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Good morning.
It's Sunday, December the 15th, 2024.
The shooting death of UnitedHealthcare's CEO is prompting a broader conversation about the problems with America's healthcare and health insurance system.
Many people have stories about challenges or denials while attempting to get care for themselves and others, even when they do have insurance.
This morning, we want to hear your stories about your personal experiences with America's healthcare system.
And when it comes to healthcare in the United States, what changes do you think are needed?
We have special phone lines for this conversation.
If you have private insurance, you can dial us at 202 -748 -8000.
If you're insured through the ACA, the Affordable Care Act Marketplaces, 202 -748 -8001.
If you have Medicare or you're a recipient of Medicaid, you can call 202 -748 -8002.
And for everyone else, including folks who are uninsured, maybe using VA health care or even folks who work in the health care industry, 202 -748 -8003.
Now, if you'd like to text us, that's also the same number, 202 -748 -8003.
Please be sure to include your name and where you're writing in from.
You can also find us on social media.
Facebook .com slash C -SPAN or on X at C -SPAN WJ.
Now, there have been all sorts of manifestations of the anger against the U .S. health care system since the murder of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, and that is captured in this article from CBS News.
As anger at UnitedHealthcare boils over, Americans pay more than ever for insurance.
CBS, they're using data from KFF, the health policy research group, to highlight the fact that average premiums per family in the United States are up to $26 ,000 per year.
Here's a story about that in Yahoo News.
We're good to go.
I think?
This is after the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot in New York City last week.
Various health insurance providers have removed executives' biography pages from corporate websites.
Moving down a bit, this incident has sparked conversations among Americans voicing outrage about their negative experiences with insurance providers and the broader faults in the American healthcare system.
In a recent Yahoo Finance interview, Oscar Health CEO Mark Let's listen to a clip of that We've heard from security agencies talking about a rise in violence in the health sector, largely in the facilities themselves, especially in the last year and a half.
What does that tell you about what you need to expect and how you're thinking about the company and where it needs to go in order to help reduce this tension that is clearly being felt by the American public?
Well, the American public exists in a system that was designed 80 years ago after World War II.
It was designed in a way that we built a lot of hospitals across the country, and we also provided benefits free through employers as a way of making wage control work after the return of soldiers from World War II.
And I think that system is largely now broken.
And it has been broken for some time.
I've been an advocate for change for a long time and believe that we have ways to get it better in this country.
And I think it largely starts with making sure our healthcare system meets the needs of individuals, not the needs of groups.
And right now our system in large part is built around meeting the needs of groups.
Let's start with your calls.
Stephen is in Portland, Oregon, and is uninsured.
Good morning, Stephen.
Yes, hello.
I've been uninsured all my life.
What gets me is people think that if you have health insurance, you're going to live forever.
You're never going to get sick.
You're never going to die.
And the murder of the CEO is very evil.
In my opinion.
And yes, there should be some reform, but just because you don't have health care doesn't mean you get to go murder someone.
Now, Stephen, how have you addressed your health care and your health care costs throughout your life, given that you've gone without insurance for so long?
Well, I've gone to hospitals.
I've had surgery five times because I have osteochondromas, benign bone tumors.
But I had to pay off my hospital bills through working.
Afterwards.
And then, what changes do you think we need in the American healthcare system?
Well, a lot of rancor.
A lot of hatred.
Not all physicians are evil.
Not all CEOs are evil.
That's an unreasonable expectation that people are assuming.
I've seen all over Facebook people that are
During an interview with Meet the Press, President -elect Trump spoke about his own approach to healthcare.
Here's a portion of those comments from last Sunday.
Sir, you said during the campaign you had concepts of a plan.
Do you have an actual plan at this point for healthcare?
Yes, we have concepts of a plan that would be better.
Still just concepts?
Do you have a fully developed plan?
Let me explain.
We have the biggest healthcare companies looking at it.
We have doctors.
We're always looking.
Because Obamacare stinks.
It's lousy.
You did try to have your Justice Department effectively kill it, though.
Kill it from a legal standpoint, but from a physical standpoint, I made it work.
In your concepts of a plan, sir, will people with pre -existing conditions still have coverage, and can you guarantee their prices will not go up?
The answer is yes.
They'll have coverage.
You have to have it.
And what about their prices?
What about their prices, sir?
I want the prices to go down.
I want to have better health care for less money.
And there are ways of doing it, I believe.
Just a reminder, we have special phone lines for this segment.
If you have private insurance, dial 202 -748 -8000.
If you're insured through the ACA, 202 -748 -8001.
If you have Medicare or Medicaid, 202 -748 -8002.
And if you're uninsured or have some other situation, 202 -748 -8003.
Now to some of your comments on social media.
On Facebook, Fran Jaffe says, universal health care.
Hi, Kim.
Thanks for taking my call.
Yes, I have private insurance and I have a story relating to it.
I've always been satisfied with it.
I have it through my employer, and my family's insured.
And years ago, my daughter was having problems with her ears.
She had tubes in her ears, and they needed to be removed after, I don't know, several incidents that she had.
Well, it was always at a hospital.
I'm in upstate New York, and I've always been satisfied with the outcomes.
The last time I was told to go to an outpatient building, I guess you can call it that, and the procedure was done, it went fine, and the insurance company simply denied me payment,
and they had paid before.
So when I inquired, I asked them, why was my payment denied when you had paid before?
They said, well, you didn't go to an approved facility.
Now, bear in mind, the doctor told me to show up there.
And there are other procedures of the same nature being done there.
And when I called the facility up and I said, why?
Listen, I'm being denied.
And I forget what the price was.
It was over $1 ,000.
He simply said, they do this to us all the time.
They simply deny it.
And when I called the insurance company and said, you can appeal it, they, well, I did appeal it.
And you know what the answer was?
Mm -hmm.
and we get these statements saying that your insurance what would happen to the person what does happen to the person that of course doesn't have coverage they can't pay they're bankrupt and I'd like to know maybe somebody out there can tell me the number of bankruptcies that have occurred because of medical necessities so I can go on and on I'm sure your callers can add to this but Thank you for your time.
Well I do want to point out, thank you for your call John, some more data from KFF which finds that people with private insurance are more likely to have denied claims than people with Thank you.
We're good to go.
No, I'm not a medical provider.
I have Medicare.
Oh, you have Medicare.
Excuse me.
It doesn't make any sense.
We have care for profit.
You either pay or die.
And United Healthcare and Aetna are number one in denying things.
People, they usually put out a booklet on insurance companies and give a rating.
If you have Medicaid, you get that booklet.
And in that booklet, it tells you what their ratings were.
And United Healthcare and Aetna were number one for denying women's healthcare, especially.
I have Medicare, and I'm glad.
I have Kaiser, and so far I haven't been denied anything.
And I'm a person that I don't take no for an answer, especially for health.
I have a daughter with disabilities.
I am a helicopter mom when it comes to her.
Sometimes I have become a Scud missile.
But both political parties are responsible for the type of healthcare that we have in this country.
When Barack Obama got in office and he wanted universal healthcare, Nancy Pelosi was the one that said, That's not on the table and it won't be.
The number of politicians who take money from the insurance companies is just astronomical.
You need to put it up there so people can see.
We need universal health care so people can get the same health care that the president gets, that the politicians get.
We want the same health care system.
We have good health care products.
But we don't have a decent deliverance of the system.
It is absolutely a killer.
And that's all I have to say about this healthcare system.
We need universal healthcare yesterday.
That's all I have.
Many people agree with Mary's point there.
There's been polling from Gallup as of earlier this month that found 62 % of Americans believe the government should ensure health care coverage for all.
That's the highest number in over a decade.
And support for government responsibility in health care has grown among pretty much everyone.
Republicans up to 32%, Democrats 65%, 90 % of Democrats are in favor of government responsibility in health care.
Cedric is in Alvin, Texas, and uses ACA insurance.
Good morning, Cedric.
Yes, good morning.
What changes do you think are needed in the American health care system?
Well, I have ACA, which is Obamacare, and a lot of people, when it was time for voting, they kept saying it was Obamacare, but actually it was ACA, too, so I guess they made it so negative.
A lot of changes...
We need to be made, like that young lady said, by universal health care.
We need it, too.
But since I have ACA, it's so political.
When you try to go to these facilities and use it, some of them don't want to take it because, I guess, just because of the name of it, and they try to put you back.
I'm so glad I got it.
I had it.
If it wasn't for me being a truck driver, And independent operator, I have to get insurance for me and my 13 -year -old.
And I'm 60 years old.
And the thing is, if it wasn't for ACA, I wouldn't be able to get a colonoscopy.
I just had a stroke not too long ago and vertigo.
Thank God that the ACA was here and I was uninsured before.
But now I'm good.
I'm hoping that the next administration...
Thanks for your call, Cedric.
Let's hear from Amanda in Clarksdale, Mississippi, who has private insurance.
Good morning, Amanda.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I was just noticing that Trump just lied.
The ACA was not saved by Trump.
He tried to get rid of it.
John McCain said that ACA insurance.
He would just open up his...
I don't understand how people just embrace this man, embrace his lies, and just support those lies and get out and vote for him in astronomical numbers because he's a pathological liar.
He did not say ACA, and he claimed he did.
I have private insurance, but...
I'm not sure if I have a problem.
I have not been hospitalized.
I do get health care, and I have not had anything denied so far.
I have that Aetna insurance for the first time.
I'm not really clear on that particular company because I used to have Cydna, and I haven't read up on Aetna very well yet.
But Trump has nothing to replace the ACA, and 50 million people would just be out.
There are, we've had several references to sort of the ACA and Obamacare.
MSNBC's Zeeshan Aleem made a comment about this back on December the 10th, saying it's been nearly 15 years since Obamacare, the only major modern effort to reform American healthcare was signed into law.
Over 25 million people remain uninsured.
Costs have come down, but not enough to prevent tens of millions of Americans from avoiding care or going into hundreds of billions of dollars worth of medical debt.
Most people know it doesn't need to be this way.
The U .S. is the wealthiest country in the world.
It has extremely high quality doctors, cutting edge medical research, and is unrivaled as a pharmaceutical innovator.
But because of the way our insurance system is set up, the U .S. spends far more money per capita than peer nations, yet it's the only one that lacks universal coverage and it delivers worse health outcomes.
Back to your call.
Cameron is in San Diego, California and is uninsured.
Good morning, Cameron.
Hi, good morning.
Yes, I'm actually currently in between health care plans, but I just wanted to note that access to health care is way too complex for the average American.
There are so many stipulations and hoops you have to jump through to change your plan or understand your plan.
And I'm one of the few individuals who you know do somewhat.
But it's also a broader issue with the bureaucracy in the FDA, because I live in San Diego, which is a border town, and I know several people who drive across the border to receive cancer treatment options that the FDA won't approve and many of them have had positive results from these treatments.
So I mean I think we need to really Moja.
No problem.
Yes, I am a Vietnam veteran.
And because I was exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam, I have high blood pressure that had caused me to have a blockage in my carotid.
96 % blockage that when I went to VA, they missed it.
And Trump has said that if we had a...
Hmm.
So based on that experience, what do you think should change in the United States healthcare system?
This is what I think should change.
VA paid for the surgery and all of the follow -up except for the last visit, they said that they were not going to pay that.
And now I am strapped with a bill from St. Vincent's.
I think there's a problem.
So then now let's hear from Carol in Miami, Florida, who uses Medicare.
Good morning, Carol.
Hi, good morning.
What do you think should change in the healthcare system?
Well, I'm going to be honest with you.
I'm perfectly happy with it.
Okay.
I just, yes, indeed.
I just went through surgery back on October the 2nd to have We're good to go.
We're good to go.
I don't know my Medicare and my you know through the Medicare and insurance coverage I've had no problems so I'm so sorry to hear from the people that are having problems with it but I've had none.
Well thank you for sharing that Carol.
There are a bit of a mixed bags and Thank you.
Excellent.
Another 33 % say that it's good, fair 38%, and poor 16%.
This is an annual poll that Gallup does on health and healthcare.
Now, Mike is in Toms River, New Jersey, and uses Medicare.
Good morning, Mike.
Good morning.
I hope you're well.
The whole thing boils down to money.
As long as they can fleece the public
So Mike, what do you think should change about the U .S.?
What do you think should change about the U .S. healthcare system to make things work better?
Could you say again?
What do you think should change about the U .S. healthcare system to make things work better?
It's got to have more control, I guess, for, as with the gentleman you had earlier on discussion, say, for the public and not for the company.
And the politicians, as he said, are probably just being over it for their own benefit.
Okay.
Carol is in Villarica, Georgia and has private insurance.
Good morning, Carol.
Hello, thank you for taking my call.
A lot of problems are arising because Humana and the different 20 % requested insurance that you're supposed to have, they are not being honest with any of their patients.
Once you get off regular Medicare, you are doomed for a large bill.
Carol, are you referring to some of these Medicare Advantage programs?
My private insurance has never denied me, and I just went through an eight -day stay at the hospital, and they paid every cent.
I didn't have to pay anything.
And another thing that's happening to these poor people or innocent people, uninformed people, is once they do leave Medicare, their primary care doctor can direct them to greedy people.
And I did have that circumstance where my primary care doctor couldn't see me.
I was getting ready to go into pneumonia because of an ear infection, and she just wouldn't listen.
So I went, took her advice, went to the immediate care facility, showed my insurance, and they took me immediately with no questions asked, and they paid the bill.
And again, I ask, why wasn't I billed anything?
They said, because of your insurance.
And I'm going to, can I name the insurance so that these people have an opportunity to improve their lives?
If you like?
Mutual of Omaha.
They are great.
They're wonderful.
They're pricey.
Ours keeps going up $300 or $400 a year for both my husband and I.
And we pay over $5 ,000 a year.
But it's well worth it for the situations that these individuals have gone through.
They don't have the unanswered bill paying.
It's paid.
All right.
We have a comment from Kristen in Portland, Maine, who says, Could we at least start with universal health care for young children, say, ages 0 to 5?
Give our children a healthy start.
We could then raise the age over the years.
That's one idea.
Let's hear now from Larry in Houston, Texas, who uses VA insurance.
Good morning, Larry.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
I feel sorry for the guy that I'm a combat veteran myself, and I was going to be lucky.
My wife is in the medical field.
She has insurance.
It's terrible, and it's sad, but that's what we get.
You know, we put these people up in office, and these big pharma companies go ahead and pay them off, and we stuck paying the bill.
You know, we holler it's a free -market company, country, but we know that's not true.
I mean, we can get medicine coming from Canada and Mexico that's cheaper.
But this ain't no free market.
They won't do that because it will hurt the big pharma companies.
You know, people wake up, man.
You know, the VA is so terrible.
The horror stories, I can tell you.
I went in there for a toothache.
Had to go like two days later to the emergency room because I had my infection in my throat.
They had to close my throat up.
I couldn't even swallow.
I heard one girl go in there for one time, one friend of mine.
She went in there for something simple because my three months later, she was in a coma.
These people do not care.
And until we start putting people in there, and all y 'all hollering about getting rid of Obamacare, y 'all lucky they had Obamacare, especially for the virus.
You know, this don't make, we got to take back our, we got to take back the power.
And until we go ahead and take back the power from these people up there in Washington, D .C., we gonna be stuck with bad health care.
So let's hear a bit from Bernie Sanders, because earlier this year, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders spoke about health care in the United States at Harvard University's Chan School of Public Policy.
In this clip, he's talking about the need for Medicare for All as a single -payer system.
So what's the solution?
I mean, the basic solution, fundamental issue is, as a nation, We have got to conclude, and by the way, most Americans do believe this, that health care is a human right, not a privilege.
And once you accept that understanding, then we can argue about how you want to go forward.
I am not unsympathetic to the Canadian system because I live 50 miles away from the Canadian border.
And in Canada, as you know, they spend about half as much as we do per capita.
You're in the hospital for a month.
You come out, there is no bill, you have freedom of choice regarding doctors and so forth and so on.
Other systems do it differently.
But bottom line, as a nation, we must resolve that healthcare is a human right, not a privilege.
The function is to guarantee high quality healthcare to all people, regardless of their income, not to make huge profits for insurance companies and drug companies.
The debate over healthcare It's not about health care.
It's about economics, and it's about politics, and it's about who gets what.
And what we have got to do is to make sure that we don't have incredibly complicated systems, which we do, to make people money.
We need a simple system, universal access, and we go forward.
So, in my view, the solution is a Medicare -for -all single -payer system.
We have a Medicare system today which is, by the way, under attack from the private sector with Medicare Advantage.
But it is a system that is widely respected by the elderly.
It needs to be expanded.
And the program that we have brought forth would take it over a period of years, expanding Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing, so it's a more comprehensive program.
Then taking it down to people 55 years of age and down to people 45 years of age and eventually covering every man, woman and child in this country.
Senator Sanders there was talking about some of the broader economic trends related to America's healthcare system.
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation has some data on this also, finding that national health expenditures, which include both public and private spending on healthcare, are projected to climb from $4 .8 trillion,
or $14 ,423 per person in 2023, to $7 .7 trillion, or $21 ,927.
Good morning, John.
Good morning.
I think the lion in the room on this subject has not been discussed by anybody.
And we talk about the health insurance provider and what people are paying, but we never talk about what the actual hospitals are charging and what the doctors are charging and what the nurses are charging and what's paid to those people.
In the last 10 years, I've had three incidents where I had to go to the hospital.
Mm -hmm.
And it took them about 30 minutes to do that.
It was a doctor and a nurse.
And it cost Medicare $2 ,200.
So something's really wrong with how we perceive what's being charged.
We need to talk about what's being charged.
I've seen doctors that have a home in our community and then on the lakes in northwest Iowa have two properties on that.
So, you know, a doctor gets paid $2 million a year and the federal government, the state government takes a million dollars in taxes from them and so forth.
So, I mean, we need to look at some of that stuff and talk about that and rather than just beat up on the insurance companies as the big devil in the room all the time, because that's not necessarily true.
We need to talk about the actual providers and how things do.
Now, I know they passed a bill.
A few years back that dealt with what these hospitals are charging because most people go to the doctor or go to the hospital and have no idea what their procedure or what they should be going in should cost,
nor do they care because somebody else is paying for it.
But if they did have to pay for it themselves, they would be concerned with those things before they go or at the worst, after they went.
And they might...
Dispute it with the hospital, the doctor and the nurses and so forth.
I mean, so we need to look at that and talk about that a little bit because it's out of control in my opinion.
And I thank you for your time.
If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.
Thank you very much for your call.
Let's go to Kristen in Philadelphia, who is uninsured.
Good morning, Kristen.
Hey, good morning.
Thanks so much for taking my call.
I really appreciate it.
Yeah, I'm currently uninsured.
I'm going through a super rough patch in life right now, and so it goes.
But I've been all over the board.
I've been currently uninsured.
I've had Medicaid, or Medicare, Medicaid.
And I've also had private insurance.
I mean, Bernie really took the words out of my mouth.
The only logical thing to do is...
To provide all Americans with universal health care.
I'm not really sure what is more important than the health of the people of America.
I mean, it's kind of, you know, as he said, a basic human right, or at least should be considered one.
Greed is really what it comes down to, the greed of a very small amount of people who can make these decisions.
Amy is in West Virginia and uses ACA insurance.
Good morning, Amy.
Hi.
Yeah, healthcare is so expensive and there's really no way around that and it's become such a political issue and it really shouldn't be because health and death are the great equalizers in life and we all need to come together on this.
I come from a time when I could not get insurance back before the ACA.
I'm a Republican but I greatly appreciate the ACA because I've been able to cover my family for what I think is a reasonable cost.
I think the idea of sliding fee premiums are very important for people so that their premiums can be based on their income and that everybody can contribute to the extent you know that they can and still be able to keep their family above board with their other expenses.
I think one of the problems with the ACA and all healthcare insurances is how difficult it is to understand what you're paying for and what you're getting.
Terms like out -of -pocket maximums, co -pays, deductibles can be very, very, very confusing because you see an out -of -pocket maximum that's astronomical.
I know people that are immediately driven away from the healthcare .gov website when they see those things, but you have to have so much understanding of How you get to that out -of -pocket maximum to make an educated decision and I agree with a previous caller that it's just too difficult for most people to understand.
I think another problem is the health care that people receive in the last you know months or years of their lives.
I've gone through that with an elder relative recently and the astronomical costs in the last year or so of his care For things that really didn't increase his quality of life and the whole concept of a lifespan versus a health span.
We've focused a lot on increasing people's lifespan, but we need to be working more on preventative measures.
Unfortunately, our system pays per procedure in those cases and we need to find a way to pay for prevention.
We need to find a way to reward providers and insurers who help people get healthier.
Amy, I'd like to read you something, if you don't mind, and then get your response, because you mentioned at the beginning of your call that you were able to get insurance through the ACA, whereas you previously were not able to.
I'm guessing that's because you had a pre -existing condition?
Yes.
Okay, so I'd like to read you this.
Well, they called it a pre -existing condition.
I had had a miscarriage and a difficult procedure in taking care of the miscarriage.
I'm so sorry to hear that.
I'd like to read you a bit of a statement from former Representative Hank Brown, who is a Republican from Colorado, who was talking about the cost of health care and why it's so expensive.
And he said, one of the main reasons for this increase in cost and constriction of choice is the health insurance industry consolidation that occurred in the wake of Obamacare and similar state -level initiatives around the country.
A major component of the law It was the imposition of expanded coverage mandates, a list of procedures known as essential health benefits that insurers offering plans in the new central health insurance marketplace were required to cover regardless of individual circumstances.
The impact of these mandates and of all the others that have piled on at the state level in the ensuing years has been to increase costs on insurers who then pass those costs along to consumers.
That was in the Washington Examiner.
Amy, what you were just describing as allowing you to have coverage, this former representative is saying is one of the things that is contributing to the higher cost of coverage overall.
What do you think of that?
I don't agree with that at all because I think the essential things that they are requiring them to pay for are largely preventative.
Colonoscopies, mammograms, and so forth.
And that was another thing that I experienced when I went for my first screening colonoscopy.
It's a procedure that's supposed to be covered so that everyone can get that preventative screening, which hopefully then leads to less colon cancers and so forth that are very expensive for insurers.
And when I went, my colonoscopy was free, but they did a bunch of other lab work that really was unnecessary.
For example, an EKG on someone like me who had no previous cardiac issues.
Why did I need an EKG before a screening colonoscopy?
And then they wanted to charge me $400 for that lab work.
And I told them that I was not paying it because these are essential screenings that are meant to help everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, to prevent serious problems with their health.
And that I felt that those were just charges that were tacked on because maybe they weren't getting the level of billing they wanted from the screening colonoscopy itself.
Thank you for sharing those stories.
Let's hear from Holly in Enterprise, Alabama, who has private insurance.
Good morning, Holly.
Hello, ma 'am.
Yes, I have private insurance and my husband is disabled and he gets Medicare.
And two things are in my mind right now.
One is his Part B is going up to $185 a month.
When you only get $900 a month, it's just... to me is totally upside down to what we need in our country and the i don't dare stop working because without my private insurance i'm going to turn 70 i don't know what will be covered or not because of his health issues and my health issues and that's not right in our great nation it needs to stop
Well, thank you for your call, Holly.
Debbie is in Largo, Florida and uses Medicare.
Good morning, Debbie.
Hello, good morning.
I'm 68, and I just recently found out I have Medicare.
And Medicare used to handle all of the bills, but when us lovely boomers started retiring, they got overwhelmed.
So that's really when United Healthcare and Humana came into play.
United, I think, was the first company that Medicare basically hired to handle all of this.
And I don't know what the current amount is, but what they decided on is for each person that they cover, they get $1 ,000 a month for us.
So I was shocked.
I had no idea.
That's how, you know, they deal with it.
So then Humana just pays, Humana United, whatever, pays everything out of that.
So that was a surprise.
So that has to be considered in the cost.
I never had a chance to use ACA, but I certainly wish it would have been around for a really long time because every time you got laid off from a job, your insurance got thrown out.
So you're racing around trying to get a job for insurance, and people with pre -existing conditions couldn't get insurance.
So anyway, I'm glad that's solved.
I hope they figure it out.
The previous, there was a caller, a couple of calls back that said things should be income -based.
I don't know how that could work because we need to cover the unemployed as well as the employed.
It's definitely who we have in Congress.
We need to make it so that those people cannot own stock because all of their interests are centered around their stock ownership.
And as far as, you know, Humana and United, to me, are making money on their stock and they're making money on Medicare.
And to me, that's not right.
All right, let's hear from Tara in Fond du Luc, Wisconsin, who has private insurance.
Good morning, Tara.
Hi, good morning.
I just wanted to say I have insurance through work, and I just had a throat surgery.
It was a day surgery, and it ended up costing me $7 ,000, which I had to pull my 401k out.
To pay for it because the payments were so high per month for the hospital.
I have friends that two of them that are on disability and one just had a brain surgery because she has seizures and it was completely paid for.
I have another friend that's on disability that had
So what do you think should change there, Tara?
Because it feels very unbalanced, I'm guessing.
What do you think should change?
I just know I'm one that's really getting socked by this insurance deal and just wanted to let it be known.
And I also work with people that have state insurance that have kids and are constantly taking their kids in to the doctor and they're going into the doctor and it's all paid for.
And I'm sitting here paying out money.
All right.
Paul is in Chesapeake, Virginia and also has private insurance.
Good morning, Paul.
Yeah, good morning.
I actually have two.
I'm on Medicare and private insurance.
And one of the things that I definitely will agree with Bernie Sanders on is the fact that the Medicare should be covering vision,
Dental and hearing.
Those are probably the primary health issues that seniors have.
Now, because I have to carry private insurance for my dental and my vision.
But I'm fortunate enough I can do that.
And I think there's some what I guess The main reason I'm calling is the question is healthcare in the U .S. and what changes are needed.
It should be insurance in the U .S. and what changes are needed because I get my care from my physicians and my dentists and I have had wonderful care.
That's the quality of my care that you're talking about.
That's coming from the individual who is taking care of me.
Now, cost, politics, etc.
That all comes into play in a whole different light.
That's all insurance.
And this is what happened with the Affordable Care Act when Leader Pelosi, one day before they had to vote on it, said we have to pass it to find out what is in it.
And that is exactly what they did.
And this is one of the reasons the costs did go up.
Thank you.
Rachel is in Florida and uses Medicare.
Good morning, Rachel.
Yes, good morning.
First of all, my comment is that I do not believe that Medicare should be approved for all.
I waited and worked many, many years and paid in to The Medicare system to be able to get Medicare at the age of 65.
I am a retired nurse and I'm here to tell you that if you're looking to make a lot of money, nursing is not the profession to go in.
The other thing I'd like to say is I have a Medicare Advantage plan, PPO.
I don't like to go to doctors, certainly don't like hospitals, and went to the doctor three times this year.
Twice to a primary and one to a pulmonologist.
And about a month ago, middle of November, I had a back issue.
I have a history of back issues from lifting heavy patients working years and years in the emergency room.
And my Advantage plan, my primary, called an MRI in for me, and the plan denied me.
I ended up laying in bed for a month.
I did make it to an orthopedic doctor.
He called in to get an MRI for me because he couldn't treat me without knowing what was going on with my back.
I hadn't had an MRI in three years.
And they just pushed it along, pushed it along, weeks after weeks.
And then finally, with my insistence, They had a peer -to -peer review, some of you may know what that is, and actually talked to the doctor and then they finally approved the MRI.
So, I could get treatment, but that was not a good, that was with Aetna, by the way.
Also, another comment I'll make is one of the problems we have in this country is that ERs are swamped, emergency rooms are swamped with people who have no insurance.
and instead of going to a walk -in clinic or you know they'll go in for an earache they'll go in for a sore throat instead of taking an Advil that's a problem so hospitals have to foot the bill for that and that's one of the biggest problems we have in this country and of course the insurance industry is just one big mess it's gotten worse over the years I know 35 years ago when managed care came in,
it was much easier then.
Now it's a real hassle.
Let's get a couple more folks in.
Let's hear from Colleen in Florida who has private insurance.
Good morning, Colleen.
Good morning.
Good morning.
What do you think should change about our health care system?
Well, what I think needs to change is the Affordable Care Act is really not affordable for the middle class worker.
They're paying about 10 to 12 percent of their gross income.
So if you're making a California $80 ,000 middle class, you're paying about $900 a month, and you have several deductions also, you know, to meet.
So what I would say is that that is capped.
So if you're making $80 ,000 or you're making $300 ,000 or $400 ,000, you're paying the same amount as the person who makes $80 ,000, about $900 a month.
So I think that it needs to be maybe looked at to where maybe the higher income earners need to be paying a little bit more because it's really crushing your middle class.
We don't have enough doctors to take care of the influx of people that we're bringing into the country either.
I have a friend who has an aggressive brain tumor, can't get in to see a specialist for four months.
I have beautician friends who can't afford the Affordable Care Act because it's just too costly.
If we increased and brought the caps higher for those higher income earners, then we would have an excessive amount of money, a lot more money.
If we want to provide medical for everybody and do like Bernie Sanders wants to do, then you'd have plenty of money for that.
And I think we have to think too about the politicians that have been in there for a very long time.
What really made me see that they're not too attuned with what's going on in the country is we had everything over there in China, medicines, PPEs, during COVID.
These career politicians didn't think this was a bad idea?
Paul is in Alexandria, Virginia, and uses Medicare.
Good morning, Paul.
Good morning.
I'm also a physician and about to close up my... Office and maybe make house calls.
The overhead expense is enormous.
But one of the main problems with the system is that the insurance companies have usurped credentialing authority of the state medical boards.
So a simple solution would be If the legislators would say anybody who buys insurance can be seen by any physician who is willing to take assignment.
It would cut the power of the medical insurance companies and you would do away with a lot of overhead that medical practices have where they have to
Okay, let's go to Facebook where David Basinger says everyone talking universal healthcare forgets.
That's exactly what the ACA gave us and it's a disaster.
Aaron Rouse also says on Facebook, if a doctor orders medications, procedures, etc., insurance companies should be required to cover it.
Period.
End of story.
People should not be bankrupted by medical debt, and insurance companies need to cover long -term care.
And Dana Brooks -Wagner says, the whole in -network, out -of -network work needs to go.
Whatever doctor, hospital, pharmacies, rehab I choose should be covered.
And then Patricia Ozynski says, it's really not complicated.
Combine the VA, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Eliminate the eligibility age for Medicare and eliminate Medicare disadvantage.
And then end for -profit hospitals and outpatient surgery centers and raise the Medicare tax.
Done.
All right, let's get to one or two more calls in this segment.
Keith is in Richmond, Virginia and uses Medicare.
Good morning, Keith.
Good morning, Kimberly.
I just wanted to call and just let everyone know that I have just recently signed up for Medicare myself.
I'm 70 years old now, so I went ahead.
I had Medicaid and Medicare Part A, but I went ahead and got Part B.
The amount that it's costing me is $185, which is what everyone has been kind of referring to.
I'm still working and I'm trying to come off of my employer's insurance and get on Medicare because of conditions in my life, certain things that I want to do to just get away from that and be able to live my own life and have Medicare because at some point I may have to stop working but I'll still have health insurance.
And I went ahead and decided that Medicare would be the best way to go as opposed to some other things.
And I appreciate all the advice that has been given today to me about the Advantage systems and all of that because it helps me to understand where I probably may need to go.
You know, furthering this.
But I just want to say that I'm taking the jump.
I'm getting in Medicare.
I'm going to go for it.
I think it is going to be an advantage to me.
I have Humana as my supplemental to my Part B so that I can have, you know, the drug coverage and things like that.
But I just want to say that, you know, for me, the 185 was doable because with my private insurance, Well, with my employer insurance, it was $51 per pay period.
Well, it was going to be going into 25.
$51 per pay period, which would have been about $100 a month.
So I guess with Medicare, I've doubled my amount that I'll be paying out.
But I feel like it's important for me to do that.
And for me and my wife,
So Keith, we are just about out of time for this segment, but we thank everybody who called in to share their stories about your interactions with the US healthcare system.
Coming up next on Washington Journal, author Alexandra Hudson is going to join us to discuss efforts to promote civility.
In American politics, as well as her book, The Soul of Civility, Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves.
And then later, today is Bill of Rights Day, and David Bob, president of the Bill of Rights Institute, will join us to discuss the history behind the commemoration and of the ratification of the U .S. Constitution's first ten amendments.
We will be right back.
We're good to go.
I think?
We're good to go.
I think?
We're good to go.
I think?
Share stories about the rebuilding of the World Trade Center complex following the attacks and discusses the business, political, and engineering challenges he faced during his 20 -year rebuilding effort.
I said, it's got to be replaced.
Because if you don't, Lowman Hat is going to become a ghost town.
People are going to leave it.
They'll never come back.
I said, secondly, if we don't rebuild it, we're going to give the terrorists exactly what they wanted.
I said, this is an attack.
Not on the Twin Towers.
Nothing like that.
Much more serious.
It's an attack on America and everything we stand for.
So we have an obligation to rebuild it.
Welcome back.
We're joined now by Alexandra Hudson, who also goes by Lexi.
She's the author of The Soul of Civility, Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves.
Welcome to Washington Journal.
Having me, Kimberly.
You recently had an op -ed in the Washington Post, a piece where you said we should approach...
We should approach politics the same way Presidents Adams and Presidents Jefferson did and that is by not talking politics.
Why is that?
It's a great story that's somewhat forgotten to history.
So Adams and Jefferson were good friends.
Everyone's seen the musical 1776.
They were the co -authors, the co -architects of liberty, of the Declaration of Independence.
And Jefferson was actually Adams's vice president when John Adams was vice president.
And things began to go south in their relationship.
Tensions rose and they culminated in a very, We're good to go.
I think?
The election.
But it was at the expense of his relationship, of their relationship between Adams and Jefferson.
They didn't talk for 12 years after that.
And it was actually because of Benjamin Rush, a friend of both parties, and he was a fellow founding father, a noted abolitionist.
And he fostered a reprochement between them.
He kept encouraging them to reconcile.
And they eventually did, and they ended up writing over 150 letters towards to one another over the next decade, up until they both they both died.
And they talked about in these letters everything under the Sun.
They talked about their grandkids.
They talked about, they reminisced on the good old days of being brothers in arms fighting the American Revolution together.
They talked about their self -care regimens, their exercise rituals.
What they didn't talk about was They conspicuously avoided controversial subjects of the day.
They chose to elevate friendship.
Over politics.
They had both reached the pinnacle of public life and they had lost friendship.
They had placed politics over friendship.
And they regretted that.
I think we see that in the reality that they spent the last decade or more of their life in friendship and talking about everything but politics.
And I think that's instructive to us today.
So many friends and family members, family relationships have been severed or strained over political disagreement.
And as we enter the holiday season, it's important to remember that
So related to those holiday dinners or get -togethers, what advice would you have for people who might find themselves being drawn into political conversations with folks who disagree with them?
Michael Oakeshott, one of my favorite English writers, intellectuals, he said that conversation is an unrehearsed intellectual adventure.
And too often today, our conversation when it comes to politics is not unrehearsed.
It's not an unrehearsed intellectual adventure.
It is a set of canned talking points where we just, you know, we hear people repeating and regurgitating.
What they hear from their favorite political pundit.
And so I think what can be helpful is when you see a conversation or feel a conversation going into a kind of a can instead of your talking points versus my talking points.
Shift the dialogue.
Talk about something totally orthogonal to the news of the day.
Talk about, I don't want to say the weather, but even the weather is better than these monologues.
It's not even a dialogue anymore.
Often these monologues, it's just like your talking points against our talking points.
So shift the dialogue and remember that the conversation should be an end in itself.
It's not about winning an argument.
It's about enjoying company, enjoying the dialogue and the journey of the conversation itself.
Now, Some of these disagreements that people have can be quite fundamental to their identity as a person.
You might be disagreeing with someone over the value of certain types of life or someone's sexual orientation or something like that.
What do you say of the argument that critics who say that this idea of civility is a way to stifle hard conversations, especially for folks who might be in more vulnerable groups?
It's a great question.
I even got some responses to my essay in the Washington Post arguing that we should, you know...
Radically not talk politics, especially in place friendship over politics.
I had people write to me saying, you know, how dare you ask me to be friends with someone who doesn't agree with my right to exist or be friends with a Nazi or a fascist?
You know, you crazy person.
What are you thinking in asking me to do that?
And I really like this mental framework that I unpack in my book called The Soul of Civility, Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves, which I think is a helpful antidote to this.
This kind of this concern, it's called on.
Bundling people.
And unbundling people is this mental framework that helps us see the part of someone, the part of them that we might, the mistake they've made, the thing they've said or done that has hurt us, that the person they voted for, that we, or the policy belief that they hold,
that we vehemently disagree with, to see the part of them in light of the whole of them, the irreducible dignity, value, moral worth that they hold as a human being and seeing and keeping in mind the bare minimum of respect.
I think?
The whole of them in light of that one part.
Doing so, which is so often done today, where we want to cut people off or say, you have nothing to teach me.
I don't want you in my life because of this one part of you.
That is unduly essentializing and reductionistic and degrading of the personhood of others.
So unbundling, I think, is a helpful antidote to that sort of zero -sum reductionistic thinking that is so common today.
We're going to be taking calls from our audience with questions about civility and its role in politics.
Our number for Republicans is 202 -748 -8001.
For Democrats, 202 -748 -8000.
And for Independents, 202 -748 -8003.
Now, Lexi, how did you first become interested in talking about civility in this way?
I have been thinking about this topic my entire life.
My mother, Judy Johnson Vankovich, is kind of an expert on this topic.
She's called Judy the Manners Lady, and she's one of, as I discovered while writing this book, actually, one of four women who are internationally renowned experts on manners and etiquette named...
Thank you.
Thank you.
We're good to go.
Well, say more about that.
What happened?
I took a role in federal service in Washington, D .C., 2017 to 2018, and I went in bright -eyed, bushy -tailed, eager to make a small difference in the world, make it a little bit of a more gentle, better place.
I was fresh out of grad school, and I couldn't have been more disillusioned or discouraged by what I experienced and observed in federal government.
All of a sudden, everything that my mother had taught me was refuted by my lived experience.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
I heard in my mind what my mother had said growing up, that manners mattered because they were an outward expression of our inward character.
And yet here I was surrounded by people who were well -mannered enough and yet ruthless.
And cruel, and what I learned from this experience is that um is several things.
One, that both these modes the extreme bellicosity, the hostility the the, the bullying people into submission, and the extreme politeness, the tone policing the, the poly test, the Polish um that is, that is actually fake and manipulative.
That these are actually two sides of the same coin.
They seem like polar opposites, but both have an instrumental logic when it comes to others.
They see other human beings as means to, As opposed to, you know.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, I wish I had a little more time to develop this.
Go deep with me now.
Steve Bannon is probably the most well -known public intellectual for Trump.
And now he's trying to boil down what he thinks is coming.
He thinks global war's coming.
He thinks economic breakdown's coming.
He thinks that there are millions of illegals.
He's not sure what they're going to do when it all starts crashing.
Now, I'm really taking your civility argument serious here.
I'm saying that we're going to see liberals, socialists, Marxists, feminists,
Thank you.
Now, this is the end game.
Am I anywhere close to where your thinking is on this?
And thank you for indulging my kind of haphazard thinking here.
Thank you.
Trent, thank you so much for calling in and for listening this morning and for taking this conversation seriously.
I appreciate how much you care about the state of affairs in our world.
And this is a drumbeat in my book and in my work is kind of antithetical to that sort of outward thinking that the world around us and our media culture,
they want to externalize what's going on and blame.
And there's a tenor It's a sort of apocalypticism in our public discourse that is really, it's disempowering, frankly.
And so an argument, a core argument I make in my book.
Is that, you know, stop looking outward at the many sufferings and frustrations and hardships happening around the world.
But also, but look inward.
You know, look around you at what you can control.
And I'll tell you a story.
You know, when I left government, the frustrating experience that I shared just a few moments ago, I came home from work one day and said to my husband, I'm done with D .C.
I'm done with the swamp, with toxic politics.
Let's move to Indiana.
And that's where my husband's from originally.
We're good to go.
I think?
And I never heard the word porch used as a verb before, but I was curious and we didn't know many people here in the Midwest.
And so I went to her home that afternoon and I realized a quiet and subversive revolution was afoot at Joanna's front porch that day.
She had curated people across.
Race, across politics, across geography, across social class, not to have a structured dialogue across difference, but just to bring people who might otherwise never cross paths into close proximity and just to be together, to share a space together, to have unrehearsed intellectual adventures, to have dialogue across across these differences and just to build seeds of trust and friendship that are so lacking in our, in our world right now.
And as I wrote my book, The Soul Of Civility, I realized there are people across the country, across the world, doing what Joanna is doing, which is, again, Quiet, subversive, and saying, because they're saying, I can't control what is happening in Washington, D .C.
I can't control who's president or what's happening, what the scandal of the day is or what the crisis of the day is, but I can control myself.
And I'm going to choose to double down, reclaim my civic power, and make my community and my family better and stronger and more beautiful.
And Trent, that doesn't mean putting your head in the sand and ignoring what's happening in the world around you, but it is doubling down on your age.
Good morning, Wesley.
I'm glad to thank you for taking my call.
I think that values and traditions we get from our family and our culture and education and politics is a nasty sport and it's very divided and abrasive and ridiculous.
At times.
The way I look at it is that some people were grown up going to Bible study and learning their traditions and values from a very young age.
And then also just being able to be in a polite society and be educated and read as many books as you can and be able to go to the country club for Easter dinner and for Easter lunch.
And just put on a tux when you're going out to a gala and just join societies, non -profits and philanthropy and give back.
I mean, that's the noblesse oblige that the obligation of the nobles is to look out for the needy and to not talk about politics, religion or money.
That's the old Scottish, that's the Scottish precept to that.
So, Wesley, are you saying that we should return to that system?
So, Wesley, I want to give Lexi a chance to respond, but hold on for a moment because there's a similar comment that kind of pairs well with yours that we received on X, where Agaca said, civility decreases as wealth disparity.
increases in my opinion and this kind of lines up with what Wesley was saying about you know kind of the difference between the past and and now with people who have maybe greater education greater wealth almost seeing a decline in civility
I think it's great observations, and I think, Kimberly, you're right to connect Agatha, if I got her name correct, the commenter, Anne Wesley's comment.
So a core argument in my book is that there is an essential distinction between civility and politeness.
And this emerged, this insight emerged from my experience in government that I shared with you a few moments ago about, again, seeing people who were polished and polite, well -mannered, but who You turned on a dime,
turned out to be ruthless and cruel the moment I and others no longer served their purposes.
I thought, you know, that doesn't feel right.
There has to be more than just politeness.
And that clarified for me this essential distinction between civility and politeness.
I realized that politeness is manners.
We're good to go.
I think?
Moral status as members of the human community.
And that crucially, you know, to Wesley's point about sort of this WASP -y ethic of not talking politics, religion, finance, the dinner table, sometimes actually...
We're good to go.
I think?
Politeness in order to actually respect the other and disagreeing with someone, voicing our disparities or our differences, that's a way to actually respect and love someone, saying, I respect you,
therefore I'm going to take your ideas seriously.
And that means telling you when I disagree, whereas politeness would say, oh, just sweep difference under the rug, polish over difference.
I love etymology just to help us understand this distinction between civility We're good to go.
Whereas the etymology of civility is "civitas," which is the Latin root of our word "civilization," "city," and "citizen." And that's what civility is, is the conduct, mores, and the habits befitting a citizen in the city, which sometimes, as our commenter said, requires speaking truth.
To power.
It requires, again, being impolite.
There's more important things than being polite.
Too often we settle for politeness in the world today.
Again, the form, the outward stuff of etiquette and conduct and propriety when we should instead aim for true civility, which is actually respecting others enough to have these difficult conversations.
Kiki is in Dedham, Massachusetts on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Kiki.
Hi, good morning.
I wholeheartedly agree with the premise of civility, but social media, which I'm not on, doesn't reward civility.
It rewards hate speech, and that's what generates the revenue.
So I'd love to see it significantly change and be more civil, but it doesn't seem to be what sells.
Thank you so much.
It's such an important insight.
Thank you for bringing up the subject of social media.
I unpack in my book, The Soul of Civility, this idea of cultivating our digital garden.
It's this idea that, again, there's so much viciousness and toxicity in our media culture and our social media culture.
And you're absolutely right.
The incendiary, the vitriolic, the rage, that's what is rewarded.
That's what the algorithm likes.
That's what goes viral.
Even the hate clicks, even the people who disagree with you, they reward the creators that peddle the incendiary because of the hate.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
Focus on what you can control.
How are you personally using social media?
Don't click the things that you know are just there to bait you into clicking them and getting the eyeballs.
I use the example of my own intellectual community.
It's a small little corner of the internet.
It's called Civic Renaissance.
It's my newsletter and publication dedicated to beauty, goodness, and truth and reviving the wisdom of the past to help us lead better lives today.
We're good to go.
Is it single -handedly dismantling the toxicity in our media culture?
No, but I believe it matters.
It's just a drop in the bucket, but that is all that each of us can do.
It's easy to externalize and easy to want to complain about how Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg are working the algorithm or how our public leaders are using social media,
but that's... focusing on those things is incredibly disempowering and I'd like to invert Invert the question to you and to other viewers.
What are we doing?
And how are we stewarding and wielding these enormous powers that we have with social media at our fingertips?
And how can we use our little corner of the internet?
How can we cultivate our digital gardens to be places that cultivate seeds of light and hope and trust and joy and grace, especially as we enter the holiday season?
Dave is in Columbus, Ohio, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Dave.
Yes, I just wanted to say, you go girl.
This is so pertinent to what this country needs today.
And I'm, in fact, have a group of people, both Democrats and Republicans, we're going to be meeting and starting the very thing that you're talking about.
But one step further, you should somehow get this implemented into the junior high schools, high schools universities colleges, every place, because this is exactly and one other thing with the um the constitution, the bill of rights and so forth have you implemented I haven't read your book at all but uh, have you implemented how?
What the struggle was in the constitution and then to get the bill of rights and so much of this plays into exactly what you're talking about.
So i'll shut up from there and let you respond.
Thank you so much for calling in.
I'm thrilled to hear that you are forging a bipartisan initiative to start a conversation.
About these ideas, about the tenets of a free, tolerant uh society that respects basic human dignity, regardless of things like race and politics and class.
So i'm thrilled to hear that, that you're starting this conversation locally, which I think is important.
I'm thrilled to hear it's bipartisan, which is absolutely essential to kind of reestablish common ground as, and our shared identity as human beings and as as citizens in this country.
And you know, I hope that my book can be a a resource to you.
I hope it can be a tool to So just facilitate and foster this dialogue to you, as you're having that.
I joke that in my book, The Soul of Civility, Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves, that it's a great gift for your best friend or your worst enemy, which is sometimes the same person these days in this crazy and beautiful and sad time that we live in.
So thank you again for calling in.
Flute is in Washington, D .C. on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Flute.
Hi, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
You know, I was thinking about this subject matter.
Matter of fact, actually yesterday, my father's birthday, if he was alive, he would have turned 100 yesterday.
Wow.
And he's a very thoughtful man, you know, Bernard Johnson.
But the one thing he emphasized to us was just being American.
You know, he's a former school teacher as well as a veteran.
You know, and the thing that he emphasized on being a common... Thread, that's being American.
It doesn't matter if you're white, black, whatever your standards are, you know, because it was taught in school.
You know, we taught efficacy in school, and there was religion taught in school.
They've taken a lot of that out, you know, and it's been done over the years.
But, you know, it's like social media is starting to be the one that determines the civil factor now.
You know, and that can go any direction.
You know, and I think that's why we have so many different fractions.
You know, everything is being divided.
And if you're with this group, that means you're against this group.
But at one time, I think we were raising Americans.
You know, and I think back to the Trumans and the Eisenhowers.
You know, you're going on up through the political process.
You always had people that were grounded in American culture.
You know, but I think now that American culture seems to be just a...
Each person has their own agenda, and your agenda has been not crossed over to mine.
If it does, then we're going to court or we're going to violence, you know, and it separates us.
You know, you should be able to be an American citizen, and it doesn't matter what class or what structure or what race, you know, or what political party.
There needs to be a common thread that we all are here together, and we can progress together.
And I think we'd be a more peaceful society, and we'd be eliminating a lot of the outside influences that are raising our children and determining our family structures.
Thank you for taking my call.
It's such a great insight, I think.
I can't remember, so was it your father, your grandfather, who just turned 100?
Happy birthday.
But it's beautiful that he, to him, the most important identity was that of... Americans.
That was the most important thing that we shared in common.
And that despite our differences, we still had that to fall back on.
That belief, that faith.
And again, this experiment.
We're good to go.
I think?
political candidate or their political issue, whatever it is that they're very passionate about.
And I think what we've seen is that these people have misplaced their meaning, their ultimate source of meaning and identity in these smaller identities.
And that has made it almost impossible.
To have rational dialogue about these differences because you're not just having a detached conversation about a political issue.
You're having a conversation that touches the core part of who someone is and they feel like their identity, their core aspect of who they are is being assaulted when someone has a differing opinion about them.
So I do talk about in my book, The Soul of Civility, how we have misplaced Armenian politics as these traditional Thank you.
Rational, detached conversation about these issues when their core identity is at stake.
And it's bad for our souls too when we externalize our identity on things that are so transient.
And so as people come around the Christmas dinner table with loved ones and family members, I encourage them to remember that unoffendability, the superpower of the 21st century is something that they can reclaim.
We don't have to be offended by someone.
We can actually, we can choose if someone says something to us or has voices and opinion that seems to cut to the core aspect of who we are, our core identity, that we actually have a choice.
We can choose to be offended by that or we can choose to let it go.
And I encourage more of us to reclaim that agency, that power, reclaim the superpower of the 21st century, unoffendability, and choose to let more things go.
In the name of joy and peace this holiday season.
One of Trump's things.
And then I saw the Jewish people and Catholics and Protestants and the Amish and women and blacks, whites, Asians, Spanish.
But seeing the Muslims and the Jews and the Catholics and the Protestants all supporting Trump made me feel like we are starting to come together.
I know that, you know, you see, I mean...
Trump was called Hitler a hundred times.
Nazi, Stalin, Putin lover, racist, communist.
And I don't think that is appropriate either.
The name calling has just gotten out of hand.
But I did see that I think we are coming together as a country and we're becoming more civil.
Seeing the Muslims and seeing the Jews.
Together, supporting one person.
The Protestants, the Catholics, the young, the Amish.
I think that a lot of people are getting tone deaf to the name calling and are starting to come together as a loving country.
Can that happen?
I only hope it can.
Thank you.
I'm so encouraged to hear that you have some hope when it comes to the future of our country.
The hopelessness, the apocalypticism tend to be the voices that dominate our public discourse right now.
So I'm glad that you are looking at things as they are and taking some hope.
I also have hope as well.
I hope that conversations like we're having right now are a small bit of change that will make again the world a softer and more gentle place.
We're good to go.
I think?
Across Deep Difference, yes, is the most important question of our day, but it's not a new question.
The oldest book in the world, for example, called The Maxims of Tahoe Tap, is a book on civility.
It's a civility handbook that helps people navigate life together across deep difference.
People across time and across place, time and time again, have grappled with this question.
And so it's not realistic to think that this problem is going to go away anytime soon.
Conflict and disagreement will always be with us.
But the good news is that even amidst conflict and disagreement, that is not the death knell of a relationship or of a community or of a country.
Yes, we're polarized, but that doesn't mean...
It has to spell civil war or the end of our country, the end of families or communities.
And in fact, so keep that in mind as, you know, even if your hopes of coming together around Donald Trump across these factions and different communities isn't fully realized, that doesn't have to mean the end.
In fact, there are two things to keep in mind.
Like, conflict can strengthen relationships.
They can actually improve.
Um...
Life with others, as we know it.
And it's not about how we fight.
Sorry, it's about how we fight, and it's about whether we reconcile.
So I'll take that first.
In terms of how we fight, it means not, as you were talking about, Faye, it's not the name -calling, not calling someone who disagrees with you a murderer or a fascist.
It's actually taking that ad hominem attack and that dehumanizing conduct off the table when it comes to how we talk about our disagreement.
And it's about whether we reconcile.
That's the second thing that determines whether conflict can strengthen our bonds.
Are we coming together at the end and saying, you know, reaffirming the bond and saying, yes, we disagree on this issue and we've had it out, we've had an intense and heated spirited dialogue about it, which, by the way,
is the lifeblood of a democracy, wishing...
Debate and heated dialogue away is to basically wish democracy away because we're not going to ever fully agree on absolutely everything.
But after that debate, do we come together and say, you know what?
We're good to go.
I think?
Just in the couple of minutes we have left, I want to read you several comments we've received via text and social media and maybe get your response to a couple of them.
This comes from Carol in Boston, Massachusetts.
Civility in politics will never happen until the media falls into line, as evidenced by ABC's defamation law.
Then J. Lou on X says,
And then finally, Joe in Syracuse, New York, says civility lasted less than 24 hours after Trump's attempted murder.
They're right back to calling him Hitler and a fascist from the Dems.
Those are all important insights.
I love the story.
They all get to this question of how do we do life together with others that think and say horrible things.
I love the story of my friend and fellow, my colleague at the Pro -Human Foundation, Daryl Davis.
He's an African -American jazz musician.
He says, music is my vocation, but race relations is my obsession.
For 30, 40 years, he has been seeking We're good to go.
We're good to go.
And he does that because he believes in the power of conversation and of friendship to rehumanize our politics and rehumanize our thinking.
And I think to date he has converted from their hateful, bigoted views, you know, 40, 50, oh no, several hundred, sorry, people away from these hate groups and they are still his friends because he realized that many people have these hateful views about African -American people.
People have never actually met an African American person.
And when Daryl went out of his way to befriend them, show kindness to them, he surprised them.
He shocked them out of the stereotypes that they held about what an African American person was and how they acted.
And that was enough to conquer their hateful, bigoted views.
And so my response to people who say, how can I be civil to someone who denies my right to exist or who has this hateful view or who has done this?
If Daryl can and continues to reach out across these divides and surprise people with his kindnesses, with his micro glimmers, which is the opposite of a micro aggression.
When he asks questions, when he shows curiosity to people who hate him.
I should point out your friend Daryl has appeared on C -SPAN quite a few times as well, and folks can find clips of him talking about exactly this topic on our website, c -span .org.
Let's get to one more caller before we have to let you go.
Ron is in Florida on our line for independence.
Good morning, Ron.
Good morning.
And can you turn down the volume on your TV before you get going?
Sure.
I'm down.
Okay, go ahead, Ron.
What's your question?
My question is, I believe that civility in this country will never happen until we tell the truth of the country and people recognize how this country actually came to be.
We are not without sins, but we are definitely without taking care of the original sins of the country.
And I think We have people that tell different stories so that as generations come up you have people that believe what we did early on never happened.
So until we start telling the truth in schools and to everyone we won't find civility.
All right let's get your response to that Lexi before we let you go.
I think the caller's point about how our history has become a subject of contention and even a forefront of the culture war, I think that's very telling and it's an instantiation.
It's a symptom of our divided times.
Across time and place, a shared history has been the thing that people have been united by and appealed to.
Amidst divided times like we're in right now, but instead we're seeing it divided.
There's the 1619 project, then the 1776 project, and the founders are all villains or they're all heroes.
And in fact, what does it mean to even, I suggest this idea of unbundling people.
We can do that to our history as well.
We can see the part in light of the whole.
We can see our founders not as monolithically evil or monolithically good.
They were human beings, just like us, capable of greatness and capable of wretchedness.
I'm paraphrasing one of my favorite thinkers, Blaise Pascal, who said the human condition is defined by the greatness and wretchedness of man, that every single one of us are both and, good and a little bit of good, a little bit of bad, that nobody is perfect.
Alexander Pope, the English poet, he said that to err is to be human, to forgive.
Is divine.
And so what does it look like to take that view and apply it to?
To our founders to say yes, they made mistakes they um, they were not perfect, but they also created a beautiful thing in creating, creating our country that um unprecedentedly unprecedentedly, recognizes and affirms the basic dignity and humanity of all persons, even if that has been imperfectly realized in our, in our history, um and that, and that we can take the good and and condemn the bad At the same time, we don't have to either, you know, again, buy into these cheapened,
monolithic narratives of American history being all good, all full of heroes who are perfect in every way, or all evil, and that let's, you know, throw the baby out with the bathwater.
America is evil to its core.
Both of those are wrong.
Both of those are imperfect.
And so what does it look like to reclaim a nuanced and more accurate view of our country that allows us to love our country and be grateful for our country in a deeper way?
Well, thank you so much.
Lexi Hudson is author of the book, "The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves." Thank you very much, Lexi.
Thank you for having me.
Now coming up on Washington Journal, we are going to have a segment that it was mentioned a bit earlier, Bill of Rights Day, which is today.
And so we're going to have the Bill of Rights Institute president, David Bob, join us to discuss the history behind this day, which is a commemoration of the ratification of the U .S. Constitution's first 10 amendments.
But first, we're going to do a quick dash through open forum.
You can start calling in now.
Lines are on your screen.
We'll be right back.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We're in open forum, ready to hear your comments about the news of the week or other topics you'd like to mention.
Our phone numbers for Republicans, 202 -748 -8001, Democrats, 202 -748 -8000, and Independents, 202 -748 -8002.
Let's start with Brenda in Michigan, who's on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Brenda.
Yes, good morning.
I enjoy C -SPAN very much and you do a great job.
My comment is to have a peaceful state or world, we have to have leaders that recommend that.
And it seems like the people that are going into the White House on January the 20th, he loves chaos and he likes to put people in there that don't follow laws.
William is in Wayne, New Jersey on our line for Republicans.
Good morning William.
Yes, good morning.
I'm Bill Baker from Wayne and I believe that there is a solution to this drone situation that has not been examined as of yet.
It's my opinion that there are specific frequencies that the drones are allowed to be used under and that the FCC has the I think we're good to go.
I think we're good to go.
I think we're good to go.
So, William, first if you can just switch down the volume on your TV, but while you're doing that, I do want to flag, just give folks a bit more information about the story that Bill's referencing.
Here it is in CNN, what we know about the mysterious drones.
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
Well, I don't think it's a new policy, but I believe that I would like to think that the government might have a way of blocking frequencies in specific areas.
For example, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, they seem to be the hot spots.
Now, I honestly believe that a lot of these things are hobbyists.
I don't believe we're being attacked by any foreign country or anything.
So what I would suggest is that they give fair warning that on December 20th, from 4 .30 in the afternoon to midnight, we're going to block...
Drone frequencies in a geographic area.
And then we'll see how many sightings there are once this has been put into effect.
Okay.
Tom is in St. Paul, Minnesota on our line for Independence.
Good morning, Tom.
Hi, good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
I really enjoy watching C -SPAN.
I wish I could have gotten in earlier to leave.
I wanted to pose a question to Lexi about healing and civility.
I work as a probation officer and has been for over 24 years.
My clientele are mainly youth under the age of 18.
My comment is basically this, you know, I hear people talk about, well, let me put it this way, you know, I heard somebody mention something about, well, you know,
they call him Hitler and a fascist and all of this type of stuff.
And we talk about healing, but I think part of the healing process is admitting that you say things that have false pretenses that lead people to believe, well, it's true.
My problem is that when I talk to my clientele and we have group sessions, some of them are repeating the same thing to some of our leaders who are now going to be taking power in January about their eating the cats and dogs.
They're poisoning the blood of America and they're going to suspend the Constitution.
What scares me about this is that youth are now buying into this.
And until we come to terms and people come to terms, and I say this on both sides of the fence, but mainly in the fact that Republicans will not admit that this man said things that were inappropriate, that were misogynistic,
racist, and so forth.
And then when you see him At the football game with a young man that choked the life out of a young man on the train, what type of image are we sending to our youth?
And that's the problem that I have.
I just wanted to just say, if we're going to sit down and have a conversation, let's have a conversation, and if we're wrong, we're wrong.
And so what I'm trying to do with my clientele is say, hey, look, we can come together, but we have to also look at and say, hey, look, We've got to be honest.
When you're wrong, you're wrong.
I say this to my clientele all the time when I screw up.
I'm sorry I made a mistake.
That's my comment.
I just wanted to weigh in on that.
And have a great day and keep doing what you're doing at C -SPAN.
I love you guys.
Thank you.
Eric is in New York on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Eric.
Good morning, Kimberly.
I, too, wish I had been able to talk with Alexandra, I guess her name is, over the past decade.
I think that diversity declines as people's engagement and finding their identity online increases.
So I resolved to, when I found people alone, to include them in what I call a personal poll.
So whenever I was alone with somebody pumping gas, this way I kind of assured diversity or built in a diversity for me so I wouldn't select people I thought were approachable.
As I went along, I asked more and more different kinds of people, if you'll say.
And I've called them before about this, but I wish people would try this because my sense of the body politic is very different than what could have been derived online.
And what I would do is I would say, I'd look them in the eye, use that powerful thing of being in situ with somebody, and say, excuse me, ask you for your opinion.
I've been taking a personal poll.
Think most people are nice?
I would stick my neck out with an inane comment, but you wouldn't believe the amount of responses in the positive that I got from thousands, literally thousands of people over the years.
I asked them this in the various public places that I found myself alone with someone I didn't know.
And my takeaway is that when you strip away the frames, which I, in my personal poll, and you approach people, look them in the eye, Okay.
Another Eric calling in this time from Palm Beach, Florida on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Eric.
Listen, we're going to have the segment on civility, which I saw, and on rights, civil rights and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
I want to suggest the following, please, and suggest at the end of my comment, that there's an overlooked right when we look at the history of people.
That would be people have the right to form a business.
And as a Republican, you know, business people, Republicans are orientated toward business.
C -SPAN, not too long ago, had a tremendous outstanding guest named Adam Winkler.
He's a UCLA law professor who wrote a book that he reviewed on C -SPAN, We the Corporation.
And historically, he retraces the beginning of the country.
All the way to the 1607 and 1620 when the Virginia Company founded the Jamestown and Massachusetts Bay Company landed in Plymouth.
Those were both corporations charted by the King of England to find riches and resources and profits.
And prominent people on those ships, the majority of them were corporate shareholders and noblemen.
And he retraces history in the context of business.
And the way rights for people to form businesses and corporations have been upheld.
And you know the founding fathers had corporations and bridges and roads.
So I think it would be wonderful if Adam Winkler was re -invited to rejoin and, in context of rights, if it broadens out to see how rights evolved and it just wasn't simple.
The um, that More recent one where people think all of a sudden businesses got rights as people and all of that.
And I think a broader context would be beneficial and just understanding that Republicans believe that business and as business thrives and people are in business and can learn, you know, advance their careers,
that that's a benefit in the country and that's the priority and focus.
Not to deny individual rights, but...
To overlook commercial rights that people have to join businesses and do that should be included in when we go over rights.
So thanks for taking my call and considering maybe having Professor Adam Winkler from UCLA back on his book, We the Corporation.
Thanks very much.
Troy is in Valdosta, Georgia on our line for independence.
Good morning, Troy.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
I listened with interest earlier, the discussion of healthcare.
I didn't get in.
So I'd like to discuss that real briefly right now.
Healthcare has been my life's work.
I worked my first hospital job in 1982 as an orderly in an emergency room and radiology department.
And over the course of my career, I've worked myself up to a master's level.
Medical librarian and informationist.
I've worked in a lot of different segments of health care from from the clinical end all the way up to the administrative where I am now and When I think of American health care,
I think of its beginning the model where I believe the current American model began It's around the time of the Great Depression when Kaiser Permanente began Group health care insurance and we started the third party payment which I'm sure I don't have to tell anybody what it has evolved to now in the 21st century.
Some of the callers that called in touched on something I didn't hear them call it what I understand it as, and that's consumer sovereignty when we purchase health care.
We have none.
Most people are not educated enough to make their own purchasing decisions once you're in the health care system, especially if you're facing a complicated diagnosis.
You can't make your own decisions on who is going to take care of you, where you will be taken care of.
A lot of things, a lot of variables get in the way of your ability to make these decisions.
Probably the biggest one is your ability and your knowledge to make that.
And healthcare for most of us is the biggest decision we're going to make.
Even bigger than probably our home buying decision.
You can lay out millions real quick.
So Troy, what kind of model do you think would work better?
We're currently in a hybrid model.
A lot of our older patients are in Medicare, Medicaid, and of course we have some safety nets like the Affordable Health Care Act and a lot of people are still insured.
So probably a hybrid model is the best model, but it really needs to be tweaked.
Like any good health care worker, I can probably work up a diagnosis for you, but finding the cure, well, that becomes a bit more difficult.
I will say this.
I think that if an insurance executive were to follow up this call, he would probably say that health insurance is one of the most regulated products in the country because they have to go through 50 regulatory agencies.
Every state has its own regulations about insurance.
Yes, good morning Kimberly.
I want to say good morning to America and I want to say Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Kwanzaa.
To all faiths that we really need to get along.
And uh, may we pray for peace in the world.
You know um, just too much hate people.
You know we just saw the the fall of Assad.
And um, you know uh uh, people want to be free.
They they they they, just people were saying that they were happy just to breathe.
You know the uh.
We're so lucky in America, and I'm grateful that the people like myself had a voice during the election to speak to the people.
And you do such a fine job up there.
And y 'all have a nice day.
Take care now.
Bye -bye.
Steve is in Painesville, Ohio, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Steve.
Good morning.
I'm going to make a comment about Project 2025.
We're good to go.
I think?
Some union -busting tactics like Reagan did in the 80s.
Airline, air traffic controllers and steel and railroads, all that.
I think the steel workers voted for Trump this time around, but they're in for a surprise because U .S. Steel is probably going to deal from...
Japan is going to be broken up, which they wanted.
So you're looking for a lot of...
Sure, they want it made in America, but they don't want to pay labor.
They want you to have no benefits, and they're just going to try to break our backs.
I put my hard hat on for 35 years and wore my steel -toed boots to work, so I know what I'm talking about.
Take you back to 1982 in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Bethlehem Steel.
Shut down.
Second largest steel producer.
150 ,000 lost their pensions, health care, benefits.
Okay, people, you're in for it.
And I back you, even though you voted for Trump.
You know, I'm a military guy.
I still love my country.
I support all Americans.
But you made a big mistake voting for Trump.
I just got to tell you.
All right, next up is Caleb in Greensville, Mississippi, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Caleb.
Good morning, Suzanne, and thank you, and happy holidays to everyone.
I like that one of the callers, he said, there's too much hate, man.
We got too much hate going on in this nation.
Yes, I'm glad she's an open forum.
There's a couple things I would like to say.
One would be, I believe Trump is good for business and helping our nation.
Just, you know, get back on board with business.
But just some things, it's always, it's too many conspiracies surrounding stuff.
And I just, and politics is full of conspiracies anyway sometimes.
That's just my opinion.
I remember back in, when I was voting, when Hillary and Trump was voting, I mean, was running against each other, and I went and I pressed Hillary, and when the screen went off, it lit up green for Trump.
I was like, what?
Then my screen went blank, you know, like it was done.
So I would say somebody needs to investigate this poll.
I think that's what he's talking about.
And it's just crazy.
So I don't, you know, that's something to investigate.
And lastly, every 100 years, America repeats itself, okay?
Now, if we look at the racial level, back in 1919, we got...
A summer of 1919.
We got Rosewood.
We have Tulsa.
All these different racial attacks.
Now we're here in 2020, and we're talking about a mass deportation.
History repeats itself.
And until we can understand history, we're going to continue to repeat it.
And we need somebody who's, first of all, with a good business mind, but we need somebody who's fair as well.
So I'm hoping, you know, and watch this, you can't get in a position like that except to be God's will.
So he's there, it's God's will.
So we can't fight against God.
So what we do is pray for him.
And as God, you know, his will be done.
So with that, God bless you.
Thank you for having me.
Bryce is in Ohio on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Bryce.
Good morning.
Good morning.
What's your comment?
I was just calling about the drones that have been flying over New Jersey and that part of the country.
And I've heard that Domino's Pizza had out an extra large drone that could carry like up to 300 extra large pizzas.
And one of those, I guess, went down and they discovered it in a backyard in New Jersey.
And holy baloney, you know who...
Let's hear from Virginia in Springfield, Illinois on our line for Independence.
Good morning, Virginia.
Have just caught up with modern technology.
Merry Christmas, everybody!
All right, well, we're going to have to end it there.
Coming up next on Washington Journal, we're going to mark today, which is Bill of Rights Day, with David Bobb, president of the Bill of Rights Institute, who will join us to discuss the history behind the commemoration of the ratification of the U .S. Constitution's first ten amendments.
We will be right back.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We are joined now by David Bob, who is the president of the Bill of Rights Institute.
Welcome to Washington Journal.
It's wonderful to be with you, Kimberly.
Can you tell us a little bit about your organization, what you do, and why it was needed to set it up?
The Bill of Rights Institute teaches history and civics.
We equip young people, especially, to be able to live out the principles of the Declaration of the Constitution.
So that they can see a just and free society come about.
It's important to learn about the past, but it's also important to take the principles of our founding and put them into practice.
That's why we were started.
Teachers have a hard job when it comes to being in the classroom and talking about these ideas.
It's always been challenging because we have to learn from our past.
We have to think about these ideas.
These ideas don't come naturally to us.
Thank you.
So let's talk about today, Bill of Rights Day.
Can you just remind us an overview of what the Bill of Rights is, and when and why a day to honor it was established?
The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.
The story is complex, but to boil it down, when the Constitution was being debated, and the idea that maybe we should have a supreme law of the land.
The people across this country looked at, well, what do we want to put into it?
You know, when you write things down, it tends to memorialize them.
We hadn't had an effective constitution up until that point.
So there was a constitutional convention, four long, hot months in the summer of 1787, and a bunch of delegates got together and debated this.
And what they started to see as their negotiations ended is that there was an emerging group.
A minority voice, to be sure, but the pretty loud minority that was saying, we need to protect individual rights more in this document.
And so the people who debated that thing sent it out to the states for ratification.
And there was a pretty bruising battle, and a lot of the states were saying, we're not going to approve it unless there is a more concrete statement about what kind of rights individual human beings have.
Take a step back to the Declaration of Independence, right?
That document which declared our independence... talked about the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
So I think there was a through line here to the debates that happened after the Constitution, and what the people across the country said is, you've got to do better.
And so some of the politicians initially who were not in favor of a Bill of Rights, notably Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, started hearing the will of the people.
And it was Madison who was very careful, he was attentive, he assembled a list.
The list was more than 200 in length.
And then they took that list and started saying, alright, we're going to have to will it down.
If we're going to have a kind of negotiated settlement to this whole thing, what list would make sense?
It got down to about 20, then it became 12.
The 12 were sent out to the states for ratification, and the 12 came back with 10.
So 3 through 12 were adopted, and on December 15, 1791, the... State of Virginia became the last that was needed for ratification,
and the Bill of Rights became the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.
Now then, according to this year's Annenberg Constitution Day Civic Study, only 7 % of respondents could name all five rights guaranteed just under the First Amendment rights, and 21 %...
Couldn't name any, and just a few more numbers for that.
Only when asked to name the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, 74 % knew it included freedom of speech, 39 % knew it included...
What do you think?
One of the things that I've seen over the years, and it may be particularly true in Washington, D .C., where we are now, is that the sense of the Constitution being for the people, of the people, and by the people is lost a little bit.
It's complex, right?
There's a lot of court cases.
There's a lot of complexity to it.
At the end of the day, though, it's not the province of attorneys and judges.
It's a document that if you sit down and read, it takes about a half an hour.
We've made it a little bit more complicated than we've needed.
Also, we're not devoting enough time in our schools.
For example, an elementary school teacher has maybe, if she's lucky, 20 minutes per week to talk about these things.
So we need to start with the stories.
Start with the Declaration of Independence.
It said something that no government in the history of the world had said before, which is that people have rights because they're people, because they're human beings.
And it took us longer than we wanted.
It took a long time before we...
We're good to go.
And speaking of this...
Topic mattering to our current state of affairs.
You had a recent opinion piece with the headline, Election Highlights Need for and Warnings about Civic Education.
What exactly are these warnings?
Well, I think one of the things that I just mentioned, the need for more time in our schools.
We have a challenging system in this country, but it's a good one, and that is that education is local.
That means that there's a lot of decision makers.
And we're negotiating these decisions all the time at the local level.
Think of it.
Parents are the first educators.
They can entrust their kids then to different schools and then teachers complement the work that parents do in learning about history and civics.
How do we make sure that every child in America is growing up with a sense of what this country is about?
That's a big challenge.
And the further we get away from the local level, the more that Washington, D .C. or even state capitals Governors insert themselves into these things in a political or ideological way, the worse off we're going to be.
Because one of the things that we've seen is we've become more polarized and we think we're more divided than we actually are.
Americans actually anchor around the principles of the Declaration and Constitution.
But we perceive that we're very, very divided.
And when politicians seize on that and use civics as a means to kind of stoke disagreement, that's a problem.
And what we don't want, I don't think, is for Washington, D .C. to take these things over and to say, here's the kind of official civics we're going to have from the government.
That's never been a part of our government, and I think it's a real strength.
For example, in tyrannies globally, we've just seen the toppling of the dictator in Syria.
But even in regimes that aren't dictatorial, oftentimes what they'll do is have a big fight over who gets to write the textbooks.
And when you have that fight, what you tend to do is to reduce the value of the civics and history because people just say, well, that's just the politicians and that's what they want me to think.
Civics and history has to be about people taking these ideas, making them their own, and then putting them into practice in everyday life.
The more that we make this an ideological or political thing, the worse off we're going to be.
I'll point out that some other resources for teachers when it comes to civics education come from C -SPAN directly on c -span .org.
We have a program called C -SPAN Classroom, which includes free video -based materials for social studies teachers on various civics -related topics.
You know, how do you think, especially in our politically divided environment, civics might be able to help bridge that divide?
You know, we've been pleased to partner at the Bill of Rights Institute with C -SPAN Classroom.
The resources are excellent, and there's nothing better than going back to primary source documents.
When you ask Americans, you know, what do you anchor on?
It's that sense of that the Declaration and Constitution do matter.
The way to bridge political divides is by having conversations that matter, by not shirking that and ducking them.
You know, two out of five young people in this country who are in high school Feel uncomfortable disagreeing with their friends and their peers in the classroom.
That's got to change.
What we have to do, I think, is disagree better.
Let young people know that if they disagree on matters of significance, it doesn't mean you're going to lose your friends.
And for young people to take that seriously, they're going to have to see more models of that kind of thing.
It's the kind of deep civility.
It's a civil discourse, and it's a valuing of free speech that says it's okay to talk about religion and politics.
And financial things.
You have to do it in a way in which you're respecting the other person.
And bringing these controversial subjects into the classroom, when you anchor on primary source documents, it kind of gives a new footing to those conversations where young people can say, you know, I do want to see your viewpoint.
It may be different than mine, and that's okay.
I want my perspective to be challenged by yours because we're sharper, we're better off, and critical thinking results from that.
We're taking your calls with questions for David Bob of the Bill of Rights Institute.
Our number for Republicans, 202 -748 -8001.
For Democrats, 202 -748 -8000.
And for Independents, 202 -748 -8002.
You can also send us questions via text or social media.
We received a text message comment, really, from Diane in Morristown, New Jersey, who says all Americans should be able to pass the citizenship test.
What do you think of that?
You know, I think it's, as a mental kind of model, it's the right idea.
For those of you who aren't familiar with this, there's a hundred questions.
It's about pretty basic things related to what it means to be a citizen, and it's given to those who want to become...
There have been efforts to institute this as a kind of mandate in states.
I don't know that we have to do that.
But I think that all Americans, if you just Google it and take the test, you'd see that it's a worthwhile exercise because it's trying to anchor you on the things that really matter.
Now, it's important to know those facts and figures, but we also have to know why.
And that's something that the naturalization test does not get into as much as we'd like.
Great civics, great history learning.
It's a good start, but I think we can do Do a lot better for all Americans with the kind of critical thinking that we see from a lifelong commitment to civics.
Before we get to the callers, and maybe this is a difficult question for you, but of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, which one is the most fascinating to you?
You know, I think it's hard not to be fascinated by the 9th and 10th amendments.
They don't get as much attention maybe today, but taken together they're kind of the...
The taproot of what we might see as popular sovereignty, the idea that the people rule in this country.
Think of what humility it took so you have the drafting of the Constitution and then you send it out to the people.
That's not been what typically happens in other countries.
A lot of countries, it's the elites who rule, and we never see a change from that.
So what the founders were trying to do is say, could we get away from that kind of system in which accident and force rules the day?
Could we be ruled by reflection and choice?
And ultimately the 9th and 10th Amendments say that the people retain rights.
So let me just read them quickly.
So the Ninth Amendment says the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
And then the Tenth Amendment says the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people.
If you take the Ninth Amendment, one of the big debates over the Bill of Rights was, well, wait, what if we start writing them down?
If we miss one or don't write down everything, will people think that they don't have those rights?
That was some of the objections, and that was a reasonable objection.
If you look to history, even, the Soviet Union had a beautiful Bill of Rights.
Many of the tyrannies that exist around the globe today do.
Just writing down rights doesn't make them put into practice, though.
People have to actually believe them.
And so we don't have a written confirmation of our right to say, for example, get in your car and I can today drive into Maryland and Pennsylvania and keep going.
But I do have that right.
So what's important is to think about the Declaration's promise that because we're human beings, they adhere in us as human beings.
That's what the Ninth Amendment is saying.
The Tenth Amendment is a restriction, as are many of these.
We think of them as giving away rights, but in fact it's restricting and saying to the federal government, You can't interfere.
You can't overly involve yourself in the affairs of human beings because the founders again saw, I think it's been confirmed by history, that too strong a government, too invasive a government is going to be a bad thing, right?
When they were colonists, what happened with the British is that they could search their property for any reason at all.
And that's a pretty invasive sense of what power means.
So the 9th and 10th Amendments are restrictions on power.
Yes, and you made reference to...
Basically what's in the Fourth Amendment, right?
That's right.
This one says the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.
Let's go ahead and get to your calls.
I'm sure people have lots of questions here.
We'll start with Oki in Crab Orchard, West Virginia, on our line for Independence.
Good morning, Oki.
What I wanted to say is that your guest and just about everyone else always speaks of the inalienable rights that are mentioned in our Declaration, but that's an incomplete sentence.
It's almost as if it's out of context.
Thank you, Oki.
That's a great observation.
You're absolutely right.
The Declaration itself has four references to God, and I think they tell an interesting story.
Two of them were included by Jefferson, and two were added by the Continental Congress.
That first reference to Creator is the one that I think is probably the most pivotal.
You're right, that we're endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.
They can't be taken away from us, right?
They can't be stripped from you by government, their life living the pursuit of happiness.
That has a sense of the executive.
Also, the legislative kind of component of God's nature was the laws of nature.
That was the second reference.
There's also the supreme judge of the universe.
That's the third reference.
Think of it.
The executive branch, the legislative branch, the judicial branch.
And the Declaration's argument is pretty simple in one respect.
It's saying that this prince, King George III, has become a tyrant.
Why?
He's become a tyrant because he takes the executive, legislative, and judicial function.
And pulls it into his own orbit and supposes that he can operate in that way.
And I think what the Declaration is saying is, without getting specific to any one religion, it's saying if there's a superintending God, if there's a supreme being,
it would be only that being that would be able to handle all of this power.
No one human being, no one human committee could take the executive, legislative, and judicial powers.
All right, now let's hear from Gary in Winter Haven, Florida, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Gary.
Good morning.
I wanted to talk about the Second Amendment.
One thing a lot of people don't remember is earlier this year there was a school shooting in Iowa, and Donald Trump's response was you just have to get over it.
And then recently there was a shooting of a UnitedHealthcare CEO, and you could hear the meltdown on the right.
California's restrictive gun laws...
We're introduced in the 60s by Republican Governor Ronald Reagan when the Black Panthers were stockpiling weapons.
So it's not unprecedented for Republicans to implement when they get freaked out enough.
All right.
Well, let's look quickly at the language of the Second Amendment, which says, A well -regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
So one of the great concerns that people had at the time this was adopted is, were we going to have a standing army or not?
And many of those who were anti -federalists, that is, they were opposed to the ratification of the Constitution, We're good to go.
I think? is bring this into the classroom so that teachers and students can learn the history,
they can study the primary source documents, they can engage in the kind of debates that help sharpen their understanding of this thing.
That's the essence of what good history and civic education requires.
As an organization, we're not taking a stance on how the Second Amendment should be interpreted, but we think it's very important that young people and teachers should be equipped with the tools to be able to look at the document And that goes to just what you did, Kimberly, which is reading the text and trying to understand the text and have a conversation around those topics.
Tom is in Rochester, Washington, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Tom.
Yes, mine is mostly on the education of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
My daughter is a school teacher, and we live here in western Washington, which is a very liberal area.
And she's not allowed to teach these.
And this goes back all the way till the Civil War when the Democrats lost the war and formed the KKK, and they formed an agenda to actually not infiltrate,
but to indoctrinate the children through the school systems and not teach that.
And this has been proven by the stats that's been stated on this program this morning.
On people not even being able to label them.
And you can ask four, six -year college graduates who we fought in the Civil War.
Not the Civil War, the Revolutionary War.
And they can't even name it.
They think it's Germany.
Things like that.
And that's all because the schools have been indoctrinated and they don't want history taught because it shows that all through history...
When the Democrat Party was first formed, they fought all against civil rights all the way through history, but it's been kind of indoctrinated in schools to not teach these,
not teach Christianity or other religions and all that, and I think that shouldn't be taught in school.
That's a personal thing, but people need to remember history.
Tom, let's give David a chance to respond to some of these points.
Okay.
The overwhelming number of Americans today believe that civics and history will lead to critical thinkers and informed citizenship.
I think it's on that agreement.
We talked about polarization and disagreement that we need to seize on and say, how can we create more space so that teachers are supported by parents?
What does this support mean?
You know, a lot of times if a teacher is using, let's say you want to teach the Second Amendment or talk about things that are happening in the news that are controversial, you need to be able to say, on one hand, this is a position, and on the other hand, here is a different position.
It's called viewpoint diversity in teacher.
The language of educators.
We build that into our curriculum because it's from that kind of iron sharpens iron mentality that we think we get the kind of citizens that are open to other people's ideas.
How do we do that?
We need more time in schools.
We need more trust.
When we as parents can trust our teachers and say, if you're committed to viewpoint diversity, we have your back.
We need to talk to our principals and say carve out more time in the school day for these kind of conversations.
Build in activities in which young people can build the skills that allow these principals to be put into practice because ultimately what we're looking for in civics is a change in the habits of heart and mind.
We want young people who are committed to the promise of the Declaration of Independence.
You know, John Lewis, in his famous speech in the March on Washington in 1968, said that our task is to complete the Revolution of 1776.
And I think there's something really powerful in that, and there's something that can unite us around that effort if we take it seriously.
Pat is in Keyport, New Jersey, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Pat.
Hello.
Speaking about how the Tenth Amendment is really a protection against the Well,
I think the historic record actually shows that the enumerated powers of Article 1, Section 8 still very much are in play.
I think that There have been, I think, and this is again one of those debates that at the Bill of Rights Institute we teach, a back and forth over many, many generations about just how broad a scope are you going to give?
What is the right delineation of power between the federal government, between the national government, and the states?
Of course, much of the relationship was changed when the civil rights amendments were adopted and before that the amendments around the Civil War.
So this is certainly a hotly contested thing.
The important thing, though, I think is that in each era and through to today, there is still this amendment in effect.
And it's the will of the people and the kind of will of the electorate that's ultimately going to say, how seriously are we going to take this?
I'll say just one other thing about this related to the education.
What's great with young people, and this is the kind of thing that I think we need to bring out more for them, is...
Put a question to them.
What is the right relationship between the national government and the states?
And one of the ways that I think young people can really start to understand that best is actually if they get involved at the local level.
Because then they start to see, okay, it's really difficult to start something like a farmer's market.
Why is that difficult?
Why is it difficult to solve some of the problems like homelessness or...
Pick any one of the things that are really important to people of any age in this country, but especially to young people.
We have a contest at the Bill of Rights Institute called My Impact Challenge.
And it takes students through three things.
The charitable sector, business, and then also constitutionally limited government.
So raising these questions around the size and scope of government.
But it asks them then to get involved in their community at the local level, to start by looking at a problem, a challenge.
Yes.
A caller from West Virginia a few minutes ago called in and Did you have a question as well?
Alright, let me pull up the exact language of the Declaration of Independence from the National Archives.
So you're right about our verses there.
I think the distinction though is one without a difference.
I think the affirmation is that there is, and this was Jefferson's language ratified by the Continental Congress, that there is a superintending being.
There's lots of controversy about just what the relationship of God is to human beings.
But they're saying we're not God.
I think that's the essence of it.
And we're not the author of our own rights.
It's saying that these rights are not positive.
They're not given to you just by government.
Robert is in Waldorf, Maryland on our line for independence.
Good morning, Robert.
To an abortion.
Does it authorize the right to free healthcare?
Anywhere in the Bill of Rights, does it authorize the right of a living wage?
Can any of you show me that in the Bill of Rights?
Now, I know that you can't, but maybe, like you say, we should educate these young kids that nowhere in the Bill of Rights is it a right.
Nowhere in the Bill of Rights is...
Well, I appreciate the caller's passion around this, and I know that this elicits a lot of strong opinions.
I'll tell you how we approach it again in an educational context at the Bill of Rights Institute.
Each one of those topics that you raised is one that young people and people of all ages in this country are going to continue to debate.
We're a nation of 330 million plus people.
We have the task of managing disagreement, not eliminating it.
So, for example, when you go to the Bill of Rights Institute YouTube page, you can find a video about Roe v. Wade.
The New York Times, when they needed to rely on a Video for their coverage of the Dobbs decision pulled this video because it's telling you what that case said.
Our job is not to weigh in on each of these disputes but rather to go into the place where teachers especially can be equipped to go to primary source documents.
We should read these documents from the founding era and from each era of our history carefully.
We should equip young people to be civically literate.
So that they can engage in the kind of conversations and debate recognizing that first and foremost, we see this in the First Amendment, we have a guarantee of free speech.
I think that guarantee of free speech has to go hand in hand with the responsibility of civil discourse.
And what we want to do, I think, in our civic learning, in classrooms and out of classrooms, is to equip all Americans to be able to have these conversations.
But be able to do so with a recognition that we are going to disagree about certain things.
The question in my mind is, can we agree about core things?
Can we agree about the fact that our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are critical?
We're going to have policy disagreements for sure.
But the question is, what are we united around?
And I think that's the central challenge of our day, to point young people and people of all ages in this country back to those core...
Big questions.
Stephen is in Norcross, Georgia, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Stefan.
Excuse me, Stefan.
Good morning.
Hi.
Hi.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking the call.
I listen every day, so I'm a little nervous.
That's the first time I've ever called in.
I really think it's a great show, and I appreciate the guest points, but one thing I want to point out is that the Declaration of Independence, as important a document as it is historically, and it is, It is not the law,
and it is not codified into law.
And one of the reasons I think that's important is that, in relationship to the Constitution, is that when people do, let's say, try to insert religion or establishing a religion into society,
they will refer to the Declaration of Independence, which uses the word creator.
The Constitution does not.
If the Founding Fathers really wanted that word to be in the Constitution, Stefan, thank you so much for your question.
The Declaration of Independence does not have the same standing as does the Constitution of the United States.
You're right.
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land.
The Declaration is part, however, of the organic laws.
So the Northwest Ordinance, the Declaration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, these are...
Part of the organic laws of the United States.
Abraham Lincoln, I think, gave us an interesting guide to thinking about how the Declaration and Constitution are related.
He said, quoting from Proverbs, the apple of gold, the Declaration of Independence, was made with a frame of silver around it.
I think that's an evocative image.
What he was trying to say is you set up the goal, the big picture, the vision, if you will, is that human beings have rights.
And that the government's job is to protect those rights.
It has to be powerful in protecting those rights.
So you can't forget about the promise of the Declaration.
That's why I've been anchoring on that so much today.
It's not so much to say that we should have, and I certainly don't think that we should have, an established religion.
That in fact is one of the great things that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights did.
Notice, for example, that the King of England still to this day is the head of a church.
One thing that we did in this country through the First Amendment and through the structure of the Constitution was say that our president has no, to quote here Publius, no particle of spiritual jurisdiction.
That means that the realm of religion is one of an individual and a collectivist within civil society.
Government's job is not to dictate that.
That does not mean, however, that religion and politics can have nothing to do with one another.
In fact, we are given wide license in this country to bring religious perspectives and those that are born of non -religious sentiments into the public square.
That's a very important thing.
I know this is a complicated question.
I appreciate the nuance of your question, but I think it's really important to understand that the Declaration of Independence is a big part of the understanding that we have about who we are as an American people.
And for that reason, we put it at the core of what civics and history education means.
Since we referenced the First Amendment, we'll pull up the language for that as well.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Rick is in Woodville, Virginia on our line for independence.
Good morning, Rick.
My question is about the interplay between the Commerce Clause and the 9th and 10th Amendments.
It seems like Congress and the court, particularly under the Warren administration, used the Commerce Clause to meddle in areas that the framers perhaps didn't intend Congress to have jurisdiction.
I'm wondering what your feeling is about the limits to the Commerce Clause and whether or not there's some primacy of it.
So the Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution, right?
An additional 17 amendments were added, so we have 27 amendments to the Constitution.
Even though they're all included at the end, it's of a piece.
So they really have to be interpreted together as a whole.
You can't have a disharmony between the Bill of Rights and the text of the Constitution.
That was something that...
We're good to go.
We're good to go.
Congress will not be able to interfere in the affairs of commercial activity.
There's a lot of different cases.
Rickard v. Filburn is one of them that we could look at.
But in the 20th century, there's been a movement to allowing legislation to be deemed constitutional for questions that in the past Really, we're not allowed.
So to cut to, I think, the caller's point, we have a big debate today over how much Congress can actually interfere or be involved in questions of interstate commerce.
And this is one of those things, again, that at the Bill of Rights Institute, we take up that debate, put it to students, and let them dip into these different documents and try to figure out what the truth of the matter is.
Our point as an institute is not to come to a conclusion.
Patricia is in Virginia on our line for independence.
Good morning, Patricia.
What's your question?
My question was, standing on the Bill of Rights, I really didn't learn anything about my heritage of Native Americans and why isn't Native American history For basing upon everything on like the whole Constitution and everything,
why isn't Native American history being taught on our side versus, you know, like the Civil War and all that?
Why isn't any of that being taught?
Because I didn't know anything about how my people died and why there isn't many of us left.
Except for when I was 50 years old, I saw a piece on, I think it was Nat Geo.
That's how I found it out.
Now, Patricia, did you want to know more about sort of how the Bill of Rights shapes what we learn in terms of different types of history?
Yeah, because it wasn't taught in school.
Patricia, I'm sorry that you didn't have that opportunity, and it's one of the things that we care a lot about at the Bill of Rights Institute.
You know, you can go to our website, myBRI .org, and you'll find a 500 -year history of the United States that touches on many issues and parts of the Native American journey in this country.
I think one of the key things that I'll say is that it's vital that each person in this country We're good to go.
I think?
To enslaved peoples, to native peoples, to others the same rights.
In some cases, they lamented that they didn't do more.
And I think it's okay for us to recognize that that lament was true.
We wish that there had been more.
Take the perspective of somebody like Chief Joseph or Frederick Douglass.
Leaders that themselves knew the tyrannical force of government when it did not protect their rights.
That did not eliminate the fact that these individuals said these rights still exist.
And that goes back to our core thing today, which is that the rights exist before government grants them to you.
Human beings have rights, and it's government's job to protect them.
And when government fails in that task, it's up to all of us to call government to account.
And I think what civic education does well, and what it should do well, is let people know that we have to teach the whole of our history and we have to recognize where we failed, where we've lived up to this promise, and also to challenge everybody in this country to hold our government to account, that these rights are extended to each individual, regardless of where they live in this country.
And I'll point out that on your website you've got several lessons related to Native American history, including this one, "A Deep Stain on the American Character: John Marshall and Justice for Native Americans," as one of the lesson plans that's available there on the BILL OF Rights Institute website.
Last caller for today, let's hear from Horace in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Horace.
Good morning, my dear.
How are you?
Doing well, thank you.
To the young man, it's just talking about all these Bill of Rights and civics and all this other stuff.
I'm a 79 -year -old black man.
When I was born, blacks wasn't even allowed to vote, you understand?
Let alone learning civics and all this kind of stuff.
But gradually, gradually, I was allowed to...
People was allowed to vote and stuff.
But let me tell you something.
This guy, he's sitting there talking about all these rights and all this stuff.
This man was lucky.
He's right.
He was born with rights.
You understand?
So it's easy for a fellow to sit up here and say all these type of things about rights and all that stuff.
Unless, unless you was born without them.
You would appreciate him.
You know, as far as I'm concerned, you understand.
Education, you understand, is a good thing.
And yet, we got a man that was elected that wants to destroy the Department of Education.
You understand?
So, it's mixed up and it's crazy.
So, I don't understand what you're saying.
You understand?
Because it's unfair.
Horace, I appreciate what you're saying, and I think I understand your perspective.
I'll say that one of the things that we take very seriously at the Bill of Rights Institute is to bring to bear the fact that, as you just pointed out, these rights have not been extended to people.
They have not been extended to people equally.
You are 79 years old, and I appreciate the perspective that you just offered.
I mentioned Frederick Douglass a few minutes ago.
One of the key things that we anchor on is something that Douglass said in the speech July 5th, 1852.
The first half of the speech is about how wrong the United States of America had been to allow the extension of the institution of slavery.
It was a speech in which Douglass could not really say of his fellow citizens that they were his fellow citizens.
He felt estranged.
He felt estranged from that country.
And yet, in the second half of the speech, what he attempts to do is to say, yet I still have hope.
And that hope is based on the idea that there are certain principles that are there from the get -go.
Freedom and equality for all.
Do those principles not apply to all?
That was his argument.
He said if we can look to them as saving principles, they can save him from his plight as an individual who for the first 20 years of his life was enslaved.
I think?
Thank you so much.
David Bob is the president of the Bill of Rights Institute.
I appreciate your time this morning.
Thank you, Kimberly.
And thanks to everybody who called in today on Washington Journal with your questions and comments.
We're going to be back tomorrow at 7 a .m. Eastern with another edition of the show.
We hope you'll join us then, and have a great day.
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Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend.
Pulitzer Prize -winning columnist Peggy Noonan shares her book A Certain Idea of America, which is a collection of her columns from over the past quarter century.
And then on afterwards, economist and investment advisor James Rickards talks about the potential threats that AI poses to the global economy and national security in his book Money GPT.
He's interviewed by George Mason University Distinguished University Professor J .P. Singh.
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