Hi, this is Glenn Lowry of the Glenn Show at to Glenn Lowry.substac.com and at blockinghits.tv.

I just want to introduce briefly this week's conversation at the Glenn Show, which is a little bit different than what we ordinarily do.

Lawrence Mead is a professor of political science at New York University and he has a book out called Burdens of Freedom

in which he argues that the cultural inheritance of Europe is fundamental to the success of the American experiment

and that that experiment is threatened to the extent that those coming to the United States from non-European points of origin do not embrace the same individualist cultural orientation which he associates with our European heritage.

He has organized a series of conversations with interested parties such as myself to debate the merits of his argument.

This is my conversation with Lawrence Mead about his book and about that argument.

I push back vigorously and I hope that you will enjoy the conversation. Thank you.

Welcome to the YouTube channel on poverty and culture. Our channel is dedicated to the understanding how culture affects poverty and other social problems.

Through discussions with our guests, we hope to understand that connection more deeply and thus find better answers.

Our host is Larry Mead, a longtime scholar, poverty and welfare reform in the author of the recent Burdens of Freedom.

Our initial ideas about culture come from this book, but the discussions may take us in new directions.

Our discussion today is Glenn Lowry, who is a professor of economics at Brown University and a prominent commentator on social and racial issues.

Okay. First of all, to my audience, welcome. Thank you for attending. I appreciate your interest in this book.

What we're going to be talking about is cultural difference. Where culture really means what we think life's about.

What is important, what we think we should do and say and do and be and all that. That's what life's about.

And the great fact about America, which we really haven't paid attention to, is that our country is really divided between two cultures.

We have a dominant culture which descends from Europe. America, most people in America descend from immigrants who came from Europe and they brought with them a distinctive culture.

It's very individualist and temporal where people are more or less pursued their own goals.

But at the same time, they have a moralistic idea about right and wrong, have attitudes about those things which are typically internalized in early life and which guide them for the rest of their life.

But meanwhile, we also have minorities in America who come from the non-Western world.

And that leads to quite a different culture, although there's a lot of diversity.

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