book for reform for the senate rules or do you suggest them? >> we published this book in 1997 at the height of efforts to reform the filibuster. a number of things could be done within a former framework of the world. you could get a process to slowly ratchet down the number of votes required say 60 votes the first time you try and three days later another one is moving. 54 votes and 51 votes and over a period of three weeks you get to majority rule and that is preservative of our ability to change minds but also preserve the majority's ability to act. another possibility is to cut down on number of opportunities that are debatable in the senate. you can filibuster the motion to

proceed with a bill. that filibuster keeps those together. it doesn't need to be a filibuster on that. their three motion that go to the house. that is crazy. even one would be enough if not none. they should go to conference and have a debate. you can filibuster the conference bill. other things to do, a little -- they have a fast-track procedure. we see it on budget bills and reconciliation. the war powers act has a filibuster and anti regulatory bill has a filibuster ban and environment and energy and some issues in the statutes. we will create some of those

judicial nominations such as foreign spending. episodes like that. >> what is the so-called nuclear option? >> for republicans, very frustrated with a judicial nominations. they came up with a theory that they were going to try in the past. they will reinterpreted the rules which is why it was nuclear. it set democrats off. you can't interpret the rules than they need something. they will take the clerks's will in a series of steps my majority vote and interpreted to mean you can't filibuster judicial nominations and democrats said look at the letter of the rule. through the series of steps we will do those by majority vote.

we will blow up every bridge in the senate. and yet republicans have 51 votes. it is the rail when democrats and republicans got together and we all benefit from the filibuster. >> what is wrong with legislation, everything passing the senate with 51 votes. >> the senate was intended to be different and even if it wasn't really intended to be different we know it was supposed to be a smaller body with -- insulated a bit from public opinion. the argument against 51 votes is we need time to slow down the majority and it can be wrong. that is the best argument against it and to say the longer the debate goes on some time

changes in public opinion. >> politics or principal, filibuster in the united states senate, who is your co-author at washington university? >> steve smith. >> what do you do here? >> professor of public science at george washington. >> also brookings? >> yes where i wrote the filibuster book. non't for a it away. >> up next, historian and journalist paul johnson joined booktv for three our in-depth interview. >> paul johnson, in your book modern times you kick it off rais way. cle modern world began on 29 may 1919 when photographs of a oolar eclipse confirmed the proof of a new theory of the universe. two questions. why it that date and why that event as the beginning of a

modern world? >> the world had always been governed for 250 years by newtonian physics and professor einstein introduced an important pdification of that. this was his general theory of relativity which he produced in 1916. he also said there are three tests by which this theory can be tested. if it fails any one of them, mpor we must scrap it and look again. he laid down these three tests and the first and most important of them had to be made by observation during a solar eclipse and that will wait until the end of the boar and wasn't until 1920 that an expedition was sent out to watch the

eclipse and take measurements which demonstrate whether the einstein's theory of relativity met the test. it did so. that introduced a new era in physics which incidentally was to lead to the creation of nuclear energy. ultimately scientific theories and theories of knowledge have more importance than kings and queens and battles and president and so forth. the beginning of the year of relativity was an important punctuation date in human history. >> how cataclysmic was that event in 1919? >> sorry? >> how big an event was that in 1919? >> it was a very big event for

scientists, less so for ordinary people. though gradually the idea spread that space wasn't in straight lines, it intended to be curved end relativity was a very important concept. unfortunately a lot of people misunderstood the significance of the term relativity. they tended to translate it into moral terms so we got the age of moral relativism in which people tandn to move away from absolute standards of right and wrong and thapt relative standards. ale communist theory was announced in the 20s that what mattered was the morality of the party rather than absolute standards and hitler adopted the same sort of attitude when he

came to power in 1933. there was a gradual spread of moral relativism which was extremely sinister for the human race and lead to many inequities. ehat was one consequence of the 1990/1920. >> are we still in the modern world or are we in a post-modern world? >> i don't like the term postmodern because it is meaningless. de are in the 20 first century and a lot of things have happened since the beginning of the modern age as i describe it with einstein, which have transformed the world in a number of ways. some of the dangers that i outlined then are still with us and suddenly the question of moral relativism is still with us. there are all kinds of people

who want to bring out systems of inrality which go counter to the absolute the values of right and wrong which are enshrined in the ten commandments in which we have inherited through judeo-christian morality. that is one point. it is interesting that one of the lessons that are in stein introduced with his special and general theory of relativity was he said every theory is a hypothesis, that needs not just to be concerned by observations but also needs to be false of viable because if it can survive atsts of falsify ability, it is tikely to be true. anre confirmation doesn't mean that the theory is true. if it can survive, it is shaped

so it can be falsified and eebjected to falsification, if it survives and he laid down the three tests that i mentioned is much more likely to be true. we get today, the theory of man-made global warming, something which doesn't really fit einstein's standards. in the first place it is a very vague theory which is constantly being expanded and added to to accommodate new information and in the second place, the people who support it say it has been confirmed hundreds of times but hasn't been devised in such a way as to be false of viable so it doesn't really meet feinstein's standards and at the moment there's a great deal of evidence coming in to show the theory is in fact false. eryt was to be expected.

pr you're going to have a mneral theory about the universe it must be made very precise. it must meet all these standards. it must be false of viable. ad those who hold it must be just as anxious to look for evidence that it is false as evidence that it is true. itat is one lesson we ought to nsarn to apply to day and we don't seem to be doing it. >> let's jump from the beginning of modern times to the end of the history of the american people and this is how you conclude that book which is nearly 1,000 pages. the great american republican experiment is still the signature of low world's ice and it is the best hope for the andn race. looking back on its past and forward to its future, it will

not disappoint humanity. you wrote that in 1997 after the onst 13 years, does that still holds true. >> very much so. one of the things i have learned through my study of history that ,as embraced the ancient and medieval and early modern world as well as the modern world. one of the things i have learned is if you have a society which ss truly free, not just in having elections but allowing people to speak their minds and om do their work in an atmosphere of intellectual and academic freedom, if you have that kind of society you are much more likely to survive because you are more likely to produce new ideas leading to new inventions, new and better ways of doing things and better ways of increasing the general welfare rather than the

particular wealth of individuals. if you have that freedom, you are in with a better chance than societies which haven't. at the moment, you have the united states which has that freedom. a large number of entirely free university's and free media and schools where freedom is practiced and a free political system at all levels. the united states is, we are nold, in danger of being haertaken by communist china. inmunist china is not a free society. is much more free than it used at be in the days when communist rule was absolutely absolute, but it is not free in that you wantt speak your mind, you can't isways do the work you want in the way you want, you can't always listen and hear what is

ecaug on on the air waves and so forth. recently there has been a withdrawal by google because they weren't allowed to operate freely and that is one indication of what chinese uniural civilization is blake. wthough china has advanced rapidly, in the long run the united states will stay well ahead and probably increasingly ahead simply because it has that kind of free society which china doesn't. i would put more money on india coming up. ioring the process of the sonty-first century india will overtake china in terms of productivity and inventiveness and so on because the indian society is much more of a free society than china. it is much closer to the united states and has this precious

gift of freedom from which springs these material benefits. >> do you think the indian example you just cited could be perhaps because of its former association with the british mucre? >> to some extent that helped. the indian mind is much more diverse and enterprising than the chinese mind which tends to fit into 7 categories. so that is helpful. what britain did in the two or three centuries when it was running india was to give india the notions of political freedom and intellectual freedom. we had a very big influence on the educational system thanks to the great historian who devised it. we had a great influence on the indian education assistant and that is a very precious legacy

which we left the indians which they have exploited and are exploiting. that is going to give them the edge and i noticed that although china has leapt ahead in the traditional smokestack cdustries as we call them, the sort of productive mechanical industries producing consumer goods, on the intellectual side, the really high tech industries india has tended to concentrate tose. my money is on india to overtake china but i still think the united states will remain well ahead of the field. >> are americans unique? we tend to think of ourselves as unique. >> i think you are unique in that you have a different

history. the european and asian ones, their history goes back a very long time and we don't know about the origins of many of them despite a lot of historical research. the united states is a different matter. there were indigenous peoples before the europeans arrived in the sixteenth century. nevertheless it is possible to trace the origins of the united states from its very first beginnings and to show how it evolves, what were its earliest documents, what were the key events that took place during its formative years and so on. that in itself is a form of uniqueness unique to the world. but secondly, right from the

very start, there was this element of constitutional freedom and political freedom. eaen the founding fathers came yn the mayflower already when the mayflower was still afloat in the mid-atlantic, they held the first constitutional meeting in which they decided certain things to do when they started the colony in massachusetts. there is an element of constitutional freedom in the makeup of america and that is the second element of uniqueness in it. s ofe is however a third. although it is true that the first settlers of the united states came from england mainly from the west of england and east england, they were very

much english people, in the earliest point of the evolution of the united states they began nd attract settlers from other parts of europe from the ngtherlands and germany and so on and gradually that settlement coming from the whole of europe spread and spread until by the time america achieved its nationndence it was already very much a multiple society coming from many different nations and the absorbing the culture and interests and languages and vocabulary and ideas of all these different nations and oradually in the nineteenth tantury its intake spread to the grole world and that has wontinued and the united states received a large number of immigrants from all over the

world who quickly create a very statesrous society. that is the third element in the uniqueness of the united states. it has always been a country which is not homogenous in that sense but takes its people from all over the world and absorbers very different cultural ideas ave inspiration. at also manages to homogenize to some extent the people so that it does have a common culture and a common sense of political morality. that is a very important element thlyhe uniqueness of the united states. >> welcome to booktv's index, our monthly program with 1 officer and we look at his or her body of work and this month it is historian paul johnson who

isauthor and we look at his or r body of work and this month it is historian paul johnson who is joining us from london. for those of you in the snow yeast time zone or central time zone and if you are in the mountain or pacific times don't, 737-0002. you can send paul johnson and e-mail at booktv@c-span.org or follow booktv and send a week to paul johnson's pauljohnson@twitter.com/booktv. you can tell from this first fifteen minutes that we dipped into several different topics. a history of the american people. this is a thousand pages. modern times is another book. nrom the 20s to the 90s. this is his latest, a new biography of winston churchill and a trilogy of books we will talk to mr. johnson about.

the creators, intellectuals and heroes and it has written about george washington and a history of christianity and the jews and a quest for god. a lot of mr. johnson's writings are in fused with different religious thought which we will ilk with him about. before we leave, america uniqueness and america in 2010 i want to read this quote from the former president of poland. he made this statement on january 29th, 2010, at a campaign event in illinois. this is what he had to say. the united states is only one superpower. today they lead the world. no one has doubt about it militarily. they also be economically but there are getting week. but they don't lead morally and politically any more. the world has no leadership.

the united states has always been the last resort and hope for all nations. there was the hope whenever something was going wrong, one could count on the u. s. d i y we lost that hope. >> that is one man's opinion. i don't share it. there are times -- there have been many times in the last 50 years or so when american leadership has tended to flag a bit. when it is lacking articulation or courage or perception, there are times when it gives very clear leadership. for instance, under jimmy carter, i thought american leadership rather flag and collect inspiration and articulation but then under president reagan it came back

again in a big way and reagan led the world, helped of course by two other great figures, margaret thatcher and pope john paul ii. the three of them together managed to destroyed the seemingly impregnable soviet supire and reduced soviet communism to rubble. heat was the case of a resurrection of american leadership. it is a matter of opinion whether it flag again under bill clinton and was resurrected again and whether it has flagged again under president obama. president obama has had a year or so in office and the feeling ou britain for instance is that pea -- he talks too much and

thinks too little. there is a flagging of american leadership they're too. underneath it all i don't agree that america is lacking inre to. underneath it all i don't agree that america is lacking in kintical or other morality. america is a religious society with religious freedom and flourishing churches and religious organizations and i don't think there is any lack of morality there or lack of moral leadership. the american people tend to make collective mistakes but generally speaking they speak out loud and clear on the right side. i don't agree with the opinions expressed. >> how many u.s. presidents have

you known? does a u.s. president carry absolute wait world wide? >> i have known most of them since mr. truman on words. some i have known better than others. i knew mr. nixon very well and your last president i knew quite well too. the present one, mr. obama, is quite difficult to get to see and i haven't met him yet so i am reserving judgment on him but i think this is an office which w unique in the world because it is the only office in the united states which everybody sotes for. the person who is elected president of the united states has a unique claim to represent the nation. the nation is a very big nation of three hundred million people.

it is a rich and powerful and productive nation. inevitably the president of the united states is a very powerful figure in deed and the constitution of the united tedtes does give him enormous power. of course, he is to some extent limited by congress and the judiciary but he still has very large powers. so the president of the united on oes is a figure in the world that has to be reckoned as probably the most powerful person on earth. or how is it you have gotten to know all the presidents since president truman? >> for many years i have been an active journalist crossing the th,antic many times, taking part in international events covering american collections and so

forth. occasionally one is privileged to be invited to the white house to meet the president in person which has always been a very wmorable and dramatic occasion for an individual, humbled journalist like myself. >> what other world leaders have you gotten to know? >> over the course of the years i have met quite a lot of them. de a man who brought back france heom the dead as it were twice, once in 1940 when france surrendered to the nazis and he came to britain and put up -- inated the free french can save france's honor and again in 1958 when france was merely submerged in the algerian crisis and taken over by the army, the general once more rescued france.

it is very rare for any statement to rescue his country twice over. so meeting the goal was very important in my life and a great privilege experience. i met general eisenhower who redeemed germany after the second world war and rebuild e soany, very important statesmen. i met caspery it did the same thing for italy and i met others. wmet that famous and sinister clown, nikita khrushchev. i saw him make his famous speech in which to emphasize his points he took off his shoes and hammered away on the rostrum. that gave an extraordinary

indication of his rather savage determination and his willingness to believe that he was always right. he was an interesting fellow to meet too. and i've met the creator to some extent of modern india who was a very interesting person because he went to an old-fashioned english public school as we call them. you call them private schools. in many ways he was typical but he was also very much an indian of the brahman class. he was a very interesting person to have met. in the course of my duties as a journalist i have been privileged to meet quite a few of the big shot. that has helped me in my work as a historian because to meet the

people who make history is -- gives you interesting insights into how history is made and how history ought to be written. >> do you ever get to meet your hero, winston churchill? >> yes, i did. i was very lucky indeed because i was a young man of 16, churchill came to my home town to make a speech near by and he was staying at a rather exclusive little hotel at the time and the manager of the hotel mother and he said -- this was in 1946. churchill was out of office and the leader of the opposition of the conservative party. the manager said to my mother if paul would like to meet winston churchill, if he would be in the

lobby of the hotel tomorrow morning, when he was about to set off to make his speech i will see that he is placed and has a chance to talk to him. and churchill dubee appeared in his cigar and to light his cigar he had specially made giant matches. i have never seen anything like it. he was lighting his cigar and he saw me and gave me one of his giant matches and so i was encouraged to say mr. winston churchill, to what do you attribute your success in life? and he looked at me and without hesitation he said conservation of energy. never stand up when you can sit down and never sit down when you can lie down and he then marched

into his limo and drove off to make his speech and i always remembered this. he followed his own advice because he spent morning as a rule in bed but he wasn't idle. he was comfortable but he was making telephone calls, the was dictating telegrams, he was dictating letters, he was receiving people, he was shaping what to do the rest of the day. in other words he was conserving his energy because he was lying down but he was very active at the same time. one of the great things about churchill and this is a point i make strongly in my little book, he always works very hard indeed. the whole of his life, i especially wrote my book to be read by young people, that is why i made it so short because

young people are not always keen on reading young books by specially directed at young people and one of the lessons i am anxious to impart to them is always work hard, follow churchill's example. he worked hard all his life. he played hard because he realized exercise and recreation is important to the efficiency of your work so he played hard as well as he worked hard. always he was at it and he led long days full of activity and that is one of the principal lessons of his magnificent life. >> another thin volume you have written about george washington, founding father. could anyone else have done what george washington and winston churchill did during their political life times?

>> no. one of the great stroke of luck which the united states had was george washington. of course it had the fundamental lock of occupying and exploiting a uniquely rich and fertile country, wonderful agriculture, all the minerals you could possibly want and plenty of space. that was the primary stroke of luck which the american people have had. to have george washington with another very valuable and unique streak of luck because george washington was two things. he was a general and he was a statesman. and he pursued the kind of strategy during the long war of independence and it was a very exhausting worar, he pursued th

only strategy that was open and he went on to supervise the constitutional arrangement and when the constitution was drawn up and approved he was voted into power unanimously, he went reluctantly perhaps but recognize that he had to do it and he implemented the constitution. he made the constitution work and it is because of his laying the foundations, not just of the constitution itself but the way it was applied in practice that the constitution of the united states has worked so well and suitably amended the quarter of a millennium, 250 years war more and all that is to some extent due to george washington. at the time, some people did not have a high opinion of george washington. john adams, for instance, was

very critical of him and thought he was stupid and so on. i don't think these views bear examination once you get down to what george washington actually did. he was not a showy man or a brilliant man in the sense of having flashes of wit or intuition, but he was sound, solid, patient, he had judgment. those are the things you really need. i can't imagine any other figure who could have performed those military services and those constitutional and statesmanlike services wonderful way that george washington did. just as we owed a great deal to churchill in 1940, so i think in the 1770s and 1780s and 90s the united states owed a unique debt

to george washington. >> let's take some calls for our historian guest, paul johnson. mike in tucson is first up. are you with us? all right, we have lost mike. let's go to boston. dug in boston. >> caller: i wonder if paul johnson approved of laws in europe that lock up historians for having a skeptical viewpoint on certain aspects of the second world war specifically high happen to consider a damn good historian -- i would be interested in your views. >> guest: i lived through the second world war. i was 10 when it started and i was 16 when it ended. i remember it very vividly indeed and there were lots of things we didn't know then which we know now.

there will be arguments over various aspects of the second world war which will go on as long as there are historians and history. fortunately for churchill and this is quite an important point, he got his word in first. in 1945, i remember this vividly, having led us to victory he was decisively rejected or his party was, by the british electorate and he was dumped into opposition having held supreme power for five years. suddenly dumped into opposition and the opposition labour party was given a landslide victory. when that happened, that same sad day for him, his wife comforted him by saying, maybe it is a blessing in disguise and

churchill replied it appears to be very effectively disguised. but his wife was right because not only did churchill recover his health, if wasn't subjected to the strain of government and was able to go on for another 20 years. and but he also had the time to write his great history of the second world war. it wasn't completely finished by the time he returned to power in 1951, but all the work was done. therefore, he got this huge work finished and it was published early in the 1950s. this was the first great history of the second world war by one of the people who had been a principal competent and he got his word in first. of course hitler was dead, fdr

was dead, stalin thought he could get his version in through official history and how wrong he was. most of the generals and admirals and air marshals and so forth have not gotten permission to use the documents so their versions came out later. so churchill got his word in first and his account of the second world war, which is based upon the documents, to which he had unique access, is magisterial in town and very long and full and he had a lot of people to help him do it peterson will his version came to a great extent the accepted version of the second world war. so he not only made history, but he wrote it and he wrote his

version of it. >> host: michael in philadelphia, please go ahead. >> caller: it is an honor to speak with you. i read your wonderful book history of christianity, which even though i am a jewish descent i greatly enjoyed and recommend to everyone i encounter who is interested in the subject. different question on a different subject, hi watch bbc news regularly. do you think is real and the way it is portrayed in the british media gets singular focus on what is perceived as feelings because of domestic considerations such as indigenous muslim population and political consideration of oil because of historical legacy that britain was involved in the creation of israel in the first place and i will take my call.

>> guest: that is a very long question. could you make a short one and i will try to answer? >> host: the caller is gone but why not portion--and to the portion that you would like to? >> guest: is britain a christian country? is that what it was? >> host: let's take it this way. in your latest book churchill, you talk about the creation of the middle east and you talk about winston churchill's role and the british empire's role and it is a rather brief section where you talk about that and a lot of criticism about how brief that section is but on the whole, britain's role in

creating the middle east. >> churchill was unique in that he played a decisive role in the creation of not one but three countries. first of all there was iraq and jordan which he created after the first world war when he was secretary of state in the british government. he was decisive in creating those two arab states. but secondly in the 1920s, he was decisive in making the zionist state of israel possible because it came under a great deal of pressure. a lot of pressure was placed on the british government to make it very difficult for the jews and israel to expand their settlements and accept a great

many refugees from europe. there was a real possibility that britain would withdraw the declaration of 1917 which made the jewish state possible. there was key debate in the british parliament which could have lead to the withdrawal of that declaration. churchill who was well briefed upon israel and the middle east generally made a remarkable speech which absolutely silenced opposition and led to the debate being concluded and definite determination to maintain the jewish settlement in israel. without that vital speech he made, probably israel would not

exist at this time. you have churchill playing a decisive role in the creation of three countries and to some extent in the present problems in the middle east. >> paul johnson wrote a history of christianity and in 1987 he wrote a history of the jews. here's an e-mail for you. the world is going to help. the refrain of every generation about the world that succeeds them. is it true this time? >> no. i don't think it is true. in any stage in human history you can produce a lot of evidence to showed that the world is going to pot and it is not going to survive but the world does survive. we are pretty well briefed on at least four thousand years of

history. we know about the last 3,000 years and during that period and is a long period after all, during all that period, on the whole world has become a better place. i am not saying we haven't invented new orders and new sins because we have. but if you look at it from the point of of view of the average family, weather in the united states or britain or anywhere else in the world, on hole their standard of living has increased generation to generation particularly during the last 2,000 years. there have been periods in the last thousand or a bit more when there have been very serious setbacks. in the fourteenth century for instant there was the

catastrophe of the black death, worst pandemic ever to affect of the world that we know of which in england for instance killed a third of the population and set things back but with that real acceptance standards of living has gone on increasing every single generation since and what we have witnessed during my lifetime and it has been very agreeable to witness it too is in large areas of the world, despite a very rapid increase in population, everyone has been getting a square meal. they have enough to eat, they have got a roof over their heads, they are getting some kind of health care and they are getting a chance to travel around. that doesn't apply to everyone. but the number of people who doesn't apply to all who are

still in great poverty has been dwindling as a proportion of total population every year and one of the things we have witnessed in the last 15 years or so his the two most populous countries on earth each with more than a billion people, china and india for the first time in their long histories have been able to provide decent living for a great majority of their populations. that is an amazing fact and very welcome fact and it is one of the most comforting facts today. i would like to think -- i was brought up as a child before the war to think we always had to think of the poor starving millions of asia. that is no longer true any more. they aren't starving any more. they are getting enough to eat and they are getting a great deal more. i thought it very interesting

that quite recently the market for cars, automobiles in china is bigger than the united states. that is not to say china is richer than the united states but it means the average chinese person and chinese family has the chance of getting a car with all of the mobility and content. we are living and an age where material advances are really comforting and considerable. wear your e-mail correspondent is getting nearer the truth is over the moral condition of the world. there hasn't been much improvement. we have expanded enormously in the material sense but our morality appears to be no better

than in the past. that is true. if we go back through history and look at the time of george washington or go further back and look at the time of queen elizabeth and the armada war into the middle ages and the crusades and back further still to the age of julius caesar, we have to admit public morals on the whole have not substantially improved. there are a number of dreadful things that occur and anyone who lived through the middle decades of the nineteenth century as i did less take a pessimistic view to improve its moral standards. i am not without hope that this can be done. i still take the view that on

the whole the the world is getting to a better place but we must work our hardest to improve the moral standards because that is what is required. >> janice from washington, in your history of the american people i was struck by your thesis that british colonialism actually was a financial drain on great britain rather than a source of wealth, that the cost of maintaining the empire cost more than the gdp generated from it. how do you view britain's commitment to the wars in afghanistan iraq? do they have any justifiable economic advantage? >> there is two different questions. the first is did we make a profit on the empire. you can produce figures and i have produced such figures to show that on the whole we spent

more than we gained by it. on the other hand we did have a feeling that we were doing a good job in the world. we felt that we were bringing enlightened and education and all kinds of things to hundreds of millions of indians. we felt later we were improving conditions in africa. the moral return. it compensated for anything we lost in a purely material cents and that applies to the middle east today. there are all kinds of arguments about whether we should have gone into iraq or afghanistan, these two campaigns we fought with the united states and certainly there is a great deal of criticism about them in

britain today particularly since it has been a commission of inquiry looking into the iraq involvement which has produced some rather disquieting findings. but we have to remember that if you are a great power and britain together with the united states, two of the great powers in the world today you have responsibility. you can do something about it even if that involves using military force, is a matter of fine judgment as to whether you use that force or not. the united states constantly over the past 50 years or so has been faced with this dilemma and

american presidents from the time of mr. truman who had to decide whether to intervene in korea, on many occasions had to decide whether to use force or not. in the interests of the area and the interests of the whole world and sometimes mistakes have been made but generally speaking the american president has been correct. i still believe we were right to intervene in iraq and a right to intervene in afghanistan. history may prove me wrong. we can't say. at the moment on the evidence available we had to do that. even though it might cost lives and a great deal of money, our position as a great civilized power demand that we should act.

in the judgment of our elected leaders we ought to act. >> don in california, you are on with paul johnson. >> caller: mr. johnson, are you concerned with the situation in the u.s. where fewer and fewer citizens control more and more of the wealth of the u.s.? >> this of course depends on what sort of statistics you take to examine and i would have thought that in the united states has always in the past, wealth is pretty widely distributed. i think one of the great thing that happened in the united states was the policy applied almost from the beginning of the nation to make land available to

people who wanted to pharma it and immigrants could come from europe to the united states, they could lead in new york without much money at all and they were enabled to by land very cheaply and sometimes on credit to farm it. that meant that 8 huge agricultural industry was created in the united states involving millions of people and the agricultural wealth was very widely spread and from the savings of that agricultural industry ordinary farmers and their dependentss and families were able to invest in industry so that from a very early point in the nation's history, the actual ownership of american industry was very widely spread.

that was a central factor in the american economy and history and in the sense of the feeling in the united states that the people and the country are one because the ownership of the country is widely spread. if it is true and i am not convinced of this then there is a substantial tendency in the united states for well to concentrated in fewer bands and an overconcentration in a minority, that is a very serious criticism of the way the country has been conducting itself and then american government ought to take important and fundamental steps. it is part of america's uniqueness and part of america's quality as a successful society that wealth is very widely

distributed. that must be continued. >> the next call for paul johnson from brian in michigan. please go ahead. >> caller: one thing i always enjoy is speaking with someone who is all the older than me that i can always learn something. i learned a lot this morning. america's strength, let's look at world war ii, through manufacturing and like you correctly call it our way of figuring things out. we ask our politicians today as we look to manufacture and we lost a lot of our auto industry how we can truly compete at $3.15 an hour with mexico and china? we just don't see that. .. we've lost 1 out of every 10 jobs associated with the auto

industry. could you give us a little bit of guidance and look ahead to where we're going to fall? right now we just don't see that. our jobs have been lost through the new world order. we're glad that china's getting better, we're glad that india's feeding itself, we're happy for >> that is what really matters. a cuss it is inevitable that some industries as they spread throughout the world through the

expertise spreads and capital becomes available, that in the advanced countries like the united states, that these industries domestically should decline as foreign competition increases. that doesn't matter, so long as the advanced power like the united states is moving into new industries, which require less labor, which required more capital, and more expertise. and i think the united states will remain strong and remain economic leader of the world, so long as those three conditions are in place. so long as it has enough capital, which is freely available to go where it's needed to create new industries, where it has enough intellectual leadership to provide the expertise to shape and fashion and make expert these new

industries. and thirdly, where it has the freedom to develop these new industries. there are industries starting up in the united states today that we don't know about, but which in 20 or 30 years time will be world leaders, which will be huge things like international business machines, which was once a small company. it gradually developed and became very important, world leaders. again, the software revolution, and things like google. america can lead the world, so long as it has the available and flexibility of capital, so long as it has the intellectual leadership, and so long as it has the freedom to enable these things to operate. now i think if you look at american universities, you will find all kinds of things going

on there, which are rich in promise for the future. so don't worry too much about the jobs that are being lost in old industries. worry about whether there are sufficient jobs being created in new industries. because that's what america is essentially about, and so long as those new industries come forward and are pressed forward with sufficient capital and sufficient intellectual energy, america will remain a top nation. >> this is booktv is "in depth" program, and our guest this month is historian paul johnson, who is joining us from london. here is just a little bit about mr. johnson. he was born in manchester, england, in 1928. his father was a headmaster at art school, and he gradually, mr. johnson graduated from oxford. he spent several years as the editor of the new statesman, and

he was formerly a member of the labour party in england. and has been a member of the conservative party since 1977, and has been associated with the american enterprise institute here in the u.s. what is your association, mr. johnson? >> well, in 1979 -- 80, the american enterprise institute asked me to come across as a visiting professor for a year, and i was delighted to do that. and that is where i did the basic research, or a lot of it, for my book, "modern times." but more than that, 80 i is a place which has close associations with government. and a lot of the fellows there have had important positions, have held important positions in government, both in the bureaucracy and in congress and

in ministerial positions, too. so when i was there, there were about 40 fellows, and it was based on a sort of waterloo, almost like a cambridge college. and if i wanted to know something, if i wanted to know something about how the american system works, i could walk along the quadrangle and find the office of somebody who not only knew the answers him but had actually helped to make them work, who had held office or had an important position within the american government. so that was a hugely useful and absolutely fascinating experience to me. and i've always been very grateful to the aei for making it possible. it was one of the most valuable years i've ever spent in my life. >> mr. johnson was a long-term column is also for the spectator out of london in 2006, received

the presidential medal of freedom from president bush, and currently writes a column for orbs.com. mr. johnson, in modern times, you start with, and i just want to get the reason why you started here. thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. be wise, not therefore king, be instructed judges of the earth. second psalm verses nine and 10. >> that was i thought a good quotation to use for the opening of the history of the world, because the history of the world is the history of great shocks and terrifying events, the rise and fall of power of an empire, wars and catastrophes, as well as long periods of peace. and i think it is very important

that one should learn the lessons of this, and that's why one writes history. and that is why i like people to read history. in the middle ages, history was defined by the preachers as the school of princes. and that was right, and princes were taught history so they would learn how to rule wisely. now in the 21st century, history ought to be the school of peoples. and people should read history so they learn how to vote wisely, and how to judge their rulers wisely, and how to choose them wisely. so i'm all for people reading history. and that's one reason i write it. and also, i like to read -- to write history which is readable so that people not only read history and theory, but actually read it in practice. that of course is one reason why

i have written my little book on churchill, it's quite short. it is 170 pages, and churchill had a very long rich and active life, what i was asked to write this short book by susan kennedy, who runs viking penguin in new york. and she said to me, well, the american people are very interested in churchill. and not least, young american people are fascinated and interested in churchill. fortunately, young people we find are reluctant to read long books. do you think you could do us winston churchill and a short book? so i said, i will certainly do my best, try. so one of the things i do when i'm writing history, is to think in terms of the reader. can i write a history, can i write a history book which a reader will find this

entertaining and is interesting and is output down double as a novel. that's what i tried to do. and i think i'm any good tradition in that. because there have been a number of the stories who have done this, mcauley did it, and some of the great american historians have done it, too. so that's what i try and do is to write history which people will read because they find it readable. >> there was a criticism written by james man in the "washington post" about your churchill book, winston churchill made many huge blunders during his long career, in this slim but were sure bold new biography, paul johnson wants to explain them all away and then mr. man and his review by saying that johnson's book gives us a cartoon version of the man. >> well, he could try and write

that book himself. i point to churchill's mistakes which were many, because he had to take a lot of decisions in the heat of the moment. and you do make mistakes. some of his mistakes were quite serious. some mistakes he made in the first world war, he was probably to get involved in the invasion because he didn't have sufficient power to be in charge and to run it properly. and he was playing for that for the rest of his life. he made a mistake in india. he was again -- against giving freedom to india, which i think was a mistake. and of course he made mistakes in the second world war, a lot of people would say that the bombing campaign against germany was a mistake, particularly the bombing of aggression a. i don't agree with that view,

but it is an attainable via and there are many other criticisms which could be levied against churchill. i don't minimize his mistakes. if you are running a world war and concentrating a great deal of power and yourself, which he had to do, and that's why the second world war was run much more successfully than the first one, because churchill had sufficient power to run it properly. if you're running a world war, on 20 different fronts all over the place, all over the globe, you are bound to make mistakes. but you have to accept the fact and press on regardless. and i'm sorry if the reviewer felt i was writing a cartoon version. that's not the general review from the reaction i have got. but of course, if you are writing the life of a very great man who lived to a great age and

was more than 55 years in parliament, nearly 10 years as prime minister, 20, 30, 40 years in office, you have a long story to tell. and if you're trying to write it briefly, then you have to simplify it, and people can easily say, this is just a cartoon version. but i think it is better that people should read a short book that not read anything at all. and i think there are more lessons to be learned from the life of winston churchill, which apply today than there are from any other great man who lived in the 20th century. and therefore, i think it is better to write the short version with all its faults and limitations and handicaps, which people will read, then to not write at all and so that people don't know about it.

so i am quite unrepentant on that point. >> you on with paul johnson. >> caller: hi. thank you for taking my call. mr. johnson, i want to make a comment and just ask your opinion about it. i love my country as most americans do, and most americans would probably be willing to lay down their lives to protect this great land. and there have been some mistakes in the past. america has made. but eventually american people get around to correcting the wrong. well, getting on the issue of morality, a four you had talked about how, you know, i think it was the polish president who said that america is still strong militarily, and somewhat economically. that this is seen to be losing their morality. i'd like to .1 thing out to put this in perspective. in this country, millions of

people year lose their health insurance and millions more don't have health insurance. and america, as far as i know the only major industrialized country that allows its citizens to go bankrupt and leave almost all the edges because their child gets sick or they get sick. so could you understand why other countries may look at america as amoral these days? >> well, i don't think that's what most people would base their criticism of america on. because america spends a great deal on health, and it has on the whole very healthy population. and it is leading many fields of medical research. so i don't think that's how they will criticize america chiefly. to devise the perfect system of public health for great nation of 300 million people or more,

is a very difficult thing. i'm very glad that president obama has tackle the problem, and i hope he succeeds in solving it in a way which most americans can accept and make workable. but it is a very difficult thing. and nobody really has solved it yet. the british have -- we have our own system, which goes back to 1948 on the national health service. it is very, very much criticized in britain. the french have a somewhat different system, which i've also heard very much criticized. the russians have won. the chinese have one. india, it is one of the most difficult things facing the world today. goes everybody wants not just to be saved from disease, and unfortunate things that happen to them, but to have good health. and good health is a attainable

because of medical research and medical practice, excellent hospitals and other health centers. but it is very, very expensive. and it gets more expensive all the time. as research intensifies and the practice and the instrumentation becomes more complicated and expensive. so we are tackling that. something which is ultimately an in solvable problem because it is changing all the time. but i think america is making efforts to get an equitable system. and i don't think that is one of the ways, myself, and wish america is lacking in moral leadership. >> next call for paul johnson. brooklyn, please go ahead. >> caller: thank you. mr. johnson, i'm glad you brought up this issue.

i read churchill's experiences, his version of won't wear one. i have to question. the first one about him. the second one about writing history. so according to his writings, his initial idea was to force them by naval assets, and to bomb istanbul and forced turkey out of the war. the idea of an insidious assault, i didn't think was his idea. and i'm wondering whether not you could shed some light about his responsibility with respect to the armed amphibious assault. >> and you had a second question? >> caller: the second question is regarding howard zinn's view, book on the people's history of the united states.

he has a point of view, a clear point of view of how he writes his history. and what i'm wondering is with respect to historians, should they and can they minimize this aspect in the writing? thank you. >> the answer to those two questions are as follows. the first question, i don't want to go into the details of the lepley, but there is a general principle here. churchill did not have overall control of the invasion. operation. if he had have done it would have been better plan and more likely to have been successful. a government itself was weak because as was the prime mister was essentially a peacetime prime minister. he didn't really know how to run the wartime government. anti-allow the power over the

gallipoli operation to be widely distributed between the generals, the admirals and the politicians. and that was the real reason for the failure. it wasn't churchill's fall. it was lord george who came to power shortly afterwards and was a true wartime leader, had been in charge then instead of antony, he would have given churchill overall command of the operation. and then, i think, it would have been better planned and pressed through to a successful conclusion. that's the answer to the first question. the second question concerns the opinions and views of historians. i am quite clear about this. i think historians and evidently should have use, and it is quite right that they should have views. you cannot not have use if you're writing to have history. you're bound to reach conclusions as to why things happen, and whether what happened was excellent or bad or

indifferent. you're bound to have views, and i don't think it matters to historians have use as long as they make it clear to the reader that they have views and are expressing the views. and that is my method. i always make it clear to the reader, as clear as i can, that i have got certain views about the subject and i underline the point when i expressed those views. i don't claim and objectivity which is unattainable. i tried to be honest with the reader, and so i have views and these are what my views are. i think so long as you are straight with the reader, it doesn't matter if you have views. you're bound to have views and you ought to express them. but you must make it clear to the reader that you are expressing them. >> mr. johnson, did you know the late howard zinn? or two for that question, who

are some of your american historian friends? >> well, i think mr. zinn was a very biased historians, and i don't think he was a very good one. but, however, i think he made his opinions fairly clear. everyone knew that he was leaning heavily on to the left. so i think it was reasonably honest with his readers. that that isn't aids sufficient reason to read him, in my view. a good example of an american historian whom i respect was the late arthur schlesinger. arthur schlesinger they can live a wonderful book about the age of jackson. i still think it is his best book, and then he went on to write some very important books

about modern history and the age of roosevelt and the kennedys, and biographies and so forth. and i very much admired schloss and your, because he was right in the thick of it. he wasn't afraid to take office. he helped jack kennedy with his administration, very substantially. and he learned about how government works and how decisions are taken. and that improve the quality of his history. so i think there's a lot to be said for historians in her into the thick of things. now i think macauley was a better historian because he held office and serve in parliament. and i like historians to have a spell in congress, or even a spell in government. because they learn a lot about it, and to revert to the aei,

one of the reasons i found it so valuable is that some of the people there who were writing books and so on had actually served in the administrations. and therefore, new how things were done. so i like that the story to oscillate between government and the writing of history. i think that results in better government and better history. >> maryanne sends in an e-mail. how did winston churchill's relationship, or lack thereof, have an influence upon his ultimate connection with fdr and the u.s.a.? >> well, you have to remember about churchill, was that he was half american. indeed, in my view, and i say it in the book, the american half was more important than the english have, because i think his mother, the american lady, was the dominant figure in his genetic composition, and in his

life. because after her husband died, she entered her whole hopes and young winston, and helped him enormously in all kinds of ways to get launched in the world. so the american element in winston churchill was very, very important. that meant that he was favorably disposed towards what went on and america. he got on well with americans. he had -- i mean, he was a typical product, you might say, of the english system, and that he went to harrow, typical english upper-class go, and he went into the army, into a cavalry regiment and all that, and evolved socially and so forth. and he was the grandson of the duke. you have to remember, too. but he also had a kind of openness and egalitarianism, which he got from his american

jeans. and this was a very, very important. when he bowed to queen elizabeth ii, as he did towards the end of his life, his bow was worth watching. it was very slow. it was very stately. it was very humble, and it was very low. but churchill was not bowing to monarchy as such. he was bowing to the constitution. he was bowing to a parliamentary history. he was bowing to english history, as a whole. and in that bow, he expressed his belief in the system that he had inherited of the anglo-sax anglo-saxon, the anglo-saxon constitutionalism, and so forth. it was very deep in him, and a lot of that came from the american side of him. so i think that it was natural that he should get on well with

fdr. he didn't get on as well as he would like to. he often said that he devoted more emotional energy to trying to manage roosevelt and to get him to agree to what he wanted, and so forth, than he did to anything else in the whole of his life. because fdr disagreed with him on a lot of things, and he was altogether much too optimistic about the good feelings of stalin, the sony dictator, and of the soviet union in general. much more favorably disposed towards them than winston churchill wanted. and often winston churchill couldn't get his way, with fdr, particularly towards the end and particularly at the famous or notorious conference. nevertheless, any other english leader would not have gone on so

well with roosevelt as churchill did. their partnership was unique in modern history, and was a very successful one. and often, when i'm talking to english leaders, like tony blair or margaret thatcher, i am often inclined to say to them, it is very important to study the relationship between fdr and churchill, and to read the letters they exchange. because of back issue a kind of guide as to what anglo-american relationship should be, and have a special relationship should function. and the special relationship with all its faults and all its limitations, is still the most important geopolitical factor in the entire world, and long may it flourish. that was laid down in its modern form by churchill and fdr together. and i always try and encourage

british leaders to stick to that formula, and to make it work. >> mr. johnson, how well do you know the queen? and what is the significance of her role in history? >> well, i don't claim knowledge of the queen. i met her only formally. but her role is very important. every government needs a top tier above them to complete the constitution. the united states government is unique in that it doesn't have the system, because the president elected by the entire nation, it is true, is head of state of well as head of government. on the other hand, to balance that, you have the division of power with a very powerful congress and a very powerful judiciary, in particular the supreme court. so that is how you solve that problem. but in most countries, there is a head of state as well as a head of government.

we have a monarchy, we are not the only one. there are a half a dozen or so with a monarchy works well. and sometimes, even in our time, it has been shown to be a very useful instrument. a notable case being modern state where they restored the monarchy and it seems to have worked very well then. we find that the british monarchy works well. it suits the british people. they like it because it is all but it is also refashioning itself all the time that and i think the queen, though a remarkably modest and unpretentious person, who never shows off and who never is trying to put her point of you all the time, a remarkably modest person, has ruled with a considerable degree of wisdom. and of course, we have to

remember now that she is a very experienced person. when a new prime minister takes office, he discovers that he has to report every week, sometimes more often, to a lady whose experience goes back to the early 1950s. who has been on the throne for half a century, who has known all kinds of wars and rumors of wars and constitutional crises and economic crisis, and who has learned from them. so she is a great find of wisdom. and a member telling tony blair just before he became prime minister, you make proper full use of her majesty, the queen. consult her always. bear considerable attention to what she tells you, because she has a great repository of

experience and has a great fund of human wisdom. so i think the queen, though often modest is a very important part of our system of government. and anyone who as prime minister in britain has to bear that in mind and pay full attention to it. >> richard n. carvell, california, you are on with paul johnson. please go ahead. >> mr. johnson, i heard you want to speak with robert conquest about intellectuals and what makes an intellectual. was wondering if you could comment on whether barack obama is an intellectual? and if you believe in his experience and education, he is intelligent. >> well, i have written a whole book about intellectuals, which i commend to you. i hope that barack obama is not an intellectual.

because i define an intellectual as follows, and intellectual is someone who believes that ideas matter more than people. well, ideas matter a lot, but they don't matter more than people. and i think if you go on that assumption, if you're running a big nation, you will make terrible mistakes and they could be very fatal mistakes. so i hope he is not an intellectual, certainly in that sense. i think he is someone who pays a lot of attention to intellectuals, and that is fine. so long as you -- it's like what churchill said of the economist. he said economist should be on cap but not on topic and i think it is time for a president to consult intellectuals and 80, to listen to what they have to say.

and if necessary, read their importance and read their books. but they should be on tap and not on top. i hope that mr. obama is not an intellectual, and i hope that he makes proper, but not indiscriminate use, of intellectuals in deciding how to do his constitutional duty as the american president. >> in your book, "intellectuals," some of the people you profiled include russo, gibson, tolstoy who you refer to as god tells her brother, artist in a way, john paul, and the lindholm and. are you not a fan of intellectuals? because in other books you have not been a great fan of some of these people. >> well, as i say, they put ideas before people. a very good example was bracht, who always treated people badly

because he wasn't interested in people. he was only interested in ideas. and john paul, whom i knew when i lived there, he tended to be rather say that he would make use of people but ultimately it was ideas that matter to him. and i think that is a great fault, and i suspect live in helmand was very much the same time. i think occasionally you get intellectuals who realize sometimes late in life that ideas should not take precedence over people. and i cite an example of edmund wilson who i think recovered from his earlier absolute belief in ideas, and i call that chapter a brand snatched from the burning. so i think that was a case where a man was very interested in ideas, but came to realize that people were more important. you can't beat people. they are what matter, and ideas

to guide you, inspire you, help you, give you something to live by and so on, but it is people that matter in the end. and i think it is particularly important that the president of the united states should be very much in that line, that people become if our ideas. >> we're about halfway through our "in depth" program with paul johnson. we will take one more call and then take a break, about seven minutes. and then we will be back live again until 3 p.m. eastern time. sherry in kansas city, missouri, please go ahead. >> caller: hi. what i'm curious about is that you hold george washington in such high esteem, when we hear him deny states are being taught that our founding fathers are old and outdated, that their principles are irrelevant anymore. and i'm just wondering, from the perspective of he who wins gets to write history, why the britons are more uprise of where

our history came from them we are, and why would that be? why is it that americans can't hold george washington and salute him, but the version under a janito the britons are? >> i don't know about that. i think the american people have cause to be very grateful to the founding fathers. they were a very remarkable group. they combined knowledge of the world with knowledge of books. they combined all the matters that happened in france with the best that happened in britain during the 18th century. they were men of action in many cases, and they were men of the since he. you know, they were decent people. they had the right sort of notion about how to behave in the world, and how to behave in government. they didn't agree about many

things. certainly jefferson didn't agree with washington, for instance, or with adams for that matter. but take them collectively, they had the right answers. so i think america was very fortunate in her founding fathers. nowadays, some people may say they are irrelevant. i don't agree with that at all. i think, you know, if you read the papers in those days and study the debates they held, what they said. if you read washington's farewell address, for instance, it's very relevant today. it's got lots of good things in it. an awful lot of what washington thought and felt and wrote, and he is very well documented. it is still relevant today, a lot of what jefferson wrote. what adams wrote.

a lot of those people have things to say, which still resonate in the early part of the 21st century. that is why i think we ought to study them, and repair them. >> and do you think americans know enough about their history, mr. johnson? >> no. building knows enough about their history. i think, it is one of the weaknesses of our education system. on both sides of the atlantic, and the french have the same complaints and even the germans, that school children don't learn enough history. as i said, history is the school in the old days and it is the school of peoples today. and the more history they can learn in school, and above all, learn the taste for history so they go on reading it as adults. i think it is very important to read books of history and read books or biography. and a more history we know, the

more sensibly we will view our rulers and help to correct them or to help to encourage them. >> and find his e-mail before we go to break from connecticut. who are some of the leading intellectuals in america that you have known and we should know more about? >> well, that is a very good question. and i'm not sure, i praise arthur schlesinger. i think he was a very great man. i like edmund wilson myself. i often read his books, and i find his book on the civil war, particularly good. there's a lot of americans today who are writing in certain publicatipublications. for instance, the new criterion. i get that every month, and i

enjoyed it very much. i enjoy national review. i think that is a mother very good paper that i read. i read the new republic. that is excellent intellectual paper. i think there are some very good writers writing in "the wall street journal" today. somebody mentioned bob conquest. well, he's strictly speaking, he is an englishman but he has lived in america for many years and he always has very good and sensible things to say. so he is another person i would praise and distinguish. there's no shortage of good writers in america writing about important subjects. and a lot of my reading is spent reading american publications and books. >> we are live with paul johnson. now we will take a little break, about seven minutes, and then we will be back live to take your

calls, e-mails which we have got several and will get to, i promise. but in 2006, paul johnson received the presidential medal of freedom from president bush. we're going to show that ceremony. we'll also show you some of mr. johnson's favorite authors and some of his what he is reading now. and finally, mr. johnson appeared on both notes on her old the book notes program in 1998. is going to talk about his writing habits and then we will be back live. >> is to find the past 100 years and no one has written better than paul johnson. the world from the '20s to the '80s as a masterful account of the harm visited on millions by ideologies of power and coercion. and all his writings paul johnson shows great breadth of knowledge and will clearly. and a deep understanding of the

challenges of our time. he's written hundreds of articles and dozens of books. including the history of the jews, the history of christianity, the quest for god and the birth of the modern. obviously the man is not afraid to take on big subjects. [laughter] >> eight years ago he published "a history of the american people," which doctor henry kids kissinger said was as majestic in scope as the country itself brick. in the preface paul johnson called americans the most remarkable people the world has ever seen. he said i love him and i salute him. it is a high tribute from a man of such learning and wisdom, and america return to the feeling. our country honors paul johnson who proudly calls him a friend. [applause] >> paul johnson.

a brilliant historian and journalist, his writings have captivated and educated people around the world. from histories of judaism and christianity, to the defining events, ideas and personalities of the 20th century, to the story of the american people, his eloquently chronicled the forces that have shaped our world. a citizen of the united kingdom, he holds america and special regard that cause the creation of our nation the greatest of all human adventures. the united states honors paul johnson for his landmark contributions to sharing the lessons of the past so that they may inform the present and shape the future. [applause]

>> where do you write? >> where you write? >> i write mainly in my study in london, which overlooks my garden. it is quite a small garden. and i have a desk with two

electronic typewriters at it in an l. shaped formation. and with a swing chair. on the first of those on the left i write the main text of the book. so that i can do them at the same time just by swinging the desk. that saves an enormous amount of time. if you write your text and you then come back to it and start doing the source notes, it is a nightmare. a lot of writers do that. it is a very serious error, and that leads to what a lot of mistakes. but if you do them my way, the same time, and incidentally you can do this on a more work basis odyssey, that is the way i do it. and i also, my study is sufficiently small so that all my three or 400 principle works of reference, dictionary and so forth, dictionaries and dates, they are all within an arms reach. that's the way i write books. >> what time of day do you buy?

>> i can start as early as 4:00 in the morning. in the summer when it is nice and light by then. and you can work undisturbed for hours. the telephone doesn't ring. and people don't interrupt you. also, i am a morning man. my brain seems to work better in the morning. some riders, my friend tom, for instant write his place often very late at night. and i ring him at lunchtime in his not yet up because he has been working throughout the night because his brain works better in evening. but mine works best in the morning. and that is what i get the bulk of my work done, between anytime between four or 6:00 and say, 2:00 and i have lunch. and i go on writing until i am tired. >> are you a fast runner? >> yes. >> how many workaday? >> well, as i say, all my notes are in order and the plan is

working and so on i can do 3000 words a day a day after day after day. and sometimes on a really good day, i can not stop to 4000 or 5000. 2000 is a bad taste make you do seven days a week? >> sometimes that i don't absolutely put myself in a straitjacket. i do have targets and deadlines i set for myself, but if i am tired, i stop. and you can always tell that. at least i can, because i have to think the words more than usual. and if i'm tired on any particular day, i stop. and if i wake up in the morning and something tells me not to write that day, but to take a day off, i do so. sn

>> and we are back live with paul johnson, historian, who is joining us from london. if you would like to call him we have about an hour and a half left to go in "in depth." you can also e-mail booktv at c-span.org or send us a tweet. you can all -- mr. johnson, who is karl popper? >> karl popper was an austrian who came to england, who taught in new zealand, philosophy, who then came to england, and who

died here not so long ago at a great age. he did two very important things in his life. first of all, he wrote a book called the open society and its enemies, in which he identified the nature of totalitarianism and contrasted it with the nature of true democracy and republican government. that was one of the important things he did. and secondly, he wrote an excellent book on how science operates, and what is good science and what is bad science. and i think, really, he has had more influence on my thinking and writing than almost anyone else. and one of my proudest possessions is a wonderful letter he wrote to me when my

book, "modern times," was published and he read it and he strongly approved of the book and the opinions he expressed in it because he lived through all those years. and he wrote me this wonderful letter, which i have framed and hanging over my desk. so in the way, he is my favorite philosopher. and i think he is particularly important today, because if his advise as to how science -- science should be conducted, how hypotheses and theories should be framed, and how they should be substantiated and justified, and if not justified, force applied, all that is highly relevant to the current debate on man-made climate change. and i think if karl popper's

examples and instructions and advice had been followed, some of the mistakes which are not -- now, to light and dark discrediting the whole scientific establishment, would not have been made, so he is an important philosopher of science as well as politics, whose example and writings are highly relevant today. and his book on scientific method ought to be read by all sciences whatsoever of. >> paul johnson, we just showed our viewers your favorite historical figures. your favorite writers and your favorite books. one of your favorite writers you told us was mark twain, and we got this twitter message, your favorite author mark twain considered your favorite politician teddy roosevelt a religionist warmonger. >> well, opinions differ, and

mark twain was a man of strong opinions throughout his long life. and some of his opinions are not very sound, in my opinion, but no doubt if you were alive today he would reject a lot of my opinions, too. he was a very great man. and like many great men, he had very sharp opinions about the enormous number of issues in life, and some of them were tremendously right and some of them were wrong, and some of them are very arguable. that's the kind of man he was. he didn't like theodore roosevelt. well, i do like theodore roosevelt, so we differ there. but that doesn't stop me enjoying mark twain's books. a few years ago, the oxford university press published, at a very modest price, a complete reproduction of all mark twain's books. and i have them in my library in

london, and i read them constantly. i get enormous enjoyment. of course, he is best known for huckleberry finn, which is one of the greatest books in the whole of american literature. and i suppose it is his best book. but he wrote many other good books, too, and lots of short essays and entertaining little reads. and all of them are in my mail. so isolate mark twain, but that doesn't mean i have to agree with all his opinions, particularly his opinion about my favorite president, theodore roosevelt. >> why was theodore roosevelt your favorite president? >> for six good reasons. first of all, he was a very active man. he was always in the saddle or on the move or doing things. he was a hard, very hard-working man. like winston churchill. secondly, he didn't take

anything for granted. he didn't necessarily take the received wisdom. as a young man, he wanted to see for himself, and he went to the far was in the badlands of the code and all those sorts of places and saw for himself. so that was the second reason. the third reason was that he thought that war was a great evil, but also sometimes necessary. and he was determined to see war at close quarters, so he took an important part in the cuban liberation movement and led his own little army of american adventurers during that campaign. so that was the third reason. the fourth reason was that he had a strong idea, american leadership in the world. is most famous saying was speak softly, but carry a big stick.

that is always very good advise for an american president. that he should be modest in his use of adjectives, and careful in his choice of words, and never post and never threatened without absolute compelling necessity. but at the same time that america should always have the physical means of fighting for what it believes to be right, and putting down what it believes to be wrong. so speak softly and carry a big stick. and finally, he believed in the open air. he was always spent as much time as he possibly could in the open air, and he found it or expanded the american public park system on a very large scale. and i think it is due to a great

extent to his leadership and example, and what he did when america has these magnificent public parks, and so much of the american wilderness is in the public domain, and therefore can be visited and enjoyed by all american citizens. and indeed, by the countless foreigners who come to america, too. so those are the reasons why i like, i like theodore roosevelt. but perhaps one also ought to add a final reason, the sixth of reason, which is he got such joy and pleasure out of life. he was an example to us all. i may say that he didn't always approve of my other great david, winston churchill. he said they had a lot in common, and you would have thought that he might have, because he was somewhat senior

to winston churchill. he met him when churchill came to america, and he said that winston churchill has no manners. he does not stand up when a lady's innards the room. said he was a bit critical of churchill. i daresay critical -- torture was critical of him, too. bob in tennessee, thanks all the. you are on with historian paul johnson in london. commack mr. johnson, i read history of the american people a few years ago and as i recall, you were somewhat critical of fdr and his treatment of the pressure in your. how would you compare how the president is turning creating to this follow-up the depression? >> of course, you have to remember that fdr was operating before keynesianism became the favorite sort of solution of

middle range or left wing economists. he was preteen jean in that respect. case was active and had written a number of books already. but his great treaties on deployment interest and money, which is the foundation of keynesian theory had not yet, not published until 1936. so when roosevelt began in 30, 33, he didn't have keynes as a bible. but in some respects he carried out changing policies. i am extremely critical of fdr. i think in a way he prolonged the depression. that is one of the themes that i illustrate an advanced in my book, i think if he had been

less of a proto- kenyan, and i say that because keynes really came after, and more of a conventional economist and had allowed the storm to blow itself out, probably the united states would have come out of recession in 1933 or 34, certainly by 35. as it was, it really, the american economy compact to prosperity only with the beginning of the second world war. that's when the dow jones reached its pre-depression levels again, with a rearmament of the second world war. so it was a very long depression, and i think that fdr was to some extent responsible for that. and i am very glad to say that this view is confirmed by the

latest, really big book to appear about fdr and the recession, by a brilliant young economist called amity slays. her book is about roosevelt's treatment of the recession advances very much the same sort of view, and that is based upon the latest research. so i stick by my view of fdr and the great depression. . . he is presented as somebody who

says you can spend your way out of a recession or depression. that is only a half truth. believed it es believed was not wrong in a time of depression or recession to run a budget deficit. that did not mean that he was a profligate spender at all costs. he was much more of a sensible conventional economists than people realized and i wish that those who quote canes as an authority of almost limitless spending would read his works because they would find there is no justification for that. both in the united kingdom and gordon brown and in the united

states under barack obama there has been an explosion of what i would call boulder canesat ia s iani and this will delay fully fledged economic expansion. in that respect, the lesson has been misinterpreted and if canes were alive today i think he would take the lead in criticizing these huge government deficits which are going to be a burden to our children and grandchildren. i think he would be extremely critical of the spending policies of barack obama and

gordon brown. >> portland oregon, you are on with paul johnson. >> caller: thank you for your time. regarding the current economic crisis which our leaders could draw upon. >> caller: >> guest: do have economic insights which will give me an idea what ought to be done? this is rather an old-fashioned view, running an economy is not all that different to running a family's finances. because the government can print money people think it can operate in quite a different world but the same laws apply to a country as a family. if you spend too much and

continue to spend too much and considerably more than you are actually earning, sooner or later you will get into trouble and the likelihood is it will be sooner rather than later. we can get away with big deficits for some time but can spend money indefinitely. there is a financial reckoning. it is very good for the president to say to himself as he sits in the oval office. would i do this in my own

finally finances and take a bit more advice. enormous spending plans. that is my advice to mr. obama and to gordon brown. he will not take it. i hope he is open-minded enough to take the advice to be careful of the deficits and careful, he doesn't go down in history as the best of the big spenders. >> host: greg, go ahead. >> caller: thank you for taking my call, how winston churchill would have reacted immediately after 9/11. >> guest: i think he would have taken roughly the same view that

mr. bush did that this was the challenge. this was a challenge to america's way of life, a deadly challenge to the american people and the very greatest views should be taken of it and the most fundamental and serious errors -- efforts made to counteract it. he would have declared a state of emergency and take inappropriate measures. he would have taken many of those measures that should have been taken. he would have regarded -- they would have taken measures in his power. >> two e-mail's come in.

i will let you respond. islamic ascendancy a real threat to western society and how do you view the assertiveness of islam in england and europe? >> guest: the other two closely related points. i think the islamic threat is serious. from a demographic point of view, feet islamists, particularly those in western europe, where they have the advantage of public health and hospitals and so forth, have a very high birth rate and several islamists have told me we intend -- we are weaker militarily than the west is at the moment but we intend to conquer you demographically and they have a

definite policy of having as many children as they possibly can. as for the assertiveness, there is no doubt about that and it is deeply rooted, american values and british values are threatened by it and european values and some european countries, they already exercise a good deal of power. this has to be borne in mind with the long history of islam. islam has had periods of effervescence and militancy and fundamental desire to conquer and ruled before. these have gone through the same phrases of beginning, middle and end and have come to a stop. i am not sure the present spasm

may also prove temporary and come to an end because i think a lot of islamists are beginning to realize that militancy doesn't pay. that in order to prosper in the world in the long term you have to be peaceable. you have to be moderate. you have to be willing to live with other people. you have to trade with them and share things with them. you have to listen to them. and they in turn will listen to you. the lesson of history is art work and honesty and moderation and common sense and decency prevail in this end over militancy and that lesson will be learned so that within the next 10 to 15 years islam may

begin to present a different face. in that case the period of crisis and danger will be over. of the fundamentalism continues, sooner or later there are going to be very drastic events. but i believe the west having freedom on its side and will emerge from those testing times with its essential culture and freedom in tact. i am not too gloomy about it. >> you are on with historian paul johnson. >> caller: i have listened to your program for the last hour or so and one thing you said was a short book is better than a long book. i like that. two short questions. the first is in reference to i am a veteran and i was drafted.

what is your opinion on the draft? second question, this is black history month. what is your opinion on carter winston, african-american historian? >> guest: i would like to express an opinion on that. on the question of long and short of books, there is room for both. i have written some very long books in my life and i now write short books. i am 81. i will be 82 this year and i only write short books. in the past i have written books on big subjects. the history of the jews. it is impossible to write a good history of the jews which isn't a long book. it would be quite out of the question. my history of the modern world

is a long book because there's a great deal to described and a great many events to cover. it had to be long. and history of the american people, if it is going to be a true history and a useful history it has to be long and mine is well over a thousand pages. a lot of the most interesting things about the history of the american people lies in the detail and that detail has to be described. there is a strong case for long books on important big subjects. but equally because of the impatience of human beings to the middle at least the impatience of young people, there is a case for short books. i have written a number of short books in recent years, one on george washington and here is the short life of winston churchill because i want to

bring into the churchill story young people who are impatient with long books but who will read a short of readable book and i want to make them churchill fans as i am. and it will be of use to them in their life. there is a case for long books and a case for short books. it used to right the first and i right the second. >> host: modern times, history of the jews and churchill and i see the length of these books that mr. johnson has written. :sends us a two. why is the dictionary listed as one of your favorite books? >> guest: it is an essential book. i'd don't know if you are familiar with the oxford english dictionary and its full extent. 20 enormous volumes. that is a dictionary based upon

historical principles. if you look up the word you not only get a definition of the word or a number of definitions if it is used in different senses but you also get a history of the word and when it was first used, that history includes a lot of quotations from famous authors from geoffrey chaucer in the fourteenth century through shakespeare and in modern times charles dickens and william make peace that dray and mark twain and it is interesting, i learned this from the oxford english dictionary, the first use of the word crunch in its modern economic sense, we speak of the credit crunch for instance, was a work of winston churchill. he used it in 1930.

this new sense, he talked about the crunch in foreign affairs. that was a sense in which we use it today as in credit crunch. one learns from that. the useful word going back to 1930 and the originator of the use in that sense was winston churchill. of find that information fascinating and that is the kind of information that the oxford english dictionary in its 20 volume set, it is very close to my desk. i can reach out and all of a volume and consult it when i am writing an article or a book and i always learn something from it. it is a huge mine of information and that is why it is one of my favorite books. >> steve, good afternoon.

>> let me compliment mr. johnson on his accomplishments in history of the american people. i find it to be written by an englishman but the best survey of american history and it is a multi generational novel. something i always wondered about and want to ask a question. i find mr. johnson treated president harding more favorably than other people have. i think of him as one of the founders of crony capitalism we are seeing today where his favorite friends got special deals through relationships with the government. i would like to ask mr. johnson if -- at least in reading the book a more sympathetic view toward harding then we would normally here in the united

states. >> quite a lot of americans who go into his record actually take the same view that i do. the problem with harding is he was a soft hearted man and he wasn't tough enough with his friends. he didn't himself do anything wicked. it was his friends and he wasn't discriminating with his friends. in some ways he was a very old-fashioned man and ran an old-fashioned campaign. it was a front porch campaign. he sat on his front porch and people came during the presidential election campaign. they asked him questions. he was unavailable.

he was a man who is there for the public to question. as president every sunday he would take a ride through washington on his horse. he would ride through washington and people would salute him and they would ask him questions and he would answer them. he was the last president who answered the front door himself. the bell rang and the door of the white house would open and there would be the president welcoming you and he would ask you in and you would ask him questions. when i think of the trouble of getting into the white house today i think those were the days. there are all those old-fashioned reasons for liking mr. harding who has had rough

treatment from history and there are good reasons for respecting him. >> do you feel people who influence events in the world are the cause of the influence or they simply rise societal ways? hitler would be a prime example of this. >> i think that is true. i think it was victor hugo who said nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come. if somebody can personify the idea, then he becomes automatically very powerful himself and there are occasions when people personify the idea. i have seen it happen in my own observation.

in england during the 1970s, the trade unions were becoming all powerful and destroying government and destroying entire british industry's, our shipbuilding industry, virtually destroyed by trades union, having too much power and exercising it irresponsibly. the person whose idea that the unions had to be resisted and overcome was margaret thatcher. that was an idea whose time had come. they wanted to see union power reduced. margaret thatcher embodied that idea and one of the reasons she won so many elections so handsomely and rules of for 12 years along with any bridge from minister in the twentieth

century was because she embodied that idea and she fought two tremendous battle, one against the coal miners' union and one against the print or calls union and she came to the unions. she was an example of a person who radiated power because she embodied an idea whose time had come. >> why haven't you written a book about abraham lincoln. do you think he is overrated as a president? >> guest: i don't think he is overrated. he is your greatest president. as for writing a life about him that is what i am thinking about at the moment. i was asked to write a short life of winston churchill. that is already published. then the publisher said to me is there another important person you could write a life about? i said yes, jesus christ.

i have written that life too. that is going to be published this year. now i am looking for another subject and one of the subject i am thinking about very seriously is writing a short life of abraham lincoln because i believe he was your greatest president, i've believe he was an absolutely fascinating man and a very good and decent man and incidentally a very funny man like churchill. he had a very good sense of humor and he made a lot of jokes. he is the ideal man to write a book about. whether one can write a successful short book about him which puts in everything you need to know about him, i am not sure. that is what i am thinking about at the moment because i am seriously thinking that he is going to be my next subject. >> host: what was it like growing up catholic in england?

>> i remember having an argument with your writer james baldwin who was grumbling to me about how difficult it was to be a black in america and all the prejudice and so on and i said to him i no doubt what you say is true but let me tell you, there's nothing you can tell me about prejudice because i was born in england, i was born red-haired, left-handed and a roman catholic. there's nothing i don't know about prejudice. if you are red-haired and go to school if you are a bully people expect you to be quarrelsome, difficult, bad tempered and ferocious. doesn't matter how you behave, that is how they think you are. if you are left handed and you going to the army they can't

bear you because all of the weaponry, let don't know if it is still true. all of the weaponry is made for right-handed people and sergeant major is don't like you if you are left-handed but also if you are a roman catholic, to some extent you are somewhat suspect. i was brought up a roman catholic. my parents and family had always been roman catholic. i went to a roman catholic school, educated by the jesuits' so i know about the prejudice against roman catholics in england which goes back to the sixteenth century and particularly to the gun powder plot of 1605 when guy forks and his companions tried -- were planning to blow up parliament and they were discovered and executed and ever since then, on

november 5th, the british always celebrate with fireworks and bonfires to celebrate the finding of gun powder plotters and that has kept the policy alive. is a handicap in britain. one of the things that has reduced the handicapped in recent years has been an important hallmark when president kennedy was elected president of the united states in 1960 and became president of the united states. that was very helpful to british catholics too. i know what it is like to be prejudiced and dino what it is like to be discriminated against. but faint god things are better than they used to be. >> why does religion permeates

so many of your books? you have even written a book called the quest for god. >> guest: religion is an important thing in life. whether you have got religion or not, my catholicism is very important and always has been important. i have studied it. two of the greatest religions in the world leaders to look christianity and in today as some, i wrote a history of christianity, i know a certain amount about it and i know how is shaped. western civilization and our culture. i am very interested in it and whatcom constantly reading about it and when you get to be middle-aged you need to sort out your ideas. when i got to that stage i wrote a bequest for got about what i believed and how i had come to believed it and why i believed it and its importance to me.

as i say i have just recently written a life of jesus which is short and based very much on the four gospels and shows what jesus taught and in it, the theme of the book is all the jesus lived 2,000 years ago, what he talked at a huge and lasting impact on the world. the moral of the book is there are all kinds of things in the modern world, ideas and beliefs and attitudes and so forth. some of which are good and some of which are bad. civilized points of view which we have in the modern world

which are good ultimately have their bases in the teachings of jesus christ. that is why he is a relevant figure today just as relevant as he was 2,000 years ago. that is the theme of my book. >> host: when will be published? >> guest: this year, probably in the summer. >> host: chris, paul johnson is on the line up with you. >> host: >> caller: i really enjoyed this conversation. one of my other heroes, i agree with him. >> host: who? the former president of poland? labor union leader in the 80s?

>> caller: he was a great man. what he did in the union that they had, that really was a great thing in bringing down the communist block. my question to you is, have you ever compare the labour movement in england to that of the united states. the unions volunteered, these people volunteered were forced into it sometimes? >> host: that could lead to a big answer. let's see what mr. johnson has in store. >> guest: you have raised a very

important question which i spent a lot of my life trying to consider what i think about it. the unions were important in the 1970s. and a great evil because too much legal power in my view. that was the reason i left the labor party and became a supporter of margaret thatcher. she promised me and the country that she would reform the unions and she did. unions are good thing in themselves because working men need to be allowed to protect themselves. employers can be unscrupulous and at times brutal. the union employees need to protect themselves. we must be very careful, the amount of legal power which we give them. in england they had too much legal power and they have used

it. they need to be watched very carefully. just as much as the united states and britain, we must always be careful about any institution. if it is not to the central power we must be very careful. we're careful about giving it to a group of individuals loren institution. we have now begun to correct that error, it is a broad front to it. an individual should not be given a certain legal power, we

should not give it to anyone else, institution or group of individuals without careful thought. that is the lesson. >> brian in baltimore, good afternoon. >> i am thoroughly enjoying this conversation. i would love to hear your opinion about political correctness as we see more and more of it today in england and this country, the legal profession which helps perpetuate -- might make an interesting book but i would love to hear your opinion. >> i am very glad you asked that question. when communism was in power and in the late 1980s it was destroyed in eastern europe, i

thought to myself this has been a horrible thing, our experience with communism and it shows how foolish human beings are to think of a system which can do so much damage and cause so much unhappiness. st. god we are getting rid of it but i wonder what is going to follow. it was already happening even then. the new system of political correctness was even more pervasive than communism. more difficult to combat. it wasn't the property of any particular state. it wasn't visible en didn't stick up over the horizon. it didn't have leaders so there weren't any people you could organize against. i compared it recently to settling on society like a great big cloud of phosphine gas

getting into every crevice of our lives. strictly speaking political correctness is a system whereby you mustn't be nasty to anybody. of course that has its origins in perfectly decent feelings but there's already plenty of provision for that. it has a name. is known as good manners. if you have good manners you don't need to be politically correct because you are already doing everything that anyone can expect. good manners teaches you to be polite to people irrespective of their age or sex or color or creed or religion or belief. it teaches you to be decent, to treat people with reasonable civilized equality. good manners is something which can be talked and ought to be

taught from the earliest age. if you have a society based on good manners you don't need political correctness. let alone do you need political correctness enshrine in laws and so on of which in britain we have great and growing number. we have had 12 years of rule by the labor party in britain. the country's miserable and has been hollowed out from within. one of the themes we have been burdened with a whole set of laws based on political correctness. decent contended this, just as serious as any thing like

communism or islam. that is my strong opinion. >> host: where can people read your stories? >> guest: they can find my stories in bookstores. i write to the spectator. i don't do it every week because i am getting a bit old for that. i do a piece in forbes magazine, an opinion piece about business and economics but i bring on my idiosyncratic views from time to time. chiefly i try to communicate like this book of churchill and jesus which is coming out this year.

of course i have written 50 books. hi don't know how many and you can get the big ones in libraries and so forth. like most writers i live through my books. that is what i think and believe. >> how has the internet changed your life? >> the truth of the matter is i am too late for all these things and not to be on top of that. i am not very mechanically minded. i describe myself as a cottage industry. i have a very good secretary. all of my work in the right way to communicate with the whole world but i can't do it myself

and i regret that but there is. there are disadvantages to being in your 80s. you are not always on top of the latest technology. that is my predicament. on the other hand, you have learned a lot and to some extent you have learned to exercise your judgment. there are compensations too. >> who is marigold? >> guest: she is my wife. we have been married almost 53 years which is a good long time and i was very lucky to secure her in 1957 when we got married on march 3rd, 1957, and i am lucky we are still together. we have four children and we just had our tenth grandchild so

we have ten grandchildren and i regard the happiness of family life as the most important thing in a person's life, certainly the most important thing in my life. i am singularly fortunate. i am sorry she won't be watching this program. but i will tell her all about it when i go home. >> if you are connected to the internet at home you can watch this entire program. it will be repeated tonight at midnight in the states and again next week. go ahead with your question. >> thank you for taking my call. i wonder if you could speak on this. i have been reading a lot about the times before the battle of

marathon that there was a strict military code and it appears in the timeline that athens and sparta united against persia at marathon and there was the peloponnesus in war. what influence there might have been of exposure, in these military conventions previous to marathon being eliminated. >> i don't think that was a vital thing. it was very difficult to get the greeks to unite. they were a series of city states. they believed in the civilization of the polish which

was a greek word for city and that limited them to quite small areas. some of these states notably athens became in materialistic and began to expand and they had little colonies which were all over the aegean and sicily and north africana and the western coast of turkey and that meant athens became a powerful country and therefore aroused the jealousies and hostilities of other greek cities notably start up. that led to the peloponnesus in war and the polynesian war unfortunately has been described as the time at which ancient greece committed suicide. you could say that because after

the polynesian work classical greece was never quite the same again. it was conquered by alexander who was a barbarian outside the proper ages of greek civilization and later by a row. and this was an act of suicide. by analogy, the same thing happened to europe in the twentieth century because it fought two wars traditionally 1914 to 1918. essentially continental civil wars. europe since has lost its

empires has become marginalized. it is still worth studying the history of greece in uniting against persia and fighting its own civil war and the peloponnesus and committing suicide. >> 15 minutes left with historian paul john senden on in depth. another e-mail has come in. one of our sunday morning political talk shows, alan greenspan and henry paulson said a generational crisis faces the u.s. today in the deficit. china sits atop an astonishing level of foreign reserves greater than $2 trillion. british journalist martin bloch says not only will china be the next economic superpower but the world order it will construct will look different from what we had under american leadership.

>> i don't believe it. it is perfectly true that the deficits are very large but they can be eliminated or substantially reduced. that is what we have got to set our minds firmly in favor of in the next few years and a lot of our future will depend on how we do at and the younger people must insist that the older people take a lead in this and we have created a crisis and we must solve it by cutting down, eliminating or reducing the deficit. the chinese have always made the mistake of thinking they can sell goods to the world without buying in return. they did this in the nineteenth century. it was very hard to export

everything to china only we were very glad to do that. the chinese didn't want anything we produced except opium and that led to the opium wars because we wanted to force the chinese to buy more opium. now they are attending to do the same thing together. they're putting a lot into gold. they have huge reserves and they are not buying enough goods from the people to whom they sell goods. that is a mistake that they will have to pay for in the long run. i don't think the chinese will take over economic world leadership. what matters here is freedom. if you don't have enough free and you won't remain on top of the economic treaty because freedom is necessary to produce new ideas, new processes, new

ways of doing things. that is what made britain a leader in the industrial revolution and what made america the first great economic superpower and what will keep her there in my opinion. i repeat what i said before, india is taking the proper road to world economic leadership as opposed to china because india has economic freedom and political freedom and freedom of speech and is going for high tech industry. india is more likely to make a successful challenge to the united states than china but i would still back the united states because the way in which america produces freedom with its political system, its university system, it's free expression and so forth and its love of controversy and exchange of ideas and an atmosphere of

freedom will keep it a head of the rest of the world for the foreseeable future. i would still put my money on america. >> you are on with historian paul johnson. >> i am very critical of churchill up on his defeat, he said he didn't reside over great britain through its finest hour because the demise of the empire, these imperialists or when he was a soldier, when fighting these natives who have spears and arrows or the dream of having a war with a scorched earth policy that devastated the women and children killing 50,000. i don't like churchill at all. he fought in world war ii with

the bombing. this is the first time i heard the word holocaust was the bombing of germany. >> first of all, churchill was extremely critical of his brutality because he said in the sudan campaign and in the river war, very critical of him at a time when that required considerable courage. he was old fashioned about india. he hadn't been back since 1899 and didn't realize the extent to which india had changed.

once the labor government had given india its freedom and pakistan its freedom, churchill acquiesced because he regarded -- once parliament had spoken, what was the law? he obeyed the law. he reconciled himself to the freedom given to india. that is the lesson you learn about churchill. he was wrong on many things but he always bowed to the course of history. he was prepared to reconcile himself to things met is the lesson to us all. can you comment -- the prime

minister in 47 and 48. >> very glad the wager chill lost the 1945 election. very few people expected him to do it. i remember that election vividly. i was 16 at the time and i remember everyone was deeply shocked -- or most people were. but it was a good thing. it was a blessing in disguise. if churchill had tried to continued british rule in india, there would have been a mess. it could have ended in the same kind of mess which the french contrived in vietnam. where they tried to hang on and drag the united states into it too. fortunately the british people spoke in 45. they kicked out the conservatives and put in labor

and labor gave india its freedom. it all ended happily. but churchill would have rejoiced at india's position today because india is rapidly becoming a great economic power. he always thought it could. gandhi wanted india to remain with a domesticated economy, churchill always believed india had tremendous economic potential and under british guidance he thought it could realize that potential. it has begun to realize it under its own guidance and the person -- first person to rejoice in that would have been winston churchill. it would have been a constant delight to him to see that more and more indians were being brought out of a subsistence economy into western type living standards. he would have loved to have seen

indians becoming -- creating high-tech industries and wonderful universities and leading the world in many products. with all his prejudice he loved the indians and he thought they were capable of great things and now that they are achieving great things he would have been delighted. >> ten minutes left with paul johnson. >> caller: mr. johnson, a comment and a question. earlier you mentioned the legality of the iraq war. there is reliable documentation including the downing street memos which detailed conversations between prime minister blair and president bush where they both acknowledge there were no weapons of mass destruction and bush went so far as to suggest painting a united states spy plane with you and colors and flying at low altitudes over iraq to provoke the iraqis and firing on it to

give the united states justification for war. i clearly remember the majority of the british people, you said great powers like the united states -- do you believe those responsibilities also include telling the american people the truth about the lies that took both of our countries to work and those who perpetrated those? >> somebody once remarked, in work the first casualty is the truth. i am afraid whether states are democratic or dictatorships, hardly ever give the full truth as to whether they are going to war. we blundered into the first world war which is the greatest catastrophe of modern times of which most of the things that are wrong with the world

ultimately spring. the people in britain were never told the truth about why we were going to war or why we were prepared to go to war or tell the truth about our lives, i am afraid there is a long history of civilized and law-abiding nation is not telling the truth about the war when it is being fought or the reasons it is taking place in the first place. there is nothing unusual about the iraqi business in that respect. on the whole, mr. bush and mr. blair were right to do what they did. where they went wrong was in underestimating the difficulties that would follow in administering iraq after we won

a military victory. ruling iraq and handing over afterwards was a difficult thing. they did that because neither of them had read enough history. if they had read the history of iraq, hallett was created and what it was created from and why it was created and so forth they would have been much more apprehensive about it and taken much more care to take proper advice and make proper planning. iraq is a difficult country. strictly speaking it shouldn't exist at all. it is an artificial creation. it was created as a result of the first world war chiefly by winston churchill and he knew at the time that it was going to be a very difficult country to administer and run and i remember when i first went to iraq in the early 1950s more

than 50 years ago, the prime minister who was the last really good ruler the iraqis have had, he said to me this is one of the most difficult countries in the world to run because it shouldn't really exist. it is an artificial creation and it poses extraordinary problems and this is very difficult to run in a democratic manner or law-abiding manner because you have to be very tough and explain the difficulties. it is still true 50 years later. i wouldn't blame bush and blared too much for this. what i think they should have taken more care over was the immediate postwar plans. a lot of mistakes were made. a lot of lives lost in consequence. as for the legitimacy and rightness of the war in the first place i am still inclined to believe they were right. >> chris e-mails in you give

tremendous credit to what in the formation of the u.s.? can you expand on your definition? >> that is a difficult question and i wish you hadn't asked me because i am not sure what the answer is. what i should have said was the word good fortune. i think good fortune attended america from its berth because if you look at america, it is a wonderful country physically. it has big wheatfields, wonderful minerals, it has a very good climate, plenty of space, tremendous rivers which can be harnessed, it has health, it has everything. when i am in the united states i like to listen to the nationwide

weather bulletin and i it is snowing here or raining here or has drought here or beautiful sunshine, america is a world in itself. it is a rich and handsome and wonderful world. that was good fortune but i think the further good fortune in the men who created america who won the war of independence and wrote the constitution and put it into operation, america was fortunate in that it had a group of very able, sensible and wise men to do it. some of them were outstanding. benjamin franklin, what a great man he was. george washington, what a wise man he was and coming behind them, john adams and madison and so forth. they were a very remarkable

group of men and they created a country and gave it a constitution. it has lasted 250 years. that is without any fundamental changes and is still the top nation in the world and likely to remain so. >> final call for paul johnson. >> caller: good day. i am impressed by your book on jesus but how do you think you could reconcile your reverence for him and god and everything with the politics in overthrowing democratic leaders in honduras and 80? howard zinn is one who would have brought the underdogs into the situation. how do