(compelling music) - If you are tired of the loudest voices in the room peddling chaos and conspiracy theories, or if you don't recognize the country you thought you knew, here's a break from the doom loop.

You're about to meet three distinguished bipartisan thought leaders, whose optimism about America and its future will lift your spirits.

Joining us are David French, New York Times columnist and author of "Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore our Nation."

Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian whose latest book is "Autocracy, Inc.

: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World."

And Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation.

Let's get started.

In an era where people say they don't recognize their own country anymore, New York Times columnist David French tackles the toughest and most divisive issues.

Informed by a moral compass that puts individual liberty and pluralism above politics, his voice is a clarion call to the better angels we all aspire to summon.

David, you spent much of your life as a high-profile conservative and Republican.

Now, you defy political labels.

Your willingness to paint outside the established party lines is the antidote to the forces that divide us.

In other words, you operate on a higher standard that endeavors to strip out the heat in favor of bringing in the light.

Is that the way you see yourself?

- Well, that, you're very kind to say that.

That's what I aspire to be, that's what I try to do, because we are trapped in this moment where competing partisans are abandoning civility, abandoning decency to tear each other to shreds, online often.

And we're seeing the spillover effects all over our society, all over our culture.

So, I do think there is a necessity for people to try to look at the bigger picture than the day-to-day combat of politics.

- The point is, you are all those things.

I spent a full day taking the luxury of really reading what you've written, and what really struck me was your ability to come out in favor of something or support something that's at odds with your own personal beliefs and ideology.

You disagreed with the decision to overturn Dobbs.

You basically, in terms of LGBTQ rights, even though it doesn't... It's a subject that is murky because of your Christian beliefs, you came out and said, "This is something that these folks deserve."

Now, why is it that that you can do that and other people don't see the inroad to do that?

- You have to ask this question: What is the United States of America?

And is it a vehicle for your own values, for your own faith, or is it an instrument, one of the great instruments, when the full American dream is realized, where people of many different value systems and many different faiths can live together in legal equality?

And I tend to think that, that latter vision is the vision of the United States, that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.

And a lot of our history has been the battle between those folks who fully believe that vision of pluralism, that all of us, regardless of our faith, regardless of our race, regardless of our sexual orientation, et cetera, are equal in the eyes of the law.

Or are you part of a faction, one faction among many, that believes that it should dominate, and that your values should dominate the public square, as opposed to accommodating a wide variety of views, accommodating a wide variety of faiths, ethnicities, et cetera?

- I mean, have you always been this way, or is this something that you've evolved into?

- I think I've, by and large, always been that way, but I think that I have much more emphasized pluralism in my writing over the last nine years because in the last nine years, we really have faced a frontal attack on American pluralism.

And so it's been much more necessary, I think, to talk about pluralism as a value to remind Americans why we should defend the rights of people we disagree with.

- Okay, but you've come under attack, you and your family, and I'm going to bring these these up because I think they're really important in terms of the contrast that you represent.

And you've written about them, obviously.

But back in 2010, you adopted a little girl from Ethiopia, and you were slammed not just by the the left, but by the right.

I mean, it was like everybody kind of piled on.

And what... I just, I'm still in shock when I think about it, but- - Yeah.

- But it was really ugly stuff.

- Oh, very much so.

I mean, we faced identity politics in its most ugly form.

Now, there are people who, for ideological reasons on the left, don't like to see, for example, a white family raising a Black child.

And that's been an issue for decades.

There's been fights about that for decades, and I knew about that and I knew about those conflicts when we adopted.

But what I did not see coming was this rising alt-right, white nationalist movement on the right.

And it came after us with a viciousness we did not anticipate.

And this was one of the things, this goes all the way back to September 2015 when we first began to encounter the most gruesome racist attacks against our family.

And I have to say, it really woke me up to the sheer extent to which racism, this malignancy of racism was growing on the American right in a way that, quite frankly, I had not seen in my life experience until that time.

Now, there are things I should have seen that I hadn't seen.

And mea culpa, this was part of my own blindness.

But then in September 2015 and after, it was right in our faces, it was right in our faces.

And again, that's one of those things that showed to me how much American pluralism is under attack and how even just basic decency and civility is under attack.

- And I guess what I don't understand is why, especially in this time of such toxic polarization, there isn't a little more grace... Well, but that's the problem, there's no grace.

- As I live in a very, very red part of America, about 85% of my neighbors are Republican, and lots and lots of them are just the most wonderful people.

But there is an element, there is an element, particularly on the far right that's embedded, for example, in the heart of MAGA, that quite literally views grace as weakness.

- That's right.

- It views grace as cowardice.

And I have encountered, on the far left, people who view grace through the prism of, they call it respectability politics, or kindness as respectability politics.

And we don't need to be respectable when we're advocating or arguing for ideas.

But I think both the far right and the far left are out of step with this exhausted majority of Americans who actually long for grace, they long for compassion, they don't want their words constantly thrown back in their face, and they don't want to face constant toxic division.

But their voices are largely absent from political debate.

Political debate tends to be dominated, not exclusively, but predominantly, by the angriest voices.

- Right, well... But sometimes, the angry voices come from unlikely places.

And the second very, I think, shocking to me, at least, incident that happened to you and your family was that after 15 years of feeling like your church was your home, it was really very much a part of your life, they canceled you.

I mean, why were you canceled by your church?

- Yeah, it's a remarkable thing.

I was supposed to speak at my old church's general assembly, and there were so many of sort of the MAGA strain of that denomination that came forward and some of the Christian nationalists that came forward and really attacked me very aggressively, precisely because of my pluralism, precisely because of my commitment to legal equality.

And often because of my... And also because of my opposition to Donald Trump.

Those things were seen as disqualifying to even speak to a denominational assembly about polarization.

And many of the attacks were incredibly personal, incredibly vicious, incredibly dishonest.

But I knew that was coming.

I knew those attacks would come because there was that faction within the church, and I had seen it with my own eyes.

I just didn't think the the denominational structure, the denominational leadership would cave to it, but they caved to it.

They capitulated to it in the name of peace or unity, but it's a false peace, it's a false unity.

When you're appeasing people who are lying, when you're appeasing people who are malicious, the better course of action would've been, "Just let me speak and respond to people who challenged me, not to cancel an event entirely."

But honestly, that kind of, I hate to use this word, but that kind of cowardice is endemic right now within the evangelical church.

People are shrinking back from confronting the most angry MAGA Christian nationalist voices.

Even some of them are outright white Christian nationalism.

In other words, they're outright racist voices.

And there's too few people are willing to stand up and confront those voices head on.

Instead, they're often appeasing them, they're giving into them in the name of peace in the church, but it's a false, false peace that's going to only harm the church and only harm the members of the church.

- So, you have these experiences that profoundly affect your family and your children.

You have three children.

You had a dream of a multiracial family that would look like America.

- Yeah.

- And that really, I don't want to say destroyed it, but it clearly derailed it, let's say.

Now, do you get to a point where you come back from that?

You don't strike me as a... You're not a vengeful person even- - I try not to.

Try not to be.

- Well, so do you... Does it get easier with time to get over those?

- No, it doesn't, actually, because what happens is it's not as if it stops or it goes away.

So in 2015, we began to have the first big attacks on our family, and they come and go, but they never go away forever.

And so periodically, some of the most vicious MAGA voices will attack my wife, or they'll attack my kids, or they'll attack me.

And when they do, often then you'll have harassment offline as well, or you'll have threats.

But in a real way, it only gets more discouraging and more dispiriting because it makes you feel as if, at least on parts of the right, this is just settling in as the culture.

It's not an aberration related to one man, Donald Trump.

But how much is the culture of part of the religious right being distorted and twisted?

And this is one thing that I say a lot, which is that Donald Trump has influenced the evangelical church more than the evangelical church has influenced Donald Trump.

And I don't know what happens.

I certainly think if Donald Trump wins, you're going to see a doubling down of investment in him.

But it's an open question as to what happens if he loses, and I don't think anybody really knows the answer to that.

- Lately, you've been writing pieces on there was a cure for loneliness, you don't have to be Hulk Hogan to be a man, or whatever that was.

And it's almost like in this country, and I want to talk about this in a second, this epidemic of estrangement, and loneliness, and loss of community.

People don't even know where to turn anymore.

- Yeah.

- And so you are kind of filling this void by helping people almost to relearn basic stuff.

For example, in the "Hulk Hogan" piece, you quote... What was the make-your-bed speech?

- Admiral McRaven, William McRaven, Bill McRaven, who spoke to UT Austin and talked about sort of what it meant to be not just a good man, but a good person.

But it resonated with so many millions of young men, and it was such a holistic vision of what manhood could be.

It's one that is not just about physical courage, but also about caring and compassion for others.

And of course, it wasn't just about what it meant to be a good man, but as I said, a good person.

But that really resonated with millions of people.

And you contrast that with that sort of that almost caricatured masculinity of like the Dana Whites of the world, who's the head of UFC, or the Hulk Hogans, or the Kid Rocks, or much less the Donald Trumps.

That there's a real opening, I think, right now in America, people's minds are opening to the idea that, "Wait a minute, a lot of the cultural, I mean the political problems that we have in this country are actually related to some deep-seated cultural problems."

And one of those is the very definition of masculinity is up for grabs.

Here's another one that's a big cultural problem.

Friendships are in decline.

And we know when people feel lonely, when they feel disconnected, when they feel a lack of belonging, they get drawn towards these more authoritarian and angry political movements.

So, it sounds weird to say this, but one of the things that we can do to address our political crisis of animosity and anger is actually to address the friendship crisis, which is a crisis of loneliness and lack of belonging.

If we can address the friendship crisis, we will actually lower the temperature in American politics, as strange as that might sound.

- What kind of reaction do you get to those pieces?

- You would be amazed.

Overwhelmingly positive reactions, and also, I will tell you this, deeply emotional reactions.

I will get email, after email, after email to my inbox, talking about people feeling about talking about their own loneliness.

To say that there's an epidemic of loneliness sounds all kind of distant, it sounds almost sort of sociological academic, but it's experienced by people in their lives as devastation, as emptiness.

And so when you write about it, millions of Americans, when you write about this, they feel heard and they feel seen, sometimes for the first time, in kind of this national political debate.

And so I've been blown away by the intensity and the emotion of the reaction to writing about these things.

It's touching a nerve.

There are so many lonely, disconnected people out there, and so it just convinces me to double down on this point and double down on this commitment to individual connection in our personal lives and in our communities.

- You must sleep well at night.

I would imagine this would give a lot... I mean, it's upsetting, I would imagine, but it's also, I would think, brings a lot of satisfaction and that you're helping people.

- I feel so grateful for the chance to connect with people on this basis.

I'll be honest with you, it's my favorite kind of interaction, it's my favorite thing to write about.

And honestly, I think it's the most important thing that I write or talk about.

- This is part of what this country is hungry for- - Right.

- Is what you are doing.

And it has led... The estrangement and loneliness has led to a mental health pandemic, which is just enormous.

And talk about, ultimately, how that impacts everything in the country.

- Yeah, absolutely.

People who are lonely, and disconnected, and feel a lack of belonging, not only are they more prone towards political dysfunction, this sort of being drawn towards authoritarianism, drawn towards much angrier movements.

They also are... There's also a personal crisis that occurs.

Very few of us can go through life completely emotionally and mentally healthy without people around us who love us.

That's just a very rare thing.

And so I feel like we're also, when we talk about loneliness and lack of connection, we're also talking about deaths and despair.

We're also talking about economic stagnation.

One of the most interesting findings that I have seen about friendship is that one of the best things you can do for social mobility in the United States is form friendships across socioeconomic lines.

So, we're talking about happiness, we're talking about economic mobility, we're talking about political dysfunction or function.

There are so many things that are connected, interconnected, when people feel happy or fulfillment in their lives versus when people feel loneliness and a lack of belonging.

- You have three children, and we're almost out of time, but I'm going to ask you.

Because you are constantly barraged by doom and gloom, (David laughing) yet clearly, you are wired to constantly try and see the best, the positive.

How positive are you for their futures?

- I have three great-grandkids, two incredible grandkids.

And actually, I'm quite positive for them.

They are three kids who are deeply connected to their family, they're deeply connected to friends.

And you can go through a lot of adversity, a lot of adversity, including national adversity, when you have that sense of connection.

I am less... In a weird way, I'm less concerned, for them personally in many ways, than I am by sort of the larger course of our country.

Think about this.

30 years ago, only about one or 2% of people with a high school diploma or less reported having no friends at all.

Presently, one in four, about 24%, almost one in four, 24% of people with a high school diploma or less report having no friends at all.

And that's grievous.

It grieves me, it concerns me.

And I think that everyone who is walking in life right now with a community around them should be A, grateful for that, and B, use that strength that you've gained by those friendships to extend friendship to others.

- David French, it has been a privilege, it has been a pleasure.

I guess mostly, I want to say my husband said about you, you're the person we all want to be.

- Oh, gosh.

- Well, I know that's a lot.

I get that.

- Yeah.

- But the point is, you are, and we thank you for your outreach to people and for everything you do.

So, I hope we will see you back here.

Until then, you take care, thank you.

- Thank you so very much.

(audience applauding) - When it comes to reporting on the threats to democracy, abroad and here at home, no one's more trusted than Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian and journalist Anne Applebaum.

In her new book, "Autocracy, Inc.," Anne warns the dictators, like Putin, Xi, and Orban, have kicked it up a notch that there's a new wrinkle in their oppression and the destruction of democracy.

Anne, beyond their common goal to decimate democracy wherever it lives, dictators are now in cahoots to preserve personal wealth and power through... Really, it sounds like a crime syndicate, at least to me, which is maybe why you named your book "Autocracy, Inc."

Talk about how that works.

- So, thanks for this opportunity, I appreciate it very much.

And let me begin with "Autocracy, Inc."

So, what happened is, I've been observing this, it's not an alliance, it's not an axis exactly.

It's a network of dictators who do not necessarily all have the same ideology.

So, we're talking about communist China and nationalist Russia, theocratic Iran, Bolivar and socialist Venezuela, and a host of others who've begun to collaborate together and cooperate together.

And I was looking for a metaphor that described it.

And "Autocracy, Inc."

works because it's kind of a conglomerate.

There are a bunch of companies inside, they each have their own business model, but when they see that they have interests in common, they work together.

And you're right, some of those interests are financial, some of them are absolutely commercial, the kind of quasi-state companies of one country invest in the quasi-state, quasi-private companies of another.

But they also cooperate to push back against the thing that they find the most threatening, which is the language of the rule of law, the language of justice, the language of rights.

And they hear that language coming from their own oppositions, as well as from us.

And that, I think, is the key to understanding what it is that brings them together.

- So, it's basically just in self-interest because they want to stay in power.

It's not like there's... As you said, it's not about ideology, it's not about philosophy necessarily.

It's just about power, it sounds like.

- Well, they have... Each of them has their own ideology.

And I can say this.

They do have this in common, that these are all leaders.

They're either individual leaders, or they're ruling parties or elites who seek to rule without checks and balances without anyone questioning them.

They control all the information space inside their own country.

There's no independent courts.

There are no independent institutions.

And so they have that way of operating in common.

And so for them, there is a war of ideas going on.

And the ideas that they're fighting are the ideas that are connected, more or less, with the liberal world.

And those are, as I said, the idea that there should be something to justice, other than what the ruler says it is, the idea that there should be a way to find out information that isn't dictated by the state.

Those ideas are challenging to them, and that's why they push back against them in different ways, both inside their own countries, but also increasingly around the world.

And this is a battle that they're fighting in the war, on the battlefields of Ukraine.

They're also fighting it in the information space, they're fighting it in the economic space, and they take it very seriously.

- We were honored to have you here two years ago when you released your last book.

And at that point, I asked you for a top line about how democracy was doing sort of around the globe versus autocracy.

And you painted a pretty bleak picture.

Is it even worse?

You're smiling.

Is it even worse now?

I mean... - So, I don't want to leave you with the idea that it's bleak.

I'd like to leave rather the audience with the idea that there is this huge challenge, that there are, the idea that we had maybe back in the 1990s, that sooner or later, the world was going to automatically become liberal democratic, that that was the most attractive system.

Eventually, the world would tend in that direction.

The arc of history bends towards justice or towards progress.

It's time that we let that idea go.

That's not how history works.

There is no determination, there's no rule that says one thing has to happen or the other.

But at the same time, I don't want people to feel desperate.

The book includes many descriptions of what we could do, issues we could take seriously.

The United States, but also our allies in Europe, and Asia, and around the planet need to act more carefully, in a more targeted way against the abuse of the information space.

We can do it in an organized way if we make that our priority.

So the book has decided, "Yes, I'm trying to scare you.

I'm trying to draw your attention to something that's happened."

But also trying to say that there is quite a lot that we could do to fix it.

- I want to go back to something you said, because there was always an assumption after the Cold War, as you said, that democracy would spread west to east.

And in fact, the reverse has happened.

- The version of it that we hear in US politics is this description of American carnage.

The language that sometimes comes from Donald Trump, sometimes from others on his campaign about the disaster, the unfolding inside the United States.

It's this language of crisis and chaos that makes people feel panicky, they feel weak, they feel that they need some kind of strong leader, someone to overturn all the rules in order to make everything work again.

And that is very dangerous.

And it is language that comes from the autocratic world.

It's pumped out by them.

They seek to amplify it inside the US or inside Europe when they see it, when it comes from the far right sometimes, or sometimes from the far left.

And it's important that we all be aware that the language of fear and desperation is something that makes people panic and makes people make bad choices.

I mean, it's also, of course, the language of revolutionary Bolshevism that those who seek to undermine and take down liberal democracy first need to portray it as catastrophic, unfixable, disastrous, so bad that we can't imagine rescuing it.

And that, I think, is very important for us to fight as well.

- I want to turn to this country because you have a wonderful podcast you do with your colleague Peter Pomerantsev, I think the name is.

- That's right.

- And I think the latest one I heard was about America's first dictator and Governor Huey Long from Louisiana.

- Yeah, so this is a podcast, this is sort of... It's almost like the companion to the book.

My book is really about foreign dictatorships, but the podcast is called "Autocracy in America."

It's only five episodes, it's a narrated podcast, so each episode tells a slightly different story.

And there's a series of interviews and other things inside each one.

And the most recent one looks at the story of Huey Long, which I think we all vaguely know, if not from history, then we remember the book or the movie, "All the King's Men," which was based on his life.

And the podcast describes how he captured the state, how he took control of state institutions in Louisiana in order to politicize them and make them work for him personally, rather than on behalf of the state.

And part of the argument of the podcast is then the question is: Could that be done at the federal level?

Can we imagine it happening?

Could the US Justice Department, or even the FDA or the IRS, could those be weaponized by a president or by a White House who wanted to?

And unfortunately, the answer is yes.

I mean, almost everybody who you speak to who's worked in those institutions or who studies how democracies decline elsewhere, does say that this is one of the potential threats to US democracy.

Our system works based on an enormous amount of goodwill on norms, people respecting institutions.

And once that ceases to be the case as it was in Louisiana, back before the Second World War, once it ceases to be the case, then their guardrails can fall pretty quickly.

- I'm going to go back to, I mean, again, you've said that the end of democracy has already started.

- And- - It's not so much... Can I say, it's not so much the end of democracy, it's the rise of autocratic behaviors inside the United States and attitudes.

And I want people to be aware of them.

- Okay, and I saw something that really just kind of shocked me a little bit, that when the whole birtherism thing happened surrounding President Obama and whether he was born in this country or not, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I read that you were even surprised that people would go for this kind of ridiculous conspiracy.

And yet now, we see we're awash in conspiracy, what's the danger in that?

- So, birtherism was important because it was a theory that the president was illegitimate.

I mean, he wasn't really born in America, he shouldn't have been president.

It was about President Obama.

If you believe that, that the president is illegitimate, and then you also come to believe that all of the institutions of the state, the Congress, the courts, everybody is lying or hiding the fact that the president's illegitimate, then you begin to have very deep doubts in the state itself and in democracy itself.

And that was the purpose of that lie and that was how it functioned in our society, and I think it did do a huge amount of damage.

It kind of laid the, prepared the ground, rather, for what was to come.

We then had in the White House for four years, we had a president who constantly, and knowingly and in very obvious ways, made up stories or said things that were patently untrue.

Whether it was about the number of people who were at his inaugural speech or repeatedly all through his term as president.

And then he's, of course, continued to do so afterwards, he lied about the 2020 election.

And all of that has a cumulative effect.

I mean, this is one of America's most important leaders.

He's the leader of our, one of our two great political parties.

And we are now a country that is, at least a part of which, is reliant upon conspiracies to explain the world, is deeply distrustful of all kinds of institutions, including the institution of the elections themselves.

They weren't part of the political game eight years ago.

We didn't worry about whether people were going to count the votes, or whether they were going to believe in the result of the election.

I mean, we had issues in Florida and with George W. Bush's election, but not at the scale that we have now.

Whereas a large part of the population just doesn't believe in American democracy is something new, and that is what I mean when I say there are autocratic tendencies and behaviors already inside our society.

- But do you think at this point, you talk about something, the concept of mental corruption, which we're living in a post-truth era.

You've got the conspiracy theories, I think it was your colleague who said, "Once truth is a subset to power, you can't have debate."

So, this mental corruption, which proliferated before Russia tipped into a full-blown autocracy, I mean, do you not see that kind of, or am I overplaying it?

How serious do you see that at this point?

- No, no, it's very, very serious.

I mean, that's why I devoted a couple of books and a podcast to it.

It's very serious.

I want people to be aware there are now Americans both in politics, but also not necessarily, who feel they have to conform to lies, even though they know they're lies.

They feel they need to conform to them in order to get along in politics, in order to do their jobs.

- We're the fastest interview I can remember doing, but we're almost out of time.

And before we are, I'd like to ask two final questions.

I want to talk about the optimism part of this picture and really go to some of the things you do talk about prescriptives to try and staunch what's happening.

And the last question I would like to know, how optimistic are you?

- Huh.

So let me just say, I know a lot of really optimistic people, people who work really hard to change their countries.

And often, they live... They are people who live in the most difficult countries on the planet.

I know members of the Venezuelan opposition, in the book I write about it, a Zimbabwe opposition leader who I've come to know.

These are people who face really hard challenges, jail, torture, exile, and yet they keep working, and they keep trying, and they keep trying to affect change inside their countries.

And so really, my book is very much dedicated to them.

And if those people can fight for change in the most difficult dictatorships on the planet, then the idea that Americans would be pessimistic or that we're in... Things are so bad we can't possibly fix them, I think, is an absurdity.

And so in that sense, yes, of course, I'm an optimist.

I think there are many things we can do.

In the book, I talk a lot about coalitions, and it's funny, we ended up the podcast, the final episode, which is in two weeks, I think.

There's also a lot about coalitions, but that's part of the answer is thinking about who you can work with to bring about change.

And in the wider world, there's clearly a coalition of countries, not just America and Europe, but of democratic countries around the world who could push back against kleptocracy.

I think there are possibilities for change, we just have to name those ideas.

We have to work towards them, we have to want them, and of course we could win the war in Ukraine.

I mean, I was just there two weeks ago.

It's winnable.

If we want to, we need to focus on... We need to focus harder on how to... On the sanctions in Russia, as well as military support for Ukraine.

But there are many winnable contests if we want them.

- And we are out of time, but I want to say we hope you'll come back with the next book.

I'm always so excited when I see that you have a new book out.

So thank you very much for sharing this time with us and helping us to understand the world better.

Thank you, Anne Applebaum.

- Thank you very much for your great questions.

I really appreciate it.

- Thank you.

(audience applauding) Most people would think that giving away $7 billion to worthy causes is simply an act of charity.

And it is.

But Darren Walker, who has spent the last 12 years as the president of the Ford Foundation, has also made it the definition of hope and justice.

Darren, you're also an outspoken and passionate steward for our democracy, which hasn't been tested to this degree, arguably since the Civil War era.

Of all the issues that have fractured this nation and killed our sense of collective good, you believe that inequality is the greatest threat to our democracy.

Tell us why.

- Well, thank you, Jane, for having me as your guest.

I'm a huge fan and delighted to be here.

I do believe inequality is the greatest threat to our democracy because inequality is the enemy of hope, and hope is the oxygen of democracy.

In America, for centuries, we have believed in the idea of opportunity for all, even if we have not been able to fully realize that.

At the heart of that was the mobility escalator, that mobility escalator in America that I rode as a poor boy living in rural Texas, in a shotgun shack, on a dirt road.

I had dreams, Jane.

Those dreams were realized because I lived in a country where there were no real barriers.

Of course, growing up in the South, I experienced racism, I experienced homophobia, but I felt my country was cheering me on, and that gave me hope.

It gave me a sense of optimism about the future.

Today, far too many Americans do not feel that same sense of hope.

Indeed, we have a crisis in this country of hopelessness and purposelessness, and some of that is due to the growing inequality, the gulf between those of us who are privileged and those who feel that they have been left out and left behind.

So, we have work to do in America, Jane.

Work to build a sense of hope.

And a belief.

A belief that that mobility escalator, which too many economists tell us has stopped, can begin again.

And we can live in a society where there truly is opportunity and where the dreams of little boys and girls in small towns and big cities can be realized.

- Let me ask you a sort of related question because you say that you've been on both sides.

You've lived on both sides of inequality, and you had family members when you were young who couldn't vote.

Today, we're sitting here looking at people trying to make it harder for people to vote.

You're looking at privacy rights under a cloud, you're looking at a 50-year-old right that was stripped away from women to control their own bodies.

And yet, you maintain, and I'm taking this, I think, from your speech, that democracy is at a crossroads, that the American compass is still true.

Why do you say that?

- Because I believe in this country and my belief is unwavering and unyielding, and that is because I stand on the shoulders of people who did not have reason to believe.

Frederick Douglass, Fannie Lou Hamer, these people lived in an America when there was not opportunity for people of color, Black people especially, and yet they believed in America.

When Langston Hughes wrote his great poem, "Let America be America Again" in 1932, he was living as an outsider, a Black gay man in Harlem who could not find work.

And yet he wrote this poem, "Let America be America again.

America never was America to me."

And he expresses his rage, but he ends the poem, "Oh, but yes, one day, America will be."

Langston Hughes, like so many Black people, believed in America when America did not believe in them.

And so therefore, today, Jane, how dare I not believe in this country with the privilege I have and the opportunity I have, but I don't take for granted that it is going to be easy.

I'm not naive, but I believe I will always be bullish on America.

- Well, I have to tell you, I think that probably started with you being one of the first children in Texas enrolled in Head Start, from what I can tell, because that opened up your whole world.

You have also been credited with revolutionizing the world of philanthropy.

And the the connection here, I think, has something to do with Head Start.

Explain, go ahead.

- Absolutely.

You're absolutely right, Jane.

Part of that was because President Johnson's war on poverty included the Head Start program in 1965.

A woman appeared on the little dirt road where we lived, and she enrolled me in Head Start.

And as you say, rightly, that's how my quest for learning and love of words and literature began.

But I was connected to the idea of philanthropy through the private philanthropists who help fund my education.

Martin Luther King, in 1968, said the following about philanthropy.

"Philanthropy is commendable, but it should not allow the philanthropist to overlook the economic injustice which makes philanthropy necessary."

This was the thesis of my book "From Generosity to Justice."

- You also were inspired by a man named Julius Rosenwald.

You wrote a piece about Julius Rosenwald who practiced a form of socially conscious Judaism, I believe.

And he basically had this same philosophy where you have to look at the root causes.

You can't just throw money at a problem, you have to try and address why it's happening.

- Indeed, Julius Rosenwald was the first social justice philanthropist in America.

And as you say, Jane, he believed in the idea that we had to address inequality at its root.

And Julius Rosenwald was the first philanthropist to call out racism in America as a problem.

And he put all of his financial resources behind the issues of Jewish life in America and addressing racism against African Americans.

He said that no country can be great, America cannot be great if it leaves an entire part of its country, Black Americans, behind.

- You also wrote a rather bold, some would say, a piece of The New York Times, an op-ed, "Are You Willing to Give Up Your Privilege?"

Now, this is something Julius Rosenwald would've approved of, but I want to know what you said and what the reaction was that you got.

- Well, it's interesting.

Andrew Carnegie popularized the idea of giving back.

He was the first philanthropist to use the term giving back.

And I believe that yes, it is important for us to give back, but I also believe that for many of us, the level of compounded privilege we hold requires us to consider giving up something.

And The New York Times SAU referred to, I gave a number of examples of the kinds of privilege that I think compounds over generations, advantages for some and disadvantage for other.

And the example I gave that I received the most feedback, when you mentioned, Jane, the people I hang out with, was the legacy programs at elite universities, which give preference to admissions.

I don't believe that it actually furthers our ideals of an equal America, where opportunity abounds for all to have admissions slanted towards those who are the sons and daughters of the wealthiest and most privileged.

This is not about demonizing wealth.

I believe as a capitalist that we should valorize the idea of wealth creation.

But the notion that our educational system should be designed with preferences for those of the wealthy and privileged, I don't believe, and nearest to our larger benefit.

And certainly, the very people in rural America, working class white people, poor and middle class African Americans, and others, don't feel that these programs are actually helping America be America.

- Former Chair of American Express, Kenneth Chenault, called you, I think it was a Renaissance man with a conscience.

What do you think of when you hear that description of yourself?

- I think Ken was being incredibly generous.

I feel, every day, grateful Jane.

I feel so grateful to have been born in a country where my improbable journey could be realized.

When I think about my, my journey to sitting here in my living room in New York, in conversation with you as an esteemed journalist.

And I'm in awe and I am incredibly grateful for this.

I know as someone who has traveled the world, that there's no place in the world where my story, my journey could be realized but this country.

That does not mean, however, that I am satisfied that my country, the country I love, is delivering on its potential to provide opportunity and justice.

Justice and opportunity cannot be rationed.

They have to be available for everyone who is prepared to work hard and sacrifice.

But we have to think about things like our tax policy in a way that ensures fairness and ensures that people who are, particularly at the lower end of the economic scale, can have a sense that they have a future in this country, and their children will prosper and live in a society, where justice and opportunity for all is realized.

- Are you always this positive?

- I am always this positive- - Always, really?

- I'm this positive, but let me be really clear, Jane.

Don't mistake my positive disposition for something it's not.

It is impossible for me because I do have a conscience to not, on a daily basis, experience moments of rage, moments of anger, of deep and profound disappointment in what I see, the ways in which certain people, certain communities are, in a sense, dispossessed, left behind for no other reason than their geography, or their race, or their status.

And I have to, every day, calibrate my love, and my belief, and my hope for this country with the rage that I feel when I see things that are so profoundly unjust and unfair.

And so my positive energy, my positive sense is, in no way, pollyannaish or naive.

It is rooted, though, as I said in a commitment to honor those people whose lives were given so that people like me could have the opportunity today.

And my accountability and responsibility to those people is to not pull the ladder up behind me, but to do all that I can to extend that ladder and build a society, contribute to building a society, where the idea of shared prosperity is not a historic idea, but that is something that is realized and believed to be in our future.

- We're almost at a time because you're absolutely fascinating.

We have a little time left, and I have to ask about your dear mother, because- - Oh, my God.

- No, because she... Beulah, she was a nurse's aide, she was a single mother, and she raised you and your sister in that little house.

And when she went on the "60 Minutes" interview, she just like, I mean, endeared herself to everybody because she did say, and she said it so I'm going to say it too, that you talked a lot as a child.

They asked what you were like as a child, and you talked a lot, and she finally figured out if she gave you a quarter, that you would stop, right?

- Indeed, that is exactly right.

- She also said that the Lord had something special in mind for you.

- She did, and my mother, her belief in me was... I mean, it was incredible.

My mother did not have much education, does not have much education.

She, fortunately, is 88 years old and was just with me for a week here in New York doing well.

Beulah is back in Texas, but I will tell you that it was her commitment.

And anyone who is a parent or loves someone knows the impact that having someone love you and support you unconditionally, which is what I had.

My mother knew, Jane, that she had an odd child.

She was very aware that I was a gay little boy, that I was unique in many ways, that my personality was not like many of my cousins.

And yet she encouraged me to be fully myself, and that gave me the confidence.

I never knew my father, and some people believed that not having a father can be a barrier, and it is for most people.

But for me, I had Beulah, and she was my anchor.

She believed in me, she never wavered.

She didn't know, Jane, what college to tell me to attend or what major, but she knew that she wanted her boy to get an education, and she did everything she could to make sure that happened.

- Last question is about somebody else you also loved, and that was your partner of 26 years, David, and you called them 26 magical years.

You also shared two dogs, Beulah and Mary Lou.

Was Mary Lou named after David's mother, or were... - Yes, very good!

- Oh, was it really?

- Yes.

- That's impressive, right?

- Very impressive.

- No, I'm sorry.

But, you had that love of your life, and I don't want to sound corny about this, but in the last moment of this show, how does that still inform your life?

- Because love can transform you.

It did for me.

It opened up a way of looking at life that I never thought I could experience.

And for anyone who has experienced a deep and profound love, you know the impact of which I speak, it can change your life.

And meeting David Beitzel changed my life.

It gave me and continues to nourish my spirit and my soul, and allow me even... And on those days when I experience sadness, and loneliness, and grief, because I miss him so deeply, what he gave me sustained me.

And I'll never have to find love again.

And I will die a happy man because of what I had with him for 26 years.

- Darren Walker, we are out of time.

But for all the work you've done on behalf of the marginalized, the underserved, the people who aren't heard, we're very grateful and we're very grateful you've been with us today.

Thank you.

- Thank you, Jane.

(audience applauding) - And now, as always, we wrap up this edition of "Common Ground" with the Silver Lining story.

This one about a librarian leading the charge against book banning.

When librarian Amanda Jones protested orders to remove books from her Louisiana Middle School Library, she found herself at the heart of a culture war.

First, she was targeted by a vicious smear campaign, claiming she was harming children.

Even as she stood her ground, a torrent of death threats erupted.

But she fought off panic attacks, armed herself with mace, and vowed not to give up.

Now, Amanda is sharing her story in her bestselling book, "That Librarian," as a way to inspire and engage all those who value intellectual freedom and are willing to fight for it.

We're grateful to our extraordinary guests for their insights and inspiration and to you for joining us today.

Until we see you back here next time, from The Frederick Gunn School in the other Washington, Washington, Connecticut, for "Common Ground," I'm Jane Whitney.

Take care.

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