(audience laughing) - Yes, ma'am,
what's your question?
- You spoke a lot about spirituality
in your guiding, applying spirituality.
How would you use spirituality to guide the conversation
on women's choice, abortion,
I think that's really important.
I think both sides, and there's a lot of legitimacy
in spirituality, but also, how would you put that
in the public sphere?
- Yeah, well. (audience applauding)
Thank you.
The spirituality is the path of the heart.
That's all that spirituality is.
When it comes to abortion, I do believe
that it's a moral issue.
But it is to me an issue of private morality
and I trust the moral decision making
and the biological choices of the American woman.
I do not believe the U.S Government has any right
to be making moral decisions for an individual.
(audience cheering)
- You have in the back, yes.
- So, gun control and this conversation with mass shootings.
I guess, with the media not acknowledging, I think,
the other factor of white supremacy.
How do you feel about maybe bringing up
that conversation, and how it could tie
into officers that are white,
killing unarmed black individuals,
where you have white shooters that are leaving,
maybe, obviously not dying, and maybe self afflicted--
- Right, so, if I understand what you're saying,
just so we're on the same page.
No, no, I think I understand, but what you're saying is,
how, as a president would you begin the conversation
in and around white supremacy,
its role in America's mass shootings,
but also in police departments
where I think we've seen on many occasions,
I mean, they showed in, I think it's Philadelphia
where many police were found with extremely racist accounts
and we've seen police are more likely--
- Just a conversation
of saying white supremacy is mental illness
as opposed to when an unarmed black person dies,
that officer is not mentally ill, right?
So, these conversations are being gapped
and not acknowledged in the beginning.
- The FBI said several years ago,
that they felt that the largest threat
of domestic terrorism
in the United States was white supremacy.
And I remember there being political forces on the right
that squelched that conversation
and didn't want to go there.
My comment at the debate about the dark psychic forces,
collectivized hatred, I did talk about this
in both of the debates, I have been talking about it.
When you put racism, bigotry, antisemitism,
homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia together
in one energy field, particularly, see, we thought
several years ago we had reached a point in this country,
not that any intelligent observer thought we didn't have
bigots, racists, et cetera.
But we thought we had reached a point in this country
where there were lines past which we would not go
on both left and right that neither republicans
nor democrats, any serious, a megaphone would be given
to such people as those.
Those levies have fallen.
First of all, they've fallen because of social media
and they've fallen because we have a person,
namely the president of the United States
who's not above harnessing those powers
for his own political purpose.
This has been historically, and is today,
one of the most dangerous things that can exist
in any society.
The power of collectivized hate.
Now, what is happening with such shootings as this
and it has been happening among intelligent observers,
is people are realizing we have a serious problem
on our hands.
And that is why I've talked and I also mentioned it,
like I said, maybe the way I mentioned it was
a little silly, but I said,
when you have collectivized hatred,
you must answer it with collectivized love.
When I heard Jared Kushner say,
that he had said to his father-in-law
about three years ago, there are a lot
of angry people out there and we can harness all that
and make you president, I thought to myself,
I see a lot of wonderful, loving, dignified,
decent people out there.
We could harness all that and change the world.
So, this is a multi-dimensional issue.
On one hand I hope that we will have laws now,
there will be resistance to this,
but we need to give our intelligence agencies,
including law enforcement, including FBI, far more power
to go in there on these websites.
We have to.
They have known that they're there,
just like we give them power when it comes to people,
we have police agencies who know
that if once you start talking about pedophilia, right,
we give resources, we need to give more resources,
but to people who are doing the sex with children thing,
they know what to do, they know how to shut it down.
Not enough of this has been shut down.
Then, we have the gun issues that you've been speaking about
quite eloquently, and I agree with you on all that you said.
First of all, we have to realize we have a serious problem
on our hands.
Secondly we have to give all the external powers,
the power that they need, to go shut it down
in cyber security and we also have to deal
with the gun issues I believe,
just like you were saying in Dayton, the police were there
and how many people died before--
- Nine people dead, yes.
- And we have to realize that is up to each
and everyone of us.
We must now become as serious behind our love
as some people are serious behind their hate.
There are far more lovers than there are haters,
but haters in America today hate with conviction.
Conviction is a force multiplier.
We must love with conviction.
But the love that is a convicted love is not
just a personal love, it's not just a love
for people like you, not just a love
for your own children,
it's also an equal love for children
on the other side of town,
it's love for the children on the other side of the world,
we have to realize in all the ways that I'm talking about,
whether it has to do with traumatized children,
whether it has to do with reckless
and irresponsible and even criminal acts
of militarism, we must be willing to apply love,
rather than an amoral and leading
to immoral, economic principles ordering our society.
The United States of America, we generation
of Americans have to decide what kind of country do we want.
Because we need an entirely new operating system
in this country.
If you're gonna make money, the bottom line,
money untethered to any moral or ethical principle,
do not go being surprised when
all this societal dysfunction arises.
Anybody with any intelligent understanding
of history knows that's what happens
when love does not prevail.
(audience applauding)
- We've got time for one more from this side of the room.
We'll take it from the second row,
your hand was up first, sorry, yeah, yeah.
Last question.
- Hi, so, a lot of the policies that you have in mind sound
really great to a lot of progressives,
but it's so politically polarized
in this country right now that it's not as easy
as just saying what we're gonna do,
you also have to convince the other half of the aisle
to agree with you.
So, how do you plan to bridge the gap
after so much tension and discourse has happened
in the past?
- I have two things to say to that.
First of all, no matter who wins the presidency,
of course we hope it's a democrat,
if Mitch McConnell's still head of the senate,
that person is going to find themselves obstructing
a lot of places.
Second of all, if the consciousness of America is
at a place where they would elect me president,
then I think the consciousness
of America might give it a whole different senate as well.
So, I mean, think about it.
Think of the kind of changes that would be happening
for that to happen.
So, if I'm president, so, it's all about what you have,
but more than that even, my partnership is
with the American people.
None of what we're talking about is going to happen
unless we, the American people, see each
and every one of us as an immune cell.
Donald Trump is an opportunistic infection
that could not have gotten hold of us,
had there not been an enweakened societal immune system.
Too many of us through our chronic disengagement
from politics to our acquiescence
to an economic system that played more
to the advocacy for corporate profits
than to advocacy for the people,
we all, I believe have to take responsibility
for what's happened.
And if we just think the same old, same old,
a better version of same old, same old is going
to defeat that, I obviously do now agree with that.
And if we are open, as Abraham Lincoln said,
we must disenthrall ourselves.
As the case is new, we must act anew.
We are Americans, we were born out of a rambunctious spirit.
We said to tyranny, in 1776, "Hell no.
"We're not doing that anymore,
"we're doing something different'.
We repudiated aristocratic elitist nonsense in 1776
and it's time to do it again.
(audience applauding)
- Marianne Williamson,
everybody. - Thank you.
(edgy music)