anthropological record. when we see where the laughs come and notice how quickly people grasp the point, we've got a picture of what the american people understood in the vein of natural law in the 1940s. so one case it's established that jack benny with a bow and arrow is lethal, but phil harris offers him a bet that he can't, ten cents you can't -- a dime you can't hit the apple off the head of donald wilson. benny says, i'll take that bet. wilson says, i don't know about this, and jack benny says, what are you getting upset about? it's our money. [laughter] the laugh was instant and massive, the point, of course, that we can't risk human life for anything as trivial as a sporting bet and a bet of ten cents. ..

i submit when people laugh at that joke they have put in place every critical premise this way. the young man tells his girlfriend, it's all right, we can do this for fun we don't need a commitment. don't worry, anything happens,

now that's how something once regarded as serious in generating new life, they something reduce it to a matter so trivial that some among us will not suffer the least hesitation in throwing way way that life and one of my favorite lines, red skelton said they had a military wedding -- i think they had a military wedding. let's put it this way, there were guns there. that joke is clearly the reflection of a culture that has vanished. it reflects a time when the residents of dog patch u.s.a. somehow didn't think they had a franchise to solve their problems through the simple expedient of getting rid of the child in the womb. there are no shotgun weddings any longer, because marriage is no longer regarded as the necessary framework for sex or because pregnancy may be ended now without the course of marriage. that joke may be taken as a kind of an throw prolong calmics

fragment, a clear sign of a culture that has sifted from the 1940's or even from the 1960's. the test now is of recovering that culture, is a task of teaching again the moral understandings that were once anchored in the culture that has been dramatically eroded, but we have seen the moral recovery in the past, just as we've seen conversion in the past, conversions involving persons and spreading to the rest of society, and just apps we see in the sexual revolution of the 1960's, that revolution has begotten its casualties, its regrets, its deep second thoughts, but it's changed -- but what has changed before may change yet again. the joke about the military wedding reflects a shift in conventions, marking changes of moral import. the question is whether some of these jokes actually touch the things that will not change, the permanent things.

my own hunch is that the mel brooks joke on shooting peasants as though they were clay discs will still be funny years from now, because people will still understand something as dramatically, comically out of scale as destroying human life as a sport horplay thing, but if i'm right, it means that we touch again those recognitions that cannot be extinguished, because they involve things that are truly primary, the things that human beings are constituted to understand, you might say, wherever we are. and of course, certain things we know, may simply fade from our awareness. when lincoln offered his segment on slavery, and we recognized that there was no principle on which to premove brown people, we are being awakened to things that we should have readily grasped and when ronald reagan argued in this same way, the

rewas often, well, of course, he was alerting us to things we should have known, if someone had only posed the question in the right way or framed the problem for us. in the of aftermath of that recent election, scott brown in massachusetts, several commentators remarked that this is after all a center right country. the democrats are the swollen majority, thought it was 1965 all over again, when they could reenact the great -- the search of the great society. now that search of 1965 followed the land slide victory of barry goldwater in 1964, and so let us recall, that when ronald reagan stood up to give that speech for barry goldwater in 1964, the speech that launched its political career, he was not standing up in a country, understood at the time to be center right.

it was quite the opposite. he was thought to be a voice at the far margins of our politics. it is not in fact arguable, that if we have a center right country today, it is because ronald reagan taught anew, some old lessons, in a manner that was accessible and appealing, he taught us to understand ourselves as a political people in a different way, in a way we used to be, a way that the intellectuals told us could never be recovered. but being, that's old political culture was never irrecoverable, because the case for it was there to be made anew, by a political man or woman with the skill to make it in a way that heard people would understand. -- ordinary people would understand. it reminded them the permanent things would not always be seen, that it's precisely the function of teaching, of statesmanship,

to bring them back to us. we find ourselves backing again into the lessons of plato that so much of our knowledge is already tucked away within us, and becomes a matter then of drawing out the things we come to feel we've known all along. the genius of state craft as teaching. is that it reminds us of the things we used to know, and when it is done, with the art of a ronald reagan, it also stirs the recognition that these are things, these are things we have never ceased to know. thank you. [applause]

>> allan c. carlson is the president of the howard center for family, religion, and society. his books include family questions, reflections on the american social crisis, the american way, family and community and the shaping of the american identity, and conjugal america on the purposes of marriage. he has appeared on the pbs news hour, npr's morning edition, all things considered, talk to the nation, voice of america, abc, cbs, and nbc news, cbn, cnn, c-span, australian, czech, and polish tv and eight special pbs productions on family issues, but now for the rest of the story. allan lives on a farm in

winnebago, county, illinois, where he and his wife betsy tend to a one acre vegetable garden, perhaps reflecting his swedish peasant roots, his favorite crop is the potato, particularly the northern red. his fellow swedish americans think he is a very funny guy, which allan admits is a fairly low bar on the humor scale, inasmuch as swedes are notoriously humor challenged, but because of their high regard for his low level swedish humor, he serves as master of ceremonies at the county jewelfest, scandinavian christmas party, where allan modestly reports, knocking them dead with his ole and lena jokes. let's welcome allan c. carlson

address, will the post-family culture shape america. [applause] >> well, thank you, and it's a pleasure to be with you today. odd live enough, like professor arkes, i too want to talk about jokes. ole and lena are a mythical swedish american couple, probably residing in minnesota, notable for their remarkably dysfunctional marriage. one story goes like this. oli and lena grew old and one day oli became sick and one day he was confined to a upstairs bedroom, bedridden, growing weaker and after several weeks of this, the doctor visits, and tells lena, well, oli is just about a goner, i don't think he's going to survive the note.

so lena, being a practical woman, decides she had better start preparing for all the guests who would be coming to the funeral. she begins to bake, starting with loaves of a swedish rye bread. the smell of baking bread is soon wafting through the house. suddenly upstairs, oli's nose twitches and his highs open, limpa, he jerks into a sitting position, swings his legs around and climbs out of bed. it's like a miracle. of half walking, half stumble, he crosses the room, enters the hallway, starts working his way down the stairs. limpa, he says again. he reaches the ground floor, stumbles across the kitchen, pulls himself into a care by a table where pa loaf of freshly

sliced bread sits, he reaches over to take a slice, stop that ole, says lena, as she whacks her hand with the spatula, that limpa bread is for after the funeral. we can still laugh at ole and lena, because they are now out of time. characters from a much earlier here ra of swedish immigration into america. their high deal type, we might say, no longer cysts. cysts -- exists. more importantly, and this is a point made in the prior talk, i think, their dysfunctional marriage also belongs to another here ra. several generations ago, when there were real ole an ole and s divorce would have been rare.

for better or worse, people stayed in troubled marriages, perhaps for the sake of the children, perhaps for other religious and cultural reasons. successful jokes involve making fun of institutions that are strong and stable. the marriage joke, a staple of comedians during the 1950's and 1960's, seems to be fading in our time. symbolically, rodney dangerfield, perhaps the last master of the marriage joke, is recently deceased. it's hard to make fun of an institution that is battered and briewlzed 679 -- bruised. such are marriage and the family in america. marriage rates are now at record lows in this country. the average age of first marriage is at a record high for both men and women. the proportion of adults who will never marry is also at a record level. at the same time the marital fertility rate in america is at

a near record low. meanwhile, 40% of all births are now outside of marriage. a figure steadily climbing again. co-habitation, living together without benefit of clergy, as we used to call it, grows ever more popular, as an alternative to marriage. while the american divorce rate has been fairly stable for a decade or two, it remains at a high level. one of every two marriages still ends in divorce. and finally, gay rights activistactivists are clamoringe right to marry, with some success among the state. there are those, such as harvard historian nancy cott, who argue that these changes simply represent the inevitable evolution of marriage and family. a natural adaptation of a plastic-like institution to new

conditions. industrialization, modernization, and the quest for equality, cott, concludes, has freed marriage from the shackles of the past, allowing it to evolve in to a higher and new form. there is no doubt that the vast process called the industrial revolution brought new pressures to bear on what i prefer to call the natural family. at the most basic level, this process severed the workplace from the home. for all of human history of about, the great majority of humans had lived and worked in the same place, be it a small farm or an artisan's shop or a nomad's tent. under the industrial regime, adults would be pulled out of their homes to labor in factories or offices. serious complications arose over matters such as sex or gender roles, and the care of children.

however, in most of europe and north america, families recovered a significant degree of autonomy through so calmed family wage regimes. constructed by religious leaders, social reformers and morally grounded labor unions, there used to be some, family wage systems limited the intrusion of the industrial principle into the family circle. these systems held that the factories could have only one person per household, normally the husband and father and that that person in turn should receive a family sustaining wage. for working class women, liberation came to mean freedom from having to work in the factories. this allowed mothers to focus on maintaimaintaining autonomous h. this way the family rooted in marriage and focused on procreation and child bearing,

accommodated itself to the new industrial here ra. -- era. it is also true though that such family wage regimes, largely vanished during the last three decades of the 20th century. and are now mostly forgotten. feminist historians, nancy cott being a perfect example, she visit add most welcome and important step in the evolution of marriage and family. a more accurate interpretation is that the disappearance of these regimes has been a major cause of american life family and scenes since 1965. while such systems have flaws, nothing compensated for the loss of their strengths. moreover, rather than being an aspect of social evolution, this transformation of private life walls the direct result of an ideological project, designed to create a post-family order.

this unique ideol ogical socialist and family nighs roots. -- feminist roots. its clearest expression came in sweden, the ancestral home of ole and lena. the project began in the 1930's when a declining marriage rate and sharply decline fertility rate called for radical changes in the swedish home. in 1932, a young socialist intellectual spelled myrdal, she generated a fur or where young mothers would join the men in the labor force where infants and toddlers were cared for

in -- together with her husband, she co-authored the best selling 1934 book, "crisis and the population question." they argued that raising the low swedish birth rate required other changes in the family, fathers should be freed from their distinctive bread winner role, mothers should be freed from home making. all adults must work outside the home, while massive welfare benefit, including state clothing allowances, day care subsidies, universal health care, meals at school, state summer camps, low interest marriage loans, these should pay for the costs of parenthood. on the surface, the couple appeared to elevate the public importance of marriage. at a deeper level though, they saw its shrinkage. the home resting on marriage would largely cease to be an economic unit. the contemporary feminist

historian explains, the murdals adopted a successful trojan horse tactic. they would smuggle socialist forms into capitalist societies, at its most vulnerable spot -- the home. family and population policies would set the stage for the politicization of private life by radically altering everyday life. how successful was the couple in pressing this same scheme on swedish society? while enjoying some policy successes during the late 1930's, they actually went into retreat during the 1940's and 1950's. remarkably, the mothers and homemakers of sweden both from the middle class and among a remarkable group that could be fairly labeled the desperate swedish socialist house wives,

it would be a great television show, wouldn't it? they modeled a successful political counterattack. they defended family wages for their husbands, and ensured that the welfare state of that era reinforced the mother at home. during the late 1960's, however, alva myrdal and other socialist feminists pushed for change. the big victory came in 1970, when they successfully replaced the taxation of married couples as a unit, which used the te mandatory individual taxation. given sweden's highly progressive tax system, the single change had the immediate effect of sharply raising the taxes paid by one income, father-headed households. the home maker became an expensive luxury. meanwhile, the government quickly ramped up day care subsidies. in 1965, only 3% of all swedish

preschool children had been in some form of parental -- non-parental day care. by the early 1980's, virtually all 1 to 4-year-olds were in state day care. yet, perhaps this was good for young women, allowing them to move in to challenging positions of power and authority. where they could display their talents. in fact, something much more peculiar had occurred. to this day, for example, female corporate c.e.o.'s in sweden are almost unknown. and the number of women work being in the fields of forestry, agriculture has declined. however, female employment rose by over 300% in the government-run fields of social service, day care, education, and health. in the words of two israeli

sociologists who have studied the change, the swedish welfare state quotes channeled women in disproportionate numbers into feminine occupational niches. which is child care, elder care, nursing, and elementary education. swedish women still do so-called women's work. but they now do so for the government, rather than for their own families. put another way, sweden successfully socialized women's work in the labor of women themselves. the goal of socialism had always been to eliminate the family as a meaningful economic and social unit, where husband would no longer be dependent in her husband, for young children on parents, for elderly parents on grown children. all would be equally dependent on the equally comprehensive welfare state.

yvonne herdman, sweden's leading feminist historian, describes this post-family culture as the triumph of red sweden and adds, new ideas of gender replaced old fashioned ideas about the couple. we witnessed here the birth of the an androgenous, that's sexless, individual, and i speak about the explicit ideal and the depth of the provider and his housewife. we thus witnessed old ideas popping up, ideas which had been buried for decades, but ideas which quickly found their advocates and became developed. people, men and women, eager to speak the new tongue of gender. has the same post-family culture, built on socialist and feminist assumptions, made any progress in america? have we americans also learned

how to speak the new tongue of gender? and accommodate ourselves to the vast expansion of government, which it seems to require. we have. although in more convoluted and less obvious ways. the swedes at least debated these issues more or less in the open. our debates have rarely been as clear and focused. all the same. there have been key changes. in july 1964, the u.s. house of representatives voted to add the word sex to title vii of the proposed civil rights act. the section prohibiting discrimination in employment. the amendment was actually offered by a curious coalition of dixie crat segregationists.

the latter group saw an opportunity to tear down the family wage system. a few voices warned of dire consequences if this curious coalition carried the day. starting in 1969, some years later, the equal employment opportunity commission moved aggressively andton family wage. and indeed, predictably, between 1970 and 1990, the wage fell by over 20%, which pushed more women into the labor market, simply to make ends meet. also in 1969, the u.s. congress approved a major tax reform, house ways and means chairman wilbur mills responding to criticism from single persons, that had tax code favored marriage, successfully ended the practice of income splitting in america. the tax burden carried by married couples rose. and the marriage tax penalty,

which still haunts us today, emerged. in 1973, the u.s. actually came within a hair's breath of creating a massive federal child development entitlement. fortunately, president richard nixon vetoed the measure. in a statement reportedly drafted by his aide, patrick j. buchanan, nixon said the bill would committed the vast moral authority of the federal government to decide if community approaches to child rearing as against the child centered approach. alas, congress turned around and quickly approved sell other measures, providing day care grants to the poor and child care tax credits to the middle and upper classes. the broad results in america have also been in the same direction as in sweden. it is true that our welfare

state estimate remains somewhat limited, although president obama is trying to change that. our voluntary religious and charitable sectors still the accelerated flow of american women into the labor force has been more complex. or pluralistic than in sweden. these have grown from 263 billion in 1980 to 1.3 trillion. the number has nearly tripled. also like in sweden, the great influx of married women into the work force has been channeled heavily into the governmental sector and today, three out of ever four american preschool

children are in non-parental day care. all federally subsidized. in short, tasks that had formerly been performed by families in their own homes, primary health care, infant, toddler and of a-school care, maternal nursing and so on, these have been substantially turned over to the state or to state-funded entities. public patriarchy, some feminine theorists call it. higher taxes, which have fallen with particular force on remaining one income homes, with three or more children, helped pay the cost. achieved incrementally and with few open idea lodge cam clashes, it might be called the swedish post-family model, via the american plan. all the same, there are important pockets of resistance and all of them are growing.

most dramatically, home-schooled families have mobilized to defend the integrity of their home economies, by focusing on the most important of family responsibilities, education. emerging in the face of state hostility, they have won legal recognition across the country and are producing a disproportionate number of the nation's morally grounded and creative young adults. they are a special embarrassment to public schools. which have long operated on a socialist industrial model, with ever more discouraging results. some american religious groups have done a solid job in building new affirmation of the natural family. under the leadership of figures such as page patterson and developing a powerful new pr apologetic.

another group, the latter day saints or the mormons, provide an important example of how in the faith turmoil, they can maintain their own culture of marriage, with measurable positive results. i also find reason for optimism in the growing number of home businesses in america. taking advantage of new technologies, such as the home computer, and the economic democracy of the internet, they are powering a new age of family entrepreneurship. more importantly from a world historic perspective, they are also beginning to heal the great breach between work and home, a divide exploited by the advocates of the post-family order. ronald reagan understood what was at stake. in a speech given in chicago in 1988, he said, the family is the bedrock of our nation, but it is

also the engine that gives our country life. it's for our families that we work and labor, so that we can join around the dinner table, bring our children up the right way, care for our parents, and reach out to those less fortunate. it is the power of the family that holds the nation together, that gives america her conscience, and that serves as the cradle of our nation's soul. so true. and in their better moments, even ole and lena would agree. [applause] >> from modest origins in

colorado, population 185, where she began a community paper at the age of 10, jean eishtain has risen to international prominence, writing and editing over 20 books and 500 scholarly essays, presenting several hundred lectures around the world, earning nine honorary degrees, holding positions at princeton, harvard, vanderbilt, georgetown and chicago, receiving awards from the gag i'm and rockefeller foundations. serving on the boards for advanced study at princeton and the national humanities center and delivering the gifford lectures at the university of edinburgh. today, she simultaneously holds

the laura spellman rockefeller professorship at the university of chicago and the levy chair in the foundations of american freedom at georgetown university. but she is all of that and much more. as a wife and mother of four children and grandmother of three, she is a woman for all seasons. let's welcome to the regent university platform, jean bethke eishtain, to address the critic and the cull tour. [applause] >> well, good morning, i'm delighted to be here. i'm afraid that unlike our first two splendid speakers, i am going to be jokeless. this morning. so -- i'm sorry. so you'll have to bear with me. everybody is a critic. it seems to be a natural right

among americans to gripe about pretty much everything, but politics above all. how many times have you heard they're hall a bunch of crooks? trust in politicians and the political process appears to be at a naydear among us. it has plummeted. now for many decades, cultural elites appointed themselves as the designated critics of the culture. today's elite criticism finds in the outpourings of the ordinary citizens about the state of our union, little but ignorant fanaticism. in turn, some of those of attacked suggest that criticizing the country in severe terms is tantamount to a lack of patriotism. in return, others replay, shout,

that the only worthy patriot is the harsh critic, because america is so obviously guilty of so many terrible things. now, it is not my intent to make my way through all this noise. instead, i want to start at another place as we say. when we think about the hebrew prophets of old, we are reminded that they were a part of and loved the people they were criticizing. they did not see themselves as above it all, or somehow on the outside, launching thunder bolts from on high. reminding myself of this, i recalled a very wise comment made several years ago by cardinal frances george of the great city of chicago, who stated that you cannot criticize effectively what you do not love.

now, he had in mind criticisms of his church, that frequently enough comes from a stance of bitter animus. but similarly, one can see such animus at work in zoom criticisms of contemporary america. it is, if you will, the flipside of the old notion of american exceptionalism. you have some idea of what that entailed. american exceptionalism. the claim that america was an exceptional nation, that was ordained, anointed, in a historic sense, to carry on a particular mission in the world, one that lifted up at all times and carried forward the message of freedom. now, this position of american exceptionalism gets a very bad press now hey days. -- nowadays, but there were and there are several versions of

it. one lends itself to aggressive nationalism, the other to robust patriotism. and there's a difference between the two. for the patriot, america is indeed exceptional in a number of ways. that is simply a fact. but that does not at all india that we treat the love others have for their particular countries lightly. instead, we recognize this. and work with it, so to speak. surely, abraham lincoln's idea, put forward in the agony of his country at the time that america is the last best hope on earth is an expression of the gentler form of american exceptionalism. still, there are among us critics who make no distinction whatsoever between the belligerent and the more

lincolnan versions, who can edemic it outright. but they do so in a manner that is a species of a noxious of american example, that is america as a leader of injustice, racism, imperialism, classism, run amuck capitalism, globalism, you name it, if it is bad, america somehow embodies it. now, put forward as criticism, it is in fact a type of conspiracy theory. if anything bad is happening anywhere, america's bloody hands are bound to be involved. now in response to this sort of virulent outburst, some defenders of america, we need to acknowledge this, go over board in another direction and exonerate us altogether.

as historic sins and crimes and misdemeanors. they offer too rosy a view of us as a nation. thus, we found a great deal of become and forth labeled criticism, but it takes us nowhere. it is by now, so much background static that does not assist the ordinary citizen in thinking about how we might go about loving our country, and criticizing her at the same time. those who do not love their country as american citizens will be entirely unmoved by the argument i will set forth, but up can't win them all, as they safe. so let me step back and think about a framework set forth many years ago now by h. richard

nadir, a distinguished theologian. and an oldie but goodie called christ and nature, h. richard nadir identified five different possible positions taken by christians historically and their relationship to the wider cultural surround in which they found themselves. and these were christ against culture, the christ of culture, christ above culture, christ and culture in paradox and christ as the transformer of culture. now, can we take our bearings, as we think about criticism, more generally, whether it comes from a stance of christian belief or not, from nadir's categories? i think we can. is the critic against or above his own society? does the critic seek to transform the society from

within? is there a paradoxical relationship between critic and culture. how do we sort this out? why is it important. nebuhr was inextent that the profitabilities were not airtight categories. they blend into each other. they need not be seen as opposites, but as part and parcel of an overall stance, but the against part cannot be one that is stand alone, involving brittle condemnation from a hottie presumed moral superiority. now, when i hear some of the contemporary radical critics who hey peer to loathe the america they criticize, i am reminded of the anti-nazi german theologian of the radical.

bonnhoffer argues that the radical begrudges god his creation, for the radical seeks a self-sovereignty, incompatible with recognition of our indebtedness to others in the past, as well as in the present, and of course, our indebtedness in the first instance to our creator. the radical bonnhoffer tells us is all ultimacy, that is, every goal is annum mate goal, every gem has to do with sacrificing the here and now, for some goal in history. that is to say, all good is located at some future point. so we have contempt for the present, but boy, if we just destroy this and destroy that in the future, we'll get to that which we can call good. we must hid ourselves of this

present through any and all possible means. if it means trampling on people's lives, controlling them from above, ignoring their cries for understanding, well, so be it. the radical knows better somehow. now, bonnhoffer continues that this is not a stance that the christian can embrace. for we are taught that creation is good. that doesn't mean everything that's happening at the present is good, but it does mean that there must be some good to embrace in the present. that there are of a all blessings all around us, even in the most dire circumstances and bonnhoffer's redire beyond anything we can imagine, although if you believe some of our most belligerent critics, they're in danger of some

gestapo entering the door and hauling them off for their political advocacy at any moment. a few years ago i attended a conference in europe, in berlin, and there were patrol meant intellectuals, both american and german, who claimed that guantanamo bay was really set up to become a prison camp, where american citizens critical of the bush administration would be sent. now, this was so preposterous, one didn't know what to say other than that is pre postrace. now this engendered knowing looks all around you, that you were either a suspicious sympathizer of that administration, or you had your head in the sand and did not want to face what was coming down the pike. now, of course, there is an

exact mirror image of this radical negation stance to be found and what might be called equally radical affirmation. and this would call on the christ with culture side. we make -- we face the critical distance, if you will. i refer here to those who equate all that is good with american culture, who grow heated and defensive if you note our historic shortcomings, and our hubris on display from time to time. as the negative radicals find you in league with the enemy, if you do not agree with them 100%, so, the totalistic defender of all things america, who equates america with a religious project, sees you as dangerous and perhaps unpatriotic, if you criticize your country. you get lumped in with a radical

negators. now neither of these stances embodies authentic cultural critique. one overdoes it to the point of loathing her own country and finding nothing good in it. the other rejects and abandons her birth right as a thinking being and a citizen by endorsing as good, all that is going on. now, surely, this cannot be either. certainly not if you are a christian and hold that human beings are fallen creatures. christians are enjoined both to love the world and to be against the world. similarly, citizens should both love their country, if that country is at least a minimally decent place and america meets that standard and goes much beyond it, and understand, when and where she must be held to account and even chastised. they do this because they love

the country. and they want to rise closer to the blessed community of which martin luther king, one of our civic of prophets, spoke. let me offer an example of what political theorists michael walter calls, the connected critic. the person who speaks from a stance of deep immersion in that which he and she criticizes, who does not exist in some lofty world apart, who does not send down those lightning bolts of condemnation on any and all who disagree with him. here, there are many examples in our history to choose from. mine will be from frederick douglas, the great abolitionist, a speech he delivered in rochester, new york, july 4, 1862, independence day. much of the speech is pointed, even bit terp. -- bitter.

douglas cries, you cannot drag a man in chains, before the altar of liberty and expect him to celebrate on a day that mocks his condition. douglas offers a blistering comparison of the condition of the slave when measured against the declaration of independence and the preamble to the constitution, but then he goes on to say,. not condemning these principles. i do not think they're phony, false. and that the founders were nothing but wicked hypocrites. no. these are great principles, these are great documents. i share those principles, the slave aspire to them, we want to be part of the country too, not apart from it. we too want to be freed citizens. so you see the dynamic here. and in niebuhr's scheme of thing it would be the christ with and

against culture position. so here we see the would-be citizen with and against culture. one both criticizes and ex tolds. -- extols. so i submit does the critical patriot, whether he or she is the believer or not. the aim of criticism is transformation. the critic in america is so fortunate, because our civic aims can always be measured against our great founding documents. we do not have to invent anew every day some principles to guide us. something that is impossible in any case. so the basic questions for the critics will be measured against our ideals of ordered liberty, freedom consistent with a common good. human dignity, an america as the last best hope, that alerts us

to our responsibilities in the world at large. if the critic functions entirely outside this framework, her criticism will, at best, be entirely irrelevant. we do not need to import full blown ideologies from marxism to hard core libertarianism to serve as a basis for criticism, not if we are deeply connected to the american apology, acknowledge our love for her and acknowledge our indebtedness to her. now i have thought about that indebtedness a lot recently. perhaps because as one grows older, one reflects in greater detail on one's past. my immigrant grandparents of beloved memory, on my mother's side of the family, came here as children, impoverished germans from russia, so-called volga

germans. they did stoop labor in the sugar beet fields of northern colorado, living at first in sawed huts, finding themselves covered in layers of dirt as they awakened every morning, they were out there every day with the hot noontime sun beating down and that can get brutal in colorado, as i can testify. they worked until dusk and then they started again at dawn. eventually, once my grandparents had married, they acquired slowly a bit of land, that expanded to a bit more, but the dawn to dusk work didn't lighten very much. that indeed is the image with which i associate them, always working hard, loving their families, insisting that their grandchildren gain an uninterrupted education for some of their own children, including my mother, left school of a the eighth grade to work on the farm.

how quickly, this is america after all, how quickly, things went from that economic hardship and daily relentless toil, to grandchildren and great grandchildren being doctors, lawyers, teachers, civic benefactors of all kind, most importantly, mothers and fathers as were their grandparents and great grandparents before them, deeding a legacy of decency, hard work, love of family, love of country. now, how could i possibly condemn a country that made all this possible for me, and for so many others? the element of lofting and resentment and so much contemporary criticism, coming from people who are living lives america made possible, i'm thinking here of the

professoreate owe special live is simply beyond me, so i will remain a connected critic, a political patriot, one who understands when what an astonishing proposition america is, and how she must they have be an object of idolr idolatry,t neither an object of scorn. thank you very much. [applause] >> i feel the need for a 30 second standup. let's stretch just a bit. 30 seconds.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] snod [inaudible conversations] >> all right, you may be seated now.

>> the house will be in order. thank you. good to see such a large crowd, on a day that promised ill weather. and good to see so many young people in the audience. we have -- [applause] >> our age range here is, i would say, from mid teens up to

and -- well,. [laughter] my age. >> it's a little known fact, the university of prove certificate length clear career >> he was on the fencing team. and in two years of varsity competition, he had a perfect record. eight bouts, eight losses, no wins. now, paul may not have been a sterling at least, but who among us that is ever had moses come to our defense? when paul wrote a book review in

the weekly standard, attacking one of those books who claimed shakespeare did not write one of his plays, the anti-shakespeare crowd attacked him in the next issue, but who should come to paul's defense with a brilliant scholarly rebuttal, none other than charlton heston. palm said that was like having moses come to his defense. paul's books include "shakespeare's rome, republic and empire," "creature and create core, myth making and english romanticism." "gilligan unbound, pop culture in the age of globalization ♪ . and "literature and the economics of liberty, spontaneous order and culture."

he rights for the weekly standard, reason and the claremont review of books. paul received the prize for scholarship in austrianan school economics and served on the national council of the humanities from 1992 to 1999. let's welcome paul cantor to address the unpredictability of culture. [applause] >> according to the clock, i have five minutes by our schedule, but i'm told i can speak for my full 20 minutes. thank you for very much for that introduction. as you may have gathered, dr. dunn asked us for some humiliating facts about our past. i should have told him, just wait for my lecture, that will be humiliating enough. think anyway, i've taken -- any way, i've taken very seriously

the topic of this symposium and i'm going to speak about american culture. as an english professor, i think of culture meaning primarily the arts and i've recently become especially interested in popular culture, and can say in all modesty, that i'm regarded as onette world's foremost authorities on the simpsons. so i'm going to largely talk about television, the movies today, i feel like the odd man out here, but in the presence of ronald reagan, and groucho marx, i feel like i can speak about some respectability here. so focusing on the popular culture, i make strong predictions about the future of america. american culture production increases at an average rate of 3.7% per year, topping out at 7.6% and never failing between 2.2% on an annualized basis.

this will go relative to television and video games. motion picture production will peak in 2014 and there after, suffer a precipitous decline as the simultaneous retirement of james cameron and jerry brook i'mer. by 2020, video game production will have outdistanced motion picture and television production by a factor of two, culminating in the release of grand theft auto 27, which will be purchased by every single person on the planet. on a more optimistic note, in 2020, the simpsons will still be airing sundays at 8:00 p.m., although the fox network will have long since been taken over by the federal government, for

reasons of national security. [laughter] there you have it. a fine set of american predictions complete with percentage figures, accurate, i assure, you to one decimal point. americans like to believe that the future is predictable, and in pre-exist mathematical terms, because we desperately want the future to be predictable, we assume that somehow it must be, and listen eagerly to anyone to claims to be able to tell us what will happen tomorrow or the next day or one year from now or 10. since the world is simply awash with prediction, at any given moment, one out of a thousand will turn out to have been correct and we think we have discovered the new -- if we look at history, we see an unending succession of predictions that turned out to have been wrong and that should teach us a healthy skepticism about the ability of the human race to foretell its future. this is especially true in the

realm of popular culture, even in the short run. big budget movies that are supposed to be sure fire hits routinely tanked at the box office, while every year produces sleepers. movies that can barely get financing, but go on to garner huge audiences and academy awards. the record of long-term cultural prediction is even more cultural. think of all the hollywood careers that were ruined in the case of people who dismissed the talking picture as a passing fad. let's face it. sculpture is the realm of the un -- culture is the realm of the unpredictable, that should give pause to anyone trying to predict the future of american culture in the 21st century. did anyone in 1900, have the feintest idea what the cultural world would look like in the world 2000. in the literary world, did anyone foresee that by the middle of the 20th century being some of the best literature would be coming out of latin america, africa and

asia. in the musical world, did anyone in 1900, with the possible exception foresee that with the decade, composers would begin to dispense with melody and harmony. more importantly, did i in 1 in the cultural world in 1900, even take notice of something called moving pictures. and predict that this form of popular amusement would go on to become the greatest art form of the 20th century. :

>> indeed do we need to draw some fundamental distinctions between the world of physical nature studied by science and the world of human culture, studied by people like me. the planet whose orbits carefully chart are not themselves astronomers. jupiter and neptune are blind and deaf to any claims we make about where they will be in 10 of our earth years. but not so with human beings who have their own ideas about their future. and the cultural realm, human beings are making predictions about other human beings. (accucapnt trial version) and the predict these may well react to what they predict doors

have to say about them. they might do the opposite of what is predicted of them just to prove the would be profits wrong. in short, cultures around the free will or the participants may change their minds at any moment and often act on women. i've been studying the history of cultural production carefully, and i've come to one conclusion. culture profits will usually be wrong because the people actually creating the cultural future are more creative than the people predicting it. (accucapnt trial version) [laughter] >> the people asked to make cultural prophecies by virtue of being in a position of authority to do so may well be the least likely to predict accurately. precisely because they are authorities, they tend to be bested in the past and hands to establish matters of culture. they tend to read the culture of future on the model of the culture past. this is just another way of saying that these authorities are usually academics.

and here we are. academics have perfect 2020 vision in hindsight. they are, however, generally (accucapnt trial version) poor profits. they can be very good at analyzing our kids to quality, but they are not as good at discovering it or recognizing it when it comes along, especially in unexpected places. they are, in fact, among the last acknowledged new development in culture precisely because of the role as custodians and conservatives of the culture of the past. this is particularly true when it comes to the development of new cultural media. academics tend to understand new medium by the rules of the established media and they judged the new medium deficient (accucapnt trial version) by the standards of the old. too many academics, motion pictures for a long time for longtime look-alike bad stage plays. by contrast ordinary people began to realize that the motion picture was a great new art form of the 20 century, as early as its second decade.

the record of academics with regard to the emergence of cinemas in art form does not inspire faith in them as cultural profits. like generals, academics often seem to be finding the last cultural war. they expected feels to be like novels or plays, and complain (accucapnt trial version) when they did not give up the interiority of their characters or did not obey the unity. when television came along, many academics treated tv shows as substandard movies. because the history of culture since the 19th century has become increasingly bound up, with a history of new media, academics have had a really hard time keeping up with new cultural development, let alone getting out in front of them a. it may be painful to give up our faith in the predict build of culture, but at the price of uncertainty, we should in fact welcomed the unpredictability of culture because it means that (accucapnt trial version) culture remains around human freedom. now, having totally undermines

any credibility i might have as a cultural profit, i want nevertheless to pursue my assigned task by means of a single case study of predicted culture future in america. i will deal with a remarkable example of -- by lindsay. lindsay was a minor american poet and his book on the moving picture is virtually unknown to the general public. that deals sirsi with if not the very first. and this book offers a good lesson at times it can restore one's faith in the possibility (accucapnt trial version) forcing the cultural future, but at other times it serves as a warning against the pitfalls of trying to out guess the creative forces in a new media. and assessing lindsay as a cultural profit we can then begin with a simple fact that it was writing a book on the art of the moving picture at all in

1915. that is at a time when virtually all cultural authorities dismissed movies as a low form of popular entertainment. this was arguably the earliest possible moment when such a book could have been written with any degree of plausibility. in 1915, the evidence was at (accucapnt trial version) hand for the first time that the motion picture could be a genuine art form. the movie a movie about the struggle between rome and carthage had come out in italy in 1940, and just have been released in the united states. and of course the birth of a nation had just created perhaps the greatest sensation that any film ever has. even bigger than avatar. [laughter] >> many film critics today would say that these two were the first truly great films in movie history. they are both epic and subject matter and they both push the (accucapnt trial version) existing limits of the cinematic art introducing for example new camera techniques.

and lindsay minister proclaimed the cells as artistic masterpieces at just the moment they came out. this kind of in the recognition of a turning point in culture is very rare in the history of art criticism. to draw an analogy, it is as if someone in 1588 do the first great elizabethan play, and on the spot to proclaim the dawn of a great new era in popular theater in england. lindsay himself draws this parable. face with a tiring tying (accucapnt trial version) achievement in his movie and tolerance, lindsay pulls out all the stops in his praise, griffith is the ungrammatical byron of the films, but certainly as magnificent and byron and since he's the first of his gun, i for 1 a.m. willing to name him with marla. just as moral did with the elizabethan theater, griffin and motion picture theater, he was the full new medium while at the same time scoring and unprecedented commercial success. what i find so extraordinary is

the way lindsay, riding right when the cells were being released, singles out his (accucapnt trial version) masterpieces precisely the words that film critics to the state hold up as the tribes of the early silent cinema, birth of a nation, and tolerance. to be sure, lindsay praises many works that do not appear today on anybody's list of the 100 greatest movies of all time. sometimes the movies he talks about simply no longer existed. reading the book is liking a voice to the island of lost reels. as the credits roll by, such a little tree, what the daisy said, neptune's daughter, oil and water, the mine owners and daughter, and two of the more provocative titles, the wild (accucapnt trial version) girl of the sierras, and my personal favorite, land of the headhunters. it's a sobering expense to realize that films that lindsay values highly and holds up as models of the arts have disappeared entirely.

lindsay is particular eloquent about another film that is evidently been lost called the battle hymn of the republic that he calls him on the two most significant photo plays. let me remark that the motion pictures were often called photo place then. it's an interesting little sign of how things, but anyway, the two most significant, the other (accucapnt trial version) is his recently well-known 1914 judith of the studio. lindsay insists that every student of american art should see this film. already in 1915, lindsay is involved in what we now call cat information that he said a battled him, this film should be studied in high schools and universities until the canons of art for which it stands are established in america. let's remember that lindsay was right and time when most people thought of films as something to give audiences a moment's pleasure. by contrast, lindsay actually predicts that films would (accucapnt trial version) eventually be archived. he writes there will be

available at certain centers collections of films a global to the standard dictionary and encyclopedia britannica. without exactly forcing the videocassette or the dvd, he did look forward to the ready availability of movies and people's homes. he writes photo libraries are an adult, as the book circulated libraries. admittedly, lindsay failed to receive blockbuster or netflix, but for someone writing in 1950, he deserves a lot of credit just for realizing that films are not throwaway items but will have (accucapnt trial version) lasting value and would be recycled endlessly and various forms of reproduction. at least that's true of the birth of a nation. though evidently not of the land of the headhunter. and here we come to the pitfalls of instantaneous information. we are too impressed by lindsay's ability to identify cinematic classics at the moment they appear. but we must also be troubled by his tendency to get carried away by what looked to us in

retrospect like a momentary enthusiasm. he evidently ranks the never to be forgotten birth of a nation, (accucapnt trial version) blow, and call the, the long since forgotten about him of the republic. this is a reminder of the fact that contently criticism is likely to be inconsistent. even a sharp critic may mistake what turned out to be and passing fad for lasting artistic contributions. that is why the test of time is crucial to the process of information. it may take years to sort out the wheat from the chaff. that is also one reason why criticism works better as a retrospective science than a predictive science. if we try to infer the future (accucapnt trial version) from the present, we are likely to go wrong precisely because we need the future to find out what really is important and of long lasting significance in our own day. still, lindsay's very impressive that he genuinely has a grasp of the big picture and explicitly states it is running about one of the apical shares in history. at times even sounds like a

great media profit. he writes edison is the new gutenberg. it's amazing, 1950 he is saying that. he has invented the new printing. the state that realizes this may (accucapnt trial version) lead the soul of america day after tomorrow. here plenty introduces a new issue and shows his understanding of the larger context of cultural development. the art of the moving picture has an entire chapter called california and america. lindsay was quick to grasp more significance of the fact that by 1915 the american movie industry had largely migrated from the new york new jersey area where it originated to los angeles. lindsay understood that this move was made largely because of requirements of outdoor filming. the course for reliable good weather. (accucapnt trial version) but lindsay sense that something people was happy. a shift in american culture geography. at a time when the dodgers were still in brooklyn, and the giants in new york, he correctly thought the balance of power between the east coast and the

west was finally tilting towards the pacific. he writes, california indeed stand a chance to achieve through the films and utterance of our own, will this land furthest west be the first to capture the inner spirit of this newest and most curious of the arts? lacey realizes how much is at (accucapnt trial version) stake in the question whether one locale will dominate the movie business. he talks about the long-standing dominance of boston and american culture. patriotic art students he rides have discussed with mingled irony an aberration the boston domination of the only american culture of the 19th century, namely literature. boston still controls the textbook in english and dominates our high school. lindsay wants to see the cultural domination of boston broken. some of us view with a peculiar thrill the prospect that los (accucapnt trial version) angeles may become the boston of the photoplay. in retrospect, we can see that lindsay was right to think that shifting the cultural center of

america from boston to los angeles would be quite a revolution. it's just that many have viewed the prospect not have a peculiar thrill, but with a peculiar horror. lindsay himself criticizes california in terms that rang true to this day. he says the enemy of california since the state is magnificent but they'll. he says the citizens of the state lacked the richest of the (accucapnt trial version) aesthetic and religious tradition. and then lindsay makes perhaps his most astonishing and provocative prediction. this apparent thinness, california has in common with the routing photoplay. in the motion picture. which is at times as shallow and it's not as the shadow it throws up on the screen. this newness california has in common with all photo plays. it is a thrillingly possible for the state and the art to acquire spiritual tradition and depth together. today we might make a point in this way, hollywood has about as (accucapnt trial version) much depth as a flatscreen tv.

[laughter] >> lindsay's and outs about california have been shattered by many cultural critic's ever since the yet to lindsay hopes that sharing a fresh start, the state in the movie industry might together grow into something richer, culturally. by standing for freedom and openness, california ap demises much of its best in america. and it was a fitting setting for a young vibrant dynamic movie industry. but lindsay recognizes that california stands for something else in america. the threat of lawlessness and a (accucapnt trial version) lack of cultural conditions that after all, california's the last outpost of the wild west. lindsay writes the moving picture likes the california gold finders of 1849 making colossal fortunes in two or three years have the same glorious responsibility and occasionally of the sheriff. amazing claim in 1915. we cannot hold lindsay for leaving unresolved the question

of whether california's cultural leadership is good or bad for america. which is still struggling with this issue nearly a century later. what is impressive is that (accucapnt trial version) lindsay was able to finally these problems as early as 1950. this is exactly the sort of development that usually flies right under the radar with most cultural critics. lindsay was a student enough to spot a cultural to non-what other people saw ripples on the water. lindsay teaches an important lesson, be on the look out for seemingly insignificant developments that may have unintended and widespread consequences. so on the basis of what we have learned from briefly studied lindsay i want now ventured a few modest prediction of my own. (accucapnt trial version) the future of american culture will be very different from what we expect it to be. or what we currently predicted some of the things we value in our culture today will survive into the future and be valued and. by the same token though, many

things without in our culture will be forgotten and suffer the fate of the vastly geordie of cultural productions and history of living. transit we're barely noticing at the moment will turn out to have all sorts of unintended consequences and to have transformed american culture in ways we cannot imagine that i (accucapnt trial version) would love to be able to tell you we are a great sub shift is occurring but unfortunate i'm not up to the test that i will say this much. it is very likely happen in the last place most of us expected. that generally means it is not happening in the media rounds we are now gotten used to and which we therefore they are all important, namely motion pictures and television. with a history of media teaches us is that new media have a way of sticking up honest and ambushing us culturally. now all this may sound obvious, for me to say that the future is unpredictable is probably making (accucapnt trial version) people nervous here thinking that only bad things will

happen. so let me end on a somewhat optimistic note. indeed, let me now take back much of what i have been saying and question whether culture is all that radically transformed which between 1902000 that if we look at the depot but in the media we cannot help being struck by the deep discontinuities. a late victorian would be amazed by television and probably at first of all buy it. confronted by a new medium, we are always struck precisely by its novelty and usually feel (accucapnt trial version) unnerved by it. but what the media portrays may not be all that new and different. my very late victorian surviving into the 1990s would at first no doubt be shocked by the simpson. but if you could settle down with the show, he might overcome his initial dismay and begin to see something familiar in it. the fact that it comes in weekly installments, the way it combines humor and sentimentality, the huge cast of

quirky and lovable characters. the creation of an entire imaginary community, the topical references and political satire. (accucapnt trial version) i hope you can already hear my eminent victorian saying, i've seen all this before. it's just like charles dickens. [laughter] >> we can get so wrapped up in distinctions among the media that we forget that by and large, they are all used to doing the same thing, to tell stories. and often while the media change, the stories remain the same. look at the way dickenson stories have kept circulating in movies and on television. i think that is a cause for hope. i will end with a quotation from (accucapnt trial version) a to classic of american popular culture, a movie in which our hero, ronald reagan, did not get the girl. in fact, famously he didn't even get the part. i'm talking of course about casablanca. and i will go some of its most memorable lines. it's still the same old story, a fight for love and glory, even

as time goes by. and that's the best prediction i can make. [applause] >> if you and i are alike, i think we are. . .

>> the number seven is the divine number for perfection. now, we need to perfect our break, reducing it from 10-7 so that we can get into our question and answer session more quickly. so let's take a short break, return. please line up here at the head of either aisle to ask questions. thank you. [inaudible conversations] ♪ [inaudible conversations]

>> we have quite a line up on that aisle, but only a couple on this aisle. we need test get a few more folks down n here. we have already had a full day, and it has only begun. now we'll proceed to our question and answer session. this afternoon we have three other excellent speakers. so we have a lot to look forward to. now i want to thank you for coming and for your excellent attention. this is remarkable. our fifth symposium. they seem to get better every

year if that is, indeed, possible. so thank you all for making this such a productive event. all right. we will begin now with our questions and answers. because there are more of you then of you we are going to start on this side. >> hello. this is a question for mr. kanter. i wanted to know, can culture profits redeem themselves to speak about american culture with prophetic accuracy and insight? >> i'm not sure i understand the question. could you elaborate a bit on it. >> in your speech you were talking about culture profits and how that you believe that they cannot predate accurately. what i want to know is can they redeem themselves? >> i am not sure about redeem themselves. that is, i guess, my problem. i do not believe that the cultural future is predictable.

again, because i think that the people created are so much more imaginative than the people who try to predicted. i don't think it is an issue of redeeming in the sense that the example, it does an awfully good job. i tried to stress that. someone writing in 1915 to realize as much as they did. i mean, he made so many mistakes in that book. i did not go in -- for example, he predicted sound would never work in movies and if it did it would make movies worse. that's so ridiculous to us now, but he had all sorts of reasons for that. he was used to silent movies. the earliest attempts at sound movies were pretty bad technically. that is the problem. but i don't, let me put it this way. i don't think there is any think cultural province could to do that is better unless they learn some humility based on studying the record failure of profits.

i really, when i set out with this task in mind, maybe i should take a look at how people have done in the past predicting the future. it is a lesson in humility if you study, even someone as intelligent and successful as lindsay. there is so much he misses. the way i came to see it is what looks like a limitation to the cultural profit turns out to be a challenge to the artist. so, for example, when you go back even to 1925, even to 1930 after sound movies have been introduced, the vast majority of critics are saying motion pictures are better if they are silent. meanwhile the actual people making motion pictures were facing up to the challenge have we make sound work. how do we make good talking pictures.

they were creative. the prophets were actually looking at the past and not to the future. so i would be very cautious about making culture predictions. in some sense i would leave it to the artists who are the truly creative people. >> professor jean elshtain woule to comment. >> it does seem to me that your question suggested that. if i may, i would like to extend the invitation to humility to people in political science and the social science. because -- [applauding] because there, too, you know, we have these confident models that are proffered with great certainty about the future of american politics and helping small turnout. what is remarkable about them is they are consistently wrong. so i think that that humility is a lesson that needs to be learned more generally in the academy and not just by people

in paul's field. >> let me add something. my model for thinking in this regard is bridget. the whole notion of spontaneous order. i have just finally show that culture works the same way. it is such a complex phenomenon that involves the interaction of so many different factors that all attempts to predict. >> there is no simple. >> it's not a linear, culture, like the economy is not a linear phenomenon. >> it is interesting, of course on the permanent things. what about the moral components contained in culture? the framework for culture? can we not predict 100 years from now we will still not be signing labor contracts with dogs and horses or seeking the informed consent of a household pet before we authorize surgery? we continue to think those

things who can give and understand the reason in regimes. there will always be, we can expect, things that we find it will be praised and aborted. the things we find that will be repulsed. but there will always be a moral framework in culture. i am thinking of this new thing by madonna. recorded voice comes in with a youngster trying to download things from the net he should not be downloading. madonna comes out and says what the of are you doing. as much as she is in the vanguard of a culture she still wants her loyalties and property rights. property rights will endure. i think we will find many other things from the arts enduring. >> as we turn to the next question here our two afternoon speakers, we welcome you to participate here in this discussion.

>> this question is for dr. carlson. my homestead of oklahoma has the dubious distinction of leading the nation in the percentage of four-year-olds in the government's preschool program and some even want to expand that to three-year-olds in communal settings. there are, however, these encouraging pockets of resistance you mentioned. we have a thriving home school sector. we have, i think, the only state or one of the first states that has a child tax credit on the state tax return. tiny, but it is something anyway that stay-at-home moms can get as well as the day care moms can get. so that is something. what from a public policy standpoint at the state level can be done to encourage and emboldened these pockets of resistance and to promote the national family this by? >> well, actually, i am a great reliever in tax policy. you mentioned in oklahoma you

have got a tax break that helps. illinois, oddly enough, has a very nice tax credit. a fairly small flat tax. 3%. there is a nice fat tax credit for all kinds of educational expenses. and actually it has been a real help to all school families. it passed the constitutional mustard in the illinois state courts. it has been a way to also help people in christian schools, private schools, private academies. so i would find whenever possible where you could find a tax and fill a credit in for families, those families in particular, that is a great benefit and help. i have even pondered ways to do it a militant relative sales ta. i don't know if anybody is doing that yet. look for tax breaks. that is a non intrusive way of

expanding liberty for families to function. >> other comments on the platform? okay. next question. >> good morning. this question is to the entire panel. how much influence, if any, did the reagan doctrine have on the fall of the soviet union? >> the fall of the soviet union? >> the fall of the soviet union, yes. >> the reagan doctrine. well, if you look at the fall of the soviet union i think you will find, as we have already insisted up here, a complex pattern. it is not just one factor, but certainly we put together the policies of the reagan administration, you put together the economic troubles of the soviet economy, and then i think one has to add the powerful witness of pope john paul ii.

you simply cannot leave that out. so many of the analyses of the fall of the soviet union omit the role of john paul ii. and the fact that when he made his first pilgrimage to his homeland after being, ascending to the papacy in 1978, first pilgramage to his homeland. again, spontaneous. millions of people turned out. millions. peaceful gatherings of these enormous crowds. and the regime at that point realized it had lost control. once people are brave enough and hopeful enough to take certain risks then the authoritarian apparatuses are in real trouble. very briefly. we want to get all the questions and. i was in poland in 1983 on the occasion of john paul ii pilgrimage. i figured that would be something not to be missed.

there was a moment when we were heading across the bridge to where they had put to the pope. they ripped up a central square so that it could not be held there. then the crowd paused before the singing crowd, the flowers, and people that imported signs, but for the headquarters of the communist party. completely shut down. the crowd started shouting the solidarity slogan, singing hymns, and so forth. it was such a powerful moment. it showed you the moral voice collectively speaking and what that could do to help bring down an empire that i was taught when i was an undergraduate would last as far as the eye could see. we would have this bipolar

world. the two empires, if you will, the united states, the soviet union, and that was it. here we go. something happened. so you can't leave out the moral witnesses. >> the experts again had it all wrong. the sovietologists were absolute stunned. >> professor kelser. there is credit to go around. margaret thatcher, very important. germany and the united front against the soviets. also i think reagan said early on that his view of the cold war was that they would lose and we would win. the denial and the assumption about the inevitability to communism and to the lesson in general was one of the great breakthroughs of reagan,

thatcher, and others. part of the mystique of communism was that history was on their side. i think reagan at home and abroad showed that is simply not the case. history is up for grabs, as it were. >> next question here. >> as part of this law appears to be intertwined in a legal precedent, should precedent ever be part of a conservative jurisprudence? >> give me the first part again. >> as part of this law appears to be intertwined in a legal precedent, should precedent ever be part of a conservative jurisprudence? >> even in the tradition of national law, you may see a sign on the roads 55 mph. but behind that sign there is nothing a principal significance within 45 or 55.

the positive law is underlined by a natural law. there is a principle that that tells us why we would be justified in a restraining the liberty of people to drive at speeds hazardous for innocent life, including their own. but we need some kind of regulation that converts the principle into a measure that applies the principle to the circumstances and surrounds us. so we have always had a place for positive law. at times positive law reflects the move of statesmanship. people recognize. they don't impose. the burdens of those who are already virtuous. may not apply the principle in its fullest sweep. i don't doubt that the principle as far as racial discrimination that bars us from enjoying the

emphasis would apply to the choice of a spouse. our legislators are far in the positive law. they held back. so there is always a provision of that. it remains when people say that they take their measure of right and wrong simply from what the positive law sets forth. we have all been tutored by harry and stephen douglas. the debate with lincoln. there are no natural rights. all men are created equal. whether slavery is right or wrong, we will leave it to people. we don't care what they say. what is right or wrong has the support of the majority. ms. lincoln, could be pointed out, if that is the measure of right and wrong and then we cute

very ground out from under the constitutional rights and the rights of the minority. as soon as the majority has spoken it has given us the exhaustive definition of what is what your wrong. we have no other source to which to appeal. james wilson said that american does begin with a revolution principle contained in its laws because america begins with the possibility that you can have an unjust law. there are things that are passed with all the trappings of legality but without the substance of justice. that is possible only because against the positive law we can appeal to the body of principles to measure the justice of what the law has done. [applauding] >> next question. >> hello. this question is for you.

>> i just came in to read the meter, and they asked me to -- [laughter] -- stay behind and offer a few words. >> my question is directed towards something you said toward ronald reagan in that he was able to take philosophical principle and make them understandable to majority. my question to you is what is taking judeo-christian principles and philosophical abstract thought. >> i don't know anyone i have seen at any age who hearing in lincoln's line that he wrote to imagine in a conversation doesn't get it. it is accessible. they get this. this is what a political person should be able to do. scott brown said we should not be taxing. we should be taxing american

taxpayers to buy guns to fight enemies, not to buy lawyers for our enemies. [laughter] he caught something. [applauding] how did he do it? how does a teacher do it? you know, reagan said, that line i quoted. he did it so often, you know. the line about subsidize people not to lose their jobs. not the best. he just pointed this out. as soon as he pointed out it is as though we have always understood it. don't think there is any way we can train people. we just give them examples of the way it was done. the best things done in the past are by the people who wrote those federalist papers and argue this way. that is the best thing they can do as teachers.

>> i regret that i am under the command of the person who controls my life at work, my assistant, natalie jeter. we have to take a recess now for lunch. that leaves two of you wanting to ask questions. now, the guarantee is this afternoon you will get to ask questions first. okay? >> we will be back. we will be back. >> that's right. i have carefully prepared introductions of our three guests this afternoon to point out certain things about their checkered past. [laughter] they don't know what it is i'm going to say. but anyway, let's all come back this afternoon after lunch, and

please enjoy a good lunch now. thank you. [inaudible conversations] ♪ >> though the snow has canceled a number of events in washington and elsewhere the u.s. senate is coming into session this afternoon at 2:30 eastern for general speeches. democrats and republicans are holding their weekly caucus meetings. democrats are talking about jobs legislation. we may hear some comments from democratic leaders after that meeting. a draft version of that bill is available. we posted it online at c-span.org. a couple of retirement announcements from congress made known today. representative diane watson of california, a democrat, she

becomes the 12th democrat to make that announcement. just announced this morning republican representative lincoln diaz-balart of florida also announcing he won't run in 2010. we have a list of some of the latest announcements on congressional retirements also at our website, c-span.org. >> tune in c-span.org book tv for a three-day weekend. authors include henry paulson talking with warren buffett on the 2008 economic collapse. on after words gary wills on how the atomic bomb changed the presidency. after words airs sunday night at nine eastern and all day monday. books on american presidents. h.w. brand on f.d.r. our culture. for the complete schedule go to booktv.org.

>> his film "hillary the movie" was the focus of a recent supreme court decision on campaign finance. david bossy sunday night on c-span's q&a. >> the only collection on american presidential portraits painted by one artist. >> news reports today indicate a number of military officers may be disciplined in the wake of the fort hood shootings. the leaders of the review of that incident testified recently before the senate arms services committee on at those events leading up to the attack and the immediate aftermath, as well as how military bases could prevent future violence. this hearing is just under two-and-a-half hours. [inaudible conversations]

>> consider the findings and recommendations of the independent panel appointed by the secretary of defense following the tragedy at fort hood. the primary objective of the panel was "to determine whether there are programs policies or procedure weaknesses within the department of defense that create vulnerabilities to the health and safety of defense employees and their families." today's open hearing is on the panel's unrestricted reports, a restricted annex to the report entitled "oversight of the alleged perpetrator" focuses on information which in the judgment of the department of defense could prejudice a criminal prosecution if it was discussed in public. so our committee will have a

closed session after this. we will have a closed session after this open hearing is concluded. our witnesses this morning are togo west, former secretary of the army, and admiral clark, u.s. navy retired former chief of naval operations. together they cochaired this independent independent review. we have reviewed their unrestricted report. members have had an opportunity to review the unrestricted annex. we welcome you both. we thank you for returning to government service for this very important task. a continuation of your great patriotism and loyalty. on the afternoon of november 5th, 2009, an army field grade officer, major nidal hasan opened fire on fellow soldiers in the soldier readiness center at fort hood, texas killing 12 soldiers, one civilian, and wounding or

injuring 43 others. there is information in the public domain indicating that this tragic and violent incident was preceded by a number of indicators that would seemingly raised questions about major hasan's fitness to serve as an officer and army psychiatrist. some of those indicators were e-mail contact with a radical muslim cleric in yemen, concerns about his expressed belief that religious law took precedence over the united states constitution, presentations that he made, that for some of the witnesses, indicated sympathy for violence. a n d c o n c e rns expressed by superiors about his duty performance and ratings. so there is a connect the dots issue here. there are a number of other investigations that will examine the failure to connect the dots. that is not part of today's open

hearing. the department of defense's inquiry is one of several inquiries that are or will be examining the incident. the president has directed a review of intelligence matters related to the shooting. the fbi is conducting a review of its procedures, and a military justice investigation is ongoing. the review that we will consider today was a first assessment of the department's policies and procedures. to identify gaps that warrant further investigation and action. clearly there is much more that needs to be done. the secretary of defense is committed to tasking each service and pertinent dodad agencies to conduct an in-depth follow-up review based on the findings of this report. the secretary of defense gave this independent panel less than 60 days to conduct a quick look review to identify and address

possible gaps and/or deficiencies in the department of defense's programs, programs, and procedures related to identifying dod employees who could potentially pose credible threats to themselves or others, the sufficiency of the department of defense's protection programs, the sufficiency of the department of defense's emergency response to mass casualties situations at the dod facilities, and the response to care for victims and families in the aftermath of a mass-casualty situation and finally the execution and adequacy of army programs, policies, and procedures as applied to the alleged perpetrator. the panel completed its work and delivered its report to the secretary of defense on time. that is remarkable given the

short amount of time over the holidays that the panel was given for this task. this could only be done under the strong of our witnesses who cochaired the independent panel. a copy of the report or department of defense independent review entitled "protecting the force: lessons from fort hood" will be included in the record of this hearing. the independent panel made a total of 42 findings with associated recommendations in the basic report. an additional 12 findings, excuse me, and the restricted and next. the panel gives fort hood high marks for a quick and effective response to this incident while recognizing that the defense department can and should do more to prepare for multiple simultaneous incidents in the future. the panel found that some

program policies, processes, and procedures were adequate, but were not complied with and other policies are in need of revision to give commanders the tools that they need to canter internal threats as well as new threats that may manifest themselves in the future. the report produced by this independent panel gives the department of defense a blueprint for additional reviews and resulting policy changes. for instance, the department will need to evaluate and update policies and procedures for identification of indicators of violence, clarify policy regarding religious accommodation, review and improve military personnel records, and refocus defense protection -- force protection programs on internal threats. this committee has a continuing interest in the findings, recommendations, and changes

made based on these reviews. it will continue that over of defense department actions, and i will assume this will be the first of a number of hearings into this incident, how it could have been avoid it, and how we can deter similar tragedies in the future. before i close i want to commend the soldiers, first responders, law-enforcement personnel, health-care providers for their prompt, professional, courageous acts that prevented an even greater loss of life as a result of this horrendous act. senator mccain. >> i thank you, mr. chairman. i join you in welcoming secretary west and admiral clark. i thank them for their continued service to the country. i thank them and their staff for their work in conducting this independent examination for the tragic events last year at fort

hood. i agree with the statement last year that the events of november 5th, 2009, are first and foremost tragic for all involved. our thoughts and prayers continue for the families and friends of the victims of this terrible tragedy. i appreciate the department of defense initiating this review to scrutinize itself with regards to organizational shortcomings that led to the horrific killings of 12 service members, one army civilian, and the wounding 43 others. however, most of your report is devoted to personnel policies and the emergency shooting response procedures. it focuses on effects rather than the motivations. it's motives that led to the fort hood killings, and that should have been examined. whatever the political correctness implications your panel's efforts to assist the department of defense and the american people to understand the threat to national security and to our military personnel

was undermined as a result. we have a profound responsibility to try to prevent a heart to all americans, especially those who volunteer for service in the armed forces and have, as a result, become high-value targets for our enemies. i find insufficient information in this report to advance the identification and elimination of this threat. admission in your report of adequately recognizing and addressing the specific threats posed by violent extremists into our military service members is troubling. we owe it to our service members and their families to be very candid in addressing the threats of violence driven by a violent islamic extremism. i believe it general jack keene, the former vice chief of staff of the army made the point clearly in his testimony on november 19th when he said that we need to provide a service to all muslims serving in the armed forces by clearly

describing the threat, explaining the indicators of potential problems, and obliging all military personnel to report individuals who display these beliefs and actions. i believe the information we compiled in the restricted evidence, restricted annex to this report regarding failures in the performance of officers who supervised mr. hasan during his medical education will help to ensure accountability and corrective measures. much of this information, not surprisingly, has been leaked to the media and portrays the system badly in need of re-evaluation and reform. i expect the secretary of the army to move quickly to ensure accountability for the shortcomings you identified and to demand more from our officers and organizations. they should have the courage and integrity to identify substandard officers who represent potential threats to

those around them. i hope you can comment on what we should expect in this regard. i also believe your findings and recommendations will have that value, to take on the challenge of identifying them legal and regulatory barriers to information sharing called for in the report. there are an array of concerns that must be addressed in this regard. concerns about individual privacy, threat of litigation, equal opportunity violations, first amendment rights, medical privacy, including stigma from seeking treatment, and abuse of authority are just a few. they represent a gordian knot that has to be cut. what happened at fort hood with something more than an isolated incident, more than a random acts of violence by an alleged perpetrator. it was a terrorist act struck against us as part of the broader war in which we are now engaged. without focusing on the threat posed today by violent islamic extremism to our military and

their families we cannot address those vulnerabilities and correct them. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much. now we call on you, secretary west. >> thanks to mr. chairman, senator mccain, and distinguished members of the committee. i wonder if i might to one or two quick housekeeping things. you have from us the opening statement, a joint statement of both admiral clark and me. we ask to include that in the record. >> it will be. >> with that, we will give a few comments come a bit of a road map to what is in our report; although, we are where you have had h ad a chance to look at it.

i will do the first. that day was a day of tragedy. at of of that tragedy there are some instructive lessons for us. those are what we address in our report. as you pointed out, secretary gates was specific in what he asked us to do, contained both in a memorandum to us in his terms of reference and in his statement at his press conference. that is important to us because it bounds are undertaking as at the time we were, within which we were asked to complete our work and also as did the fact that he had already indicated his intention to have a lengthier, more in-depth follow-on review of both our reports and the issues that we raised by the services. he has already begun that process of referring for the

follow-on activities. as you pointed out we were aked to look at personnel policies, specifically those that pertain to our ability to make identifications of those who are at risk, a danger to their fellows in the service. to look at how those policies and practices and procedures allow us to deal with after we have identified those threats and to look at the ways in which there are gaps or deficiencies, his language, that we need to improve on going forward. he also asked us to look at force-protection measures, with the same idea. not just in the army, but across the board in the department of defense and osd procedures and regulations, at the level of every service. thirdly, to look at our preparations and our policies concerning preparations for

mass-casualty events for responding to them, for our emergency procedures, if you will. and finally, in that group of four, to look at how we provide for the support of those who provide needed medical care to those who serve. the fifth assignment that he gave us was a very specifically-stated one, and i think it is one of the annexes. it is in one of the annexes to our report. to examine the army's application of its procedures and policies to the alleged perpetrator. make that distinction because he did not ask us to go and explain what happened, although, it is certainly, i think, would appear to all of us, you, and we as well that without an understanding of what happened recently cannot understand how the army can have purpose or direction to understand the

application of policies and procedures to the perpetrator. that is what is contained in our annex five. i should say to you as part of an understanding of how we organize. that was going to be simply chapter five of our report, a report that we would submit to you today for review. after review the department of lawyers concluded, and i think they conclude properly, there was a greater risk of interfering with the military justice and criminal proceeding. that is why it is submitted to you as an annex. ..

>> they are specifically called out in the executive summary which you note we took the step of signing ourselves so that you would know that the words of the executive summary come from us including those five or six recommendations. they are very specific early action by the secretary of defense. let me report he has already taken some of those actions as we talk. we had, also, a board of advisers drawn from the senior ranks of the department, the military ranks whose purpose was not to lead a team, although two of them were team leaders, but merely to review as we went and

provide an overall perspective of what we were looking at and how we were stating it and how it would effect real progress for the department in terms of responding to what had happened. their help to us was invaluable because when you think about it, otherwise the admiral had himself and me to bounce these things back and forth to, to discuss. the board of advisers gave us an additional group with the same broad range. a word or two at this point from both admiral clark and me about the actual landscape of the report. what you have before you has five chapters with an executive summary at the front and with some annexes. the first chapter is a very brief one-page synopsis that we thought we could state in a public report that is much more

dealt with and detailed in the annex, and that is about the alleged perpetrator. the chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 are about the bulk of what the secretary asked us to look at. i call your attention to chapter 2 which is about personnel policies which is divided into three sections, one having to do with how we identify the kinds of things that can lead a person to become a danger can to his or her colleagues. a second part of it has to do with sharing that information, getting it to the right place, and i point out to you that in our finding 2.2 in that report we acknowledge a specific difficulty, and that is of the fact that information that is obtained in one place does not always go forward with a service member two successive

assignments, thus making it difficult for commanders to know exactly what they're dealing with. and a third section in that chapter, too, has to do with barriers to action. three comments, three observations before i ask your permission to have admiral clark take on the description to you of other parts of the report. the first is this, there can never be too much preparation. in some ways we could say that no matter how much preparation you've done, there is more that could be done. at fort hood the leaders had taken, had anticipated mass events, mass casualty events in their emergency response plans, and it showed in their response as you have acknowledged, mr. chairman, and as also did senator mccain. the response was prompt, within

2:40 of the first 911 call, first responders were on the scene of the shooting, and i mean elements of the fort hood security forces. within a minute and a half after that, the assailant had been taken down. and within 2:50 after that, two ambulances and a command, an incident command vehicle from the post hospital had arrived to begin dispensing needed medical care. lives were saved. and yet as you have pointed out, 13 people died and scores of others, 43, were wounded. we must prepare better, plan more intensively and take the hard effort to look around the corners of our future to try and anticipate the next potential

incident. secondly, we must be attentive to today's hazards. today the requirement that is imposed in the defense department is to understand the forces that cause an individual to radicalize, to commit violent acts, and thereby -- pardon me -- thereby to make us vulnerable from within. and finally, the thread through all of this is violence. how do we, how do we detect the indicators of violence, how do we share the information about those indicators, and then whether we have the foresight to act. thank you, mr. chairman. and with your permission, admiral clark will take it from here. >> thank you so much, mr. west. admiral. >> good morning, mr. chairman. i appreciate the opportunity to be with you today to talk about

the work of secretary west and myself and the group of people who worked with us in this effort. let me make a few comments and get right to the questions when we can. i know that you all have questions for us, so first of all, let me just talk about force protection for a moment. the principle message of our review with regard to force protection is simply this, there are lots of policies on force protection inside the department of defense. since 9/11 we have built many barriers. however, existing policies simply are not optimized to deal with the insider threat. the evolving threat that we see today and when people talk about the new threat, we're talking about the insider threat. now, complicating the entire

force protection challenge is the diverse nature of the way the department of defense has evolved since 9/11. and so one of our recommendations to the secretary was that you have to look at the organization itself. on page 25 of the base report, you find a description of the various undersecretaries and assistant secretaries of defense that are charged with responsibilities for working the force protection challenge. synchronization is difficult, and simply stated, no senior dod official is assigned overall responsibility for synchronizing this policy. notice i'm not saying that one person should have all that responsibility, neither is secretary west. we were careful not to define the specific organization for the secretary of defense. our observation is synchronization is pretty

difficult the way it's set up the way it is today, and we recommend that it be looked at. the key point, too, is that there has to be a mechanism in place to do this spe duration, and that's our recommendation. secondly, the task of iding employees who potentially could threaten the work force -- and i ask us to remember that the secretary asked us to look at violence -- and so the question is, how do we identify individuals who have the potential for violent behavior? and certainly in our research we found that detecting a trusted insider's intention to commit a violent act requires observation skills that may not be in place. this is the evolving threat. and so there's a requirement to understand behavioral cues and anomalies that would alert

commanders and supervisors to know that such a threat economists. exists. and while the department focuses very effectively on many things, there is insufficient knowledge and guidance concerning who this insider threat is, who are these people? there is insufficient guidance on workplace violence, and most importantly, how to identify the person who has the potential to self-radicalize. in our view it is simply insufficient. the keyword here is violence. now, since our report has come out some have criticized us for not suggesting and talking enough about violent islamic extremism. when we talk about self-radicallyization and the term appears numerous times in our report, we're talking about the behaviors that create and lead to violence. that's what we're talking about.

and the lack of clarity for comprehensive indicators limits the commanders and supervisors' ability to recognize the potential threats. fixing this issue will be critical to solving this problem in the future. dod policy on prohibited activities, and i have the instruction here with me that talks specifically about what prohibited activities are inside the department, this instruction in our view is too limited, and it only addresses active participation in groups that may pose threats to good order and discipline inside the ranks. so we found that this lack of clarity for comprehensive indicators which limit commanders and supervisors' ability to recognize the potential threats, and so we're talking about whether we're --

we're talking about people who could hurt themselves, the secretary of defense cited specifically people could hurt themselves. for example, the issue of suicide, criminal and gang behavior, people that are advocating sprem sue principlist doctrine, radicallyization. identifying these creators is critical to eliminating the focus on the threat. let's talk about information sharing. secretary west addressed it, also, and let me just make a couple of points. the policies governing information exchange inside the department and many the interagency, intergovernment system itself also, in our view, the policies are deficient. they do not support detection and mitigation of the internal threat. dod and service guidance does

not provide for maintaining and transferring relevant information from duty station to the other. now, remember, we're doing phase i of this. as you talked about, mr. chairman, we did this review in a hurry. that's what the secretary of defense wanted us to do. thousands of pages of review, but put the spotlight on the things the services can go fix in a hurry, and it is our view that this internal information exchange has got to be examined. in other words, how can a commander connect the dots if they don't have the information, some information that's maintained at a local level and hasn't transferred mr. one command to another -- from one command to another? and i will tell you that automated systems inside the services do not allow them to share information on, for example, registered users and persons who routinely come and two from a base and may become a threat. and so the issue of maintaining and transferring all of the

relevant information, information that could lead to the identification of contributing factors, that's the issue. now, last friday the secretary of defense in his press conference stood and addressed his observations about our report. and one of the things that i was happy to see him address was his comment that secretary west and i are of the view that we have to become more adaptable and more -- certainly we have to be proactive, but we have to be able to adapt raply to this -- rapidly to this changing security environment. bringing a wide and continuously evolving range of tools and techniques and programs into play. i just want to emphasize that there's no single point solution for this evolving threat. we have to keep working at it, we need architectures and structures in place that will make that possible. now, one other point about information sharing.

certainly, robust information sharing is essential. hand in glove with that information sharing is the required command and control apparatus, be it systems, policy, doctrine, tactics, techniques and procedures to convert this information into timely decisions and actions. the bottom line, mr. chairman, members of the committee, we've got to remove the barriers. all of the barriers. we have to equip and enable the commanders, people in decision-making positions to their ability, mr. chairman, you used the phrase to connect the dots. we've got to get the information, and thus the indicators, to the appropriate level of people in command. just a couple of comments about emergency response.

secretary west addressed this, mr. chairman, you also certainly did justice to the brilliance of the people at fort hood and their actions. lots of good news related to the emergency response. mr. chairman and members, i just wanted to try to put this in perspective, and so, you know, i committed my life in service for 37 years. i created in those 37 years a number of lessons learned myself, and i heard dozens of lessons learned reports. on the second day that our team was in existence, secretary west and i got on a plane with a few members of our team, and we went to fort hood. and we walked the ground, and they showed us the space where all of this happened and looked at the terrain. and then we sat down with general cohen and his command team, and they gave us this presentation that had been turned in a matter of a few days and their lessons learned, and i

want to tell you that i was really impressed. so i heard a lot of them in my 37 years, and i want you to know that i never, ever heard a better one than i heard at fort hood that day. the base personnel were ready to respond. they had trained at this, they had worked at it. secretary west talked about the timeline response. the response to the active shooter. it was brilliant. and all of that said, it still could have been better. and in our review we found areas where it could be better, and in their own lessons learned they identified areas where it could be better. i've spoken on the last summit about the command and control system. they need a better system. general cohen had to deal with misinformation and should anybody be surprised? i don't think so. there's never been a crisis ever that there wasn't misinformation. being able to deal with it in a rapid way and being able to deal

with a potential multiple event, mr. chairman, as you indicated is critical. and so fundamentally we believe that we can improve by providing a well-integrated means to gather and evaluate and disseminate the wide range of information that will make, make it possible for commanders to perform to the maximum. and so this report is about focusing on better tools for commanders. this report is about focusing on violence prevention in whatever form that violence manifests itself. this report is about adapting and evolving to rapid change, sharing information, connecting the dots and exercising against the most stressing and pressing scenarios that we know how to present so that we, so that we satisfy ourselves that we are able to perform to the standards that we have identified

ourselves. and then i want to close by just acknowledging my alignment with all the comments that have been made about the people at fort hood, the families that have suffered loss and just say that the thrust of our work has been to do everything that we know how to do the to identify policies and procedures and practices and programs that can be made better so that the united states armed forces can continue to be the outstanding force that it is today. thank you very much, mr. chairman, and i look forward to your questions. >> thank you, admiral. thank you both very much. let's try an 8-minute first round. the panel found that the, quote, department of defense policy regarding religious accommodation lacks the clarity necessary to help commanders distinguish appropriate

religious practices from those that might indicate a potential for violence or self-radicalization, closed quote. i think what you're saying is that, obviously, this country believes in religious tolerance, tolerance of other religions, but it can never be tolerance of violent, radical views that are dressed up in religious gash. i think -- garb. i think that's that point reworded. i couldn't agree with you more. sometimes the views that are clearly either inherently violent, promote violence are dressed up in religious clothing, and that automatically means that people who are sensitive to others' religious views then are kind of put on the defensive right away or

reluctant right away to point out what is underneath the claim of religion. and so the line has got to be there, obviously, we want to continue our tolerance, but we've got to be much harder and much more intolerant of views that are radical, promote violence or encourage violence. and so my first question, i depress, to you is that the policy of the department which is limited to and addresses only active participation in groups that pose threats to good order and discipline is far too narrow a policy because of the self-radicalization point. you don't have to participate in a group that poses that kind of a threat to be a threat yourself.

and so i guess my first question is, how would you -- and i know you're not here to provide remedies and that wasn't your job, but i assume that you agree that that's not just that that policy should be examined, but that in your judgment at least it's just simply too limited a policy, and i'm wondering whether or not, for instance, you would agree that communication with a radical cleric who promotes violence is the kind of conduct that should raise real questions, would you agree with that even though it's not active participation at that point, it's just simply communication asking someone for their recommendations and views, would you agree that that ought to be raising great suspicion? without getting into this particular case?

>> yeah. mr. chairman, i would certainly agree. i think we both would. and i would think your larger point, that this is an example of, we would agree with as well. and that is that, yes, in the past perhaps membership alone in a group may have been less looked upon than the actual act of doing things. but in this environment we have to look at the group, we have to understand its purposes, and it is already considered by some that there is a tool that enables a commander to declare certain kinds of action including that, a threat to his immediate area is good order and discipline, but we think the department of defense can just simply strengthen the ability of commanders to look at and examine exactly what kind of activity they are permitting and whether or not we can better define it. group membership in a group of that sort that has a record of active advocation of violence

and as well as your point, communication especially repeated communication, again, not referring to any particular case, with those who advocate violence, those are all signals that we need to be able to indicate in our publications and in our regulations commanders are authorized to look at and react to it. >> and even if there weren't active communication, excuse me, active participation or communication with radical persons who are promoting violence, even if there's simply the expression of views which promote violence without any information about participation in a group or communication with radical extremists, if somebody gets up and says i believe that the constitution comes in second and that my religious views come

in first, would that not be that kind of a signal which ought to indicate some real genuine concern? would you agree with that? >> i certainly do agree with it, and it goes without saying that where we draw our red lines is a very, very important point. but, you know, if you look at our history, we as a people, as americans have always been very careful working about where we draw those lines. i so appreciate your introduction to this question by your comments about that we, we are a tolerant people. when i look at the dod instruction here, it talks about what people can do when they're at work and things that they can, can't do at work, but they can do on their private time. and what we're suggesting is that we have to better

understand how people go through this process from being a nonradicalized person to radicalization and what does it mean? and so i align with your comments completely and want to make one other observation, mr. chairman. in our report we talk about active duty members of the military, but, you know, the department of defense is much broader than just the active duty people in uniform, and we also make -- we understand that when, when americans raise their right hand and take the pledge to serve in the armed forces that there are some freedoms that they set on the shelf. the challenge that we're facing here in security applies to everybody in the department, and that includes civilians as well and contractors and a whole other body of people, and then you could look at this and say, well, this is not just the department of defense, this is

the whole of our nation and the whole of government. this is a real challenge that we face, and it's clear -- so you made the comment when some, when a shipmate hears a comment that's being made that is approaching a defined red line or crossing a defined red line, we must make sure our people understand where those red lines are, and that means we must have a very effective education program, an outreach program that people understand this is about our own security and the right to self-defense is absolutely not in question, we have the right to do that. ..

>> and not be dissuaded we the fact that the views are gash. >> that's the fabric on the greatness the united states military is built. we have to protect it. >> secretary west, do you want to add anything to that? >> no, i think the admiral caught the point i would have made. we are sensitive to the fact that we're talking about expressions. and expressions and many cases are pertained to religion. two different hits on the first amendment. but as he pointed out. when a member takes an oath of office, there's some things as

to which he or see agrees to be regulated. we believe where there's a clear connection for the potential for violence that could cause damage to one fellows, this is a basis on which we can encourage the department to act more clearly and precisely. >> my final question is this, you have been given the charge of recommendation remedies for where there are gaps. that's not part of your charge. although you freely respond to my questions this morning. and i appreciate that. who is in charge of responding with remedies to your recommendation? what is the timetable? does this go right up to the secretary of defense and has he assured you that he will consider appropriate remedies within a certain timetable or is there somebody else in the department that's on the remedies side of what you outlined here? >> well, the answer to your

question is twofold. i'll take the second first. yes, in his follow on review he is ordering two sets of things. one he is going to ask a senior member of his staff. we believe. this is the secretary for homeland defense of security. not authorized to make that statement. i don't know. but that's our belief to conduct the follow on review, but each of the service was also. part of their job is it to take this report, he will refer to then, and to provide the recommendation as to how to implement. that's the first thing. the second answer. first answer is some ways i give admiral clark and we too much a buy. -- bye. we needed to come up with the recommendations as well. >> all right. in that case, i withdraw that

comment. are were recommendations to be acted on in a certain period of time? >> i'm not clear. >> i mean what i was referring to was this, there's inadequate clarity on the issue we've been discussing. that's not -- the recommendation is general. provide clarity. but it's not the specific clarity. it's just you should provide clarity, mr. secretary. and i couldn't agree with you more. but it's not what the new regulation would be. that's what i meant when i said you have not provided the specific new ladies and gentlemen that should be in place of the replacing the unclear ladies and gentlemen. that's what i meant by that. >> yup. >> now is there a timetable? >> there is a timetable. he pronounced it friday. he wants recommendation in march and to wrap this up in june. if you read theline language, we

were very careful with our recommendations. first of all, you confirmed the zjlu[ni5]se

i'll make the statement. when you are around washington and the hearings, it's one thing. when you go back to oklahoma as i do every week, that's another thing. and i'm always hit up with this idea. because not only -- we're talking about the fort hood thing now. i could talk to you about ab due -- abdulmutallab, the christmas bomber. it goes on and on, we all know the father reports late november. he was added to the u.s. 550 name terrorist, identify the date of mark and all of this stuff. all this stuff is not stuff that you knew. nonetheless, it's the same. a terrorist is a terrorist. and that's what they do for a living. they kill people. and i'm for one, i know it's not politically correct to say, i believe in rational and ethnic profiling.

i think if you are looking at people getting on an airplane and you have x amount of resources, you need to get at the targets. not my wife. i think it's something that should be looked into, the statement that has been made is probably 90% true with some exceptions like the federal offense building, they there not muslims or middle easterns, when you hear that not all middle easterns or muslims are terrorist, but all terrorist are muslims or middle easterner between the ages of 20 and 35, that's by and large true. i think that sometimes we're doing to have to really, at least i'm going to have to give a better answer than i give the people back home when people board planes and get into environments such as the environment that we're dealing with with this report. i guess nothing more needs to be

said from you guys first. there's no two people i think are more qualified to do the job than you've had to do, than the two of you. you've been good friends of mine for a long period of time. now something we can talk about, i think, a little more easier. when you -- your per view is really domestic. most of what you were talking about is making this the recommendations coming from what happened at the incident at ford hood. did you look into outside of the united states? we have thousands and thousands of troops all over the world. to me the threat is probably a little bit greater there than it would be here. what thoughts do you have on that? or maybe relation you could have on that to expand what you are doing to include that? >> we certainly did, senator. and first thing that comes to mind is every base where we

exist overseas, we have nonamericans working with us on the base. what are the processes and procedures for getting these people? so we challenge it. we have a section in the report that talks about security clearances and thed you know, how people gain access. so when we're trying to -- the second thing i talked about i.d. -- identifying people who could become a threat. one the things we have to look at is how we vet people in the o'con nas environment. frankly, the details of this we might talk about in closed session. i would suggest to you it was our conviction. we would not have put it in the report if we didn't think this was certainly a potential weakness. >> yeah, yeah. might i add senator, this. if we make the lesson of fort

hood and admittedly we will talk more specifically on the closed session. we have to be reminded on the thesis on which we are dealing here for the whole report is the threat from within. the member of the military family who then turns against his or her fellow soldier, airman, sailor, marine, coast guard person. and the difficulty there whether it is oconas, they can enter what should be the safest place either here or there, the baits, -- the base, the post, freely. with our automated systems now. we don't stop them for routine checks. so we can't -- well, we can if we want to -- certainly one the lessons learned at fort hood is

they have not instituted some roving checks even of those who have the c credentials. but the place to stop them, the insider who's the threat is not at the gate. it is too identify him or her before they can get on to the post and do that act. and that's why all of those signs that we talk about, all of the cues and behavioral indications, even the ones that the chairman mentioned are important for us to reemphasis to expand and to focus on to make sure commanders have that information. that applies both here and overseas. >> you know, one of the things that came out that was discussed here by the chairman was when can we move this along faster? i think you would to do that, we want to do that. we still have some of the recommendation of the 9/11 commission that are not fully implemented and understand. so i would assume that you are -- you share those feelings.

i was down in fort hood oh about three weeks before this incident. and that was when we had two of the oklahoma units that were deploying overseas. i was down there for that event. and then i went down afterwards for the event that took place after the tragedy. you had said, now i asked my staff to hand it to me so i could read it again. this is pretty remarkable, mr. secretary, when you said 2 minutes 40 seconds first responders arrived on the scene. two and a half minutes later, the asealant was incapacitated. the blams was there 2 minute 50 seconds later. that's really moving. maybe you have already done this, find out not always looking at what was wrong, but

learn from what was done right. in this case, it'd serve us well to see how it did in the remarkable job. i want to see is in writing. so i'd recommend you do that. >> thank you, sir. it was remarkable, we did think that one of our jobs was to find out if that was the result of good planning, courageous and fast action, was there an down the block, or if it was what we belief and what we said, excellent planning and well executed. is there a lesson to pass across the force. one of the things i would add, i don't want to overdue the. we tried to figure out what that meant from the passage of time from the first shot to the last. that is the whole event. because the uncertain part was how quickly the 9/11 call got the in after the first shot was fired.

the best we can make is the whole shooting incident was ended by our security forces between seven and eight minutes after it started. >> yeah. yeah. were you surprised too? >> i certainly was. one of our strategies was to, you know, this kind of a panelist wants to find the things that are wrong. that's what we're supposed to do. if you notice, we lead with some strong statements about what we thought was right. we wanted it up front. the people at fort hood did a fabulous job. i testified yesterday and the staff reminded me that i said fabulous, or outstanding 19 times yesterday. i want to drive the point home. i said this was the best lessons learns i've ever seen. the performance of the people were brilliant. one the reasons that it was brilliant because of brilliance of our people. they are so good.

and of course, nobody had the stopwatch going on inside the room where he was shooting. that's why we don't know the exact time as the secretary indicated between the first shot and 9/11 call. here's what we do know, there were a lot more rounds available. and they took that shooter down. and the cid agent was handcuffed to him in a matter of moments and was with him from that point on. >> we need to commend all of them for the fine work they did. >> thank you. senator, if i can take two seconds to say that i disagree with your comments about middle easterners and the implications about the comments. i wouldn't want to say that expect while you're here. thank you. senator reid. >> thank you, mr. chairman.

admiral clark, you mention in terms of the threat as a receive theiric self-radicalization that would lead to violence. there are several different, as you suggest, categories that's not simply islamic radicals but a host of others. is there a strategy in the department of defense to identify these potential categories and to, you know, essentially work explicitly against them or to at least be aware of them? >> well, the first point, there are -- we have the people in the public domain said we didn't use the magic term. radical islamics. and so we didn't do it obvious purpose. it wasn't because we were trying to be politically correct. it was because our task was to deal with violence and there was one of them. i don't know how people could

read our comments about self-radicalization and not understand that we're -- that this kind of, you know, radical islamic behavior is part of that group. we said specifically, the indicatorred are inadequate. the army published the list of 10. this is better than nothing. but to say we believe that all of the indicators related to violence are not static indicators. so one of our proposals is we're living in such a rapidly changing world, potentially we should be considering the establishment of a group that focuses on this full time. across this whole series of kinds of behaviors that we are talking about, criminal, drug,

domestic abuse, supremacist, domestic, we're talking about all of these. and so, i trust that's responsive to your question. >> it is, mr. secretary, do you have any commends? >> there's an annex to the report that discusses the violence in some detail. it's an important of the pieces that are research is consulted. i think it's very informative. i commend it for the reading. i think that i agree with the admirals response. also in our executive summary. we five or six key things that we recommend to the secretary that we pull out from this report is the suggestion of a body that will collect the indicators of violence, update them in light of current circumstances, of events in our

world, currents in our world, and make them available to the commanders and supervisors who need to use them to make their judgments. >> let me thank admiral. did you believe or conclude that there were adequate information in coming from walter reed to fort hood with respect to the, you know, the major entity? i mean was there in problem there in terms of, you know, letters of reprimand that might have been issued or informal reprimands that were never fully communicated so that the commanders at fort hood weren't able to gauge the seriousness of this individual? >> senator, i wonder if you would let us discuss that with you in the restricted session. >> i appreciate that. >> there's another issue. this might -- this i think can be. but i'll let you decide to

discuss this public that there are many indicators about major hasan's just professional skills , his -- far removed from the religious beliefs and his discussions. just simple confidence. his ability to work with others. those things are fundamental to being an officer in the military. yet he was sort of moved along. in the critical areas where there are not a surplus of individuals such as mental health professionals, psychiatrist, et cetera, is there a double standards had he been a line officer, artillery officer, forget his radicalization, butus pformance. would that have sort of got him

kicked out? >> i think again senator, we are prepared to discuss that with you. we would ask you to let us do it in the restrictioned session. >> i would say one certainly, the heart of what we have to say is in the annex. let me make the comment, we used the term officership in the open report. officeship was intended to mean more than just leadership. and it was our view that there were officeship deficiencies. and in the closed session we can talk in great detail about the specifics of that. >> just one final question, i know -- >> senator, i would just add also, if that in our one page, summary discussion in chapter one is in the open report, we do mention the findings and recommendation which had to do with the army application of it's policies to the purpose traitor, but also in the fact that there were signs that were

missed and some that as far as we can tell were ignored. that's in the open part of the discussion. >> thank you, mr. secretary. again, part of this response is going to be training, and not just the commanders, but individual soldiers, sailors, airman, marines. we have something like that when it comes to traditional threat. which is subversion and espionage, and that emphasis is persistent. do you envision something like that in terms of of sort of the training elements going forward? >> i mentioned just briefly, but i probably didn't emphasis it enough. the outreach program is -- not i'm talking about an outreach program outside of the department. i'm talking about inside the

department and notice the secretary of defense said on friday, and we suggested that communication, effective communication, is the order of the day here. and the secretary started that process on friday. when he said to commanders, you know, this isn't just, you know, ho hum regular dale-to-day stuff. i'm par -- paraphrasing. there's no doubt that the effective training and outreach program is part of an effective solution. >> thank you very much, gentleman. thank you. >> thank you, senator reed. senator clam bliss. -- chambliss. >> thank you, mr. chairman. gentleman, you have served our country well. we appreciate you coming back once again to help us deal with an issue that obviously is extremely important, at the same

time, extremely sensitive. so thank you for your continuing service. in your report, you suggest that the pentagon coordinate with the fbi behavioral science unit to identify the indicator specific to d.o.d. personnel. and the d.o.d. should use the indicator to professional support service personnel to determine when individuals prevent risk for violent behavior. and my question is don't those tools already exist in the form of the army form 48-56 was is army developpal counseling forum and the army forum 67-9 which is the officer evaluation report. and assuming these documents are used and filled out appropriately, shouldn't we be able to identify a soldier who may be becoming self-radicalized as we think happened here and

address the threat that they represent? >> i'm going to let admiral clark have a good long swing at that because of his extensive experience with oers and the like. let me say what we were trying to do here. the fact is that there is a very good argument that therer tools out there that commanders can use to make the assessments they need to make. the question for us though is are there ways to strengthen what they can do? and have we learned anything by the incident we face and will discuss with you in closed session from this incident about how we can shorten that up? one thing is that frankly things like officer efficiency reports, there is a culture in the services, all of them. which i think admiral clark can speak to better than i can. it doesn't always find and report the kinds of things that would be better than report.

for one reason it may be because the information of some offense of previous drug usage, but there has been rehabilitation effort or some other contacts or signs may have been left to the discussion of commander to even keep that in the record so it would be reported in the oer. it never gets to the next commander, the next supervisor. suddenly earlier signs are lost in the midst of the past and as they move forward. we need to sure that up. we said to the secretary in our executive summit, five or six big recommendations. you need to say to the officer corp of the nation, in all of the services, that what you report on these oers and on things like the saer, service school academic relation report, you need to say it matters. it has to be accurate and most

of all, complete, so we can make the judgments that we need to make. so yes, reports exist. but they are not being made use of in a way that fits what we need in the trying times. >> so do you think it's a matter of better education of the supervisor that is are asking the questions and making that report? >> i have an answer to that. but i want to get admiral clark wanted. education, yes, but also making sure that the standard -- and maybe that is education, are applied. but there's also some recommendation for some further adjustments. >> okay. admiral clark? >> i don't know the first form that you referenced. i have the second forms here in front of me. so i can specifically.