An hour with Jim Leach

from the dole institute of politics at the university of kansas kbr presents an hour with the chairman of the national endowment for the humanities jim leach i'm kate mcintyre last year's leaked announced he was going on a fifty states' ability to order to promote courtesy and respect in public discourse and particularly in politics at the time he said civilization requires civility words matter reed served as a republican member of congress representing southeast iowa for thirty years in august two thousand nine president obama appointed leads to serve as the chairman of any age he used all institute was the only kansas stop on leeches get the state to war he spoke there september thirteenth two thousand ten thank you very much and prickly honor to be here at this stellar institution and i wanna say oh i'm particularly over because

bob dole was a great friend and if one thinks about the last half century in american politics i do not think there's a more important or better liked republican legislator the bomb and he had a very unique persona that all beer in cans is no it exceptionally well and i will only suggests that the interesting aspect of bobby it is that he was partisan older people and politics or partisan tip o'neill jerry ford and yet that just because your partisan does not mean that you are outside the mainstream or don't respect the other side and there were a few times that perhaps bop overstated a word or two but i will tell you there was

no time that he didn't put the national interests of both our political interests that is there there is a new kind of gamesmanship in politics today were at issue is who wins what voters who wins what election which party comes out on top and that has nothing to do with the national interest and bob dole in his life always symbolized the national interest like i wanna tell an anecdote that some of you may think is a bit odd but it is really drilled into my mind and i will never forget it in nineteen seventy six bob dole was nominated to be the vice presidential running mate a jury for and it was widely reported aw that was to be a one two combination nor jury was to be mr nice guy and bob was to be the issue distinguish

anyway i right after the convention possibly his first album archer because bob also never presented a symbolic to the midwest in fact we used to talk about the state of our weapon three senators chuck grassley tom harkin and bob dole but he came to the iowa state fair and i was a young young candidate i was not in office and by chance here in a hotel in downtown des moines before the fear and i was in a hotel room with bob for an hour and half are there just to assert that there is a mistaken point of such a true story was getting to know bob and i'd never really matter more if i had needed no work but i made one of these comets i said baba why do you think you're chosen for vice pres and after all the news it was pretty self apparent when i met them it was really a very important question from a task

and bob looked at me and this is what i will never ever forget he says jemmott is jamison and i said gas and so you said jam i know very well what i was sore but that doesn't mean i like it set an enormous amount what he was saying is yes the press is reporting and to be the issue distinguish her well i'm telling you that's not exactly who i am and actually if you think about it i don't think there's anyone more like bob goldin maybe jerry ford i mean they're cut from exactly the same cloth and bob to me was an absolutely great american and an unbelievably great legislator

and so i'm proud of it come to the dole institute talked about what i consider to be one of the most important issues in the country that has nothing to do with a precise issued just do with how we resolve issues and when you think about the concept of civility in one sense there's nothing dollar and talk about public manners but in the context of her history or change was wrought in the crisp all of the ideas surrounding the rights of man but also about the nature of man that is because our founders believed that there is so weakness in the human character when it comes to power and politics they won the constraint part because of the nature of man and so when you talk about civility you're you're talking about man's nature and by the way when i say man that was the the rubric of the time we spend

we have a civil war in the suffrage movement it took over center and a half to resolve the fact that the definition of dan included people who were simply male and pale in any regards when we talk about civility it doesn't mean that there shouldn't be vigorous argumentation in fact of argumentation has to be understood as a social good because if you don't argue it don't make issue distinctions you have a tendency as a people and by you i mean we all people to be dogmatic and in a political sense there's a tendency towards turning and so it's very very important that people make issue distinctions and that they express their worry simply try to suggest that to students i

used to help and it's very important that one understands that stability isn't principally and sometimes none of all about manners because what it's really about is is whether or not one wants to listen to another side taken interest and somebody else in the classic term of art book oneself in someone else's shoes and because it is very very seldom that someone cannot bring something from somebody else and it's very very seldom that one doesn't understand an issue better by figuring out what is that and why it is that that somebody may differ and so civility is most of all a boat some sort of a direct or indirect or respectful engagement and that's what we're breaking down and in an american society about words do matter that they reflect emotions and i also am the candidate times of clarify or

cloud cloth i happen to think the normally the greater the clarity the better and sometimes they're there are advantages to a little bit of ambiguity and we learn that than in husband wife relations particularly yes dear that's a beautiful dress but you don't get one doesn't always have to lay things precisely on the line there are times and places that it's better to not say something than to say something in america that process often as are most important product and in this regard it you can help and we can help a surprising challenge is i personally think we we received one now earlier this year five people in the world court justices and they have tremendous supreme

court ruling called citizens united that it was a a first amendment right of corporations to give money in campaigns and i'm going to talk about that for a minute just because i think it's a subject matter that deserves a lot of attention because it has to do with the very nature of our democracy it also has to do with what may and make civility in our society more difficult and what the court ruled was in essence that a corporation was an individual and in essence that money was the same thing a speech but to me the notion of of citizenship and end and corporate personhood doesn't exactly square with a declaration of independence because that were found in the notion that all men and women are created

equal and relationship to each other but were not necessarily equal relationship to a corporation or corporations or equal to other corporations some empower individuals and in lesson more than others and so an individual to corporate tie has an added voice in politics an individual multiple corporations has even more voices in politics and what the script for ruling buses is really take your cooper history that has been towards justice and krista back to that part of our constitutional heritage that was so fervently and just that is it brought back property considerations here and now a key aspect of citizenship which relates to her boarding and so pop like this may be an aspect of civil discourse but seville been a white words are not exactly synonymous moneyed speech that carries strings

can be the most and civil speech of all and so for example if i as an individual get some in this room it's a legislator from a corporation a huge sum of money and then suggests that something happens i my asset that happen in a very polite way but it's a kind of an uncivil contract and it's something we all should take about two very large extent of the electorate part process in many ways it's more than what happens on election day it's also got what happens between elections we had a famous german classroom cause vets who once mentioned something about the lawmaking end and i personally for making is a continuation of politics in another form because electro politics never stops and it had simply is interrupted every year to pick up ballots

and if we think of problems in america and their money and one of the problems that we're seeing on the last decade and a half that maybe our more unique and our heritage then we might suspect and that is the enormous growth of inequality in our society and it's it's no accident as a gap between rich and poor is waiting sos politically gap between the powerful and the powerless or the seemingly powerless and money is the reason for that some of us are familiar with another german a man in bismarck who was attributed to have said that the one thing the public should watch closely or laws and sausages be made well what what did the laws and sausages have income and what they have in common is that the public

wants and made in this clean away as boss and doesn't and shouldn't see it not too closely and one of the things that has struck me as i've observed the political process is that there is exceptionally little corruption role to any other society in american politics but there are enormous conflicts of interest and these conflicts of interest have now been magnified by the supreme court rulings and that many politicians develop complex the rice to corruption standards in part because the law and no judicial fee art as lord that standard and that good people that enter politics and most are very good people that do find them system kind of a home not exactly directs that incentivizes people to take

the low road to become the one most troubled and so to promote free speech perspective my view is very simple at one end of the smith spectrum and civil speech has to be protected by the spring score court but filtered out but the public and at the other end a corporate speech should be not allowed to silence a voice of whoa whoa whoa citizens and i think i'm the first to him the court does a better job than it does on the secondhand if we can turn to oil the sheer a bad night it seems to me is that if the current political winds are intended pure that have more closely divided congress will come and they can conceivably get a changing control but

what matters most is not whether republicans come forward and the majority are democrats but whether whoever comes into power that is willing to work with the other side and that may be quite a challenge we had an example that the va i frankly lived through better to harbor inn watching the nineteen ninety four the republicans won in a nineteen ninety five with a democratic president there was a a bit of a tussle for much of the year and that's government shutdowns all related to the fact that republicans want to take approach that was a lot of contacts with the administration's and it took a year to have to figure out how to work together and i'm very apprehensive that we might have in a more exaggerated circumstance like that develop next year if that circumstance develops and so the great that question to me that people are basques candidates from all directions

is whether they'll be able to listen to the other side and try to work out matters but the national interest in much the way that bob dole did during his career in public life i want to talk a little bit about the history of them turned to some of the aspects of american society that had applied to today's circumstances historically and it's quite clear that we've had more difficult times we have today merlin at nau for the sitting vice pres the united states' shot dead a former secretary of the treasury at this was acknowledged this was an arab or a shop alexander hamilton in what might be described as an illegal act of incivility a dual that was authorized in the state of nature is high and then in fifty six we have a house member walk over to the side

and the emptiness and entered unconsciousness there and the hospital is from south carolina the sender from massachusetts but kansas was the reasoning and what it was was the senator from massachusetts who is a free stater advocate her was talking about the kansas nebraska act in and advocating them priestly position of the pro slavery and felt that his state or at least a similar from the staid been slandered in the sordid indicate that with a skein though and so we don't have a quite reached that point but that it is certainly the case that when one uses uncivil terms and what i consider to be uncivil terms are a historical terms of that carrie implications like calling a public official

comments calling a public official fascist when you think about one of the great questions is what does it mean we lost puerto rico similar compatriots are feeling patient we also lost tens of thousands of work and so called encounters in the day and so if you really believe some us economist or a fascist says that mainland one has the right to do something that might be conceivably quite point likewise for the first time in my life i've heard the words indian murdered around the country about secession above north occasional vacation meaning a state has a right to nullify a national law that people don't like it or those are issues that we thought were sold in the civil war and so a few things are extremely taut and when my desk and why in and in one

sense they relate to him real reasons and although she totally share and that is a and the last decade after so i would argue the best and the brightest american politics have and i'll let the country down and we have a truly unneeded recession depending on one's perspective and arguably on you probably or at least one and in iraq but these are judge recalls others they fueled very very differently about a new and one has to respect both oppose it made the judgment on of those that have sacrificed to defend their country and whatever one's views on non on the worst were engaged and now the one thing that we all have to respect is not only the people that have served but the one presented and really

scott no water for soldiers undefeated in battles we would be in a very difficult position as a country and so we should not only a i respect your service to respectfully the enormous sacrifice to ensure that no battle so basically been lost in terms of american politics it's been a couple years in academia or a developer last resort called two minute courses in and how american society is organized today that churn some of which their shared something on this issue of civility and i'd like to give half a dozen of these to get a sense for the first i call political science won a one which is a very simple mathematical proposition that is over the last generation or so above a third of americans have been democratic both a republican authored no party

and if you cut a third and a half to get a sex or sixth of americans control the republican party a six control the democratic party but if in the legislative circumstances that most women for participating tuesday one inmate you have to do the division so one fourth times when sex means one twenty four so one twenty fourth control republican candidates in one twenty four lisa selection of them and one twenty fourth control the selection of democratic candidates and then you ask yourself who was the one twenty four thousand are increasingly it's a parade a blueprint of social conservativism on the republican side kind of an old fashioned liberalism on the democratic and an intriguingly if you go to american history one of the aspects of all of this is that we as a society thought were structured such way to make sure that the voices of all kinds in the whole dimensions are heard in legislative bodies particularly congress but the great left of a voice

in congress today is is the great american middle lot of republicans moderate democrats because virtually all the candidate selection a strong of the arch conservative side of the republican party in the more liberal side of the democratic party a political science one or two eye relates to an issue of a bunch of subtle changes that occur in the political process half of which all americans understand another half or if you've paid attention to but the half they understand is that if one's a candidate in the republican primary for president one scoots to the right but if one gets a nomination won prizes schiff told him they'll pursue the democratic side the word is often missed is for legislative races about eighty five percent of congressional seats are totally safe within one party or the other and so i there is a school to the right in the republican primary school to the

left in the democratic but there's no school to the center and this is all because of self interest if one boost to the center or moved to compromise with the opposition one invites a primary opposition and it's in the primer where one's job is jeopardized and so we have a congress today that institutionally it does not want to compromise for very strong self interest reasons of individual members as well as olive complexion and this is a very difficult and in in the modern american politics so unprecedented we're calling on both sides won three as a parent there something about the human condition that wants to have much decision making at the local level as possible but we're also the world in which a global wasn't as dominant in tip o'neil used to say that all politics is local but the corollary of that is that the local politics is now affected by international events and

all countries the world it's this balance between your closet and globalization that is the most difficult balance to have to somehow maintain in our society and then and of course i call morality one or one that is increasing number of issues are called moral and the difficulty with that the labeling of an issue as maura when there are certain issues that do have a moral dilemmas to them but you later one issue moral if i'm on one side and you're in the other the implication is i think you're immoral and you think i met more and that's very different than thinking you're too liberal or i'm too conservative and there this name says that lots of members have a minimum high regard for each other right and then of course michael sports one a one time when i entered politics are used to suggest there's a great analogy between sports and politics kind of a wonder wonders what competition winners losers it's better

now but the longer ai i've been in them yemen or change politics but i think the analogies break down because sports host oh much higher up ethics and politics as i've mentioned or a chance for earlier today that do if she saw me a coach who said to have the kids don't respect her opposition take shortcuts she'd fire the coach and in in an american athletics there are things that are imperfect and we watch this town again with egos at souter and the fact of the matter is the sports i think it's a very impressive competitive ethic and a very impressive model other rules to govern our games are a free strong flags umpires called balls and strikes the refinery prevails

reporting at least for the home team in basketball is generally wrong but one hastert served and that one does and the players sometimes better than them the chance the course record physics when a warning this story relates to work the chaplain isaac newton who once had three laws of motion the sort of witches for protection there's an equal and opposite reaction what we called top actually called reaction and one day away sitting on the forest floor is what really incredibly an intelligent republican speaker of the house named newton give a diatribe against the way the democratic party in i'm thinking to myself watching my fellow democrats that social physics is a lot different than natural for sex that sometimes reaction can be greater than action and that we have to be careful with

words sometimes if i call some in this room obama might call me some feel stronger if we as a country call another country either what is your reaction going to be or are people going to say cash dolly gee i better reform or maybe i'll think you're satanic i mean you do you have to be very careful with with how how one approaches words in an area of social and of course if you go to the humanities i sometimes suggest that einstein had the great observation of the last century when he said that splitting the atom has changed everything except her way of thinking and what this means is in that we have challenges we unearth have never ever confronted

for the first time human society i asked us is not just a wage and when war but to destroy everything that right and then if we look at the last decade were seeing something extremely limited for the first time on terrorism has been internationalize we've always had terrorism of one kind or another sometimes it at odd moments in human history that we've never had its internationalization and we've never thought through because there were these great distinctions that the most vulnerable societies have the most advanced her astrologer obama a rural setting all that damage can be done obama's top next to a bar or platter a large building in a larger society great damage can be done and so we're dealing with issues that

never existed and involving of prospects and there have never been more meaningful and so i just went in and withdrew their courses or one in literature and building a neon the shorter name lawrence to rob hall who wrote four books called the alexandria quartet in their sixties or late fifties and these are for books that were first person narrative sudden and alexandria egypt between what one will work too in each of the books recount of the same set of events as first person narratives and you wonder why read this book the same thing for times over in the more was and that each book was totally care for him that each person have a totally different take on the event and so the analogy being whether it one lives of the court works the court romer city but

international relations and that to get a sense reality when she looked at things or more than one set of art prints we take international relations with what looks reasonable for american and decision making may look a lot different year it may look a little different the middle eastern nation in africa and so we as a country are going after think through whether we want to be as a single white society or are one the takes multiple perspectives and so here let me just end with the great tone poem of the twentieth century and the bb eight says of the second coming when when he ended with the center cannot hold the slack or condition conviction in the worst are full of passionate intensity that we as a society are going to have to think great deal about how we do things as well as what we do if we're going to

build a leader of the world in the twenty first century as well as we did in the twentieth century for much of for listening to the family's chairman of nsa endowment for the humanities and kansas public radio why i have a question concerning what she said about moral issues usually many of the issues in our society that we need to be the divide people our exacting moral issues amoebic of abortion think of our gay marriage think i love whether our health care system where there are of course the vast disparities in health and health outcomes between caucasians an african american it's set on just it's a moral issue and every avoid those moral issues are simply we avoid the most interesting stuff he won women would never see joshua porter moral issue in northwest justice serving these issues are great moral and ethical dilemmas and all i'm

suggesting is that an attitude is developed that if one has the perception that one's own moral perspective is the only moral perspective one has great difficulty resolving things of a social a church and so you're fired someone is pro life but they can't recognize that someone is pro choice of his and also a deeply moral brasilia difficulties if someone who but on the democratic and liberal side sometimes thinks the ruling for any social program is world and that someone who votes against it is immoral and actually act i think that's a perspective that's fraught with problems too but without doubt one can't escape for ethical judgment

and you know other kinds of political judgments for example and abstractly you might think something's in the public interest that you've been given a lot of money by a particular party involved in there on the other side of the issue when you vote to me that's deeply ethical but these are difficult times to to pursue and all i'm saying is just desert about to should respect any of this going and vice versa and you should respect to muslim and vice versa it won should organize one's life in his world away as possible but also recognize someone else play organizer life a little differently should be deeply respected n and by the way a minimum a registered one final comment i mean if we took of the issues of the last month of the notion that

a mosque shouldn't be built in new york or at least weren't currently structured the notion that someone thinks it's credible debris litter around in a public setting these are very big issues the moral dimensions and so my only additional this is that if you take great moments in american history and they're almost always more boy expanding tolerance and the moments that are towards intolerance or those that we sometimes i think regret the most and missiles but i'm better thoughts on term limits things like if there are term limits one might be less special interests but also won she's been much less likely to be willing to compromise or work with somebody that i'm not a sort of doing that five or ten or thirty years down the road

it well this this is a difficult issue and it's an interesting one obviously we would become unsung prostitute many states have term limits for governor of california as term limits for state legislatures the young national issue there were for sale is vastly less important than it is for campaign reform involving money in politics and there is a case for the service relating to certain aspects of public life that involve some buildup an expertise i have a friend a long serving member of congress and most famous for doing no twenty an opponent the tapered six year term and says he would have a far more radical position that he favored two year term limits unless a public vote at other ways

heat prior misconduct you have another friend of his fifteenth or so comments that he was putting up a billboard blow for tony but he'd make a good congressman barrow there yet there are pros and cons to have been director i voted for term limits of time or two i'm not sure it was correct at least if i didn't vote i signed on the bills for the night hi i'm not one that has a i can't tell you an immensely are convinced of the subject yes i thank you for coming out great talk my question has to do with things that are not covered in the discourse and how'd you go about bringing that that issue to the forefront but primarily the wars

it's been a very anesthetize coverage oh we do not get the context a lot of those war so how to why bring it should you without using a bloodless language when they can well that's a that's a very profound thing that obviously leading up to the works of great mistakes relating whether or not it was right to use force to move into iraq we had incomplete and i'm an accurate intelligence we also i'm a surprising lack of knowledge of muslim attitudes in the muslim religion and one of the aspects of war is that only given for people get more interested in the subject and so today there's probably not a person in this room that doesn't know there's a distinction between sunni and shia and at least in this room there's probably nobody that doesn't know

or iraq or afghanistan are statistically many americans don't know and tech majority of americans don't or these two countries are and can't locate them on the map going down his forces conduct of war an mit i sense from your caution that you have perhaps experience in the region the war is it is it is very hard for anyone to understand that isn't directly involved i certainly believe that many things are covered including some really wonderful things are troops to do as well as some of the a lot of challenges that they have and so i'm fairly confident that there are many subtleties are being reported and there they are a particularly if you take afghanistan today the dangers involved in

reporting are now so very large and obviously in their scripted or troops but there's enormous danger now in an inner and reporters go near war zones sometimes as possible sometimes it isn't there's a professor at notre dame a woman who got a macarthur fellowship for studying the effects of war zones on on the domestic population in these three continents and and the be courageous lady oddly enough i think as a woman she was safer than if she were a man but nonetheless it was unbelievably dangerous and these are earned her very difficult things to follow him and again i just wanna conclude i suspect the course your house of knowledge about certain things with a beat a normal social thousand so how you bring it to public attention

it's one reason congressman have town hall meetings with senators have sutter in and one can visit their offices and staff so there is some access and the political system weathered gets reported deaths a lot harder nut to crack him on the yacht media for the coarsening of civil discourse or they just this dating reasonable positions held by reasonable people and there is telling us what we want here well i think everybody in america is aware of what's so what's the what's happening there are there some preston's nineteenth century every town in a couple of newspapers one might be waived the other democratic can and you have somebody's a harsh diatribes and then in the twentieth century when we moved a little bit to radio on the end of the three national networks and then two newspapers at

consolidated tip to sleuth for city is almost alone and there is an effort to try to speak to all perspectives and sometimes that this there was almost competition and the national networks to be the most even handed in it and many newspapers they would have on the op ed page or conservative columnist the liberal columnist and then as we got beyond the three major networks and more networks and then many more networks a sudden people knew started saying how do you how do you get an audience and so some decided to our pre in free market kind of way the way a jazz use strobe light one shoe store might emphasize been shoes for a particularly of it and another bite low end another might support other might be a woman shopping and so the same thing that happened in the news some of the stations have said i'm going to

appeal to construe be fighting another maybe ten more liberal fighting and in doing that there's been a kind of a breaking away from even handedness that it is more philosophical put it nicely or ideological little more difficult term reporting that's going on in an american people unfortunately are choosing an almost ghostly than we'd like and to go to the network for their biases originally start and so you're seeing a reinforcement of using almost a legitimate station of harder feeling and then each each each decides for example right left his having competition from someone that's a little bit further to write critically on the radio and so he used the russian boar was a symbolic target and other people will to his right in a major american markets and so you're

seeing the competitions thats raised or not looser language to go up and so we we we do have a problem on the other hand one of the pluses like i say this and i say this to my students placed say those that are concerned the picture to find a wonderful part to look at at least in the fear the liberal find a conservative bloc but forgetting liberals versus conservative is a particularly an academic centers it's recognize everybody with these early computers in our is being inundated with the other half options to look at journals options to look at the blogs that are pretty fabulous swimming warm we think that because of the finances and newspapers are retracting their there coverage and prickly internationally but in lots of ways there's a capacity to get news about the middle east news about south asia

the highest quality if one knows how to do and the foreigners interested in doing it and so some of the aspects that new technologies are i'm just actually fabulous for those that have the time or older to what they want to say and so all the news isn't isn't bad but for the general public there's a sociologist at harvard named bob putnam it's been arguing that people are tending to live with people just like themselves to look at news that people just like themselves that there's a tendency to perhaps in all societies but it's occurring more and more in american society dare hunter congregate on what one man may think to begin with and then done the voices of the outsider frankly legitimizing a kind of a hardening of attitudes you know having said all of that there is also an enormous reason for hard feelings in this country today the economy and

political bumper crop that is simply not uplifting compared to where did it should be them so i'll be poor expressing expert for the first time i'm having problems with the first amendment freedom of speech i think the fact that we can tolerate and prom at the burning of the qur'an even if it endangers the lives of many people overseas the fact that we have here in kansas and they've become quite national people like in phelps who will they get the graves of american soldiers and this is done without impunity the fact that iran get what you

alluded to gm corporations become a first amendment right freedom of speech and can buy our elections it feels to me that somehow this excess of freedom of speech might need to be curbed latina thing where hesitates to move in that direction one of the strengths of freedom of speech even radical freedom of speech is that it takes this room and someone feels very radical if they can express a destroyer crew horsfall that's a social good because it they will not feel compelled to take out some sort of violent alternative and so sometimes of these freedoms have to be respected no there are other circumstances that you you hope to bring people intuit the center so the judgments of the ocean

and gen masood or worse had to call please call out for pastor in florida not actually affect the best received a phone call from the secretary of defense and he was visited by the federal bureau of investigation to lay out the implications of these actions well it is very a dire situation for this country and so we have to think about closely split know and then regional issue of twelve or more of the cartoons about the prophet muhammad jiang yen the western civilization there are there's kind of a as freedom of speech or how we sometimes mock our political leaders and even religious figures and that was a tradition

that one of the things we've never fought a part of the religion why is that you know image of the profit is considered appropriate for most muslims the matter how respectful because muslims do not believe in my poetry and so by even the most respectful picture conceivable of muhammad is considered inappropriate in and to some degree we have to think through is about something we should respect and so when decisions are made whether to publish cartoons those are the types of things that are clearer freedom of expression issues defectors won't just have to make a judgment on an academic so i'm always interested in how we translate these ideas as we teach the current generation and prepare a new

one to come and so these are questions that obviously many of our students are concerned about but we also trying to analyze the why why we we got a sense of the what but the question is still why and what can you do about it and i'm wondering if you can address perhaps we're about what we might do perhaps to stem the tide amazing we have this tremendous information explosion information overload more than ever before but the choices are greater than ever before so how do we try get a handle on this i mean the sense of privilege and entitlement is greater than ever before cell can be to shift a little bit to that as perhaps the last question what precisely do you have respect for the other side that we don't emphasize uplifting language and let me give an example that might interest you there is a professor at university of south carolina named erik talks to care

who won a macarthur fellowship has been studying the language of the south african revolution and very interesting way he is an interim extension for the book about this has traced the usage of the word in this case the single word reconciliation elsewhere other words and he's come to the conclusion of that by using uplifting word and words of the south african revolution it cause the south african revolution to become more peaceful than it would otherwise be because people would check themselves related to the words they gathered and that it ended up that these words had certain meeting before the revolution and the rubble she gave them new meaning and so you have this in a relationship of meaning in words based on policy and very intriguing ways and so we think of our history i mean no society could have

bore uplifting words in the declaration of independence and then as many americans know people were left out and so our history has been one of bringing meaning to those words and i think that's what we ought to be thinking about all the time if you begin with the notion all men are created equal when you recognize that means women it it means that if you are equal you have to respect it and it means that your respects the other and those are the implications of words over the uproar and so like bristol services that everyone ought to respect like man some of the people expressing some of the diarist things in american public life in terms of trying to figure out why people think that way and listen and think it through and talk to such people

are not an hour those are boy a banana in a way that respects and reflects for thomas and the final measure of democracies about engagement and why i'm personally you is the weakest aspect of american democracy is a primer part process and we have to get more engaged in primaries to bring of meaning to the american political life right you've just heard finley chairman of the national endowment for the humanities speaking september thirteenth two thousand ten at the dole institute of politics at the university of kansas this was chairman leach is only kansas stop on his fifty state stability to our which he began in november two thousand nine recording assistant

for today's program was provided by chubby smith i'm kay mcintyre k pr prisons is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas next time on tv are presents the us supreme court is set to hear oral arguments next month in snyder versus phelps a first amendment case that hits close to home for kansas will look at the issues and hear arguments on both sides of the case in a dog institute events is nothing sacred snyder beat phelps and free speech and join us the following week as kansas public radio joins the big read the topeka sunny county public library is hosting this year's big worried about hard boiled american classic no it should be dead

here's fifteen minute thanks goldstein we're going to open windows should ring with a half a dozen times in the building or street roofs darken before slipping downhill to chinatown state it is fair and let the taxi sanford disclosed night for climbing and a drug lord the street a few yards from her speech mr taxicab a small group of men stood looking over nearly two women stood with a man on the other shore the bush be sure to tune in october at hand as we explore the maltese falcon meet the man behind sam spade and learn about this book's enduring impact on the genre of detective we'll also hear about some of the events that to keep this tiny county public library is hosting this month including the victim of the allen volume of the great mystery dinner theater tickets are still

available for the october ninth protection of pelham volume call seventy five five eight zero four five one zero for more information and kinect entire telling me your presence here is for sue and moving when

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