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How the Elite rigged Society (and why it’s falling apart) | David Brooks
so I have a confession to make I'm a
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member of the educated
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Elite my parents were historians of
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Victorian England our Turtles when I was
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growing up were named Israeli and
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Gladstone the culture in our home was
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think yish act
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British very stiff upper lip we showed
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no
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emotion and then when I was seven I read
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a book called paddings in the bear and
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decided I want to become a writer and
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that was Central to my identity ever
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since in high school um uh what you call
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like fourth form or something like that
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Bernice and she didn't want to date me
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she dated some other guy and I remember
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thinking what is she thinking I write
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way better than that guy and so those
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were my
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values H and then when I was 18 the
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admissions officers at Columbia Wesley
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and brown universities decided I should
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go to the University of
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Chicago and some of you may know the
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saying about Chicago it's where fun goes
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to
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die my favorite saying about Chicago
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it's a Baptist school where atheist
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professors teach Jewish students St
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Thomas
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aquinus so it's very educated
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Elite uh and I fit right in I had a
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double major at Chicago in history and
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celibacy while I was
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there
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um and then after school I got a job
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where an educated Elite person should
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get a job I was hired to be the
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conservative columnist of the New York
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Times a job I likened to being the Chief
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Rabbi at Mecca uh not not a lot of
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company
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there and then I got a job on PBS which
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is our PBS NewsHour which is our version
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of news night and again educated Elite
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uh we have a wonderful audience somewhat
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seasoned and so if a 93y old lady comes
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up from me the airport I know what she's
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going to say I don't want your program
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but my mother loves it uh and
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so so we members of the educated Elite
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did some good things we created the
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internet brunch and
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mocktails you're welcome we did some bad
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things we designed a meritocracy design
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designed around the skills we ourselves
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possess and rigged the game so we
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succeeded and everybody else failed by
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age 12 children American children of
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affluent kids are four grade levels
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above everybody else by University the
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age rich kids are 77 times more likely
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to go to university or to ivy league
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university than kids from poor schools
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in adulthood 54% of the people at Elite
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workplaces went to the same 34 Elite
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colleges so we ended up creating a cast
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system people with high school degrees
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die nine years sooner than people with
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college degrees people with high school
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degrees are five times more likely to
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have kids out of wedlock people with
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high school degrees are 2.4 times more
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likely to say they have no friends so we
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created a cast system even though we
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pretend to be
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egalitarian but the worst things we did
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were not Material America has a very
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strong economy the worst things we did
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were spiritual we privatized morality
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and destroyed the moral
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order uh George Marsen is a great
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historian who said what gave Martin
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Luther King's rhetoric its power was the
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sense there's a moral order built built
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into the universe that if slavery is not
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wrong nothing is wrong if segregation is
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not wrong nothing is wrong
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we took that essential moral order that
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holds people together and we decided
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it's up to you to find your own truth
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find your own
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values back in 1955 a great American
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journalist named Walter Litman
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understood this was going to be a b big
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problem he said if what is right and
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wrong depends on what each individual
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feels then we are outside the bounds of
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civilization
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um and
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so without a strong moral order it's
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hard to have
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trust it's hard to find your your
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meaning in life and so America and I
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think Britain too has become a sadder
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Society rise in mental health rise in
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suicide 45% of high school students say
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they are persistently hopeless and
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despondent four since 2000 the number of
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Americans without close personal friends
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is up by fourfold since 2000 the number
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of people who say they have no who say
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they are in the lowest happiness
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category is up by 50% we've just become
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sadder the third thing the educated lead
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has done and this may not please you is
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we produced Donald
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Trump uh some people think Donald Trump
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is a populist Donald Trump and Elon Musk
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went to the University of Pennsylvania
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and IV League school and became
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billionaires JD Vance went to Yale Pete
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hexi went to the Princeton Yale Steven
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Miller went to Duke Fox News typ like
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Laur Ingram went to
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Dartmouth and they represent the
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educated Elite and the key factor of the
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educated
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Elite is that they're not
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pro-conservative they're
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anti-left they don't have a positive
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Vision conservative vision for society
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they just want to destroy the
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institutions that the left now
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dominates and this means in the first
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place they're astoundingly
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incompetent I have a lot of sympathy
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with what drove people to vote for Trump
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but I I'm telling you as someone who's
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on the front row to what's happening do
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not hit your wagon to that star
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thank you you're supposed to
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boo P heith gave away our bargaining
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chips with Putin before we even had
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negotiations Elon Musk has 25y olds
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firing people who were controlling our
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nuclear
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codes it's like Sam bankman freed got
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control of our Nu nuclear
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Arsenal second Elite narcissism causes
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them to eviscerate every belief system
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they touch
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conservatives believe in healthy
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societies are built on healthy
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institutions they're an
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anti-institutional
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conservatives believe in steady and
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gradual change Edmond Burke their
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disruption conservatives believe in
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constitutional government Donald Trump
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says I alone can fix this conservatives
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believe in moral
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Norms they're destroying moral Norms
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conser the other belief system that they
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are destroying us judeo-christian
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Faith judeo Christ faith is based
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on service to the poor service to the
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Immigrant service to the stranger I went
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to numibia South Africa throughout the
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1990s and 2000s and I watched people die
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of AIDS then I went back with my friend
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Mike
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Gerson and I saw those 25 million lives
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saved I saw people living lives of
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dignity and so what's the first thing
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Donald Trump did he eviscerated that
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program my friends in America are
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conservative evangelicals in government
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who want to fight sex trafficking
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poverty they want to preserve National
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Security Donald Trump is declaring war
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on those
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Christians so
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don't so I've describ three
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different things we educated Elites
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brought
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you we destroy the social fabric through
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inequality we destroyed the moral fabric
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through privatizing morality and we
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destroyed the institutional fabric
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what's happening right now how can we
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come back well we already
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are I often ask people tell me about a
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time that made you who you are as a
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human
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being and they never say I want a
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fantastic vacation in Hawaii they never
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say that they say I went through a
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really hard time the death of someone
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the loss of someone moving away from
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home entering a new
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vocation Paul tiik the Theologian said
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those moments of suffering interrupt
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your life and they remind you you're not
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the person you thought they were they
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carve through the floor of your basement
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of your soul and they reveal a cavity
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below and they carve through that floor
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and they reveal a cavity Below in
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moments of suffering you see yourself in
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a more Deep Way than you ever did before
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and in those moments of suffering you
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can either be broken or you can be
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broken open and people who are
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transformed decide I'm going to be
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broken open and Nations that are going
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to be transformed by moments of
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suffering say we're going to be broken
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open we've been through periods of
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national crisis
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before across the world Nations have
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constantly hit a spiritual and cultural
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crisis and then revived this country
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between 1820 and 1848 I was here in the
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1980s Britain recovered in the 1980s
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Australia in the 1970s Germany and Japan
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after World War II South Korea in the
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1980s Rwanda after 1994 Chile in the
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1990s
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my own country we've done this again and
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again we've grown not through a happy
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merry ride we've grown through a process
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of rupture and repair when society and
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culture is in crisis and we figure it
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out 1770s the Old Colonial order had to
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go sorry
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1830s the East Coast Elite had too much
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power Andrew Jackson brought an era of
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populism 1860s the slavery order had to
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go Abraham Lincoln brought forth
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National Redemption
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1890s we had failed at industrialization
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we had a Civic Renaissance of all these
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Civic organizations that filled in the
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whole and created a sane Society 1960s
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the conformist culture of the 1950s had
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to
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go and we had the changes that came
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there the temptation of those who don't
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read history is to think this time is
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different we're in another period of
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rupture and
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repair we have spiritual resources I'm a
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conservative I believe the that we are
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inheritors of a great spiritual Legacy
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what Michael Oak called the great
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conversation we have the voice of
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Genesis that we're all made in God's
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image that's the foundation of democracy
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we have the voice of Exodus that we
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wander through the Wilderness and we
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eventually get to the promised land we
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have the voice of Jesus even if you're
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not Christian blessed are the meek
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blessed are the poor in spirit that's a
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source of great strength in my country
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we have the voice of Alexander Hamilton
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poor boys and girls should rise and
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succeed we have the voice of Edmund
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Burke that we should be modest about
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what we can know because culture is
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really complicated and we should operate
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on society the way we would operate on
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our father gradually and carefully we
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have the joy voice of John Stewart Mill
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we value diversity and pluralism because
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it leads to what he called adventures in
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living when you have a spiritual moral
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and relational crisis the job is to
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shift the
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culture and we are moving I think from a
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hyper individualistic culture the last
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years toward a communal culture I didn't
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like the social justice movement but it
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was an attempt to find Community I'm not
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particularly a big fan of Maga but it's
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an attempt to find Community cultur
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change is about a shifting of the heart
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it's a Prov providing new answers to the
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question how should I live my life it's
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about soulcraft and it isn't done the
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way you do political
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change culture change Works differently
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it's done as Walter batet put it if you
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want to Wi people over enjoy the things
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that conservatives
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enjoy culture changes when a creative
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minority find a beautiful way to live
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culture changes when a small group of
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people find a better way to live and the
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rest of us copy that's the story of the
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early
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church it's the story of the clam sect
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they weren't my cup of tea but it's a
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story of
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Bloomsbury I was mentored by William F
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Buckley it's a story of the conservative
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movement in America culture changes on a
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personal
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level when we relate to each
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other with attentive and generous gaze
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Simone VY said attention is the purest
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form of
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generosity culture changes on a
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spiritual level tselot said you can't
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create a system so perfect that the
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people in it don't have to be good it's
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when you put moral formation at the
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center of your society and finally it
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happens at the Civic level
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when a thousand voices and a thousand
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different organizations create Civic
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institutions that provide healing and
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relationship in society that's how
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culture changes I was at a bar about two
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months after October 7th and if you had
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seen me there you would have thought sad
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Guy drinking
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alone I call it
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reporting so I'm scrolling through
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Twitter and it has all these brutal
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images from the Middle East but I come
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across a video of James
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Baldwin and he says you know there isn't
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as much Humanity as one would like but
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there's
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enough and what you've got to remember
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is that when you walk down the street
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every person you meet you could be that
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person that could be you you could be
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that monster you could be that Saint you
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could and you have to decide who you're
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going to be now James Baldwin was
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treated shabbily by my Society
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because of his race and other things but
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he had a right to be
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bitter but even in that
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circumstance he uttered the ultimate
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humanist statement you could be that
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person that person could be you and the
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phrase that rang in my head when I heard
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that was defiant
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humanism that even in harsh and brutal
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times were called upon to see each other
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in the fullest deepest and most
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respectful way that God imagined that
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they would be seen thank you very much
