Evening Conversation with Os Guinness

what you all quieted down so nicely good evening to all of you and welcome to tonight's Trinity forum conversation featuring AHS again is speaking on the ideas in his new book last call for liberty how America's genius for freedom has become its greatest threat I'm Cherie harder the president of the Trinity forum and on behalf of all of us involved in the Trinity forum we are so delighted that you're here we're all so grateful to the anonymous yet very generous donor who made tonight's event possible and where we know that it's been hard to find a space if there's any of you who are still looking perhaps to no avail for a place to sit there is plenty of scene up on the balcony if you just walk out the doors we have a whole army of interns who are eager to take you to the elevators to find a comfortable and spare seat in the balcony so do avail yourself of that opportunity I'd also like to welcome just a few special guests who are here tonight with us we have two trustees who come in from out of state and we're really delighted to have them here Mike Brennan who came in from Columbia South Carolina and George Clark and from Houston Texas thank you so much for joining us we know there are a large number of people here tonight who were involved with a very founding of the Trinity forum I won't call you all by name but just wanted to give a shout out thank you for coming back and welcome to tonight we also have a large contingent from North Carolina so if you are from North Carolina and have come in for this event raise your hand we're so glad to have you here definitely worthwhile we've been really delighted by the enthusiasm for tonight's event and we know that there are many people who wanted to be here tonight and could not get in for one reason or the other so if you are friends with those folks and I've been talking with them let them know that they can follow along via livestream which is going on even as we speak which they can access either by the Trinity forums a YouTube page or our Facebook page they have their choice of social media there I will also be posting video within the next couple days and I believe c-span is covering as well which we're delighted by we will have photos on our Facebook page so tune in tomorrow tag your friends add your comments and those of you who cannot tear yourself away from your Twitter feed we will we do have two different hashtags going on at a hashtag TTFN tonight and hashtag a last call for liberty so feel free to add your comments and opinions there I also know there's a number of people where tonight is their first Trinity form of it so if that describes you and you're not familiar with a Trinity form a little bit of background about us we exist to provide a space and resources for the discussion of life's greatest questions in the context of faith and we do this both by providing readings and publications which draw upon classic works of literature and letters that explore the enduring questions of life and connect the timeless wisdom of the humanities with the timely issues of the day as well as programs such as this one tonight which connects leading thinkers with thinking leaders and engaging those big questions of life and ultimately coming to better know the author of the answers obviously one of the great questions of life is how to order a just and free society and how such a system of ordered Liberty can be sustained protected and transmitted to a new generation it's a question that has occupied our speaker tonight for many decades and been a focus of his life's work and a question that seems particularly urgent and even poignant at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise around the world when it consensus about what freedom is and requires is rapidly eroding when the Civic and relational bonds that have connected citizens across differences are rapidly dissolving when the character traits and habits that were historically understood to sustain and preserve freedom are dismissed as pretentious or obstacles to action and when efforts to divide antagonize confuse or demonize seem to be rewarded with cliques likes retweets votes funding or celebrity status in his new work last call for Liberty Liberty for which this evening also serves as his national book launch our speaker tonight will argue that there are two rival and irreconcilable ideas of freedom that are increasingly pulling our country apart and they are headed for a showdown he argues that in the midst of our growing political polarization personal isolation and tribalism in his words quote the deepest division is rooted in the differences between two world changing and opposing revolutions the american revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789 and their rival views of freedom and the American experiment understanding the differences between these warring views of human freedom is vital as a necessary first step towards valuing safeguarding and transmitting a freedom that not only saves us from despotism but offers a common vision for the common good and for human flourishing it is by any measure a fascinating and provocative argument and there are a few who can make it with the eloquence energy or expertise much less the elegant English accent as our speaker tonight AHS Guinness [Applause] Thank You Sheree it's a real honor and delight to be back in the Trinity forum I speak as most of you know as an Englishman and so as a visitor to this country but a very strong admirer but I speak tonight out of a deep concern as I watched your country at the present moment it's often been said that there are times when history and human decisions meet at a single point to cast the die of a nation's fortunes it was like that for Rome when Caesar crossed the Rubicon he was like that for England when Sir Francis Drake sailed out to face the Armada he was like that for you when the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord others would argue that it's the accumulated consequences of many decades that really shape the course of a nation and one could argue that today I'm not sure which side to take but as I look at this country I believe America is suffering its gravest crisis since the Civil War and is as deeply divided as at any time since just before the Civil War and all this at a moment when we can see the challenges globally our Western world in evident decline the search for a new world order faltering and now people are talking about global tinderbox the world agenda overwhelmed with problems some of them unprecedented and as we look towards the future we see what CS Lewis called the master generation the generation through genetic engineering and social engineering could have put a stamp on the whole human future without the consent of the future generations through as we now discussing its singularity transhumanism and so on and at this very moment for the world America so deeply divided but what is the deepest cause of the division and why does it matter as you know we have many suggested explanations another round of left against right the globalists against the Nationalists the coast Landers against the hot Landers and many other explanations like that one of our previous speakers here eminently speaks of a rich white civil war our next speaker here equally eminent talks about loneliness as the root problem in the country but I would argue that if you listen to the debate and as we look at the movements that have flowed through America in the last 50 years post-modernism multiculturalism tribal politics victim politics social constructionism the sexual revolution and on and on and on you can see that these ideas have very little to do with 1776 and everything to do with ideas that come from 1789 and its heirs I don't mean 1789 directly but I mean the French enlightenment behind it and descendants of it such as Friedrich Nietzsche or in the 1920s Antonia Gramsci writing from jail in Italy more recently Herbert Marcuse er in New York in the 1960s and even more recently Michel Foucault and if we understand the ideas that they've launched into our culture you can see how many of the movements are closer to that you just say say post-modernism truth is dead God is dead all that's left is power raw naked power and you can see in many of the movements but also in the inside the whole notion of resistance the effects of the Cavanaugh hearing and one could go on and I believe that the problem is best understood in the light of seeing the difference between those two views of the American Republic and of freedom in particular but why is that important freedom is central for a very simple reason as st. Augustine used to say nations are best understood not by the size of their population or the strength of their army or we would say today the GNP or the throw way to the missiles they're best understood by what he called what a nation loves supremely and seen that way there's no question that both for Americans and for outsiders the central heart of America is freedom freedom and you give a thousand reasons supporting that and very obvious to you who are Americans but why has that gone so wrong Marx predicted a proletarian revolution the haves and have-nots across conflict Gramsci city in jail under Mussolini said Marx was wrong and we need to sharpen the analysis the problem is not really a conflict of class but a conflict of culture and the real revolution would come by winning cultural hegemony gaining the hearts and minds of the gatekeepers the ruling class and then you can control a country and you can see with the rise of neo Marxism cultural Marxism call it what you like many terms since Gramsci since mark kusa that began to come in powerfully in the 1960s so many ways Martin Luther King was the last to refer to the Declaration as a promissory note but then you move to Stokely Carmichael the anti-vietnam war movement the rise of second type feminism and you see a very different view and somewhere around 1968 no one containers exactly except that was the year when Rudy Deutsch Kerr the leader of the red brigade in Germany called for in the light of France key and mark ooza a long march through the institution's and fifty years later precisely this year you can see how much of the colleges and universities much of the press and media much of the world of entertainment has actually been one to views that come from that side of course I mentioned the deepest divides since just before the civil war and that creates a very obvious difference from where we are today because in that time you had a Lincoln who knew the evils that were facing the country and he'd fought for years against the moral evil of slavery and yet he fought against it in the light of his belief in the Declaration and he addressed the better angels of the American nature I was in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago and reminded of his two speeches there on his way to Washington elected president he comes to Philadelphia neither speech was prepared rather off-the-cuff but he says in both of them that all his ideas came from the document that came from that building the Declaration and in one of them he finishes quoting Psalm 137 the psalm has the lines may I not forget you Jerusalem and he refers that love of the Jews for their city to his love of the declaration and he picks up the psalm and he says may my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I'm unfaithful to the ideas that came from this building and he even says he hopes to turn the country round and if he fails and is assassinated it would be something worth trying and of course as we know was only a few years later that he was there again when his body lay in state in their Philadelphia if I may say so with the crisis we've seen growing over the last 30 years I have rarely ever heard an American leader today addressing the present crises in the light of the founding vision addressing the better angels of the American nature in the light of liberty and justice for all that comes from the declaration in other words there is at the moment no Lincoln like vision and courage and leadership no one will make America great again unless they ask what made it great in the first place and go far deeper than issues such as the economy such as the military America's a nation by intention and by ideas and unless they're restored in their understanding you can see the inroads of ideas that come from a very different revolution in other words America today is that a Rubicon moment when Caesar stood there in front of that narrow rushing torrent in northern Italy the whole of Roman fate stood on the hinge when he crossed it as Cicero said and he was the first to use the word Rhyno Cicero said Rome was now a republic in name only and for better or worse augustus caesar shifted it to the rome and the empire of the Caesars America's at that moment and the question is will the founding vision the founding principles and all that they mean for freedom will they be restored or will they slowly be replaced as they're eroded that I believe is the issue before the country going round call Americans to a national conversation a national town-hall meeting which way do you want to go 1776 restored or 1789 and it says replacement a national conversation I wrote earlier on freedom but in the debate that followed that it was quite clear that well Americans were interested in sustainable freedom many of them never really asked what freedom actually is so this book is a checklist offered as a admiring visitor a checklist of questions ten of them for Americans to ask as to how they come out on these basic questions all of which touch on freedom both could you come out with a deeper understanding and what the framers were trying to do with their flaws or one comes out dismissing them and going in a very different way and I would argue that the other way the other revolution is disastrous for freedom and if we look at the major revolutions of the world the English revolution which failed the American Revolution which succeeded and then the free alternatives the French in 1789 the Russian in 1917 and the Chinese in 1949 which I was privileged as a small boy of ten to witness the first to have a very distinctively different view of freedom in fact through the Reformation they go back to the scriptures although as I said the English revolution failed but what was the losing cause in England or the lost cause as they put it became the winning cause in new england but each of those two very very different from the other revolutions the French the Russian and the Chinese and yet many of the ideas particularly among the intelligentsia today many of them unwitting are closer to the ideas that come from that side rather than from the American the first question since the one actually I spoke on last year at the Trinity forum where does freedom come from I put that in only because with the attacks on waspish penis in the 60s and now the attacks on white privilege there's no suggestion and what used to be historical commonplace that much of the New England Liberty is worthy ancient liberties of the English only historians would be interested in that today ask the average American where freedom comes from and they would say obviously Athens democracy but it didn't it comes through the Reformation back to Mount Sinai and I think we need to explore how Sinai and the Exodus and the covenant made such a difference through the Reformation in shaping the early understanding of this country because you have a very very different view say than democracy Athenian democracy 50 years and no more and the framers were extremely wary above all of direct democracy but of democracy at large for various reasons whereas covenant ilysm constitutionalism is rich in its implications for citizenship second question I raised what do you Americans mean by freedom Gertrude Stein said famously arose as arose as arose but you can't say freedom is freedom is freedom it's much subtler and more challenging and complex than that and you can see that different views of freedom come out in very different places in the 1850s Abraham Lincoln said everyone talks about freedom but they mean different things than North and the South and today there are other profound differences from that Lord Acton the greatest historian of freedom argue that the basic difference is between those who see freedom as the Commission to do what you like and those who see freedom as the power to do what you ought but there are many other subtleties that come out in our argument livings lifestyles today I was saying to March in the discussion earlier I had the privilege of being at Oxford with Isaiah building the great Jewish philosopher and I can still hear his rich deep voice arguing about the differences between negative freedom and positive freedom negative freedom freedom from no one's free if they're under this constraint or the coercion of any external person or force with its colonial power or a bully or whether it's drugs or alcohol or pornography negative freedom is the beginning of freedom freedom from but that's only the preliminary and only half of freedom as I say bill then argued freedom is negative freedom from but it is also positive it's freedom to be freedom for now that's more challenging because you need truth you need to know the truth of who you are in order to be free to be who you are and of course that's where the differences come in and today truth itself is thrown out the window in a post truth world but full freedom is never negative only and yet much of American freedom much of libertarian freedom is purely negative get the government off my bank balance get the government off my body different sides say but purely a negative freedom and you can see the problems that grow out of this negative freedom is unsustainable and runs into the sands of license and permissiveness and never lasts Americans really need to look at the challenge of freedom what it actually means and how it can be cultivated a third question is have Americans really faced up to the paradox of freedom sure all of us in this town have been to the Korean War Memorial pondered the words freedom is not free their brief inspiring and poignant obviously referring to the last full measure of Oshin as Lincoln called it for those who gave their lives for the freedom of the country but the paradox of freedom is much darker than that and not so memorable but it's simple the greatest enemy of freedom is freedom the greatest enemy of freedom is freedom if you squeeze the whole history of civilizations into one our free societies only come in in the last five minutes freedom is rare freedom is fleeting freedom is very rarely sustained sometimes freedom becomes permissiveness becomes license becomes anarchy and rebounds from one side into authoritarianism sometimes freedom loving people so love freedom they want to be safe and secure and have so much security and surveillance one nation under surveillance they're not free or gain freedom loving people soul of freedom they'll do anything to fight for freedom including things that contradict freedom and you could go on down the line and see the ways that freedom undermines itself freedom requires some restraint edmund burke's you have to have chains on our appetites and desires but the trouble is the only appropriate form for freedom is self-restraint and yet self-restraint is what's undermined quickly when freedom flourishes and once again it becomes license and we could go on or again in the great French theories Montesquieu pointed out freedom requires two things but people only think of one freedom requires structures of freedom the Constitution the law now you can lay those down for decades if not centuries but that's only half of freedom freedom requires the structures of freedom freedom requires the spirit of freedom and that has to be cultivated in every generation and passed down from generation to generation and if any fails and you don't have the spirit of freedom eventually the structures of freedom will mean nothing but the deepest part of the paradox is actually spiritual and psychological there is a certain freedom in tyranny and there's a certain tyranny in freedom what freedom requires responsibility free people are responsible but responsibility is tough challenging and demanding and it's easier to be dependent on others on the government on whomever and you can see again in the gain that people give over their freedom for entitlement and various other forms of dependency and freedom goes in other words since the rabbi's put it simply liberation is not Liberty or as they put it otherwise it took God one day to get Israel out of Egypt but it took 40 years and Counting to get Egypt out of Israel and you can see there grumbling they desire to go back their hunger for other gods rather than the Lord the liberation was one thing liberty was another and Liberty rather like the $10,000 principle demands discipline and the long obedience in the same direction and you can see the paradox put it simply america is the land of the free but looked at from europe people say why do you have more addictions take the opioid crisis more recovery groups than any other land in the modern world you say you're free but clearly of freedom in area after area has become obsessions and it's become addictions has become bondages americans are not as free as they say they are and one could go on one of the issues i raised and some of you know i would do this one is the whole question of freedom and diversity I had the privilege of launching my first ideas under the Wonder leadership of dr. Bruce McLaurys with us tonight religious freedom freedom of religion and conscience and I was involved in the Williamsburg Charter and later the global charter of conscience in Europe and in a few weeks we will see the American Charter of freedom of religion conscience launched here at the National Archives for while with the Williamsburg Charter thirty years ago this year or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act you had an extraordinary consensus it's sad to say that there's been a bigger sea change on religious freedom in the last twenty years and in all the previous 300 years of America put together I call them the three dark hours the reducers those who now talk of religious freedom which James Madison called free exercise and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes as the right to adopt and practice and share and change your views you start thinking of each of those incredible implications Muslim blasphemy all sorts of things but now it's reduced to freedom of worship and even the previous president and one of the secretaries of state for a year talked only of freedom of worship but any of you know the world every self-respecting dictator grants freedom of worship whatever you think between your two ears so long as your mouth is firmly shut and you stay in your home we can't freedom of worship that's not what the First Amendment meant and those who are shrinking in this way are doing so is a monstrous injustice to the greatness of American history the second dark are are the removers particularly in the light of 9/11 so many of those who were a theist said now we see the ugly face of religion we could remove it from public life altogether there had been even earlier strict separation ists some of the ACL u--'s Americans United and so on but the American Revolution was very different through the First Amendment from the French Revolution and it's lazy day but increasingly for many people now freedom has become freedom from religion not religious freedom as freedom for religion including atheists but it's the third darker that is the really problematic one currently and I call them the rebranded go back to the revolution again in the gain the Framus talk of civil liberty and religious liberty twin-brothers hand in hand now it's been rebranded from being America's first Liberty which the framers called it to being a code word for bigotry and discrimination but the logic of this doesn't just undermine religious freedom which is bad enough it undermines the right to dissent and it undermines the right to conscientious objection many profound things are at stake in this new idea the removers the reducers and the rebranded and in twenty short years this country which had a better record than any country in history on religious freedom is now in the same turmoil a bunch of the rest of the world is to me profoundly said and sometimes outrageous whether its sorrow or anger as some of the appalling arguments that I see where does this leave us on the one hand it's pretty hot excuse me I've been fighting a chest infection all week on the one hand certain things are obviously required I would argue we need a leader on the level of a Lincoln with courage with a sense of historical perspective who's able to address the current problems which are here but in the light of the better angels of the American nature and my wife and I pray daily that God will raise up such a person and another level we need a restoration of civic education of transmission so that all the first things of the American experiment are alive and vibrant in every generation now of course you can see how the influence of multiculturalism from 1905 Horace Calvin originally rather despised and attacked by people like John Dewey and Walter Lippman didn't really flourish until the 1970s but then became the reigning ideology and under its influence and things like tribal politics civic education went out the window but then of course the public schools which were not just free universal education but free universal education that taught the first things of the American experiment no longer did but in terms of the original motto a pluribus unum or you had left was the pluribus and the balkanization but no unum the 19th century it's often pointed out people who be given this scrap of paper could write maybe 10 or 12 first principles that all Americans whatever their background religious linguistic cultural or whatever all Americans would agree of I've actually tested there was some CEOs today and some college students and very few and except in the good colleges can get much beyond 1 or 2 the unum is no longer there I've listened to the immigration debate for 30 years now people are talking walls and sanctuary cities hardly anyone talks about civic education and what it means for every new generation and every new immigrant to really learn what it is to be American the Samuel hunting used to say is relatively easy to become an American but increasingly difficult to know what it is to be American and those first principles are increasingly gone at a third level altogether we need a new openness for freedom in public life whether it's freedom of speech think of the campuses or freedom of religion as I was saying and without that the very vitality of freedom will eventually wither the great scholar Daniel Eleazar who put the notion of covenant and Constitution on the map in one of his later reflections he pointed out that covenants come for the Middle East and a culture of what he called Oasis then he said what makes an oasis luxuriant large and lasting one thing only the wellspring at its heart and if the Wellsprings of faith and freedom go no talk of freedom and no amount of the Constitution will eventually keep freedom flourishing so certain things are relatively obvious that need to be done as part of this restoration at the same time if we look at this Rubicon moment in the light of history you can see the incredible warnings of history Caesar Augustus thought that he created a permanent Republic Imperial Republic there was that's why Rome has got the title the Eternal City but was his system eternal no we look at the genius of the American founders they believed across the board that you could create a free society that could stay free forever never been done but they believed they had the way very few Americans today could even tell you the system they created to keep it sustainable and while they've neglected it or even attacked it no one's tried to put something better in its place which means the freedom is unlikely to last and the warnings of history with corrupted freedom a sobering you know the old classical saying the worst is the corruption of the best it's a matter of profound soberness to Europeans that it was our best educated most cultured most highly civilized country with philosophers like Immanuel Kant and musicians like Beethoven produced the Holocaust the worst is the corruption of the best and I would just say to you there are things happening in your country today which for those who love this country is this the America we known these things are unrecognizable and we're just seeing the beginning of some of these ideas working out and if you know the history of the Peloponnesian War a one volatile side issues is the state of a little city-state on the island of curfew curfew and you can see that some of the things happening this very decade are the things that happen there for example when people didn't accept democratic elections undermine the legitimacy and in reaction people criminalize political differences and others fought back with fire against fire and eventually the little city-state was reduced to nothing and you can see how much of our liberal left today are following patterns which have brought destruction on previous countries and civilization so let me finish with a plea to you a personal plea as I said I'm not American I love my American wife and I have a son who is half-and-half British passport and an American passport so I love this country very deeply but my concern isn't just for as it were for freedom today for you yes but your experiment is of Titanic significance in history this is the longest-running public tutorial of freedom in all human history countries and civilizations rise and prosper through the ingenuity of their freedom and at the same time countries and civilizations decline and fall through the perversion and corruption of their freedom and America's facing this question will it restore the realism and the balance of the original freedom understanding the flaws that have to be recognized and addressed or will it go another way and destroy that freedom altogether I'd no idea what's gonna happen such is the very nature of freedom that you can never plumb people's motives for why they act and the wonderful thing about the biblical view of freedom which incidentally is unique to Jews and Christians you don't find freedom in the Egyptians you don't find freedom in the Babylonians it was the Stars you don't even find freedom fundamentally in the Greeks everything was finally fate and let me put it very soberly today you don't find freedom among the secularist philosophers Spinoza Marx Freud JB Watson BF Skinner Jacque Bono and move right down to the New Atheists such as ham Sam Harris what is freedom he says the very front cover of his book is of a puppet on strings you cannot use naturalistic science alone to give a grounding for freedom freedom is actually unique to the Jewish and Christian scriptures but freedom being what it is we can never plumb each other's motives and the best pendeks and the cockiest forecasters will never ever be able to close the circle with certainty and say what's going to happen it depends on us and I would just say to you in the light of where we are today the choice is yours will this great American story this great American journey this great American quest for a free just society that can stay free be finished in this generation because people gave up on the founding principles or will there be enough who have the courage to explore and stand against it with all the challenges we have in the universities and in many other places today the choice is yours and so also will be the consequences thank you [Applause] thank you for that oz we will have a brief moderated conversation here before turning it over to the most dynamic part of our evening conversation which is hearing from the audience but before we do that I want to just to flesh out a few of the points that you made a little bit more and wanted to ask you about some of the solutions you proposed one of which was yearning for a Lincoln like leader and of course some of the challenges that our leaders have now are both structural and technological and that different things are rewarded now than they were in Lincoln's day it's it's not that politicians no longer give talks about civic education or the better angels of our nature but more likely none of them are ever covered and what tends to get more attention to get more likes to get more press coverage is that which is either trivial or pointed argumentative and polarizing what advice would you have for leaders who wish very much to rally Americans to the better angels of their nature but also face the very real constraints of needing to raise money to get attention and to get elected no I understand what you're saying and obviously that's why President Trump uses Twitter to leap over the media and I remember I've had the privilege of being in a number of White House's and then once at Camp David President Clinton saying he loved the State of the Union because that was the only time in the year when he spoke directly to the people not mediated by the media and all the fracturing of opinions and pundits and so on so understand all that but I have to say that well I've heard wonderful talks on civic education education things like this I grew up with Churchill he was seasoned with history almost every great speech he gave had a historical perspective to it and without mentioning names I didn't only think of two people in our thirty is here who've had that sense of history as addressing the present problems it's a rare thing and I don't think all of them are either interested in or capable of it but we need a leader like that one of the other antidotes that you suggest it was a restoration both that involves civic education but also an author you quote repeatedly in your book although not in your talk which is Robert Bellah and the habits of the heart yes which Bella also quotes men has a book title by that name Oh which of the habits of the heart do you believe are most important for sustaining freedom and well which would you most recommend to members of our audience who are thinking about practical ways that they can help sustain freedom in their own communities I think a whole number of the foundations have so deeply gone but I think the habits of the heart have got to go right down to the basics today notions such as truth integrity what do we mean by words trust and then move up to human dignity freedom justice what are these things mean and really unpack them they've many of them become cliches and many of them become very hollow cliches now by the UNAM to balance the pluribus I meant a rather different number of things the rule of law freedom of conscience separation of powers things like that so the habits of the heart should include an appreciation of those but I'm thinking things that that are crucial to independence a free society should be a self-governing Society people don't need the government to tell them everything well responsibility is a very tough notion in today's world and that's at the heart of the scripture you know the Jews actually argue that responsibility or irresponsibility is at the heart of the fall so Adam the woman you gave me or Cain am I my brother's keeper each of them is a sloughing off of responsibility so to bring up children today to be responsible and know what that means that's one of the habits of the heart another one that you mentioned in the book is the importance of making and keeping promises to freedom I was hoping you could tell us a little bit more about why ordinary human commitments are so important to sustaining freedom well if you think families depend on trust business depends on trust government depends on trust and all of them are doing badly so people make that rather sort of vague but if you think surely I'll see you at 11:00 tomorrow or you say to me let's have lunch next Tuesday if I don't turn up but you don't turn up three times in a row you're not predictable you're not trustworthy and actually the simplest things in life depend on trust and commitment and keeping promises now that's highly controversial so Machiavelli threw it out the window you know what the prince said yesterday absolutely unbinding and what is this today and think of politics now and the postmodern world we again and again here not going to mention names but you see people said 20 years ago this today something completely different they just don't keep their word how can you trust them well the very system when they do that so that's very important now Nietzsche was rather more torn he said because he believed in a autonomous individual he said the human is an animal entitled to keep promises with trouble as we don't now that's a very biblical view the notion of covenant is a promise keeping but the Lord keeps his word humans don't and that's the problem that's the weakness with constitutionalism and so on I would argue that he even say the kneeling controversy I don't get too political but think of the difference in Kaepernick and Martin Luther King for Martin Luther King the declaration was a promissory note so you appealed to the declaration symbolized by the flag enshrined in the pledge etcetera etc etc was any disrespect of that is actually a disrespect to the promise in out so I would say what revolution are they looking to not to the American Revolution if you disrespect it they've misunderstood what it is we should be challenging them yes there is injustice the injustice has to be remedied but if you believe in the declaration you have say Frederick Douglass or Booker T Washington they hated slavery and attactive for all they were worth but they believed in the Declaration as the standard through which it could be finally remedied that's the difference too much of the hard left today so you mentioned Martin Luther King jr. in the promissory note and one of the tensions that your book explores as you say at one point a key feature of the difference between these two types of revolutions was the insistence that change takes time and that transformation requires patience and I believe it was the same speech where Martin Luther King quote talks about the promise area note that he also talks about the fierce urgency of now and the fact that justice delayed is justice denied how do you balance those two competing ideas that real change takes time with a recognition that there can be a body count and to a lack of justice extended mm-hmm well if you look at the history of revolution the other three the French the Russian the Chinese were all utopian take now he was a poet he just had to break a few eggs to make the omelet and that sort of thing in other words whenever you have a toe peon view of the possibility of change there's a gap between reality and the ideal and it's always filled with coercion and it leads to violence and of course that's where Martin Luther King was a pacifist he would not take to violence and that's the difference between some of those who followed him who are impatient you can say go back in a less controversial thing say William Wilberforce and Lloyd Douglas sorry William Lloyd Garrison Wilberforce was attacked as an incrementalist you had to do it step by step by step because that's change has to take place in the human heart you can't just change structures will in Void garrison of all or nothing Constitution a compact with L and all that he actually inflamed the South even more by the extremism of his rhetoric so as soon as people are utopian got it at all now they will eventually take to extremists and then violent means and that's disastrous the paradox of freedom that you mentioned is an idea that has been echoed by some and talking about liberalism itself liberal democracy that essentially what allows freedom actually contains the seeds of its own destruction and as you know there have been increasing number of intellectuals and perhaps particularly conservative intellectuals who have predicted that liberalism and perhaps by extension freedom has already failed do you agree with them no and thank you some of our friends and I would say gently I come out of the Reformation background they come out of a different one and they try and say that American freedom owes all that to those things back in the medieval world it didn't you can see that well put it like this when Theodosius declared Rome Christian in 380 officially historians say they copied Greek ideas and critically and they copied Roman structures and critically the structures were Rome hierarchical the Caesar and all that and you had the Pope and all that now Lord Acton a Catholic was the one who famously said all power tends to corrupt absolute power corrupts absolutely and the context of that was a criticism of his own church because when hierarchical power is corrupted he becomes very oppressive the Inquisition etc the Reformation not immediately and not fully consistently abandoned that went back to the Bible to Exodus and the Covenant and you have a very different view of freedom so if you look at Burke's defense of the American colonists he called them the dissenters of dissent or the Protestants of Protestantism an American free I was almost everything to the Reformation not to the medieval church and that's where I differ from some of those now the biblical view of freedom is tough you have to follow a way of life to be free or Jesus of Nazareth says you will know the truth and the truth will set you free so post-modernism there is no truth we would say well that sort of a freedom will run to seed and produce chaos now is you've got to follow the truth in a certain way of life to really be free you know Lord Moulton freedom is obedience to the unenforceable as soon as you need external restraints you're less free so for the last half-hour of our evening conversation we will turn to the most dynamic part of this event which is to hear from you all in the audience and those of you who have been to a Trinity forum event before no we have three guidelines for all audience questions and that we simply ask that all questions be brief all questions be civil and all questions be in the form of a question so we had another you can sit I can say that's fine too we will have two different microphones roving around please wait till I have called on you and if you could just stand say your name that would be great we've got one person right here if you could stand so it's a little bit easier for our roving microphone deliverer to see that that would be great hi Carla galavan I first was asked to violate all of your rules by laying a foundation for a question may it may I I'm sorry violate all of your rules by laying a foundation for a question we would ask that you not you mentioned the the opioid crisis and I would ask in in the mid-1800s the British made war upon China to compel China to allow the importation of opium to generate revenue for the crown and as a result of winning that war Hong Kong was obtained as a free port for the next hundred fifty years and I don't know when the British ever renounced the trafficking of opium but I do know today that US troops guard the poppy fields in Afghanistan and I think all of this error is traceable back to the corruption of the monetary unit which the the Bank of England of course inflated its currency beyond the amount of gold that had to increase economic activity and our country has now been persuaded to do the same thing through the Federal Reserve which which results in dishonest weights and measures and I would just ask you I have digressed that do we not need an honest unit of account in order to have peace among people with among the nations of course I think the opium war which as you say was imposed by the British is one of our major national evils and sins I'm very grateful to say my grandfather was one of the first surgeons in China treated the last emperor and so on my grandfather's sister actually wagged her finger in the face of Queen Victoria and told the Queen it was a sin and I'm proud and grateful to say her brother fought against King Leopold of the Belgian who had some of the most horrendous oppressions in European colonialism so these things let's make no question they were evil and they are scandals and sin and a real blot on the character of British history I don't make any bones about it other questions right over here hello I'm Jason Turner I've noticed that Americans over the past decade or so have increasingly rather than think of themselves as servants to anything above them their country their religion are increasingly self-confident that their own views and their own personality Dom dominates external institutions can you comment on that I accept your comment in other words freedom can very easily become a good or a bad form of autonomy I said it was obedience to the unenforceable those who are truly free are self-governing but that can easily become an autonomy that becomes arrogant and can becomes conceited and and so on and that's often the overspill or you look at it Western civilization more generally if you look at the last century there is a whole different types of humanism the dominant 18th century secular humanism God is dead man has come of age we're now directing our own evolution but that failed you think of the book Voltaire's Basterds how many the enlightenment philosophers were racist and their ideas produce modern anti-semitism so you got in the 50s a reaction against that which was called post humanism that humanism was to male chauvinist was to European was to whatever and people repeated at all and then you had a reaction against that was so-called post humanism in the direction of the animal world we are one with animals and now the future is holding out transhumanism which is humanism understood in terms all the enhancements of Technology so humanism itself in its secular forms is a very unstable thing and Christians would understand it humans are made free but we can pervert corrupt misuse abuse our freedom in all sorts of ways and Americans have certainly done that at times look for a question over on this side Lindsay you could just stand up while the microphone comes to you that'd be great your comments is always our grave and significant thank you you note with accuracy I believe that in last 30 years the decline of character in our country and the decline of the ideals of Liberty from 1776 has been of this nature and yet we have an economic engine that has been of this nature our stock market is at its highest levels ever can you help us understand how that part of our economy seems blind or uncaring of the character and liberty decline to which you speak mm-hmm you could equally say the same about technology as well as economics in other words the Enlightenment idea when they rejected God was the economy would flourish and moral progress would flourish technology would advance and moral progress with advance but most people would say today that they've become untethered now take the economy obviously capitalism is the greatest engine of wealth creation in all history though what you see in the Bible is that say in the covenantal system you have to reinsert re-inject notions of justice and equality and liberty every so often all the differences in inequalities get huger and huger if you read some of the latest stuff say from Silicon Valley or MIT you know max tegmark spoke last year this year life 3.0 he argues that when we're moving to artificial superintelligence the gaps we think today between the poorest a and Jeff Bezos which are pretty significant all the gaps between workers and CEOs which in America are out of all proportion to European workers and CEOs when you move towards artificial superintelligence it's going to be through the ceiling altogether in other words we're going to increase through this incredible progress technologically and economically increase inequalities potential injustice and as soon as you have inequalities you'll have a swing towards various ways of tackling injustice like Marx tried and you'll have a swing towards the left unless there's a reinsertion and that's what you see in the Bible the Sabbath and the seven years and the seven times seven years and so on you see what was intended to do in the midst of these things to stop inequalities we've got to think through things like that not in a redistribution as socialist sense but but injecting justice and responsibility and generosity back into the system Akina I don't hop on my family but when the founder of our family came to faith Arthur Guinness he came to faith through John Wesley the great Methodist preacher who made such a difference here in the first Awakening in America which is behind the American Revolution but where's this simple principle earn all you can save all you can give all you can and my ancestors built that into the brewery and for better or worse they became Ireland's most generous philanthropist until recently doing it anonymously in biblical ways don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing and so on because in the early days they were deeply committed Christians in doing that but whatever it is generosity we've got to rebalance the system because capitalism is so powerful that if we just let it run away without ethical boundaries it'll be ruinous to itself in the back there all I can see is a silhouette I'm afraid oh it's your neighbor Dennis ah Dennis yeah yeah your book puts great story in the Exodus in Sinai as the very definition or a pattern for freedom what does it do to your argument that most biblical scholars today most historians most archaeologists the great majority of them view the exodus as a myth that it never really happened again it's you and I've had many discussions have good bosses of wine there are certain scholars and certainly since the 18th century you can see even in the Christian Church and somewhat in Judaism too revisionist scholarship that's skeptical undermining the historical reality and so on at the same time I would say today the best scholarship is actually doing the reverse showing the reliability the historicity of the biblical account now my concern has been the implications of it it's purely a myth it has no implications but I don't think we need to go your way and I could give you great scholars who have a very different view of it whether it's the Exodus or whether it's the New Testament or whatever I think good scholarship today can show you the historicity and reliability of the texts and that's the sort of thinking Jenny and I hadn't to have the privilege of being at Oxford my fellow student was NT right he knows Tom right he is maybe the premier scholar in the world on first century in terms of the texts of the Bible not the Exodus do you say and he's shown that these things can be trusted and the point is that someone who has a living examined faith once a basis in evidence and in truth and in convictions because we are staking our entire existence on that and I've been a follower of Jesus for more than 50 years I've grown up in the East or the Buddhist culture being back to China many times so that secular culture I studied under a guru I've known many of the great atheists of this world including Madalyn Murray O'Hair and Bertrand Russell but the deeper I go the more convinced I am not only at the truth of the Christian faith but of the profound adequacy when you look at the way it's deep foundational principles make all the difference where we are today so I think we could give you stuff to show you that Exodus all the Gospels can be really understood after investigation as solidly reliable but you're right that's a key question there is a question the back road there Thank You oz for an absolutely fantastic presentation I've been attending Trinity forum for about 25 years and I'm always bowled over by your comments I'd like to just give one small suggestion for actual izing some of the brilliant ideas that you have demonstrated today and that is that if every liberal asked a conservative for dinner one night and perhaps following your notion cannibal style with fava beans and had perhaps a religious intermediary to just be there to moderate that would go a long way to bringing the country together and healing what do you think of that idea terrific now in other words all of us are small people and we start with our families and our neighbors and our communities and places we work but at the end of the day most of us some of us here extraordinarily powerful people in French most of us as small people and all we're responsible for is to be the pea Paul we should be among the people that we meet and so you know I'm a writer so books occasionally even in this internet hey he shall read by some people but we're all responsible for our worlds and if you think of your world and whether you're standing for whatever it is you understand intelligently and thoughtfully and so on now with many people are hostile and indifferent this is a matter of persuasion the first task is not to so be so explicit out of say being faithful I believe this and I got it make you understand I'm know is to raise questions because ideas that are not good or ideas that are not true at the end of the days have problems in and as you push people to be true to what they say they believe and they have problems their heads hit the wall and they start to rethink and you can think today in our culture for instance you read Camille Paglia arguing in some of the crazies in the later wave feminists they're fighting among themselves because you can see the implication of some of these things or some of the extremes of the transgender world are producing a psychological confusion and many other things which will be a harvest in the future but by raising questions is this what you believe and what if about that and so on so become great question askers that was the subversiveness of Socrates and of course that's the subversiveness of Jesus when you ask tricky questions yes far trickier ones back and we should be question askers not just out of a fear of saying what we believe by probing people's ideas so they see the problems in what they're advocating but yes we're all responsible only in the circles that we move in and your idea is a great one no does that mean say with the social media we respect truth we respect people we never descend to the name-calling for example one of the toughest things Jesus of Nazareth ever said was love you do that in the present-day climate it's tough we got to do that okay hi I really appreciated your comment about how we need to be free to do what we ought it's a motto of Charlotte Mason who I really admired and I just wonder how you think the education system in the u.s. can contribute to that I think it's kind of left that undone and what what are your thoughts about how our public education system can contribute I don't want to stray too far in that world it's not a world that I'm an expert in in any way I'm incredibly grateful I went to an English school which taught me all those things to think to write to appreciate the classics to know Greek and Roman history and things like that you know when I was a boy a teenager British Empire was in its last gasp but one of the things was just common to us where I was you read five newspapers a day because we rinsed him what was happening in Africa what was happening in Malaysia wherever it was it was just part of the way I was brought up I thought it was natural now with the social media I don't speak on the younger generation but the social media and the internet many people don't read books which are the great repository of wisdom but I was earlier referring to the public schools and that very significant role they had in passing on the American UNAM that's all I was referring to but I equally know that public education in this country is the graveyard of many an idealist so I'm not gonna wander into that one we will take two more questions so John Gardner you could stand thank you as you have said post modernists deny the possibility of truth so a bit of a follow-up to the earlier question what suggestions do you have for having this national conversation if it seems that there is disagreement about first principles such as whether there is truth and thus what is the desirable outcome truth and ethics are both controversial but they're both absolutely irrepressible you cannot think and argue for very long without truth a great discipline like journalism remove truth it's just a rumour mill or something like science just collapses without truth whether notions of whether the scientific investigations touching a real world take the difference between the west and Hinduism over reality or peer-review many of the things are absolutely critical to our world assume and require truth so we needn't be embarrassed tall even people who deny truth will sooner or later talk in ways that express truth you can't get away from truth nor can you get away from ethics and morality someone will soon say you ought you shouldn't whatever within seconds now the question is what's the grounding of what they're saying and the different views of that that's the real issue today but I'm not the slightest bit worried that truth itself will disappear no one is hurt by post-modernism more than the post modernist everything is then power and that's incredibly I in an earlier book I told the story of Picasso Picasso genius an artist monster of a man one mistress said he would rape us and then paint he was a devouring ego even Alberto Giacometti his friend called him the monster and Picasso predicted that when he died lots of those around him would go down as it were with the Titanic and certainly several of them committed suicide after he left well if you look at the terrible story of all that his relationships there was one person who survived him well one of his mistresses Francois G low forty years younger than Pablo but she says every day living with Pablo I had to put on like Joan of Arc the armor of truth if you have truth not just power you can't be manipulated one word of truth Saul's Allison says weighs the entire world so I have no fear but we who are people of the book Jews and Christians we have a solid view of truth and so against all the dangers of our postmodern world we will not be manipulated we will not give in to power or whatever truth addresses power and without it we're in the world where might makes right rather than the other way around but at the end of the day no one can finally live with that either truth or moral values it's literally impossible truth is written into the universal moral intuitions are written into our hearts so our last question of the evening I know many hands are up we'll go right over here you mentioned that the structural part of our society and the spiritual part of our society and I think the spiritual part is sometimes hard to debate no hard to discuss and when I think of Galatians I think of the acts of the flesh and the fruits of the spirit self-control is one of those fruits can you give me a couple of examples in the Constitution where our framers you know gave us a structure to rely on that the obedience of the unenforceable which it certainly comes out of those spirits well in the chapter on this book on sustainable freedom and in my OD a book of free peoples suicide how did the framers think you could create a free society that could stay free forever now was the revolution one freedom the Constitution ordered freedom a French wanted the Russians run it the Chinese wanted none of them ordered it their revolution spiraled down to demonic disorder the third parts the real Chuck how you keep it sustain it Ben Franklin Republic madam if you can keep it now Tocqueville calls their system the habits of the heart his mentor was Montesquieu who talked about structures and spirit not spiritual spirit a commitment of freedom the framers didn't give a word for this system so my word was the Golden Triangle of freedom and you can see right across the board whether George Mason fully Orthodox Anglican believer or say Ben Franklin and so on at the other side they all believed in these things and there's a trio freedom requires virtue virtue requires faith of some sort and faith of any sort requires freedom now rather like the recycling triangle goes round and round around freedom requires virtue requires faith which requires freedom which across virtue etcetera now you can unpack each of those only a virtuous people john adams says the capable of freedom now by virtue today that's become goody goody whereas for them it included honesty loyalty patriotism and above all character a person who had become a person of integrity because of those values character so there's a fascinating got in front of me but John Adams he loves words like inalienable indefeasible inviolable but there's one sentence we puts them all together and you read and you think is he moving up to freedom rights no he's talking about the indefeasible inviolable whatever right of the people to know the character of their leader now if you think character is the bridge between followers and leaders followers will never while leaders making his or her decisions if they can trust the character they trust the leader in the dark equally though some leaders are so powerful virtually nothing restrains them except character and if you look at the history of American presidents characters often the crucial floor take the Nixon presidency with Nixon's insecurity Henry Kissinger's paranoia whatever you start to see the problems that grow it's always coming out of character now that's rejected totally today you remember in the Clinton impeachment there was a famous letter the New York Times by various scholars saying character does matter for the modern president what matters is competence not character well not for the framers and you see if you under my course but only virtues undermined freedom of religions undermine - and so's faith so each of the legs of the triangle the frame of stress - all undermine today they're not surprisingly you haven't got a sustainable freedom there were some things have a kind of mathematical certainty rather like the sinking of the Titanic move this change that you can't hope that things have gone the same they won't and that's the problem this is a system set up a certain way Jonathan Hite wrote a brilliant article on cosmology and the fact of a constants in the universe they would have to be exactly the way they are for our universe to flourish and he said America's like that then he didn't go on to say what those things were and I think we can do that that's what I meant by the first principles in the UNAM and they've got to be unpacked today there are men who Jim Eyre of the real thing now of course what I didn't stress tonight and he was behind everything I said the declaration did give that liberty and justice the Constitution enshrined the 3/5 laws in other words you had an evil and hypocrisy Samuel Johnson said it immediately I can't remember the exact quote why do those who are yelping about freedom other drivers of slaves they immediately saw the Constitution at that point was a hypocrisy and an evil in the contradiction of the Declaration that's what Lincoln had to tackle that's what Martin Luther King tackled he still believed in the Declaration whereas today they don't somewhere around 1968 there was a fateful lurch left and from then on America's been chronically sexist racist militarist hegemonic and all sorts of other nasty things they no longer believe in the American experiment as the founders set it up and to me it's not only a tragedy for you today it's a tragedy for human history because of the daring and the uniqueness of what was attempted here never pulled off anywhere else now looks as if you're giving up unless well thank you for that oz copies of last call for liberty are available for sale right over there in the corner there will be an opportunity to get your book signed right here after you've purchased a copy for and they're available for $27 right over in the corner we encourage you to avail yourself of that opportunity I saw there are a lot of hands up towards the end if you didn't get your question answered great to just dive right into the book so we commend that to you we also commend an invitation that should be on each of your seats which is to join the trinity Forum society as you if this is your first time welcome if you've been here repeatedly you'll know that part of our aim and our hope is to make possible discussions like the one that you've experienced tonight that in a culture that is increasingly characterized by triviality by distraction by incivility polarization and alienation we try to offer exactly the opposite which is a space to grapple with the big questions of life in a focused way that is both intellectually rigorous and warmly hospitable and we invite you to join with us in doing that and a vital way of doing that is joining the Trinity forum Society of course there are many benefits of being a Trinity forum Society member and perhaps one of the most important tonight is that everyone who joined the Trinity forum Society tonight or I should say the first ten people who join it tonight will get a pre signed copy of Oz's book so you will not have to wait in the invariably long line just go right over there join the Trinity force engage get your free signed copy there are many other benefits as well including our quarterly readings many of you will be familiar with our readings our latest is brave new world that we put out every season that draws upon a classic piece of literature or letters explains its relevance its enduring significance and essentially tries to introduce busy leaders to the best of literature and letters out there if you sign up now you'll receive not only our fall reading but also our upcoming Christmas reading which we're quite excited about which features excerpts from Dorothy Days the long loneliness with an introduction by David Brooks and Ann Schneider Brooks so you'll want to sign up to receive that in addition you'll get our monthly podcast and our daily list of what we're reading curated reading recommendations and help support the publications and programs of the forum if you want to join if I could just ask my colleagues to stand up and wave you can see ELISA over there Colleen if you could stand and wave and I think Becca noise is around here somewhere there she is all of them can help you and would be very glad to do so in addition if you simply go to the book table in the corner you can sign up there as well if you'd like to share this event with others please do so we will have video up on our website in the next couple of days at WWE TV as well as on our YouTube channel and of course there'll be plenty of pictures on Facebook in addition as a parting gift to you one of the things that ODS had mentioned was that he was one of the draft while he was the drafter of the Williamsburg Charter which is perhaps one of the best articulations of the history nature content and need for religious freedom we'd like to offer all of you a free copy of the Williamsburg Charter which again is available at the book table we also hope that you will join us for future evening conversations and other Eternity forum programs and in fact in this very room in just a little over three weeks on November 26th we're delighted to be hosting senator Ben Sasse and ethics and religious liberty commission leader Russell Moore for our discussion of the lonely American a rudeness and resilience in our Riven land and hope that you will join us for that coming up soon even sooner than that on November 19th we will be hosting a reading group well which together we'll tackle brave new world which will be held on the conference room in our office you can also sign up for that it is free but registration is required finally as we wrap up this evening it's always appropriate to end with thanks and a gathering like this just never occurs without plenty of people doing a great deal of work who deserve our gratitude and thankfulness I'd like to thank our volunteers who helped out this evening Sara ray Amanda ku walk tim crow bath matthew mcknight from the false church fellows I'd like to thank Seamus Merrigan who works with us who put in a lot of effort behind the scenes our incredible crackerjack photographer clay Blackmore who's around here somewhere my fantastic colleagues who do so much work behind the scenes Kaleem Horrocks their becca noise and alyssa crow bath so if you could just wave your arms again so people can see you that would be terrific thank you again to Oz for your thoughtful remarks as well as to each of you for your participation and presence this evening we've been so glad to have you here thank you and good night [Applause]

Channel: The Trinity Forum

Views: 7,816

Rating: 4.8425198 out of 5

Keywords: freedom, America, faith

Id: g7eE-SEz6RI

Length: 88min 31sec (5311 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 02 2018