do we in particular, those of us

who dwell in the liberal oasis of the Bay Area, learn to break out of that and learn to

communicate with and listen to and connect with Republicans from a place of deeprespect? How do we learn to connect with the part of the country that we have not been

connecting with to date? [Applause]

Van Jones: How many people in this room were born and raised in San Francisco? How

many people were born and raised in California? So, I wasn't. And I want to say

something about this. First of all I think that the left in our country, we almost have gone

through a process where we got a divorce from our own country. For me I grew up in the


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middle of the country. I'm from Tennessee. I'm a Southerner; red state. I got my feelings

hurt really bad growing up. I was not in the big clique. I was a nerd. I was sensitive and I

left as soon as I could. And I fled like a lot of people in the left strong holds. I fled to thecosmopolitan coasts where I felt like I could belong. And I joined some of the subcultures

on the cosmopolitan coasts that felt more welcoming to me. And I was able to find my

place and find my voice in doing that.

But something atrophied in me that showed up around the Thanksgiving table. And I

suddenly discovered that I could not talk or communicate or be heard by people I hadliterally grown up with. I went back to neighborhoods and churches that I literally had

grown up in and when I would talk the room, it would freeze. People would squirm

uncomfortably and when I finished five to ten minutes later some relative, out of pure

kindness, sympathy and compassion would say, "Well now, that was a mouthful. Boy canyou pass the ketchup?" And the conversation would move on.

We don't have to ask the question how do we learn to talk to America. We have to ask the

question when did we make the choice to forget? What was the injury? What is the pain?How long are we going to let being-bullied-in-high-school run our lives and run our

movement? [Applause] This is a question.

At some point we have to accept responsibility. We cannot lead a country we don't love.

We cannot lead a country that we don't love. The country is waiting for a movement. Thecountry is waiting for a pro-democracy movement. Not a left movement, not a right

movement.

The country is waiting for a pro-democracy movement that can inspire it and not justcritique it. And it's time for us to have some kind of a homecoming. We are not little

people any more. We are strong. We are beautiful. We are healing. We did something in

this country that has not been done for decades and we did it on a dime and the turn of adime. We built a beautiful pro-democracy movement in our own country that came

within a hundred thousand votes in Ohio of unseating one of the worst presidents or the

worst leaders globally the world has ever known. We are a beautiful, powerful, proudmovement. [Applause] That's who we are. And we can go home now. We can go back

now and we can say, "Guess what? You think things are bad now? They are bad now. But

these are actually the good-old days.

We are living in the good old days. The century defining crises have yet to hit. The

energy crunch, peak oil has yet to hit. The globalization; China, India coming on line and

finally being able to come into their own; that has not yet hit and affected our economy.Global warming hasn't hit. The massive species extinctions haven't hit. We are in the

good old days. Whatever movement prepares itself now not to protest but to govern.

[Applause.] A movement that prepares itself to govern a broken country, a hurt country, acountry that needs solutions, not issues, not critiques, not complaints, not kvetches but

the country that needs strong people who are willing to take responsibility and bring forth

solutions. That movement will be welcomed, beloved, accepted, celebrated and lauded at

Thanksgiving tables in blue states and red states. Thank you. [Applause]


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George Lakoff: Thanks, Van. I grew up in a rooming house near the Navy base in

Bayonne, New Jersey where my mother ran a rooming house. And as a result I neverknew who I was going to have dinner with on any given night. But they were usually

from virtually any part of the country; sailors, people working on the oil tanks, truck

drivers, hospital orderlies, whoever. And what I discovered was that there are a lot ofpeople who are politically very, very different than I was and they were good people.

And I think of them often.

One of the things that I found when I started doing the research on oral politics was that

the ideal models of the family; these strict father, nurturant-parent families are just that.

They are ideal models but really we all have both of them; either active or passive.

Sometimes, you can be nurturant in every active part of your life but you want to go andsee a Schwarzenegger movie and you understand it. That means you've got it in you

somewhere. And there are a lot of people in this country who have both models active in

different parts of their lives. And I like to think of them as partial progressives because

they are people we can talk to about just those things.

Now, one of the things I discovered in thinking about elections was that - I asked myselfwhy it was that the Democrats kept trying to move to the right assuming they would

somehow get more votes but that the Republicans didn't have to move to the left to get

more votes. And then I realized there was a very solid, sound, cognitive science, reasonfor that; that's my field, cognitive science. Which is, that when you speak the language of

a particular ideology you activate that ideology. And when you speak to your base you

activate that same idea in the swing voters in the middle. So they know perfectly well that

when they speak to their base they activate the conservative part of people who have bothmodels. And the Democrats really screw up when they try to move to the right in three

ways. They not only alienate their base but they help the other side because they are

actually activating the other guys' models and because they are speaking about issues thatare defined in terms of their values, not ours, they are giving up on any coherent moral

vision. [Applause]

Now, the question then is 'what is going on in an election?' What's going on is that people

are voting not necessarily their self-interest but their identity. They are voting for

someone they identify with or for an idea that they identify with. And those folks who

vote for George Bush identify with him. They say there's a guy I can trust. There is a guywho is like me in certain ways. Right? And you have to understand that. These folks are

not stupid. They are not mean. They are moral. They have another moral system or they

have a moral system that has been acted as half there in them but activated by thelanguage being used.

We need to speak to the progressive part of America; of those red states and it's there. Ibegan to realize this last November after the election. I was invited to work with the

leaders of a number of about thirty environmental organizations and as I interviewed

them I discovered certain things. They all were worried about the Republicans in their

organizations and they didn't want to offend those Republicans. But as they spoke, they


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said several things. They said: 1) that there was a problem with environmentalism. That

environmentalism wasn't taking up issues like health, issues like energy, and issues like

foreign policy. That these were important things and they knew that. But they saidsomething else when I asked them the question, who are the Republicans in the

organizations? Do you know who they are? They said, "Oh yes, we've studied this in

great detail. And they started listing and it turns out there are six types.

I mean there might be seven but I only asked thirty people. But there are only six. But

here they are and they are interesting. Those are the ones they gave me. This is just fieldwork. These types are: 1) People who identify with the land and therefore join the nature

conservancy or a group that does land trust stuff; 2) Business men who are concerned

seriously with sustainability and conservation; 3) Other businessmen who want to be

environmental entrepreneurs, start Green businesses of various kinds; 4) Then there areconservative Christians who want to preserve God's creation; 5) There are social

conservatives who happen to be hunters and fishermen like from Ducks Unlimited and so

on. They happened to be hunters and fishermen but they want to be able to eat their fish

and maybe still have some place to hunt. 6) And then there are people who really lovetheir families and like hiking in the parks and they are devoted to the parks.

Now, when you look at this list, it is very interesting. These are people who are nurturant

in certain parts of their lives but not random parts of their lives because each of those

defines an identity; an identification with the land, a care about and identification withthe job and business you have, an identification with your religion, an identification with

the recreation that you do and the identification with your family. Those are important

and that's one of the responses to what environmentalism should do next. It should point

out and go for those parts of our population that identify in lots of different ways with theenvironment --- where the environment is internal not external. The problem with the

word environment is that it is external to you. You're in an environment. It's like it is out

there. Look at all the pictures of nature; it is never where you are right now. Right? It issomewhere else.

The point is that people vote on the basis of their identity and it's important that we lookat the way that people identify with our values and our issues in that way. It is also

important to recognize that the notion of community in the red states is a very interesting

one. It is a nurturant notion of community. It is based on a nurturant family model. It's

not a strict father community. A strict father community is one where you have a leaderwho tells you what to do and you do it, or else; and you get punished. It is sort of like the

congress under Tom Delay or the Bush administration or the Mafia, etc.

But I lived in the Midwest for four years, both teaching and when I was in graduate

school. And what I found was a lot of communities that were set up on a nurturant model.

Where the community leaders cared about the people in the community and the people inthe community cared about each other. That is the ideal of a red state community. It's a

nurturant ideal. It is a progressive ideal. And it's important to understand what it means,

in part, to be a partial progressive even if you have certain conservative views. The way

that we talk to progressives is to understand where they share our ideas. And it is also a


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question of how you talk to people. The kind of cross-fire dialogue that you see on these

shows where people are screaming at each other is a competitive dialogue. It's a

conservative dialogue. It's not a form of discourse that is cooperative. And we need to beable to find a form of discourse that is cooperative if we are going to be able to talk to our

neighbors and our countrymen. [Applause]

Wes Boyd: But I thought we were supposed to mix it up. Aren't we supposed to mix it

up?

George Lakoff: Wes is like, "I want to fight."

Wes Boyd: Yeah, where's the fight?

George Lakoff: Love it, I love it.

Wes Boyd:George, what's up with this word, nurturant? Could you have found a better

word than nurturant? Our society is nurturant? Strong. Strong nurturance. Nurturance isstrong. It's not these namby, pamby permissive people. You've got to be responsible. It's

tough.

Adam Werbach: Van mentioned the hurt of high school. I think we need a proposal

tonight that when we take power, take our rightful place on the thrown of Americanpower, we will dissolve junior high. [Applause] No child should have to go to school

when their body is changing in complicated ways. No child should have to be around

people when they are going through difficulties and unfamiliar changes in themselves.

Dissolving junior high. My daughter will not have to go to junior high. I've decided this.

Governing. By a strange set of circumstances I was appointed as a member of the Public

Utilities Commission here in San Francisco about a year ago. And I called when Philsaid, "Should I do this? This is crazy." And they said, "Well, if you can solve the problem

in San Francisco, that if people have the same problem in New Jersey or Biloxi, that's a

useful thing. If you solve a problem in San Francisco that's just good for San Francisco,well that doesn't really help anyone." So we set about doing that. So, in San Francisco we

released eight and one-half million dollars for clean energy jobs installing solar panels in

the City. That is exactly what people should be doing everywhere.

In San Francisco and the Peninsula Bay Area we released thirty million dollars for

Habitat protection around the water shed because instead of engineering solutions you

can protect habitat much, much cheaper and protect your water supply much cheaper byprotecting land. It makes sense. And in San Francisco, under the leadership of the Mayor,

we are going to have free or very low cost wireless in the City available for every citizen

ubiquitously in the City.

Now that's a year. The right took over school boards and we are still reeling from that and

now they are trying to shut down the whole concept of public education and make it into

religious education. So we need to take over public utilities commissions; we need to take


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over school boards and then we need to shut down junior high schools. [Applause] I'm

serious.

Wes Boyd: So to continue the junior high theme. I was the king of the geeks in junior

high. I was working at age fourteen programming. So I have my credentials. It wasn't that

bad though, if you just ignored it all. I just want to give some evidence; to support whatthe others have said, and George especially, in terms of the thesis that there is no center

or that, even better, the thesis that the best way to reach America is to go to your core

values and speak with integrity.

We decided in the last election cycle, that the way we would approach the media work

that we did was to start from the MoveOn base to find out, as we do continuously, what

people are energized about and then to develop advertising that represents those issues.For example, early on in the election cycle we did an ad called "87 billion dollars in Iraq"

which was about priorities. And that came directly from a petition campaign that went

gang busters with the Move On base so we knew there was a tremendous amount of base

energy with that campaign. And we said, "Okay, let's take the hypothesis that the bestway to reach America is to dig into that passion and to then make the case." So we took

that thirty second ad and we put it out there.

I'll tell you, the people in D.C.; you would think that the problem is that they do too much

research, that they are too scientific, and that they are too cold. I'll tell you, the reality isnot only do they not touch and move from value and integrity, but they do lousy science.

Okay? Bad, bad science. So we did good science which was to actually say, "Okay our

hypothesis is that this is going to have an impact with Americans broadly." We took this

ad and we placed it in the market. We did polling before and after. The same polls theydo to figure out what's moving in a presidential race and how people are feeling about

issues. And then we did a control - I mean they don't even do the first step and certainly

they wouldn't do a control - we a control during the same period in a comparable market,polling before and after. There was tremendous movement on all the metrics; in terms of

presidential favorability, it was a 7 or 8 point movement in just two weeks.

What comes from the heart, what comes from the base, it moves people. And another

example was an ad that literally came from the Move On base. We had this ad contest last

year where people from throughout the country submitted ads. The winning ad was about

the deficit. Who knew that progressives would think that was the most important thing totalk about but it's about our kids' future. And that ad we similarly tested to similarly huge

movements on all the scales.

So we have hard evidence that this theory is correct --- which is that you have to start

from integrity. You have to start where there is the energy and then make your case and

people move. The best thing about this - I don't know what we would have done if foundthis wasn't true. But because the deep dysfunction of leadership in Washington is they are

being told that they have to be very cleaver in that they have to find out what people want

to hear and then they have to tell them those things. And it is deeply disabling to


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leadership. I think that the reason the right is doing so well even though they are nuts and

fruitcakes is that they believe what they are saying. [Applause]

So we need new leadership, we need the creed, so we know what believe and we can say

it synthetically and leaders; it's a tough job to be in a position of somebody like John

Kerry. Where you come in March and that infrastructure is not built and you aresupposed to put it together in eight months. We've all let ourselves down by not building

that. By not building the stories; by not building the programs; by not building the

strategic initiatives that somebody like John Kerry can pick up and run with and get intothe White House on and of course, not just John Kerry but every level of government. We

are going to do that now. We can to it. We have the energy and the resources. [Applause]

Lakshmi Chaudhry: I think the interesting question to ask yourself is 'how can we talk tothem?' The question is 'who is we?' Is it the poor, single Latina mother trying to raise two

kids? Is it the working poor? Is it African American teenager? Who is we? I feel like

when you talk about "we" you are talking about very well-educated, middle-class at the

very least people who run progressive organizations, who lead the progressive movementand by the way, I include myself. Because I don't think I can pretend at all that I come

from any kind of; given how poor India is; that I come from a deprived background. I'msaying is that we talk about "them" as those a) the NASCAR Dad or these poor white

people in red states are somehow other and they are somehow different from "us" and

who is "us"? That includes so many people who are poor; people who are incrediblyreligious, very devout; that includes a lot of Latinos who are opposed to abortion.

One of the interesting things that occurred to me when I read Tom Frank's book, "What's

the matter with Kansas?" and basically his argument is that the whole culture war is adisguise to class warfare; that the more people become poor in the red states, so to speak,

basically, the Republicans have set up a message machine or an ideological apparatus that

makes them angrier and angrier at latte-sipping liberals in San Francisco and New York.Right? It's disguised class warfare; disguised as a cultural war. I'm like, great, and I think

he is right on target.

But it doesn't work if there isn't in fact a disconnect between who speaks for progressives

and who are the people being spoken for. I think the fact that we end up with an Al Gore

and a John Kerry is not an accident. I think that the leadership; who have done wonderful

work by the way; a lot of the big progressive organizations. It's not an accident that theydon't look a lot like the people that they are talking about. And this is true even within the

Democratic Party.

One of the most interesting interviews I did was with the co-author of this book called

"The Right Nation." And it was with one of the editors for The Economist, Adrian

Wooldridge. And he said one of the problems with the Democratic Party is that it isgrowing most rapidly amongst urban professional, educated people. And these are people

for whom social issues are much more important than economic issues. So the Democrats

think, "Oh, we can sell out the whole minimum wage stuff as long as we hold on to the

right to choose; as long as we fight really hard."


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I'm not saying it should be an either/or. It shouldn't be an either/or and it should never be

an either/or. The two things actually go together. But the problem is that there are sort ofthings that we don't interrogate ourselves for. I mean there are disconnects within who we

speak to and speak for even within our own movement which is exactly what the

Republican Party exploits. I mean it's the reason why they are targeting Latino votes forexample. It is the reason why they are targeting African American votes for example.

And as long as we don't sort of look within ourselves. I feel like if we can talk to

ourselves and within ourselves with great generosity and affection and sort of actually seeourselves for who we are in all our brilliant diversity; I think we are not going to have

any problem talking to the rest of America. [Applause]

Start Making Sense: Is Liberalism Dead?

Is liberalism dead? What will it take for us to bring about a rebirth of inspiration, hope

and optimism for a new American future?

June 16, 2005 |Editor's Note: The following is Part III in a series of transcripts taken from a standing-

room-only book panel/party in San Francisco for AlterNet's new book, Start MakingSense: Turning the Lessons of Election 2004 into Winning Progressive Politics.

The panel included Van Jones (executive director of Ella Baker Center for HumanRights), George Lakoff (linguist and best-selling author), Wes Boyd (co-founder of

MoveOn.org), Adam Werbach (executive director of Common Assets Defense Fund),

Lakshmi Chaudhry (senior editor of AlterNet) and moderator Holly Minch (director of

the Spin Project).

Part III

Holly Minch:

Is liberalism as we know it dead? Rest in peace. Or are we in the process of a rebirth?And what will it take for us to bring about a rebirth of inspiration and hope and optimism

for a new American future?

Van Jones:

Well I dont know about whether anything is dead or not. This is what I think. I think

that we need a new story. I think that we need a new myth and I want to suggest one.

I want to make an argument that we are entering the third wave of environmentalism.

And that the third wave of environmentalism actually creates the possibility of a newpolitics in the United States.

The first wave was called conservation; Teddy Roosevelt; lets preserve the wild

areas, etc. And that had its day and it had its beauty. The second wave initiated by Rachel


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Carsons book Silent Spring and could be considered a regulation wave.

Lets regulate the bad stuff. Lets regulate toxics, poisons, pollution. Lets try

to keep that bad stuff away from our children, away from our drinking water, etcetera.

The third wave, which is coming is conservation, yes, plus regulation of the bad, yes, plus

investment in the good: investment in solar; investment in permaculture; investment inorganic; investment in high performance cars and high performance buildings;

investment in the environmental technology of the future. And that new wave, that new

green wave has a potential to create new jobs, to create new wealth and to deliverenvironmental benefit. Not just avoid environmental horror but to deliver environmental

benefits to this country.

Now, there is a danger. The danger is the question that has to be asked and answeredis will this new green wave lift all boats? Will this new green wave lift all boats or

will we have eco apartheid? Will we have what we have right now where in Marin

youve got solar this and bio that and everything is groovy and hybrids and

everything and its all eco and fifteen minutes away in Oakland you have smokestakes, asthma epidemic, cancer clusters, learning disabilities, birth defects and the whole

nine yards, all driven by environmental pollution. Are we going to have eco apartheid orare we going to have eco equity? That question, if we stand together and say, You

know what? This new green wave will lift all boats. We are going to stand together on a

single, moral principle.

And that principle is this. Those communities that were locked out of the last

centuries pollution based economy are going to be locked in to the new clean and

green economy. We make that declaration. [Applause] When you do that something quiteremarkable opens up as a possibility.

First of all, the economic justice struggles and the criminal justice struggles and the racialjustice struggles suddenly have something in common. Something in common with the

more white, affluent, progressive struggles. You can begin to put together a united front.

You can begin to say, We have a role now for government as progressives. Asprogressives we say, no, no, no, we dont want a nanny state but we dont

want a Robo Cop state either. We refuse to go back and forth between this welfare state

versus warfare state debate, which is a false and leaves our communities further and

further behind. We have a role for government. [Applause]

And the role for government is this: partner. We want the government to be a partner to

our communities as we struggle to get into this new green economy. We want thegovernment to stand with the problem solvers, the eco entrepreneurs, the guys and the

women in the neighborhood who are trying to make peace and keep things together. We

want government to fund the problem solvers and stop funding the problem makers. Stopfunding the incarcerators and the polluters and the war mongers. We want government as

a partner to the problem solvers. On that basis you have the beginnings of something

quite remarkable; a new deal coalition for the new century. Thats my hope.

[Applause]


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George Lakoff:

There was a question that was asked about is liberalism or progressivism dead? I

dont think so. But I think it is very important to understand where we shoot

ourselves in the foot. A lot of the very best things in the progressive movement comefrom our historical roots. And those historical roots lie in rationalism; the idea that

everybody is equally rational; we have a universal rationality; everybody can think as

well as anyone else.

There is another very important part of that which is if we are all equally rational, then

what happens? Facts matter because facts affect our material well being. So we care

about science. We care about the truth. The assumption is that truth will set us free if wereason to the right conclusion and so on.

These ideas are very important but they are not totally true. You cant just say the

facts will set us free because we think in terms of conceptual frames and conceptualmetaphors as Ive been arguing for sometime. And when those frames are part of our

brains the facts are going to be trumped by the frames, right? So that when, for example,on the arguments about virtually any issues, Democrats start citing the facts over and

over whereas the Republicans start citing their values; they are going to win.

It is not that the facts dont matter. They do but they have to be framed correctly and

they have to be put in the right way. So the old line liberalism that is just based on

rationalism is a mistake.

It is also important to understand that the progressive community has gotten some strange

ideas and that are probably not terribly great. One of them is what is called the

reverse moral order, the idea that the oppressed are more moral than their oppressors. It may be true, or may not be true. But as soon as we take that idea, you are

going against facts in many cases.

There is another idea that is in certain parts of that community which is we should be

anti-business. Now there is something ridiculous about this because most of the

people I know are in business or work for businesses. The best restaurants are businesses.

The cafes are businesses. The commuter companies are businesses.

Whats important about this is to understand that business of America is business and

most businessmen are honest and try to do the right thing. There are corporate criminals;but progressives should be in favor of ethical business. What does ethical business mean?

It means you have reforms. For example accounting reform; open accounting. We should

be able to see the books; honest accounting. Full accounting, no externalization, nodumping stuff into the air and not paying to clean it up and so on. We would have to be

thinking about positive things about business; not just negative things about corporate

criminals.


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Adam Werbach:

American liberalism is definitely dead. It has been dead for years and that doesntmean that European liberalism is dead. But when you talk about liberalism as a moral,

intellectual ideological project it no longer functions for the average American. It

doesnt mean it still works for some people; but it doesnt work for most people.

When liberalism was created it provided two solutions; group rights by court and large

social safety net government provided programs. It was created in the era of thedepression, of WWII. But all of these sort of structural problems facing the broad

majority of Americans today are not solved by that [liberalism]. And instead of saying,

we need liberalism to evolve and become another thing that actually serves people and

effectively ends poverty or gets people out and moves it, liberals say we areactually going to protect the structure first. We are going to care more about the

structure than we are going to care about actually what the services are. Instead of saying

we are going to innovate new programs; we are saying we are going to hold on to our old

ones. And when I say progressives, Im not talking about liberals.

Progressive right now is an empty brand. It means to most people angry liberal.[Laughter] And the type of solutions that we need to talk about are actually what we need

to impart into progressivism. But liberalism; that set of solutions that we know so well,

we have to understand isnt working for most Americans. Most Americans are not atthe place they were fifty, sixty years ago. Most Americans are worrying about credit card

debt. They are worrying about obesity. One in six Americans live in a gated community

right now. The majority of voters live in the suburbs right now. America has changed

deeply from that time so why are we still supporting the same liberal programs? Wes,what does and should progressive mean?

Wes Boyd:

Ah, truth, justice and the American way. [Applause] But that is from a fifties serial

superman. I really appreciate the fact that Adam charges that environmentalism is dead orliberalism is dead because those challenges need to be made. In fact I dont think he

goes far enough.

I mean, is the middle class dead? We have to fight for the middle class. We have to bechampions of the middle class. We have to be clear on that.

We need to fight for the enlightenment. The enlightenment is an idea that was the basisfor the founding of this country. We need to understand that scientifically we know that

human beings have cognitive blind spots. Therefore we can actually figure out how to

socially compensate for those things. It is actually called morality, right? It is called a setof taboos; however you want to think about it; good and evil. Society comes up with

these things to help us deal with our cognitive blind spots.


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We have to understand that cosmopolitanism; the view of this as one world is a good

view and its the thing that is going to hold the pieces together as the tensions of

regionalism and tends to establish empire and try to pull it apart. Those are all the pieces,right? But how we talk about these things; that is something we all have to work on

together, because there is a lot of work to do there

Lakshmi Chaudhry:

I think there is too much fuss about whats dead whats not in the end, youknow, maybe its because Im Hindu and Im like, ah, its all reincarnated

anyway. [Laughter]

But aside from that really cheap joke that plays to my Indian identity, what I will say isthere is a serious point behind that which, in the end you can call it liberalism, you can

call it progressivism, it used to be called a nationalist struggle at one point, you know, in

different context, freedom struggle, the struggle to democracy. In the end what it is, is

some basic belief in common decency, fairness, equality, justice, the idea that a society inwhich the weakest and the frailest are simply sort of left behind is not a society worth

living in, that where people should have opportunity to be the best that they can be. Andso these ideas that remain the same and I dont think anything can ever kill them

through time as long as you have human beings on this earth, which may not be that long

but that is beside the point.

But I think what we lose when we get caught up in these struggles is the idea that when it

comes to morality, when it comes to words like decency they have no meaning without

context. They need time and space to figure out what does it mean to be moral in thiscontext, in this way. We get too caught up in the ways of being liberal. And I guess

Adam touched on that in the beginning; the ways in which we were liberal; we like to

think of ourselves as liberal. We can be liberal any way we want.

What is really important is called humanity. And it is frightening and it is difficult even

in our own personal lives to figure out how we are going to remain ourselves and yetchange. And I think that is the challenge. If you want to call it the soul or you want to call

it our conscience, it doesnt really matter. Its still the same and we need to be on

the right side of that. We have to ask ourselves where our politics gets in the way of

being on the right side of issues or on the right side of history. [Applause]

start making sense

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