0:00:00.699,0:00:02.457
So if you've been following the news,

0:00:02.457,0:00:04.946
you've heard that there's a pack of giant asteroids

0:00:04.946,0:00:06.019
headed for the United States,

0:00:06.019,0:00:09.486
all scheduled to strike within the next 50 years.

0:00:09.486,0:00:12.539
Now I don't mean actual asteroids made of rock and metal.

0:00:12.539,0:00:14.046
That actually wouldn't be such a problem,

0:00:14.046,0:00:16.150
because if we were really all going to die,

0:00:16.150,0:00:19.188
we would put aside our differences, we'd spend whatever it took,

0:00:19.188,0:00:21.318
and we'd find a way to deflect them.

0:00:21.318,0:00:24.020
I'm talking instead about threats that are headed our way,

0:00:24.020,0:00:26.156
but they're wrapped in a special energy field

0:00:26.156,0:00:30.506
that polarizes us, and therefore paralyzes us.

0:00:30.506,0:00:32.410
Last March, I went to the TED conference,

0:00:32.410,0:00:35.246
and I saw Jim Hansen speak, the NASA scientist

0:00:35.246,0:00:38.156
who first raised the alarm about global warming in the 1980s,

0:00:38.156,0:00:40.621
and it seems that the predictions he made back then

0:00:40.621,0:00:42.462
are coming true.

0:00:42.462,0:00:45.949
This is where we're headed in terms of global temperature rises,

0:00:45.949,0:00:47.558
and if we keep on going the way we're going,

0:00:47.558,0:00:51.026
we get a four- or five-degree-Centigrade temperature rise

0:00:51.026,0:00:52.374
by the end of this century.

0:00:52.374,0:00:56.162
Hansen says we can expect about a five-meter rise in sea levels.

0:00:56.162,0:00:59.404
This is what a five-meter rise in sea levels would look like.

0:00:59.404,0:01:02.412
Low-lying cities all around the world will disappear

0:01:02.412,0:01:06.210
within the lifetime of children born today.

0:01:06.210,0:01:08.506
Hansen closed his talk by saying,

0:01:08.506,0:01:12.643
"Imagine a giant asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

0:01:12.643,0:01:14.996
That is the equivalent of what we face now.

0:01:14.996,0:01:18.770
Yet we dither, taking no action to deflect the asteroid,

0:01:18.770,0:01:20.479
even though the longer we wait,

0:01:20.479,0:01:23.556
the more difficult and expensive it becomes."

0:01:23.556,0:01:25.363
Of course, the left wants to take action,

0:01:25.363,0:01:28.699
but the right denies that there's any problem.

0:01:28.699,0:01:30.277
All right, so I go back from TED,

0:01:30.277,0:01:33.171
and then the following week, I'm invited to a dinner party

0:01:33.171,0:01:35.636
in Washington, D.C., where I know that I'll be meeting

0:01:35.636,0:01:38.378
a number of conservative intellectuals, including Yuval Levin,

0:01:38.378,0:01:41.974
and to prepare for the meeting, I read this article by Levin

0:01:41.974,0:01:45.340
in National Affairs called "Beyond the Welfare State."

0:01:45.340,0:01:48.539
Levin writes that all over the world,

0:01:48.539,0:01:50.750
nations are coming to terms with the fact

0:01:50.750,0:01:53.051
that the social democratic welfare state

0:01:53.051,0:01:56.570
is turning out to be untenable and unaffordable,

0:01:56.570,0:01:59.134
dependent upon dubious economics

0:01:59.134,0:02:02.771
and the demographic model of a bygone era.

0:02:02.771,0:02:05.416
All right, now this might not sound as scary as an asteroid,

0:02:05.416,0:02:08.094
but look at these graphs that Levin showed.

0:02:08.094,0:02:10.544
This graph shows the national debt

0:02:10.544,0:02:13.626
as a percentage of America's GDP, and as you see,

0:02:13.626,0:02:15.707
if you go all the way back to the founding,

0:02:15.707,0:02:17.823
we borrowed a lot of money to fight the Revolutionary War.

0:02:17.823,0:02:21.161
Wars are expensive. But then we'd pay it off, pay it off, pay it off,

0:02:21.161,0:02:24.213
and then, oh, what's this? The Civil War. Even more expensive.

0:02:24.213,0:02:26.946
Borrow a lot of money, pay it off, pay it off, pay it off,

0:02:26.946,0:02:29.668
get down to near zero, and bang! -- World War I.

0:02:29.668,0:02:31.370
Once again, the same process repeats.

0:02:31.370,0:02:33.278
Now then we get the Great Depression and World War II.

0:02:33.278,0:02:37.636
We rise to an astronomical level, around 118 percent of GDP,

0:02:37.636,0:02:41.316
really unsustainable, really dangerous.

0:02:41.316,0:02:45.943
But we pay it off, pay it off, pay it off, and then, what's this?

0:02:45.943,0:02:48.952
Why has it been rising since the '70s?

0:02:48.952,0:02:51.745
It's partly due to tax cuts that were unfunded,

0:02:51.745,0:02:54.439
but it's due primarily to the rise of entitlement spending,

0:02:54.439,0:02:56.593
especially Medicare.

0:02:56.593,0:02:59.688
We're approaching the levels of indebtedness we had at World War II,

0:02:59.688,0:03:02.679
and the baby boomers haven't even retired yet,

0:03:02.679,0:03:05.949
and when they do, this is what will happen.

0:03:05.949,0:03:07.678
This is data from the Congressional Budget Office

0:03:07.678,0:03:10.505
showing its most realistic forecast of what would happen

0:03:10.505,0:03:14.620
if current situations and expectations and trends are extended.

0:03:14.620,0:03:17.552
All right, now what you might notice is that these two graphs

0:03:17.552,0:03:22.183
are actually identical, not in terms of the x- and y-axes,

0:03:22.183,0:03:23.378
or in terms of the data they present,

0:03:23.378,0:03:27.851
but in terms of their moral and political implications, they say the same thing.

0:03:27.851,0:03:29.687
Let me translate for you.

0:03:29.687,0:03:33.354
"We are doomed unless we start acting now.

0:03:33.354,0:03:36.334
What's wrong with you people on the other side in the other party?

0:03:36.334,0:03:40.723
Can't you see reality? If you won't help, then get the hell out of the way."

0:03:40.723,0:03:43.004
We can deflect both of these asteroids.

0:03:43.004,0:03:46.394
These problems are both technically solvable.

0:03:46.394,0:03:49.173
Our problem and our tragedy is that in these hyper-partisan times,

0:03:49.173,0:03:52.165
the mere fact that one side says, "Look, there's an asteroid,"

0:03:52.165,0:03:54.406
means that the other side's going to say, "Huh? What?

0:03:54.406,0:03:56.984
No, I'm not even going to look up. No."

0:03:56.984,0:04:00.088
To understand why this is happening to us,

0:04:00.088,0:04:04.134
and what we can do about it, we need to learn more about moral psychology.

0:04:04.134,0:04:06.792
So I'm a social psychologist, and I study morality,

0:04:06.792,0:04:09.179
and one of the most important principles of morality

0:04:09.179,0:04:12.429
is that morality binds and blinds.

0:04:12.429,0:04:14.863
It binds us into teams that circle around sacred values

0:04:14.863,0:04:18.776
but thereby makes us go blind to objective reality.

0:04:18.776,0:04:19.882
Think of it like this.

0:04:19.882,0:04:23.945
Large-scale cooperation is extremely rare on this planet.

0:04:23.945,0:04:26.104
There are only a few species that can do it.

0:04:26.104,0:04:29.104
That's a beehive. That's a termite mound, a giant termite mound.

0:04:29.104,0:04:32.204
And when you find this in other animals, it's always the same story.

0:04:32.204,0:04:37.101
They're always all siblings who are children of a single queen,

0:04:37.101,0:04:38.960
so they're all in the same boat.

0:04:38.960,0:04:42.281
They rise or fall, they live or die, as one.

0:04:42.281,0:04:44.572
There's only one species on the planet that can do this

0:04:44.572,0:04:47.147
without kinship, and that, of course, is us.

0:04:47.147,0:04:49.418
This is a reconstruction of ancient Babylon,

0:04:49.418,0:04:51.741
and this is Tenochtitlan.

0:04:51.741,0:04:53.833
Now how did we do this? How did we go

0:04:53.833,0:04:56.827
from being hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago

0:04:56.827,0:05:00.845
to building these gigantic cities in just a few thousand years?

0:05:00.845,0:05:03.888
It's miraculous, and part of the explanation

0:05:03.888,0:05:08.112
is this ability to circle around sacred values.

0:05:08.112,0:05:12.036
As you see, temples and gods play a big role in all ancient civilizations.

0:05:12.036,0:05:15.888
This is an image of Muslims circling the Kaaba in Mecca.

0:05:15.888,0:05:19.033
It's a sacred rock, and when people circle something together,

0:05:19.033,0:05:23.404
they unite, they can trust each other, they become one.

0:05:23.404,0:05:25.585
It's as though you're moving an electrical wire

0:05:25.585,0:05:27.722
through a magnetic field that generates current.

0:05:27.722,0:05:30.645
When people circle together, they generate a current.

0:05:30.645,0:05:32.178
We love to circle around things.

0:05:32.178,0:05:35.876
We circle around flags, and then we can trust each other.

0:05:35.876,0:05:38.717
We can fight as a team, as a unit.

0:05:38.717,0:05:41.876
But even as morality binds people together into a unit,

0:05:41.876,0:05:45.848
into a team, the circling blinds them.

0:05:45.848,0:05:47.656
It causes them to distort reality.

0:05:47.656,0:05:51.693
We begin separating everything into good versus evil.

0:05:51.693,0:05:55.591
Now that process feels great. It feels really satisfying.

0:05:55.591,0:05:59.810
But it is a gross distortion of reality.

0:05:59.810,0:06:03.218
You can see the moral electromagnet operating in the U.S. Congress.

0:06:03.218,0:06:05.450
This is a graph that shows the degree to which voting

0:06:05.450,0:06:08.281
in Congress falls strictly along the left-right axis,

0:06:08.281,0:06:10.957
so that if you know how liberal or conservative someone is,

0:06:10.957,0:06:14.183
you know exactly how they voted on all the major issues.

0:06:14.183,0:06:16.237
And what you can see is that,

0:06:16.237,0:06:18.622
in the decades after the Civil War,

0:06:18.622,0:06:21.111
Congress was extraordinarily polarized,

0:06:21.111,0:06:23.654
as you would expect, about as high as can be.

0:06:23.654,0:06:26.630
But then, after World War I, things dropped,

0:06:26.630,0:06:29.535
and we get this historically low level of polarization.

0:06:29.535,0:06:31.227
This was a golden age of bipartisanship,

0:06:31.227,0:06:34.502
at least in terms of the parties' ability to work together

0:06:34.502,0:06:37.510
and solve grand national problems.

0:06:37.510,0:06:41.959
But in the 1980s and '90s, the electromagnet turns back on.

0:06:41.959,0:06:44.800
Polarization rises.

0:06:44.800,0:06:47.766
It used to be that conservatives and moderates and liberals

0:06:47.766,0:06:49.598
could all work together in Congress.

0:06:49.598,0:06:52.439
They could rearrange themselves, form bipartisan committees,

0:06:52.439,0:06:55.712
but as the moral electromagnet got cranked up,

0:06:55.712,0:06:57.982
the force field increased,

0:06:57.982,0:07:00.746
Democrats and Republicans were pulled apart.

0:07:00.746,0:07:02.733
It became much harder for them to socialize,

0:07:02.733,0:07:04.211
much harder for them to cooperate.

0:07:04.211,0:07:09.052
Retiring members nowadays say that it's become like gang warfare.

0:07:09.052,0:07:12.564
Did anybody notice that in two of the three debates,

0:07:12.564,0:07:16.080
Obama wore a blue tie and Romney wore a red tie?

0:07:16.080,0:07:18.066
Do you know why they do this?

0:07:18.066,0:07:22.208
It's so that the Bloods and the Crips will know which side to vote for. (Laughter)

0:07:22.208,0:07:24.974
The polarization is strongest among our political elites.

0:07:24.974,0:07:27.152
Nobody doubts that this is happening in Washington.

0:07:27.152,0:07:30.588
But for a while, there was some doubt as to whether it was happening among the people.

0:07:30.588,0:07:31.896
Well, in the last 12 years it's become

0:07:31.896,0:07:33.983
much more apparent that it is.

0:07:33.983,0:07:37.205
So look at this data. This is from the American National Elections Survey.

0:07:37.205,0:07:39.845
And what they do on that survey is they ask

0:07:39.845,0:07:41.857
what's called a feeling thermometer rating.

0:07:41.857,0:07:46.094
So, how warm or cold do you feel about, you know,

0:07:46.094,0:07:48.869
Native Americans, or the military, the Republican Party,

0:07:48.869,0:07:51.795
the Democratic Party, all sorts of groups in American life.

0:07:51.795,0:07:54.477
The blue line shows how warmly Democrats feel

0:07:54.477,0:07:56.940
about Democrats, and they like them.

0:07:56.940,0:07:59.645
You know, ratings in the 70s on a 100-point scale.

0:07:59.645,0:08:02.660
Republicans like Republicans. That's not a surprise.

0:08:02.660,0:08:04.734
But when you look at cross-party ratings,

0:08:04.734,0:08:07.269
you find, well, that it's lower, but actually,

0:08:07.269,0:08:09.253
when I first saw this data, I was surprised.

0:08:09.253,0:08:12.548
That's actually not so bad. If you go back to the Carter and even Reagan administrations,

0:08:12.548,0:08:17.125
they were rating the other party 43, 45. It's not terrible.

0:08:17.125,0:08:19.440
It drifts downwards very slightly,

0:08:19.440,0:08:23.301
but now look what happens under George W. Bush and Obama.

0:08:23.301,0:08:26.053
It plummets. Something is going on here.

0:08:26.053,0:08:28.454
The moral electromagnet is turning back on,

0:08:28.454,0:08:30.614
and nowadays, just very recently,

0:08:30.614,0:08:32.854
Democrats really dislike Republicans.

0:08:32.854,0:08:36.370
Republicans really dislike the Democrats. We're changing.

0:08:36.370,0:08:39.220
It's as though the moral electromagnet is affecting us too.

0:08:39.220,0:08:42.945
It's like put out in the two oceans and it's pulling the whole country apart,

0:08:42.945,0:08:46.901
pulling left and right into their own territories

0:08:46.901,0:08:49.710
like the Bloods and the Crips.

0:08:49.710,0:08:52.724
Now, there are many reasons why this is happening to us,

0:08:52.724,0:08:55.644
and many of them we cannot reverse.

0:08:55.644,0:08:58.141
We will never again have a political class

0:08:58.141,0:09:01.700
that was forged by the experience of fighting together

0:09:01.700,0:09:04.444
in World War II against a common enemy.

0:09:04.444,0:09:07.978
We will never again have just three television networks,

0:09:07.978,0:09:11.151
all of which are relatively centrist.

0:09:11.151,0:09:15.991
And we will never again have a large group of conservative southern Democrats

0:09:15.991,0:09:19.782
and liberal northern Republicans making it easy,

0:09:19.782,0:09:24.100
making there be a lot of overlap for bipartisan cooperation.

0:09:24.100,0:09:26.748
So for a lot of reasons, those decades after the Second World War

0:09:26.748,0:09:28.551
were an historically anomalous time.

0:09:28.551,0:09:32.268
We will never get back to those low levels of polarization, I believe.

0:09:32.268,0:09:34.866
But there's a lot that we can do. There are dozens

0:09:34.866,0:09:38.012
and dozens of reforms we can do that will make things better,

0:09:38.012,0:09:40.436
because a lot of our dysfunction can be traced directly

0:09:40.436,0:09:44.059
to things that Congress did to itself in the 1990s

0:09:44.059,0:09:49.154
that created a much more polarized and dysfunctional institution.

0:09:49.154,0:09:51.346
These changes are detailed in many books.

0:09:51.346,0:09:53.586
These are two that I strongly recommend,

0:09:53.586,0:09:55.737
and they list a whole bunch of reforms.

0:09:55.737,0:09:58.507
I'm just going to group them into three broad classes here.

0:09:58.507,0:10:01.545
So if you think about this as the problem of a dysfunctional,

0:10:01.545,0:10:04.889
hyper-polarized institution, well, the first step is,

0:10:04.889,0:10:10.163
do what you can so that fewer hyper-partisans get elected in the first place,

0:10:10.163,0:10:11.557
and when you have closed party primaries,

0:10:11.557,0:10:14.621
and only the most committed Republicans and Democrats are voting,

0:10:14.621,0:10:18.617
you're nominating and selecting the most extreme hyper-partisans.

0:10:18.617,0:10:22.204
So open primaries would make that problem much, much less severe.

0:10:22.204,0:10:26.955
But the problem isn't primarily that we're electing bad people to Congress.

0:10:26.955,0:10:30.355
From my experience, and from what I've heard from Congressional insiders,

0:10:30.355,0:10:33.335
most of the people going to Congress are good, hard-working,

0:10:33.335,0:10:35.996
intelligent people who really want to solve problems,

0:10:35.996,0:10:38.621
but once they get there, they find that they are forced

0:10:38.621,0:10:41.552
to play a game that rewards hyper-partisanship

0:10:41.552,0:10:43.201
and that punishes independent thinking.

0:10:43.201,0:10:45.779
You step out of line, you get punished.

0:10:45.779,0:10:47.546
So there are a lot of reforms we could do

0:10:47.546,0:10:48.718
that will counteract this.

0:10:48.718,0:10:51.938
For example, this "Citizens United" ruling is a disaster,

0:10:51.938,0:10:54.137
because it means there's like a money gun aimed at your head,

0:10:54.137,0:10:56.902
and if you step out of line, if you try to reach across the aisle,

0:10:56.902,0:10:59.418
there's a ton of money waiting to be given to your opponent

0:10:59.418,0:11:05.083
to make everybody think that you are a terrible person through negative advertising.

0:11:05.083,0:11:07.386
But the third class of reforms is that we've got to change

0:11:07.386,0:11:10.213
the nature of social relationships in Congress.

0:11:10.213,0:11:14.524
The politicians I've met are generally very extroverted,

0:11:14.524,0:11:17.595
friendly, very socially skillful people,

0:11:17.595,0:11:20.949
and that's the nature of politics. You've got to make relationships,

0:11:20.949,0:11:24.228
make deals, you've got to cajole, please, flatter,

0:11:24.228,0:11:26.613
you've got to use your personal skills,

0:11:26.613,0:11:29.004
and that's the way politics has always worked.

0:11:29.004,0:11:32.084
But beginning in the 1990s, first the House of Representatives

0:11:32.084,0:11:34.469
changed its legislative calendar

0:11:34.469,0:11:38.125
so that all business is basically done in the middle of the week.

0:11:38.125,0:11:40.354
Nowadays, Congressmen fly in on Tuesday morning,

0:11:40.354,0:11:43.203
they do battle for two days, then they fly home Thursday afternoon.

0:11:43.203,0:11:45.108
They don't move their families to the District.

0:11:45.108,0:11:47.426
They don't meet each other's spouses or children.

0:11:47.426,0:11:49.940
There's no more relationship there.

0:11:49.940,0:11:53.736
And trying to run Congress without human relationships

0:11:53.736,0:11:56.563
is like trying to run a car without motor oil.

0:11:56.563,0:11:59.400
Should we be surprised when the whole thing freezes up

0:11:59.400,0:12:03.233
and descends into paralysis and polarization?

0:12:03.233,0:12:04.984
A simple change to the legislative calendar,

0:12:04.984,0:12:07.311
such as having business stretch out for three weeks

0:12:07.311,0:12:08.874
and then they get a week off to go home,

0:12:08.874,0:12:12.199
that would change the fundamental relationships in Congress.

0:12:12.199,0:12:15.335
So there's a lot we can do, but who's going to push them to do it?

0:12:15.335,0:12:17.719
There are a number of groups that are working on this.

0:12:17.719,0:12:19.871
No Labels and Common Cause, I think,

0:12:19.871,0:12:22.010
have very good ideas for changes we need to do

0:12:22.010,0:12:25.175
to make our democracy more responsive and our Congress more effective.

0:12:25.175,0:12:26.998
But I'd like to supplement their work

0:12:26.998,0:12:31.062
with a little psychological trick, and the trick is this.

0:12:31.062,0:12:34.112
Nothing pulls people together like a common threat

0:12:34.112,0:12:37.905
or a common attack, especially an attack from a foreign enemy,

0:12:37.905,0:12:43.227
unless of course that threat hits on our polarized psychology,

0:12:43.227,0:12:46.181
in which case, as I said before, it can actually pull us apart.

0:12:46.181,0:12:49.104
Sometimes a single threat can polarize us, as we saw.

0:12:49.104,0:12:52.214
But what if the situation we face is not a single threat

0:12:52.214,0:12:54.051
but is actually more like this,

0:12:54.051,0:12:55.481
where there's just so much stuff coming in,

0:12:55.481,0:12:57.562
it's just, "Start shooting, come on, everybody,

0:12:57.562,0:12:59.812
we've got to just work together, just start shooting."

0:12:59.812,0:13:02.437
Because actually, we do face this situation.

0:13:02.437,0:13:04.973
This is where we are as a country.

0:13:04.973,0:13:07.167
So here's another asteroid.

0:13:07.167,0:13:08.843
We've all seen versions of this graph, right,

0:13:08.843,0:13:12.677
which shows the changes in wealth since 1979,

0:13:12.677,0:13:15.276
and as you can see, almost all the gains in wealth

0:13:15.276,0:13:20.170
have gone to the top 20 percent, and especially the top one percent.

0:13:20.170,0:13:22.298
Rising inequality like this is associated

0:13:22.298,0:13:24.971
with so many problems for a democracy.

0:13:24.971,0:13:27.939
Especially, it destroys our ability to trust each other,

0:13:27.939,0:13:31.392
to feel that we're all in the same boat, because it's obvious we're not.

0:13:31.392,0:13:34.350
Some of us are sitting there safe and sound in gigantic private yachts.

0:13:34.350,0:13:35.940
Other people are clinging to a piece of driftwood.

0:13:35.940,0:13:37.992
We're not all in the same boat, and that means

0:13:37.992,0:13:42.901
nobody's willing to sacrifice for the common good.

0:13:42.901,0:13:45.777
The left has been screaming about this asteroid for 30 years now,

0:13:45.777,0:13:50.719
and the right says, "Huh, what? Hmm? No problem. No problem."

0:13:50.719,0:13:53.298
Now,

0:13:53.298,0:13:55.647
why is that happening to us? Why is the inequality rising?

0:13:55.647,0:13:59.265
Well, one of the largest causes, after globalization,

0:13:59.265,0:14:02.111
is actually this fourth asteroid,

0:14:02.111,0:14:04.086
rising non-marital births.

0:14:04.086,0:14:07.022
This graph shows the steady rise of out-of-wedlock births

0:14:07.022,0:14:09.000
since the 1960s.

0:14:09.000,0:14:12.279
Most Hispanic and black children are now born to unmarried mothers.

0:14:12.279,0:14:14.687
Whites are headed that way too.

0:14:14.687,0:14:17.032
Within a decade or two, most American children

0:14:17.032,0:14:19.901
will be born into homes with no father.

0:14:19.901,0:14:22.255
This means that there's much less money coming into the house.

0:14:22.255,0:14:26.213
But it's not just money. It's also stability versus chaos.

0:14:26.213,0:14:28.448
As I know from working with street children in Brazil,

0:14:28.448,0:14:33.510
Mom's boyfriend is often a really, really dangerous person for kids.

0:14:33.510,0:14:37.527
Now the right has been screaming about this asteroid since the 1960s,

0:14:37.527,0:14:41.406
and the left has been saying, "It's not a problem. It's not a problem."

0:14:41.406,0:14:43.112
The left has been very reluctant to say

0:14:43.112,0:14:46.717
that marriage is actually good for women and for children.

0:14:46.717,0:14:48.678
Now let me be clear. I'm not blaming the women here.

0:14:48.678,0:14:50.172
I'm actually more critical of the men

0:14:50.172,0:14:52.165
who won't take responsibility for their own children

0:14:52.165,0:14:54.996
and of an economic system that makes it difficult

0:14:54.996,0:14:58.229
for many men to earn enough money to support those children.

0:14:58.229,0:15:02.597
But even if you blame nobody, it still is a national problem,

0:15:02.597,0:15:06.332
and one side has been more concerned about it than the other.

0:15:06.332,0:15:08.565
The New York Times finally noticed this asteroid

0:15:08.565,0:15:10.845
with a front-page story last July

0:15:10.845,0:15:15.059
showing how the decline of marriage contributes to inequality.

0:15:15.059,0:15:18.653
We are becoming a nation of just two classes.

0:15:18.653,0:15:21.395
When Americans go to college and marry each other,

0:15:21.395,0:15:24.095
they have very low divorce rates.

0:15:24.095,0:15:27.140
They earn a lot of money, they invest that money in their kids,

0:15:27.140,0:15:28.683
some of them become tiger mothers,

0:15:28.683,0:15:30.359
the kids rise to their full potential,

0:15:30.359,0:15:32.782
and the kids go on to become

0:15:32.782,0:15:37.073
the top two lines in this graph.

0:15:37.073,0:15:39.703
And then there's everybody else:

0:15:39.703,0:15:42.947
the children who don't benefit from a stable marriage,

0:15:42.947,0:15:44.650
who don't have as much invested in them,

0:15:44.650,0:15:46.434
who don't grow up in a stable environment,

0:15:46.434,0:15:51.392
and who go on to become the bottom three lines in that graph.

0:15:51.392,0:15:54.957
So once again, we see that these two graphs are actually saying the same thing.

0:15:54.957,0:15:57.971
As before, we've got a problem, we've got to start working on this,

0:15:57.971,0:16:00.003
we've got to do something,

0:16:00.003,0:16:02.643
and what's wrong with you people that you don't see my threat?

0:16:02.643,0:16:06.445
But if everybody could just take off their partisan blinders,

0:16:06.445,0:16:09.048
we'd see that these two problems actually

0:16:09.048,0:16:11.795
are best addressed together.

0:16:11.795,0:16:13.538
Because if you really care about income inequality,

0:16:13.538,0:16:15.845
you might want to talk to some evangelical Christian groups

0:16:15.845,0:16:18.976
that are working on ways to promote marriage.

0:16:18.976,0:16:21.182
But then you're going to run smack into the problem

0:16:21.182,0:16:23.710
that women don't generally want to marry someone

0:16:23.710,0:16:26.062
who doesn't have a job.

0:16:26.062,0:16:27.875
So if you really care about strengthening families,

0:16:27.875,0:16:29.536
you might want to talk to some liberal groups

0:16:29.536,0:16:32.942
who are working on promoting educational equality,

0:16:32.942,0:16:34.702
who are working on raising the minimum wage,

0:16:34.702,0:16:37.542
who are working on finding ways to stop so many men

0:16:37.542,0:16:39.581
from being sucked into the criminal justice system and

0:16:39.581,0:16:42.935
taken out of the marriage market for their whole lives.

0:16:42.935,0:16:48.783
So to conclude, there are at least four asteroids headed our way.

0:16:48.783,0:16:51.575
How many of you can see all four?

0:16:51.575,0:16:54.190
Please raise your hand right now if you're willing to admit

0:16:54.190,0:16:57.183
that all four of these are national problems.

0:16:57.183,0:16:59.040
Please raise your hands.

0:16:59.040,0:17:00.687
Okay, almost all of you.

0:17:00.687,0:17:03.529
Well, congratulations, you guys are the inaugural members

0:17:03.529,0:17:06.792
of the Asteroids Club, which is a club

0:17:06.792,0:17:10.033
for all Americans who are willing to admit

0:17:10.033,0:17:12.936
that the other side actually might have a point.

0:17:12.936,0:17:15.967
In the Asteroids Club, we don't start by looking for common ground.

0:17:15.967,0:17:17.861
Common ground is often very hard to find.

0:17:17.861,0:17:20.045
No, we start by looking for common threats

0:17:20.045,0:17:23.714
because common threats make common ground.

0:17:23.714,0:17:27.538
Now, am I being naive? Is it naive to think

0:17:27.538,0:17:28.909
that people could ever lay down their swords,

0:17:28.909,0:17:32.515
and left and right could actually work together?

0:17:32.515,0:17:35.002
I don't think so, because it happens,

0:17:35.002,0:17:38.866
not all that often, but there are a variety of examples that point the way.

0:17:38.866,0:17:40.305
This is something we can do.

0:17:40.305,0:17:44.340
Because Americans on both sides care about the decline in civility,

0:17:44.340,0:17:46.091
and they've formed dozens of organizations,

0:17:46.091,0:17:48.264
at the national level, such as this one,

0:17:48.264,0:17:49.912
down to many local organizations,

0:17:49.912,0:17:52.270
such as To The Village Square in Tallahassee, Florida,

0:17:52.270,0:17:54.745
which tries to bring state leaders together to help facilitate

0:17:54.745,0:17:58.191
that sort of working together human relationship

0:17:58.191,0:18:01.231
that's necessary to solve Florida's problems.

0:18:01.231,0:18:05.626
Americans on both sides care about global poverty and AIDS,

0:18:05.626,0:18:08.522
and on so many humanitarian issues,

0:18:08.522,0:18:11.546
liberals and evangelicals are actually natural allies,

0:18:11.546,0:18:13.429
and at times they really have worked together

0:18:13.429,0:18:15.346
to solve these problems.

0:18:15.346,0:18:18.069
And most surprisingly to me, they sometimes can even see

0:18:18.069,0:18:20.065
eye to eye on criminal justice.

0:18:20.065,0:18:24.018
For example, the incarceration rate, the prison population

0:18:24.018,0:18:27.971
in this country has quadrupled since 1980.

0:18:27.971,0:18:30.555
Now this is a social disaster,

0:18:30.555,0:18:32.607
and liberals are very concerned about this.

0:18:32.607,0:18:35.394
The Southern Poverty Law Center is often fighting

0:18:35.394,0:18:38.266
the prison-industrial complex, fighting to prevent a system

0:18:38.266,0:18:41.044
that's just sucking in more and more poor young men.

0:18:41.044,0:18:43.377
But are conservatives happy about this?

0:18:43.377,0:18:46.459
Well, Grover Norquist isn't, because this system

0:18:46.459,0:18:49.531
costs an unbelievable amount of money.

0:18:49.531,0:18:52.110
And so, because the prison-industrial complex

0:18:52.110,0:18:56.347
is bankrupting our states and corroding our souls,

0:18:56.347,0:19:00.079
groups of fiscal conservatives and Christian conservatives

0:19:00.079,0:19:03.911
have come together to form a group called Right on Crime.

0:19:03.911,0:19:06.567
And at times they have worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center

0:19:06.567,0:19:08.545
to oppose the building of new prisons

0:19:08.545,0:19:11.886
and to work for reforms that will make the justice system

0:19:11.886,0:19:15.007
more efficient and more humane.

0:19:15.007,0:19:18.302
So this is possible. We can do it.

0:19:18.302,0:19:21.383
Let us therefore go to battle stations,

0:19:21.383,0:19:22.642
not to fight each other,

0:19:22.642,0:19:25.968
but to begin deflecting these incoming asteroids.

0:19:25.968,0:19:29.039
And let our first mission be to press Congress

0:19:29.039,0:19:32.982
to reform itself, before it's too late for our nation.

0:19:32.982,0:19:36.982
Thank you. (Applause)