when i first went to germany as a young soldier in the 1970's, i was bewildered, because as someone who spoke german, whose family was half german, i was a member of the club, so things would be said to me that weren't said for public consumption, and for whatever reason, you just want kill anti-semitism, so i would just as a way of probably offer a few of my views on it, specifically concerning the middle east, and europe, and to begin with europe, you've got to understand that while the holocaust was an immeasurable, immeasurable tragedy for the jewish people, it was a great embarrassment.

>> people can't hear you in the back. >> it was a great embarrassment for europeans. and embarrassment is a potent force and when you see the irrational criticism and outright lies told about israel in europe, i think you can understand it in terms of their psychological need. the europeans, the continental europeans know full well how monsterrous they were in their sins of commission and omission. psychologically in their shame, they need israel to be bad. they need israel to be as guilty of astros it's as they were, hence several years ago when the imaginary jenin massacre, it was terrible and several dozen

palestinians were killed and that cancelled out auschwitz. of course it didn't, and it turned out the massacre was largely palestinian propaganda, but the europeans length on it, as did many in the north american media and i think there is that need. but there's even something beyond their need to believe that israel is as bad as they were, therefore, the score is even. it's the astonishing penchant, cultures and civillations to commit suicide at various points in their development. we've seen it with many empires, but if you look at german-speaking culture, in the 19th, into the early 20t 20th century, the most sophisticated and profound in the world, now we've lost a sense of this, but in north america, especially in the lower 48, in the 19th century, german thought was profoundly influential, much more so than french thought or english thought to the extent there was

english thought. emmerson and his circle, the trance dentallist relied on german thought and you'd get to the turn of the century and the flowering, the turn of the century into the 1920's, into the early 1930's, in vienna and elsewhere, and if you look at the genius of it, it is by and large jewish culture. and the german-speaking lands turned, whether from jealousy, whatever, complex series of causes, they turn on it, and they butcher their own culture and since 1945, germany, the german-speaking lands, someone's the fountain of the greatest intellectual sophistication and development and outpouring in modern history, what have they produced since 1945? automobiles and gummy bears.

it was amazing to me how this could happen and i know we riddle about it all the time, so i think with the european criticism, i do see it largely as the need to cancel their own guilt. now in the middle east, you know, when i speak to washington area audiences, i stress jealousy as a strategic factor. now we don't think of that jealousy as a strategic factor. no, no. it's about demographics, theories of underdevelopment, but i do believe emotion plays a fair greater role in our irrational collective choices than does cold logic and analysis. and certainly, in the middle east, how can arab states not be jealous? centuries of comprehensive failure capped by the modern tragedy of the arabs, not the

creation of the state of israel. but who got the oil wealth? now, once upon a time, many centuries ago, there was a blossoming of arab-speaking culture. we know that. and cultures of life cycles and they fade. but the saudis and the gulf emirates were not responsible for that blooming of arab culture a thousand years ago, 1200 years ago. they were tribesmen, they didn't build the great mosques of damascus or cairo. they built sheep pens on a good day and the saudis, the number 1 enemy of the united states, the saudis got so much of the money, and despite that inflow of massive, unprecedented wealth, what has the arab world done? what has it akeyed? where is the world class

university? where are the software programs? where are even the early 20t 20th century style automobile factories? it has gone literally into the sapped. the palestinians. what has arab oil wealth done for the palestinians? it has kept them on a drip feed, just enough to keep them alive as a cause. and so when you go to israel, and see the remarkable, stunning job of a modern just rule of law democracy, amidst the moral squaller and comprehensive incompetence of the middle east, how can arabs not be jealous. if you stand on a mountaintop in northern israel and look north, you know exactly where israel is. it's where the green stops.

and the brown imines. -- begins. why can't hundreds of millions of arabs do better? i believe the answer -- i mean, culture is fate, and their wounds are largely self-inflicted. they were not the victims of centuries of colonialism for the most part. we'll talk about that a bit more later. but how can they not be jealous of israel? jealousy is a profound human factor and you go to the broader world of anti-semitism, and really, we need a new word, because arabs are semitic people as well. anti-judaism, just anti- >> sentiment. humanity may or may not lead to god. i believe humanity does, but i can guarantee you that humankind needs a satan, someone to blame when the cows don't give milk,

someone to blame for the epidemic. someone to blame for the bankruptcy. someone to blame for personal and collective failures. we need a satan. and throughout so much of history, what more convenient satan could there be than the jews. for so many centuries, powerless, what a marvelous thing for humanity's need to others or another force. scattered, without critical mass, a satan that can't strike back. what a gift. and then of course, with the founding of israel, the satan can suddenly defend itself, can stand up for itself. history isn't fair. life isn't fair. but i was asked just before this whether i saw any hope with the coming advent, the probable

advent of iranian weapons. of course, of course i see hope. i am absolutely of can dent that the jewish people, wonderful creative, brilliant grace on humanity will indeed survive, and will prosper. but it will not be easy, because this is a world in which our noblest sentiments, are so often frustrated. when in washington, i hear people with no sense of history say all men want peace, but yet, how many of those protesters would like to live in a town or city without a police force? all men and women do not want peace. i believe the majority to. but history is not changed by majorities, except in a few democracies. in iran, does anyone here believe that the average iranian wants a nuclear confrontation

with israel? i certainly don't think so. like average people anywhere, the average iranian want to get through the day, make a little more pony, get the bills paid, but decisions won't be paid by that average iranian. they will be made by those who have grasped and fully intend to retain power. a handful of men, who by our standards, may be men, men who have fallen in love with sonotos. we now face, and more of this later, enemies who regard death as a promotion. and that is profoundly different. and on that note, let me begin what i really want to talk about and i'm going to cram a five hour opera in to the next 40 minutes if i can. specific issues, please, ask me about them in the q & a, but i want to step back, a wide angle lens, because i believe that speaking from the lower 48, but also speaking, i think, for canada and for the west overall,

one of our fundamental problems is the way we have tried to sought to erase history. we've taken serious history teaching out of school rooms, history to the extent it is taught today is about making children feel good about themselves. if you do not know history, you will die of myth. facts matter. and one of the things that are truly -- that is truly worth fighting for are facts. factual history. we're paying a great price for taking it out. so we tend to think, whether in the lower 48 or in canada, we think of history in terms of election cycles. for the united states, vietnam, well, that's, you know, that's kind of like greeks and romans, right? it's so far in our past. world war ii, well, that's

mythologized now, and it's very, very dangerous, so let me stand back and do what we really need to do. certainly in washington, the capital, the greatest power in history, that has not produced a world class strategist in over 50 years. we produce on the military side, brilliant tactile commanders, brilliant generals, those who know how to fight, but not those who understand how the fight fits in the greater strategic scheme work and the flow of history, and in washington, in so much of the west, i see people clinging to the 20t 20th century, because it was pretty good for us. we won. and they know the theories. and now we live in a changed world, a world so profoundly different, that the 20t 20th century theories and

answers do not work. the answers do not answer. we resist the reality before our eyes. because it is so painful and dangerous to say nothing politically incorrect. so where are we now? in 2010? in the great stream of history. and you must look at the grand sweep of history if you have any hope of understanding where we are now and thus, some faint notion of where we may be going and history is not a guide to the future. but it will provide you with a dashboard full of warning lights. it enables you to recognize the same mistake the third or fourth time you've made it. at any rate. where are we? the first place we're at, and it's really a very layered, complex equation, i'll only be able to talk about a few parts of it today, we are at the end

of the age of ideology, and a turnback to the great stream of human history. now something very strange, remarkable, in a negative sense, happened to humanity for about 200 years. from 1989, the french revolution to 1989 the fall of the berlin wall, or if you prefer, 1991, the formal dissolution of the soviet empire. human kind went through this age of ideology and it would frustrate me when president bush would say we're in a war of ideas with al qaeda. no, we are not. not at all. there's no ideology on either side. we are fighting for values. democracy is not an ideology. democracy is a technique of human self-governance that uses the tool of elections, and it can be adapted or maladapted to many ideologist.

-- ideologies. we are fighting for values, for freedom, human rights, the rights of women and so forth. our enemies in an asymmetrical conflict, are fighting for me. -- for belief and our absolute refusal to acknowledge, speaking for washington, that we are fighting islamist fanatics, is debilitating, it cripples every effort we make. this is not met as a condemnation of islamists. i am a religious believer, but as an analyst, i must separate that. religions are what men and women make of it on this earth and we have a genius for perverting the word of god. bending it to our own ends. but consider the situation with which we have put ourselves. where we have enemies in al qaeda, hamas, hezbollah, other organizations, who are

openly screaming that they are fighting for alla , they are fighting for their version of their faith and we in the west say oh, no, no, they're only kidding, they don't know what they're talking about. again, these are enemies who regard death as a promotion. it is a profoundly different situation. when we, our armies, be it u.s., canadian, brits, our counterinsurgency theories, it would have been terrific in vietnam in 1957. they do not apply to the 21s 21st century. now, just give you one brief example. everyone loves to cite malaia, now malaysia, it was far more bloodier than revisionist historians like to let on, but

it was successful, over a better part of a decade. the profound difference was that no urban chinese, ethic chinese iwas born a maoist, they were persuaded to be a maoist and could be persuaded one way or the other. and now with the death of maoism, naziism, leninism, marxism, all of thiesmann-constructed ideologies, that killed so many human beings and still echo in venezuela or on campuses or the media, but they're functionally dead, nobody really believes outside of some liberal arts faculties that marxism is ever going to work.

there are he can copies here and there, but it's done. the that's the good news. the bad news is we have defaulted back to what human beings have always fought over, blood and belief, so in this aberration period, the war of ideology, people were fighting for ideas and their minds could be changed. again, one way or the other. but now, the entire world under the destabilizing impact of globalization, human kind is asking, every individual is asking, who am i? and the answer now, more and more frequently, is i'm a muslim, or i am a. >>, or i am bin galley, not even indian, or i am a pashtun, or i am a cured. kurd. it's a period of breakdown. of atomization. globalization is great for the respects on the golden crust on the human of loaf, but for the

average human being, it sews tremendous doubt. if ignorance was bliss. so you have in the 20t 20th century, the insurgencies based upon political ideologies and the profound difference was except for the psychotics, the adherence of these ideologies, the man made construction for human organization, governance, economy, culture, etc., they were sometimes willing to die for their cause, but their great preference was to live and participate in the spoils in the change, the new system, the new utopian world be it communist, nazi or whatever. now you have the hard core of whom scutate and we're dealing not with learned identities, but we're dealing with innate identities. you are a persian, you are a kurd. now, the western democracies have, by and large, got tone beyond this.

not completely, but by and large. we st. louis have our ethnic pride, etc. but in much of the world, this is the defense mechanism. this is the tribe closing ranks. i am muslim, i am hindu, i am pashtun. and it's very, very dangerous, because while you could change a maoist's mind, it's very hard to change the identity of a persian or a kurd. how do you change these innate identities? and religion, it's very hard to persuade someone to change their religion, and in afghanistan, and we had talked about that in q & a, we're not asking people to change their form of government. we're asking them to change their civilization, and it's very, very hard to persuade a human being to do that and to persuade them enduringly, so that's the first place we are. humanity, after the age of

ideology, this age of ego mania, what individuals, marxism, lenins, maos really believe that sitting down in the reading room of the british library or in a cafe in zurich, that they could device better systems of human economic, political and private organizations that human collectives had designed over the years and another reason why democracy works. it's not anism, there's no ism on the end of that and the other reason why it works, it group organically. isolation would be the islands in a hot house and it took us 800 years to get to sarah palin and nancy pelosi. so it's not a perfect process. we're still working on it. but it's self-correcting. human collectives, the genius of

all of us put together can put together better systems of organizations than these ego maniacs could and think of how many human beings died for the vanity of a marx or a lenin or a mao. so that's the first place we are. humanity has by and large passed the age of ideology, although a new ideology could spring up and galvanize the world. for now, ideology is done. we've defaulted back to what men and women have always fought about, blood and belief, faith and ethnicity. where else are we? this is very important. because it -- we are at the bare beginning of the post-colonial era. now this isn't a left wing or a right wing pitch. i'm trying to look at things objectively, to get beyond our own ideologies, and when you look at history, the european imperial powers, the portuguese have the longest stay, they rule some often misrule, they reform

and deform. native societies around the world, for up to six centuries, up to six centuries. now, this is not a pitch for neil young's line back in the 1970's about the aztecs being now where children, etc., etc. many of thate of societies that were impacted by european imperialism were pretty darn gone nasty. the aztecs and mayans really weren't nice. other tribes else where had relatively passiv passivist vief the world. but they worked out systems that functioned for them. they might have been grisly like the aztecs, they might have been war-like, they might have been mercantile, but it worked for them.

and then the european impact comes. and for a variety of reasons, do not seek single causes, for a variety of reasons, europe is so powerful civilizationly, but it overwhelms the native cultures for better or worse, and it's not all bad. i mean, up until this last decade, anything that worked in india had been built by the brits. they're getting beyond it now. but my point is this, that if you talk to many an intellectual, say post colonial era, they'll say 1947, fall of saigon. let us apply common sense. 600 years, between one and six centuries of european impact, changing the world, that cannot be undone in three decades. it may indeed take another six centuries for societies to right themselves. look at latin america. most latin -- south american,

spanish-speaking states, south american, gain their independence in heroic struggles against spain, in the second decade of the 20th century. sorry, the 19th century. it is 200 years later, and only in this generation are many of those south american countries coming to grips with the colonial hangover. now, this is junior high school physics. what happens when an external force pushes a system out of balance, keeps it out of balance, and the external force is very suddenly removed? the reaction is at least equal, to the force exerted in a utopian universe where much of us live. but where you see around the world with the fault lines is a world trying to reshape itself, societies, countries, entire continents trying to find a new organic balance. what can work for them.

well, the problem is, when the european empires, which ran the gamut from relatively benign brits to absolutely monsterrous in the case of the dutch, was the row session of empire, they left behind this poison pill of dysfunctional borders. on a practical level, there is more -- no more grotesque cause of violence in the world today than dysfunctional borders. and if you've got the department of state in washington, d.c. and mention dysfunctional borders, they go into a panic, because in the views of our state department, every border that exists on the map today has existed at least since the time of exodus. borders have changed and always will change. why on earth would something so abstract matter to us. think of where canadian soldiers have fought, where the u.s. military has been engaged. since and including desert storm. every conflict, the multiple

conflicts in mesopotamia, iraq , somalia, the balkans, afghanistan, they are all either caused by or exacerbated by dysfunctional borders, left behind by europeans who drew them for their own interests. their own selfish reasons. if you look at afghanistan, afghanistan is not and never was a country, a state, as we know it. it's an accident where other people's borders ended. in the east and southeast, the duran line is as far as britain thought they needed to and could push a buffer zone to protect british india. in the west, afghanistan's present boundaries include historically persian areas, because persia was weak when the borders were drawn. the only natural boundary is real in the north, the alexander river, but that divides two

strikes. the european boundaries do one of two things. they either thrust people together who do not want to be together or they push people apart who do want to be together. for instance, the kurds. 36 to 40 million people without a country. divided because of where the europeans drew the boundaries. the pashtuns, near the taliban home constituency. the pashtuns. again, probably around 40 million people without a country. and as an aside, you've got to differentiate between your enemies. divide and conquer is much smarter than just alienating everybody. the taliban, while i have no sympathy with them, they are by and large hillbillies. they have local and regional aids.

al qaeda has a global aspiration, and it may seem weak to us, but they are very -- whacky to us, but they are very serious, so based with an international mobile enemy with global aspirations, we are currently concentrating on fighting local hillbillies. we are not thinking. but at any rate, if you look at why saddam invaded kuwait, because in the old system of boundaries, kuwait of would have belonged to iraq in his version of the world. somalia, does anyone here really believe that somalia is or ever will be a functioning state within its current borders? rational borders could be totally differently drawn. yugoslavia was a frankenstein's monster of a state, put together with ill fitting body parts and we are in this period of breakdown and you can no more tell people to secede or

separate, but they don't listen any more than your close friends advise them not to marry that man or woman. this is about emotion. people need to learn. now, in the form of yugoslavia, as the decades go by, some of those states will find they are too small to function. and they will come together in the form of customs union, and new entities will emerge, but first, you've got to go through the breakdown, and this is very important, because we have been involved, western military, the united states, western militaries, the united states, have been involved, these great democracies have been involved in trying to preserve a european imperial world order. it is madness. and people worry in the short term about instability. instability is coming, and again, the longer you keep the pressure on, the more violent the explosion is going to be. if we could do one thing, and

our politicians will not do it, of course not, but if we could do one thing, to amend the world's problem somewhat, it would be to develop a somewhat more peaceful means of altering borders, so maybe we don't have small slaughters instead of major massacres. i mean, again, it's not -- many cities or mixed populations are intermingled. certainly anyone who studies the middle east knows that, but my point is we're not coming to grips with the problems that men hand women are now again fighting for blood and belief. wars of religion, ethnicity, they're fighting because european legacy doesn't work. it just doesn't work. and oh, by the way, let's go to the next level of complications. our insurgency theory that the canadian and u.s. military, the others, brits, try to apply, is

aimed at mid 20th century, secular revolutionaries. in afghanistan, somalia and elsewhere, we are facing religious reactionaries. it requires what we're trying to treat we're trying to treat cancer with flu medicine. it just doesn't work. it doesn't function. and the really ugly news, sorry, but 2500 years of recorded history do not offer a single example of a violent religious insurgency that has been put down without enormous amounts of bloodshed. i cannot find one put down by negotiation. because again, when people are un -- ablaze with faith, and convinced that violence is required, by their translation of that faith, tee gone too far. and you know, human societies

throughout history, whether you look at what's now israel, 2,000 years ago, when germanys in the high middle ages were not renaissance period or the middle east in the 20th century, the patterns -- it always holds up the same way. local people, impacted by a powerful foreign culture, with which they cannot compete, rome, in the case of what's now israel 2,000 years ago, the holy roman empire, the power of the well organized church of rome and the germanys in the 15th and into the 16th century, or the palestinians who cannot begin and the arabs who cannot begin to compete civilizationly with israel in the 20th century. the first step is always that the locals will actually try to accommodate themselves to the system.

jews try to accommodate themself, to rome's cultural civilizational power, but it was overwhelming. you could not finally match judaism with roman civilization. in the germanys, the first thing you get are local secular rebellions against the church of rome, the centralizing power, and when it doesn't work, you get them turning to religion. so you had this zealous revolt, which is actually much more complex and be careful about lie onizinizing the zealots. then you get the germans going thank you the same thing, resulting in the reformation, 130 years of incredibly bloody religious warfare, without a

real competitor until the bloody 20th century, and now you have the late 20th century in the middle east. where the plo originally, while its demands were excessive, it was not religious. yasser arafat was hardly the model muslim. but as they couldn't get traction and couldn't compete, they did what others have done. they default to religion. so the -- if you do not find a means of accommodation in that first stage, where they're looking for a political resolution, once it goes into a religion, a religion fueled insurgency, there's no reverse gear. so on that level, i am not hopeful. the really good haters, the religious that fat particulars, -- fanatics, again, there's no gear to turn it off, and that's the bad news, so

we're in this world of bad borders, very bloody faith, but again, this other level, which in the 20th century, the countryside came to the cities. look at istanbul. 100 years ago, 1910, istanbul was far more cosmopolitan than it is today and when you speak of istanbul, nairobi, caracas, cities around the world, beijing, as populations expanded, as minor incremental movements in public health allowed population to explode, the countryside could no longer support them. they went to the cities where the streets were supposed to be paved with silver, if not gold. and they weren't. in the past, over the centuries, cities could accommodate and thrive on increments of

population from the countryside. but the speed, even in the lower 48, with which americans from the south came into northern cities was incredibly destabilizing, because you can't accommodate the sudden flood. and so what happens when the country -- people come from the countryside, entire villages moving in some cases, the city isn't the answer, it doesn't have the great jobs for them yet. they have to walk by the shop windows, and the signs that others enjoy. they go into reaction. and they begin to try to impose the values of the countryside on the city. what we are seeing now in the islamist world, and we're seeing it there primarily because that is the most comprehensively failed civilization currently in the world today, we're seeing a reaction against sophistication, against education.

against progress. in afghanistan, we are the revolutionaries. again, we are fighting religious reactionaries, who once turned back the clock to an imaginary golden age that never existed. they want to force a form o of islam that they regard as purified that has very little to do with the original teachings of the revelation of mohammed. again, religion is what men and women make it. so we're going through all of these things, the dysfunctional border, the hangover of the age of imperialism, reversion to wars of blood and belief, the tension between world values and the cosmopolitan, urban values, play themselves out in so many ways. again, the taliban are fighting for that good old time religion. you know, they're fighting for their traditional pashtun way of life as they see it.

and layer on top of this, this is the last topic i'll have time to talk about before we go to q & a, although there's much more, many other factors destabilizing the world today, the other is that in select western countries, in my generation, we went through the most profound social revolution in all of human history. the transition of women from man's property to man's equal partner. there is no precedent, it changed the roles of 50% or 51% to 52% of the population. an entire societies, culture, state, and i'm so glad, professor, i think freud tells us a lot, just as we would never talk about jealousy as a strategic factor. if you look at the middle east,

the arab, persian, afghanistan, pakistani cultures, these are cultures that are afraid of the girls. they're terrified of female sexuality. and women are also a good satan, the witch, the idea of the witch, cows don't give milk, so it's a nasty old woman or a beautiful young woman who do it, but this is an intractable part of the problem. i mean, since i was in university in the late 1960's, early 1970's, i have stood for women's rights, for women's liberation, because i realized early on, it made the dating process a lot quicker and cheaper, and so i was there for you, sisters, and -- but seriously, think about this social revolution. it doubles our human capacity, or human potential. the only respect, speaking for the lower 48, you can tell me if it applies in canada, the only

downside of women's emancipation, equal rights, call it what you will, the leveling of the system, the only downside for us in the lower 48 is it destroyed k-12 education. because when i was a student in the 1950's and 1960's in k-12, women, especially the older ones, were brilliant, but they're now senators and lawyers and doctors and flying navy jets, but in that time, they had no choice. so you had real first raters teaching k-12 and now although there are still many great teachers, i'm often apauled by so many. i will temperature you that i believe if you can take a snap survey of american k-12 -- us k-12 teachers, that i believe that over three quarters of them would not be able to accurately date our revolution, our civil war or world war ii. the historical amnesia is so dangerous. so this transition, which we

welcome, which has so enriched us, despite the current recession, the introduction of women in to the work force to their fullest potential, and i know there are still some glass ceilings, but a new one shatters every five minutes, it's amazingly equal and the ease with which our society absorbed this truly revolutionary change is remarkable. i mean, there weren't major massacres. part of it was guys were just watching football and missing the show, but on the whole, we absorbed this great revolution phenomenally well. in other parts of the world, it just doesn't work. in afghanistan, for instance. a woman is important property, and i will tell you, that there's one thing, and there are several things that men will fight for, in traditional

society, it is their right to abuse women. to regard women as their property. so we go to afghanistan, we want to bring democracy, education for girls, you know, rights for women, and you are dealing with issues so fundamental to the human psyche that we don't begin to comprehend it. now beings i'm all for -- now i'm all for education for women, but there are some things we may not be able to force and we lie to ourselves. we say, well all people, all human beings really want the same thing, they all want better lives for their children. explain the mother who is proud of her wallison who became a suicide bomber. explain to me, the father, who has his daughter murdered because she may have flirted with a boy. human cultures are profoundly different from us. yes, we all need air, water, we all would like better lives, but some want better lives in the here half.

some want them now. humanity is infinitely complex. we attempt to simplify, we paint ourselves into a terrible, dangerous corner and in places such as afghanistan, we're simplifying terribly. now, ladies and gentlemen, i appreciate your patience. i've only thrown out a few ideas about where i think the world really; but i think you can see the implications. if these things are true, we will not see the issues resolved in our lietime. so policies that set artificial dead lines or have unrealistic expectations of changing a civilization that's 2,000 years old, with five years worth of troops and aid, the surest wave to defeat ourselves is to set unrealistic goals. in this very complex and difficult world, if we want to function effectively, efficiently, provide for our own security, and be of some benefit for human kind beyond our

borders, we must begin with a realistic appraisal of the world and human kind as they are. not as we wish them to be. when i speak to students, i tell them, look, i'm all for being an idealist, but the only way to be an effective idealist is to begin with a realistic assessment of the world and human beings. otherwise, you're on the road to the killing fields of cambodia. all of this began with idealism. thank you, lane. -- thank you, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] >> thank you very much. ralph peters, i neck to indicate at the beginning that today's

colluqial is student israel activism, colloquyism, which we have every year, right, and our director happens to be in florida, couldn't get back for today, but he supports this annual event, which is in the interest of the students, in c cijr's saip program. a few people have said to me, let ralph peters another 10 minutes, 15 minutes before the question and answer. [applause] i don't know whether he wants to do that or he has a few things he would like to sharp yearn and then we lead into the question and answer. that's up to him to decide. >> at this think it's important that this be a dialogue, and so while i am notoriously fond of the sound of my own voice and i

won't promise you short answers, i do want to hear from you, but fred just mentioned that he couldn't come back from florida. now i want to warn you canadians, i've been hearing stuff about well, there are going to be water issues in the future and canada may not want to share its water with the lower 48. if you don't share your water, we are going to take florida back from canada. just so you got it. so ladies and gentlemen, questions, please. >> identify yourself and ask your question. don't make a statement. >> my question concerns capitalism, and the obvious difficulties that it's going through now. could you comment, can we learn anything from that? it seems to me it's a system that's in great difficulty. >> well, i think it's important not to exaggerate capitalism's difficulties, and i think although they can be painful, look at where we are.

think of where your grandparents or even your parents were. capitalism has been pretty good to us. but like any human system, it's imperfect. only god is perfect. so we have a complex system, such as capitalism, that's really, you know, it's funny, that's the one ism that isn't an ideology. it's a tool, it's a system of organizing, assigning values and exchanging goods. that's what capitalism is. and it's the most effective one we've found so far. and you know, you all have heard the line about socialism, the problem with socialism is sooner or later you run out of somebody else's money. now, the tragedy for humanity with many of these ideologies is that the rhetoric of the left is beautiful. it's in operational. you -- it's inspirational. peace and bread, equality for all. etc., etc. it sounds good.

but give me the map to make it happen. give me the directions to the kit. and when it comes down to making things happen, one part of the talk i cut short was a discussion of ideologies. what is amazing was not just that these ego maniacs like massachusetts or hitler -- mao or hitler, second rate intellect with first rate ambitions, they design these systems, artificial system, human beings sign up for them, and what happens when there turns out to be a flaw in the system? instead of adapting the system, to fit human complexity, the answer is always change humanity to fit the system and you're on the road to the gulag or the death camps, etc., etc., so to the age of ideology, i certainly say, good riddance. but capitalism -- look, you always need breaks on any

system. every vehicle needs some braking mechanism and theuestion is, you know, how hard you want to hit the brakes. and i'm afraid we human beings are so subject to emotions, and can be so stirred up by rhetoric, that we are apt to first of all, drive too fast, then hit the brakes too hard. now, in the past 20 years, we drove too fast. now the challenge is not to avoid braking too fast. because capital i am, with all its inequities, with all its flaws, has nonetheless given us those who have been lucky enough to be born in the functioning capitalist systems, the best quality of life and the greatest amount of freedom in human history. there's just no precedent for it. so anybody who says capital i am doesn't work, fine, show me something that has worked better. do you really want to live in an old fashioned mercantile state or in an ethnic dictatorship,

etc., so look, capitalism, i am not one who has profited from it supremely, but i have a better life than my father, and mother, who had a better life than their father and mother. another problem with capitalism versus the leftist rhetoric. the rhetoric from the left, any of the ideologies of the left, and remember, national socialists, what's nsdap, what's it stand for? nazi party. national socialist german workers party. let's not forget, hitler's roots are on the left, but he was very adept at going wherever his am bugs and spur of the moment would take him, but the left has this stirring rhetoric about justice, but the left also brings with it the message of revenge. and i don't have to tell this

audience who the victims of revenge often are. i mean, it's emotionally satisfying to blame others. and that's the thing about our wonderful society, this inheritance from england, with tradition grafted upon it, but in this wonderful society of ours, we all feel the human tendency, when something goes terribly wrong in our lives, there's an impulse to blame, but it's amazing the extent to which we get over it. and we roll up our sleeves and fix it. in much of the world, that is not the case. the impulse to blame is indulged. and you show me a culture, a society that wallows in blame. i will show you a failed society. so capitalism, it's ugly, it's imperfect, brutal, nasty, it's everything the left says it is, except that it's the best system humanity has yet devised for

sharing wealth, because you know the little trick about sharing wealth is that there's no wealth you can't share it. so step one is to create some wealth. and capitalism has done a stunningly effective job a that, so i'm a reluctant but enthusiastic capitalism. can't dix. madam -- can't dix. madam? >> i'm confused by cultures in the arab world that are amongst the population are people who don't hesitate to slaughter, kill their children because of the misdeeds. why do they -- why, for example, in iran during the election, when the grassroots were trying desperately to rise up against the rulers, why are they so reluctant to assassinate their rulers? why are they so failed at making a plot to get rid of the rulers? >> well, arab society is so self-contradictory. on one hand, they're guilty, you

know, they're subject to fits of mass hysteria, but it's a very disorganized, atomized society. you know, in the u.s. militaries, in the schools, officer canada school, whatever, the slogan was cooperate and graduate. well, in the arab world, persian world, which of course is not arab, in in pakistan, beyond the other side of afghanistan or afghanistan, they never learned to cooperate. you know, i think one of the reasons cooperation works so well in north america, north of the rio grande, in our one big culture that accents its differences, we have so much in common, what do we do, we assess our differences, but we're frontier cultures. when you were out on -- going out west, as certainly chewing on the indian frontier in the 19th century, you might not have liked presbyterians, or you might not have liked catholics, or you might not have liked

jews. when the indians were coming, some of that disappeared and they just wondered, can you fire that rifle and i'm oversimplifying obviously, but on the frontier, by and large because we didn't come in great masses, there was a forced mixing, whether it was nebraska or assessmen even though the tel frontier has been closed, except in the arctic, we are still the great experiment in human societies, and the degree to which we can cooperate and trust each other. i mean, i live -- part of my life is in the world of book publishing. in the world of book publishing, a handshake deal -- a handshake still seals the deal. the contract follows after the lawyers fight it out but once you have an offer and agree to it, it will not be reneged upon. in the arab world, the persian

world, it doesn't work. they are so triballized. basically, it's a concentric circles. first of all, you take care of your immediate family. it's your immediate family against everybody else, but then your cousins and stuff, you work with them, but then it's the greater, the extended family against everybody else. then it's the clan and the tribe, and increasing levels of loyalty to it, but basically, you can cheat anybody for your family. we just don't do that. individuals do cheat and human beings, regardless of race, color, creed, preferably are happy to cheat some of the time, but we're honest culture and we're willing to share the wealth to a remarkable degree. some of you may have prefer, hey, gee, if i have a jewish partner, that's great, but if the really god deal is working with an angrily can, you will probably go with a really good

deal and we've come a long way in the last few generations. montreal had its exclusive lines, and there are still lines, but they're not like they were in the past. the society -- our society, we are breaking down age old, human boundaries of prejudices. but in much of the world, traditional societies, it's the family against everybody. a tribe against everybody else. and it's terribly destructive. it's very hard to have democracy, for instance, in a tribal society. democracies tend to work in states such as canada or the u.s., where we're so complex, that no one ethnic group today can no longer dominate. the episcopal church can no longer dominate virginia. so we've got to build coalitions. and the coalitions shift. but in the middle east, it's very hard, because you are loyal

to your family and tribe and nobody beyond that. it's curious, when i was growing up in the military, the idea was always, arabs can't fight. well, we didn't -- because we didn't ask ourselves the fundamental question. what do arabs fight for? people fight for different things. arabs don't fight for states. in the arab world, the state was always the enemy. in afghanistan, always -- afghanistan was a city state of kabul. a few thousand years ago, balk, but a city state of kabul, tributary citie -- caravan citis along tributaries. so there was no sense of cooperation, no sense of statehood, no sense of integration, but with arabs, we say arabs can't fight