0:10 valera WNYC when we think of American
0:13 exceptionalism a few ideas might come to
0:16 mind the colonists taking over Indian
0:18 land is their God given right manifest
0:21 destiny the initial description of the
0:23 concept can be traced to French
0:25 sociologist and political theorist
0:28 Alexis de Tocqueville who traveled to
0:30 the United States in 1831
0:33 to study its prisons and uncovered a
0:35 wealth of broader observations namely
0:37 that America is an exceptional country
0:40 in that it's an exception as singular
0:43 Gatien but not necessarily a superior
0:45 one coincidentally masha gessen in our
0:47 earlier segment talked about a state of
0:51 exception as an attack or after an
0:54 attack as an excuse for a kurta cracy
0:57 coined by somebody in Hitler's time and
1:00 in that context but in the context of de
1:02 Tocqueville joining me now is another
1:04 Frenchman with his take on American
1:07 exceptionalism 21st century style and
1:10 how it might be driving Americans apart today
1:11 today
1:14 mugambi jouer is a professor at stanford
1:16 law school form a human rights lawyer
1:18 here in Manhattan and author of a new
1:21 book called exceptional America what
1:23 divides Americans from the world and
1:25 from each other welcome to the show and
1:27 the green space professors you're a
1:32 thank you so much first about you to let
1:34 people get to know you a little bit you
1:36 have an interesting multinational
1:38 background how is it that you came to
1:40 practice and teach law of the United
1:44 States well unlike Barack Obama I was
1:46 actually born in Kenya
1:49 my father is Kenyan my mother is French
1:51 and after being born Nairobi I grew up
1:53 in Paris in a multicultural environment
1:55 and ultimately I decided to move to the
1:57 US for college going from Paris France
2:00 not to Paris Texas but to Houston Texas
2:03 and ultimately I stayed on and became a
2:05 human rights lawyer here and I was
2:07 really fascinated not only about the
2:10 contrasts between America as a whole and
2:12 France or other Western democracies
2:14 living here but at a huge contrast
2:16 within the United States I spent about
2:18 six years in New York spent time in New
2:20 England Chicago now-abandoned Georgia
2:23 California and this is a big part of
2:25 polarization that America is very
2:26 divided at a regional level it's also
2:29 very divided at a partisan level because
2:31 Americans were teeny clash over a broad
2:33 range of issues are not controversial
2:35 elsewhere in the West like whether
2:37 people should have a basic right to
2:39 health care whether special interests
2:40 should be allowed to spend unlimited
2:43 money on political elections and on
2:45 lobbying whether climate change is a
2:48 hoax invented by know-it-all scientists
2:51 or a scientific reality whether women
2:53 should have a basic right to abortion
2:55 whether contraception should be covered
2:56 by people's health insurance whether
2:58 people should have an unbridled right to
3:00 bear arms whether to have mass
3:01 incarceration the death penalty and
3:03 whether even if the propria to
3:05 reintroduce torture into Western
3:10 civilization that's a list and those
3:14 things that make us exceptional in
3:16 political terms compared primarily to
3:20 other Western democracies I guess other
3:22 things in US history that you have come
3:25 to understand laid the groundwork for
3:28 that as a related set of exceptions yes
3:30 a lot of this stems from America
3:32 exceptionalism in the original sense of
3:34 the phrase namely die America is an
3:35 exception and most people today think
3:37 that American exceptionalism means a
3:39 faith in American superiority
3:41 exceptional sense of outstanding or
3:42 phenomenal but historically it's
3:45 primarily meant that America is an
3:48 objection objectively under scripted ly
3:50 especially compared to other Western
3:52 democracies that is European countries
3:55 Canada Australia and New Zealand and a
3:56 broad range of issues in terms of
3:59 America's history culture law politics
4:00 race relations
4:03 economic attitudes abilities beliefs
4:05 I've shaped all these device who coined
4:09 the term so interestingly the phrase
4:11 American exceptionalism was not coined
4:15 by Tocqueville himself as far as we know
4:18 is that it has been ironically traced to
4:21 American communists we used it in the
4:23 early 20th century to talk about how the
4:26 so called inertial laws of Marxism we
4:28 have to evolve differently in America
4:30 because of his distinct set of social
4:33 and economic conditions and after that
4:35 epoch he was mainly used by American
4:37 academics who analyzed how America is
4:39 different from other countries and for
4:41 which reasons and eventually the phrase
4:44 became widely used for the first time
4:46 during the Obama presidency and that's
4:48 because Republican politicians routinely
4:51 accused Obama of betraying American
4:54 exceptionalism and the heritage of the
4:55 founding fathers but it's not what the
4:58 phrase historically meant you outline in
5:00 the book four ways in which the
5:03 polarization in this country has made it
5:05 an exception in the Western world that's
5:07 not just the list of particular issues
5:09 that we went through before right so
5:11 there are four factors that are
5:14 interrelated that shaped much of
5:18 American polarization profound and time
5:20 selection and press the country fervent
5:23 Christian fundamentalism of visceral
5:25 suspicion of government and racial
5:27 resentment and put together these four
5:30 factors create a very hard line anti
5:33 rational ideology that is very hostile
5:35 to compromise and these factors were
5:37 already there well before Donald Trump
5:39 even thought about becoming president
5:41 because they are rooted in unique
5:42 dimensions of American history and
5:44 culture how did we get to anti-intellectualism
5:45 anti-intellectualism
5:48 in this country because one leading of
5:50 American history would be that the
5:53 founding fathers Benjamin Franklin who
5:55 made discoveries in electricity and
5:58 meteorology you know the intellectual
6:01 power that went into the the Federalist
6:03 Papers you know and whether you were
6:05 more on Hamilton side or Jefferson side
6:07 or burr side of some of the arguments
6:09 that people who saw the play Hamilton or
6:13 a reminded you know really took place
6:16 about the nature of society how did we
6:17 get from the founding of the country
6:19 based on those things to the pervasive
6:22 anti intellectualism that you rightly
6:25 cite ironically this stems from a
6:26 positive dimension of American
6:28 exceptionalism namely the fact that
6:30 America was the first Western democracy
6:33 to emerge from the Enlightenment so the
6:35 american revolution of 1776 preceded the
6:38 French Revolution of 1789 and with the
6:40 bursts of American democracy came an
6:42 egalitarian spirit now of course it was
6:44 full of contradictions ranging from the
6:45 cruelties of African slavery
6:47 to the persecution of Native Americans
6:50 or the disenfranchisement of women in a
6:52 firmly patriarchal society but it was
6:54 Niguel terran sentiment nonetheless and
6:57 as the historian Richard Hofstadter
7:00 explained this a gala turned sentiment
7:02 created a populist conception not only
7:04 of democracy in parts of the country but
7:06 of education where some people started
7:09 equating education with elitism
7:11 education as a badge of the pursuit of
7:13 aristocracy and that fostered a notion
7:15 that people really don't need to be too
7:18 educated because common sense is just
7:20 good enough to understand the world and
7:22 to make money and this is the roots of
7:24 the intent electoral mindset of not only
7:27 Donald Trump but many other American
7:29 politicians from Sarah Palin to George W
7:31 Bush which seems increasingly rational
7:36 at least a goes by listeners anybody
7:38 want to call in and talk about American
7:41 exceptionalism or anything related with
7:44 mugambi zu a professor at Stanford Law School
7:44 School
7:46 former human rights lawyer here in
7:48 Manhattan and now the author of the book
7:50 exceptional America what divides
7:52 Americans from the world and from each
7:55 other and for our audience members here
7:56 in the green space you can raise your
8:00 hand and we can come around and you can
8:04 ask them a question if you like you
8:05 mentioned in the context of your last
8:08 answer a positive aspect of American
8:10 exceptionalism that wound up leading to
8:14 anti intellectualism I think your
8:16 original framing event of American
8:18 exceptionalism was more along negative
8:20 lines other other positive
8:23 aspects to it that you would say yes
8:25 there are many positive dimensions of
8:26 American exceptionalism and others that
8:29 also contribute to significant
8:32 polarization so one major aspect of
8:33 American society is that is the Western
8:36 democracy by far the highest proportion
8:38 of Christian fundamentalists according
8:40 to data between a third and 40 percent
8:42 of Americans are creationists would
8:45 think that God created human beings in
8:47 their present form and that the theory
8:49 of evolution is false and a similar
8:51 proportion believe in epic elliptic
8:53 biblical prophecies about the imminent
8:54 second coming of Christ and the rapture
8:57 but these forms of radical Christian
9:00 theology partly stem from positive
9:01 dimensions of American exceptionalism
9:03 including the fact that Americans have
9:05 not experienced as long a history of
9:08 religious conflict and clerical
9:10 domination as some Europeans did in the
9:13 past and therefore many Americans start
9:14 to see religions not as social
9:16 institutions not as means of social
9:19 power that mere means of worship and
9:22 that made them less skeptical of radical
9:24 conceptions of Christianity which play a
9:26 big role today because the religious
9:28 Rite is a major political movement that
9:30 also embraced at Donald Trump's rhetoric
9:34 is that I run to you that with the
9:35 United States being as you said the
9:38 first country that was formed on the
9:41 principles of the Enlightenment that it
9:43 would be as religious as it is as
9:46 opposed to more rejecting of religion
9:48 it's a great paradox in a sense that
9:51 several founding fathers including some
9:53 of the most influential ones Thomas
9:56 Jefferson Benjamin Franklin Thomas Paine
9:59 were skeptical of Christian dogma and
10:01 among those who held Christian beliefs
10:04 many of them were far more moderate than
10:05 Christian fundamentalists of today and
10:07 how they thought about religion such as
10:10 John Adams who was a you terian so it's
10:11 a great paradox of historical reversal
10:13 let's take a question here in the green
10:17 space who's got it hi hi so my question
10:19 is about whether you think kind of weak
10:22 educational systems are leading to some
10:23 of this resentment of the intellectual
10:26 classes and that the divide between the
10:27 professional classes and the rest of the
10:30 u.s. is really what we need to address
10:32 the fundamental issue with
10:35 anti-intellectualism is not really
10:37 poor quality of education in many ways
10:39 American education is quite good by
10:42 international standards for k-12 as
10:44 struggled as a blade but it's not at the
10:46 very bottom in the modern Western world
10:48 and American University is often
10:50 regarded as the very best in the entire
10:52 world but endtime collection ilysm is
10:55 more about a peculiar conception of
10:57 education that can even be shared by
10:59 graduates of top universities because
11:02 it's a skepticism of education that does
11:04 not seem to have a practical purpose
11:07 such as an example I provide my book of
11:09 a classmate we said well I don't see the
11:11 point about learning about history what
11:13 is that going to help me in my career
11:16 and that this type of mindset among
11:18 people who can be very studious we can
11:20 be better intelligence of course has a
11:25 broader political impact because it
11:28 makes people receptive to propaganda by
11:31 politicians say about well other Western
11:32 democracies live on the tyranny of
11:35 socialized medicine or the more guns
11:38 that people have the safer society is
11:40 and a lot of people graduate from
11:42 universities today are not able to make
11:45 sense of very simple facts we even had
11:46 the example a couple of years ago where
11:48 you where this where the governor of
11:52 Florida floated the idea of charging
11:54 more tuition to students in the state
11:55 university who were studying anthropology
11:57 anthropology
11:59 he mentioned anthropology and other
12:01 things like that I guess it would have
12:04 included other social sciences because
12:06 there wasn't a relationship between
12:08 those studies and contribution to the
12:11 economy yes and there are many other
12:13 examples that provide in my book for
12:15 example Ronald Reagan when he was
12:17 governor of California complained that
12:19 the state's great universities that were
12:22 subsidizing intellectual curiosity and
12:24 professors retorted that this was their
12:26 very mission
12:29 we will continue in a minute with
12:32 mugambi ziwei whose very mission i
12:35 presume at the Stanford Law School is
12:37 what we just heard and he's the author
12:40 of the new book exceptional America what
12:42 divides Americans from the world and
12:44 from each other among other things we'll
12:48 hear what de Tocqueville observed about
12:50 the criminal justice system in the
12:53 United States in the early 1800s that
12:55 relates to mass incarceration today stay
12:58 with us the City of Boston designing a
13:01 plan to tackle complicated issues of
13:02 race because when you think about what's
13:04 happened in the country whether it's
13:06 been the accident in Ferguson in New
13:08 York or what's happened at Fenway Park
13:10 racist remarks all over the place we
13:12 need to do better as a society Boston
13:14 mayor Marty Walsh that's next time on
13:16 the takeaway weekday afternoons at 3:00
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14:36 Ryanair on WNYC live from the green
14:38 space with Stanford University law
14:41 professor mugambi jouer who's the book
14:43 is exceptional America what divides
14:45 Americans from the world and from each
14:47 other and let's take a caller here is
14:50 Anne in Brooklyn and you're on WNYC
14:52 thank you for calling in thank you for
14:55 this excellent show today I had a
14:57 question regarding evangelicals who
15:00 voted for Trump how do they square with
15:02 themselves in terms of voting for a man
15:04 who represents pretty much every one of
15:08 the seven deadly sins you know is it
15:10 just East Coast hatred for East Coast
15:12 liberals is it the hatred for education
15:15 or was it just simply on the sexism you
15:17 know against Hillary Clinton that they
15:19 would vote for a person who pretty much
15:23 you know he exemplifies so much of what
15:24 they're supposedly
15:27 against so that's my question thank you
15:28 very much
15:32 you do know the answer right that does
15:35 seem a paradox because after all Donald
15:37 Trump does not seem particularly
15:39 religious even though he says that the
15:43 Bible was his favorite book alongside
15:48 the art of the deal but the answer stems
15:51 from not only the fact that a Christian
15:52 fundamentalists identify with other
15:54 parts of it agenda such as repealing
15:58 Obamacare but also that Christian
16:01 fundamentalism is an ideology that
16:03 extends beyond theological questions
16:05 like the theory of evolution or cultural
16:07 war matters like abortion and gay rights
16:11 to other areas because it shapes black
16:15 and whites anti rational anti
16:17 intellectual authoritarian mindsets and
16:19 these are also among the traits of
16:21 Donald Trump which helps explain why
16:24 they are drawn to this type of leader
16:27 you write very interestingly about how
16:31 do Tocqueville in the 1830s thoroughly
16:33 studied American prisons
16:35 I think people associate to Tocqueville
16:37 more with studying civil society and
16:39 things like that but he also looked at
16:41 our prisons and he wrote that in no
16:43 country is criminal justice administered
16:45 with more mildness than in the United States
16:46 States
16:49 and you know our listeners know a lot of
16:51 them do that we have 5% of the global
16:53 population but 25 percent of the global
16:56 prison population so what was the
16:58 criminal justice system like when
16:59 Tocqueville was experiencing it and is
17:01 there a relationship between that and
17:03 what we call mass incarceration today
17:07 it's a great paradox that indeed in
17:09 Tocqueville epic in the 19th century
17:12 America was advanced in many ways that
17:15 took bill wrote a book where he argued
17:17 that France should adopt some of
17:19 America's that penal practices and today
17:21 the exact opposite
17:23 experts regarded America as a great
17:26 example of things not to do when it
17:28 comes to criminal justice and it's also
17:29 interesting if we look at the death
17:31 penalty today America is the only
17:33 Western democracy just to have the death
17:35 penalty and is usually in the top five
17:37 countries worldwide alongside
17:39 authoritarian regimes and dictatorships
17:41 in the number of people it executes but
17:44 some American states like Michigan and
17:46 Wisconsin abolished death penalty
17:47 permanently in the 19th century well
17:50 before Western European nations now not
17:53 only reflects the contrasts of American
17:56 society but also how mass incarceration
17:59 is so peculiar
18:01 and it's actually to the deterioration
18:05 of the American social contract because
18:06 it's very important to understand that
18:09 America has mass incarceration not only
18:11 on a scale unprecedented in American
18:13 history but practically unprecedented in
18:15 America and the history of humankind and
18:17 one can really judge how much the
18:19 society values human rights human
18:21 dignity and equality not by how it
18:22 treats the most privileged members of
18:24 society but by how it treats the least
18:26 privileged and even the worst of the
18:28 worst Linda in Princeton you're on WNYC
18:31 hi Linda thanks for calling in good
18:34 morning Bryan and professors hue oh by
18:36 the way professors away the just to go
18:38 back for a second you were talking about
18:40 the universities and this thing about
18:42 anthropology and one should have to pay
18:45 more for such things perhaps you've read
18:47 robert maynard hutchins he was the
18:49 youngest Dean of the Yale Law School I
18:52 think at 25 in the 30s he later became
18:53 the president of the University of
18:56 Chicago and wanted to keep American
18:58 universities from being contaminated by
19:01 what he called vocational training he
19:03 lost out obviously that's what we have
19:06 now it seems to me by and large anyway I
19:07 wanted to ask your view Samuel
19:09 Huntington in one sentence said to
19:14 what's basically my view the West ie the
19:16 United States in this case one the world
19:18 not by the superiority of its ideas or
19:21 values or religion but rather by its
19:23 superiority in applying organized
19:26 violence Westerners often forget this
19:29 fact non-westerners never do and I
19:31 wonder do you think it seems to me that
19:34 this policy of in the greater world has
19:36 been turned inward on the people of the
19:38 United States themselves especially
19:41 black people that organized violence
19:43 including emotional and intellectual
19:45 violence and I'll take my comment off
19:49 the air thank you thank you so we see a
19:52 parallel not only between the war on
19:54 crime but also the war on terror and how
19:56 people think about these issues and very
19:58 black-and-white terms that they'll
20:02 demonize offenders in America and good
20:05 part because of race prejudice and class
20:07 discrimination as well against poor
20:08 whites and in terms of how to think
20:11 about terrorism there's a notion that is
20:13 not something that can be explained by
20:15 social or political reasons but as some
20:18 see something simply shaped by how some
20:21 human beings are evil and this mindset
20:24 is rooted in different dimensions of
20:26 American society and also it shapes us
20:28 foreign policy a lot we see that America
20:31 is the Western democracy that exempt
20:32 itself from international human rights
20:37 trees the most often also it's the most
20:39 likely to use force and that was
20:41 exemplified by the invasion of Iraq
20:44 which proved extremely controversial and
20:46 to this day I provide evidence in the
20:48 book substantial proportion of Americans
20:51 40 to 50 percent still think that
20:53 invading Iraq was the right decision
20:57 let's go to Z bond on Staten Island you
21:00 on WNYC with professors you a hello z bond
21:02 bond
21:05 Jevon you there yes come on and good
21:06 money is about how you doing doing all
21:10 right okay okay oh well of course before
21:12 this one wanted to make a comparison
21:14 between you by evangelical Christians
21:17 the illusion of Christianity and working
21:19 for mr. Trump well my mother likes to
21:21 compare African politicians to
21:22 Republican politicians
21:25 she says the both crave power but they
21:28 have no idea as to how to govern or the
21:30 one is raw power it doesn't matter how
21:32 to get the power so she called them why
21:34 didn't gellick are hypocrites I just
21:36 wanted to put in and see the our guest
21:39 can we actually well that's a pretty big
21:41 generalization about African politicians
21:43 and Republicans for that matter my
21:50 mother say yes so the history rule
21:51 number one is listening to your mother
21:54 right the history of American religion
21:56 and Protestantism is complex and the
21:59 Evangel movement is actually not uniform
22:03 I provide examples in the book of
22:08 figures like Reverend Civic who supports
22:12 same-sex marriage and equality and other
22:16 progressive causes and that therefore is
22:19 it would be incorrect to paint everyone
22:20 with the same brush but it but still if
22:22 we look at some of their hardline
22:23 positions they don't only stand out
22:26 within American society but also very
22:28 much so by international standards we
22:32 just have under a minute left what do
22:34 you hope people take away from this book
22:37 it's really important to understand the
22:41 root causes of why America became so
22:44 polarized and also if America is to move
22:46 forward there are different things that
22:49 people can do not only be well versed in
22:51 different fields learn about American
22:53 history but also not have an installed
22:55 mindset learn about the experiences of
22:58 other countries but in the end Americans
23:00 that have made so many great
23:03 contributions to democracy and to social
23:05 progress that it's not only important to
23:07 turn to other countries but to turn
23:10 inward if America is to move forward and
23:12 where is room where there's hope
23:14 what is life sorry there's hope Stanford
23:15 Law professor boom
23:18 amnesia way his new book is exceptional
23:20 America what divides Americans from the
23:22 world and from each other thank you so
23:23 much for coming to the green space today
23:26 and thank you all people for coming to
23:28 the green space today thank you thank
23:29 you thank you and thanks to everyone who
23:32 listen from another on WNYC talk to you tomorrow
23:33 tomorrow [Applause]
