Eric Liu Shares Lessons in Civility

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And now we turn to lessons of civility with our next guest, Eric Liu, CEO, and founder of the nonprofit Citizen University. The former Clinton administration adviser says that we need civic Saturdays, a nonreligious ritual of coming together to celebrate America. He told our Michel Martin why he believes that we’re in a moment of moral awakening.

MICHEL MARTIN: Eric Liu, thank you so much for talking to us.

ERIC LIU, AUTHOR, BECOME AMERICA: I’m so glad to be here.

MARTIN: And we’re talking about your latest book which is “Become America” but really what we’re talking about is your call for kind of a movement in a way, for a civic religion. What is a civic religion and why do we need it?

LIU: Civic religion is simply the idea that in our lives as citizens here in the United States, we have so little to hold us together. We’re not of a common bloodline. We’re not of a common faith tradition. We come — our ancestors come from all over the place. The thing that binds us together simply is a creed. It’s a set of ideas, a set of promises, and some of them are written in parchment in our founding and foundational documents, but others are from other parts of our history. And when I talk about the idea of civic religion, it is reminding us that in the first place, there is this foundational creed that doesn’t just execute itself. We have to remind ourselves of it. We have to commit to deeds and actions that actually give it life. But we do that best not just in random, one-off moments but actually with a structure of ritual, right. You have to come together in a regular way to remind yourselves what this thing is that we inherited by simply being here in the United States and what we’re called actually to hold up and sustain.

MARTIN: You really mean that people should get together. They should celebrate the country. They should get together on a regular basis. They should read things that are inspiring.

LIU: I do.

MARTIN: You really mean that?

LIU: I really mean it. I think my notion of civic religion is, of course, not — it’s not godly religion. It is not worshipping a deity but it is about believing in democracy and believing in each other and our capacity actually to live up to the promises of democracy. And I think democracy works only when enough of us believe democracy works. And that is a fragile thing. It’s kind of a gamble and it’s kind of a miracle when it works. And when it starts to corrode or evaporate, you realize just how evanescent that mutual faith is.

MARTIN: How did you grow up with this idea, that this is what the moment requires? Did you go up religiously and go into church and think, yes, this is what translates to that? What brought the idea?

LIU: Interestingly, I grew up with no faith tradition at all. I was not raised in any particular tradition. But I grew up — look, I think all humans are wired for belief and belonging in something. And I had that wiring especially [13:40:00] strongly and so I’m a son of immigrants. My parents came to the U.S. from China via Taiwan. And so when I was growing up in Upstate New York, I had this very strong sense that the way that I wanted to channel that spirit of belief and belonging was into the idea of this country, the promise of this country. But to be clear, I didn’t come up with this idea of civic religion. This is at least as old as Alexis de Tocqueville when he came through the young United States in the 1830s and noticed that again the miracle that he observed of people — well, of white men governing themselves at that time, was that there’s this mutual belief that if they showed up and showed up for each other, they could make the thing work.

MARTIN: Which you actually have a very specific proposal in this book which you talk about in this book which is called “Become America”. You think people should get together.

LIU: Yes.

MARTIN: Like on Saturdays. You call it civic Saturdays and so stuff.

LIU: Yes.

MARTIN: Right?

LIU: Well, let me tell you about that. So I founded this — co-founded this organization called Citizen University. And we do work all around the United States to spread the belief that a strong democracy requires strong citizens. And one of our signature programs, you just referred to, is called Civic Saturdays. These are gatherings that are basically a civic analog to a faith gathering. It’s not about church or mosque or synagogue or religion but it is about this notion of American civic religion. And the gathering follows the arc of a faith gathering. We sing together. We will turn to the strangers next to us and talk about a common prompt, a question like who do you belong to or who do you feel responsible for? Something that just cracks open the heart right from the get-go, right, with maybe somebody you just met, that invites you to be on a different plain and just I’m looking at my phone or I’ve got my armor on because I’m living in a city or whatever, right. And then after that, there are readings of texts that you might think of as civic scripture, just text from the American tradition. Whether it’s famous things like the Preamble of the Constitution or I Have A Dream speech or less well-known texts. And then from those readings of scripture, what follows is a sermon to make sense of the moment that we’re in, to tie the moral choices and ethical conundrums of living in the United States right now back to our lives in community, right.

MARTIN: And I think some might wonder at this point what qualifies you for this.

LIU: Yes. Well, what qualifies me is what qualifies you, which is that we have the dumb luck to be here right now. We have the dumb luck to be the stewards of this experiment that got handed to us. I don’t care what your documentation status is. When I say citizenship and Citizen University, I’m not talking about papers or passports version of citizenship. I mean this bitter, ethical sense of being a member of the body. What qualifies me or you or any other member of the body who decides to show up and decides that you know what, there’s no such thing at the end of the day it’s someone else’s problem, I’m kind of responsible for the health or lack of health for the body politic. And so if I look around and I feel like people are hungering for belonging, hungering for an invitation to have a different way of dealing with each other than you see on social media, and no one else is doing it, then I’ve got to raise my hand and do it. And that’s how we started these. We started them in Seattle in 2016, which is where our headquarters is. And we thought it would be great if 20, 30 people showed up. For the first one, 220 people crammed this basement reading room at a bookstore because, again, we don’t get invited or we don’t get permission to engage with one another, face to face in a locally rooted way to try to make moral sense of our times.

MARTIN: OK. Well, you said something important just there which is, well you said a lot of things that were important, but you said 2016. For a lot of people, let’s just say for, I would say a lot of Progressives but not just Progressives because one of the things that we have seen are a lot of committed Conservatives who are deeply troubled by what they see as the direction of the country, the tone of our discourse. But you live in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle. I assume a lot of Progressives showed up. Obviously, for some people, 2016 was a terrible crisis. I mean they feel like this is — Donald Trump is like their worst nightmare of someone who should not be in leadership. But for other people, this is a great moment, a great moment where they finally felt heard and seen. What is your ask for the people who think you know what, finally, somebody who’s — somebody is in there is going to get the job done in the way that I want it done.

LIU: You talk to anybody who is a fan of the current president, and I have them in my family. And you ask then — if you ask them how they like the president, they will say they think he’s doing a great job. But if you ask them what’s the state of the union in your neighborhood? Are there problems with opioids? Are there problems with suicide? Are their problems with jobs disappearing? Are there problems with people not knowing or trusting their neighbors? Do you feel like the quality of life where you live has gotten worse? Do you feel like people’s sense of dehumanizing each other has gotten worse? They will say yes just like anybody else. It doesn’t matter whether you’re left or right. The crisis that I’m addressing here is not the crisis of one person getting elected to the White House. Though in his own way, he is eroding, in my view, democratic norms and a lot of the habits that are required to sustain our Republic. But this book, our work, Civic Saturdays, this whole approach to gathering people in invitations way is meant for all.

MARTIN: If people can’t go to Civic Saturdays, it just isn’t their thing, some people are not good in groups, they don’t like it, what should they do to advance the goals that you’re talking about?

LIU: The first thing I really would say is join a club or make a club. Even if you’re an introvert. Even if you don’t like big crowds or whatever, any circle of people that’s more than 1, 2, 3, 10, 20 people, right. And the club doesn’t even have to be political or civic. It can be a gardening club. It can be a neighborhood club. It can be a book club.

MARTIN: OK. But tell me about the Garden Club. What’s good about that? How does that help things?

LIU: Oh, come on. I mean if you’re in a gardening club, in the first place —

MARTIN: You get tomatoes.

LIU: You get tomatoes. You are — I mean, first of all, you are doing literally what is metaphorically the work of citizenship which is to weed, seed and feed, and tend the garden. The garden of our democracy does not tend itself. The system of community and civic life, system of our marketplace, they’re not self-regulating machines, they’re gardens. And once you let weeds take hold and if you just sit back and watch with a laissez-faire approach, those weeds will take over until the —

MARTIN: But tell me — but one of the points is — tell me how adding — joining anything —

LIU: Gardening, chess —

MARTIN: Chess, anything, because?

LIU: Because joining a club is about re-exercising that muscle of association, of coming together with a group of folks who may not be that close to you yet, trying to figure out common goals, common agenda, common interests, common ways to figure out when you disagree about how to deal with stuff.

MARTIN: We talk to a number of people who belong to these white supremacist groups, especially the young people, that’s what they say.

LIU: You bet —

MARTIN: They say that’s why they liked it.

LIU: Yes. They —

MARTIN: Because there were people who belonged — who they felt a sense of belonging and they thought it was exciting. And so —

LIU: And it gave them an identity. It made them seen and feel heard, recognized, powerful, right. And so to me, I look at that, I look at the appeal of white supremacist groups to certain young people not as an argument against clubs and against associations but as an argument for far more and better choices and alternatives of associations and clubs. So that if you’re a young person who feels lost and adrift and feels dissed by society and you think well, the one place I can feel strong again is in a white power group, then that’s a failure of all of us. Why weren’t there five other channels at the Y, at the school, in the library, in the sports team where that young person could have plugged in, in a multiracial, multi-faith, multi-other dimension group and realized I can find voice and meaning and belonging and power there, right? The failure is not in the white supremacist group. They’re doing what groups are supposed to do.

MARTIN: What informs your idea that this kind of personal, face-to-face participation is the antidote to all of this corrosion and corruption of relationship that you see. The reason I ask is that if people feel that these really big forces are shaping our environment, like, you know, not point the finger at anyone in particular, like tech companies, right. People feel like that these are really the forces that are shaping our culture, then would it make more sense to focus on regulating or addressing them?

LIU: I’ve got to answers two that. The first one is we’ve got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, right. So it is true that Facebook, social media companies, Twitter, YouTube, they need more regulation. I think there needs to be legislative action and policy action to address them. But at the same time, remember, how does Facebook get so powerful? How does Twitter get so powerful? Because you and I give them our attention. You and I give them our eyeballs. You and I give them our screen time, right. If you want to curb Facebook’s power, convince yourself and those around you and those around those around you to stop giving away your power and your attention that way and that will be part of the solution, right. But in addition to that, I do think face to face is ultimately the way that we’re going to rekindle the renewal of democratic life. And the reason why is I think that the things that you and I are discussing here are about values, they’re about norms, they’re about spirit, they’re about the heart and whether your heart is open or closed and your capacity for empathy or for imagination to see yourself in someone else’s shoes.

And these things are, in my view, upstream of policy. The spirit is upstream of policy. The values and this kind of civic faith is upstream of law and elections. The soul is upstream of the state. And yes, we can at other times and others among us can focus a lot on policy, law, elections and a state. We must. I’m not saying give that up. But in the end, you cannot durably un-pollute what’s down there unless you actually clean out what’s up here, right, what’s upstream. And that is our attitudes and the way we see each other. The thing that you said earlier when you were talking about people who support the current president and you’re saying that a lot of them did that because they felt seen and heard, right. That is a universal human desire to be seen and heard and recognized as fully human. And we live in a dehumanizing time and so it’s only by setting emotion a counter-veiling set of habits together in the company of others to actually see each other. And that does not mean like each other. That does not mean agree with each other. But it means to be grown-ups with each other. And I think our screens give us too many reasons and too many excuses to not be grown-ups, to be toddlers with each other, to behave in our worst ways with impunity and face to face is the way we’ve got to —

MARTIN: What exactly do you want people to do right now? I take it the first thing you would say is stop unfriending people because you don’t agree with them. I mean I don’t know. I don’t want to anticipate what you’re going to say. The reason I raise that is that you remember in the wake of the 2016 election, a lot of people were like, I just can’t deal with these people anymore, even in my own family. And not for reasons that were terrible, just because I found your discourse horrible. I think that you are endorsing racism or sexism. I mean you want me to give all of these people a big hug who hate me and want to kill me?

LIU: You know I think it is possible to empathize and humanize with another person even when they’re wrong, even when they are — even when their behaviors are evil, even when they look to you to be evil. I foundationally believe that. And I think one of the things that we’ve got to do before you project this on to how you’re going to handle that guy, that person is, and it answers your question, what do you want people to do? I want people to begin by asking themselves, you know, the civic golden rule. Let me give you an example. As a person who’s not a fan of the current administration, I have been alarmed at the extent to which President Trump has used executive orders and executive authority to bypass Congress to go against the will of the people, what have you, right. But as has been pointed out to me, I was not even remotely alarmed when his predecessor, President Obama, used exactly the same powers for ends that I liked. And upon reflection, I think the first thing we’ve got to do as citizens is to ask ourselves are we willing ho told ourselves to the standards that we wish to hold others to? And if not, then the first task is actually to sit with that and ask why not? Is it because I love my righteousness? Is it because in the end, I’m just as annalistically committed to power and winning as the other side is? And I’m just as — I will just as conveniently dress up my desire for power in moral language? Then you’ve got to face yourself, right, because if that’s the case — well, that’s the recipe for the politics we have now.

MARTIN: I just want to understand what you’re saying but I’m trying to find a way to say this that isn’t so flamboyant. But unilateral disarmament, is that what you’re asking for? You’re asking for the nice people to be nice and let the not nice people run over them? Because I think it could feel that way.

LIU: Yes, it can feel that way. And I think you put it — I think that’s a really important thing. I think — I am asking people to recognize that it can feel that way and that it’s not that way. It feels like being a sucker. It feels like unilateral disarmament. And again, to say that I’m trying to empathize with the other person or trying to realize the ways in which I’m being a bit of a hypocrite when I criticize them for doing X but I was happy with X a few years back under Obama is not to, therefore, forgive them. You can still dislike the thing they’re advocating, right. You can you still mobilize with all of your might and activate every ounce of civic power you can muster to defeat that other guy or that other side. You ought to. I do in my life as a citizen. You can be in the fight. But I think to me, one of the things that you’ve got to recognize is that the subtitle of this book is civic sermons on love, responsibility, and democracy. And responsibility, we’ve talked a little bit about here, right.

But love, like I guess the fundamental question is, do you believe love is for suckers? If you believe love is for suckers, then yes, you know, then maybe you won’t like anything I’m saying. And if you believe love is for suckers, then even if you think you oppose Donald Trump, you are absolutely fueling and feeding his rise if you are somebody who believes love is for suckers. I believe that this notion of civic love, this broader notion of civic religion, it does not require you to be a saint. It does not require you to be an altruist. It just requires you to recognize that we are part of a story bigger than ourselves and that true self-interest is not just about me and my side in this moment getting what I can. It is about recognizing that true self-interest is mutual interest and we’re all better off when we’re all better off. Is there evil in the world? Sure. As dark as things may seem sometimes in our politics, I do believe we’re not done yet.

MARTIN: Eric Liu, thanks so much for talking to us.

LIU: Michelle, it’s been great to be with you. Thank you.