kids you have, what you listen to on the radio, what books you read, whether you live or die and what you teach your children. and i thought there was a telling paragraph that i just wanted to read before i turn it over to terry to make some remarks. and i "maxim and the quest for freedom in our everyday lives we are ultimately confronted with the practical, non-philosophical question, who is in control. when we make major decisions in our life, we are free. when someone else makes them we are not free. in the governor government make family live in tyranny. and i will turn it over to terry to talk about the book. i encourage you all like i say to read and follow up with him if you have any questions. [applause] >> thank you to the heritage foundation for the honor of being able to come here to this outstanding event to talk to you about my book.

that was the question i wanted to answer in my book. all these different areas where you see government trying to increase control over our lives in very practical ways, ways that we are making decisions that have huge consequences in our lives including obviously in health care. so i tried to prioritize those places that i thought were most important to our lives and where liberals are using government making the greatest inroads. the same time the answer to that question. i also wanted to explain the principles of limited government and our constitution that i think are being violated in the natural law moral principles that precede the constitution of the founding fathers of this country universally believed than that also i think were being violated and to explain of the same time, explaining what i think is a lack of wisdom among current liberals and political

power, to show how that contrasted dramatically with the people who founded our country. when you look at american history through the sort of practical question that i look at in my book you see there really was a dramatic pivot point, and that was in the 1930s under franklin delano roosevelt, the new deal, like right now where there was a single political party that had cower in the government except for the supreme court. it had dominant control of congress and at that moment is when the welfare state started to be created in the united states, from the signing of the declaration of independence in 1776 until 1940 when franklin roosevelt was breaking washington's tradition and running for a third term as president. no american unless they work from the federal government got their income from the federal government so if you work for the government, in 1940, that is

when the first social security check started being built up. social security act was passed in 1935 and had a supreme court challenge and was sustained under the supreme court under very interesting circumstances which i describe. it wasn't until 1940 that people were started receiving checks when roosevelt was running for his third term. one of the most important things i think i talk about in my book and i know people at the heritage foundation have been talking about the same phenomenon is what i call the coming crisis of the welfare state. you go back and you look at the founding of social security there were some people at the time saying look we are not even paying for this. the welfare state was unconstitutional. but leaving that question there is also the question of practical fiscal ramifications of creating a system where people are dependent on the government or their income under social security now we have a

majority people over the age of 65 in our country depend on the government for a majority of their income. with medicare that was created in 1965 coming had people over 65 depending on the government for their health care. with obamacare they want to extend that idea all the way down through birth and they recognize lifer conception all the way down to conception. from the beginning they were unwilling to tax away from the american people sufficient revenue to pay for these welfare state benefits they wanted to give. i think part of that was essentially a bribe on the part of control freak politicians to be able to say to voters i'm giving you something. it is a lot more that i'm taking back from you but by doing that what they did was they kept on running a national but that -- debt. in fact a 20 year so security was enacted between 1935 and 1940 when they paid out benefitt

wasn't deficit every single one of those ears all of the original payroll taxes paid by the original recipients of social security are doing what you are payroll taxes do now. the government guided expanded it immediately and they had to go borrow money. to pay those benefits. that cycle has been going on ever since 1940. like i said was medicare and medicaid on top of it with george bush's medicare prescription drug plan when president bush was in office and now we are going to have obamacare on top of that. what is the fiscal reality of this? the fiscal reality of it is that the peter g. peterson foundation is calculated using treasury department numbers that as of the end of 2009, the end of last september, the federal government save $61.9 trillion in unfunded liabilities. that is the amount of the national debt plus all the entitlement benefits primarily social security and medicare but

others that are promised to americans that will not be met by the tax revenue that is anticipated to come in to pay for this. that $61.9 trillion equals $200,000 for every man, woman and child in the united states. be a radically with the government faces is going out of getting an additional $200,000 in revenue for every person in the united states, for a mom and dad and three kids, family of five that is a million dollars. as of now been funded liability equals a million dollars for that family of five. when the treasury department came out with this financial report on the government of the united states back in february, the comptroller general who runs the government accountability office, looked at this and they said as of 2019, they believe, 2019, 90 years from now, they believe that 92% of all the revenue coming into the federal government will go welch just to pay the interest on the federal debt and to pay the entitlement

benefits that are due back here primarily social security and medicare, leaving only a percent of federal revenue from nine years from now a percent to pay for the defense department, to pay for the department, security securing the border, to pay for the justice department and the state department, to all the poor constitutional functions of the government that the founding fathers intended the federal government to do are going to only have a percent of the tax revenue to be run on just nine years from now. so what does that mean? that means that the government is going to have to borrow massive amounts of money they will have to do it in ever greater amounts every year from there on out. if you look at the budget numbers that the cbo has calculated from president obama's latest budget they are predicting by then we will have deficits again over a trillion dollars. for now the deficit is predicted down a little bit and then they will start back up up and by 2019 bear overage billion dollars again and they are just going up-and-up and up.

so your politicians all the time say this is not sustainable but it doesn't explain what they are going to do about it. they don't explain why it is unexplainable. the root is the guy's ire of people in government to make americans dependent on the government rather than independent and self-sufficient and self reliant and go to a system that cannot last. people in this generation, people alive today are going to have to deal with this crisis. it is coming whether we like it or not and i hope on the other side of that crisis we come out as a country that is going back to our constitutional principles of limited government, going back to the moral principles that preceded the constitution, going back to the idea of a country made up of individuals whose families were self-reliant and took care of themselves. the last thing i will say before i take questions is one of the people, they had the tea party movement in america today. you go back and you read what the founding fathers were saying

at the time and after the the tea party you realize there really is something in the same spirit alive in america today. winded boston tea party happened at the end of 1773 early that in -- and early 1774 the parliament decided on a right we are trying to line. we are going to precipitate a crisis with the americans and one of the things they did was to close down the port of boston. at very dramatic move. so the boston correspondents what they wanted to do in response is have a total trade with britain. so they wrote a letter and they literally gave it to paul revere. this is paul revere's other right before the one out of lexington. palfrey boat -- not paul revere rode to philadelphia to convince the people there to join with the people in boston and eight staff of the boycott of british goods. some of the people quite frankly weren't sure whether you are ready to do. in philadelphia one of the

leaders was a man named john dickinson who was a wealthy lawyer. he was a philadelphia lawyer who is famous for writing letters to the pennsylvania farmer. they called the other convention in the counties, totally grassroots movement and then call the legislature. they call the convention of the counties. retorted the counties in pennsylvania sent delegates and they decided they wanted to send instructions to the pennsylvania to agree to have a continental congress. they knew this was a fateful step. it is more prudent step then some of the things other people wanted but it was a fateful step and they were going to take it. this is what john dickinson who was commissioned by the county convention to explain their point of view to the pennsylvania assembly into the world of posterity. this is what he had to say. he said honor, justice and humanity. i mean john dickinson said honor, justice and humanity call on us to behold and transmit to

or prosperity, that liberty which we receive from our ancestors. it is not our duty to leave well to our children but it is our duty to leave liberty to them. infamy inequity or cruelty can exceed our own if we, born and educated in a country of freedom, entitled to its blessings and knowing their values, deserting the coast designed by divine providence surrenders seceding generations to a condition to which no human effort to knock probability will be sufficient to extricate them he said. and then in his -- they have in mind all of these things that the britons had done since 1763 when the treaty ended the french and indian war that try to infringe on the representative government and freedom of the mac and people and this is what dickinson said on behalf of the people of pennsylvania in 1774. it was a year before lexington concord. he said so learning are the measures taken for laying the foundation of the despotic authority of great britain over

us with such artful and vigilance is the plan prosecuted that unless the present generation can interrupt the work while it is going forward, can it be imagined that our children debilitated by our imprudence and supine miss will be able to overthrow it when completed? that is what john dickinson and the founding fathers were thinking two years before the declaration of independence. they weren't anxious to get into a conflict with great written that they felt they had to defend their liberty, they had to defend the government they had known american have to do it not just for themselves, they had to do it for their children and their grandchildren and future generations. and they say in my book that i think it is 1774 in the united states of america, john dickinson was polite. a supine people were not defend their freedom but there is one way it is vastly different than it was in 1774.

unlike those in 1774 we have the greatest constitution never written which they wrote for us. we of the declaration of independence which they wrote for us which enshrines the natural moral law as the credo of the united states in america and there are no foreign parliament trying to tell us what to do. we have a system of representative government where we can control the government and decide their destiny by going out and voting and changing the people who are governing as today. thank you very much. i would like to take any questions you have. [applause] >> thanks. i was the first one. you talked about some of the challenges that the country faces and i thought it was telling that yesterday the "washington post" had a profile of congressman paul ryan and a profile we are talking about how he faces conflict within the republican party because some of the political people don't necessarily want him to make the tough choices because they are

politically unpopular to maybe raise the retirement age for social security or do something with medicare. can you talk about the conflict playing out in washington between whether or not republican should be the party of no versus the party that proposes bold ideas that gets beyond some of the financial? >> i think they have to be both. i think it to be the party of knowing embrace some of the ideas of paul ryan has put forward. you know when the book i do our guest dimension that social security, the entire welfare state is unconstitutional that i don't think you can undo social security and medicare today, because what has happened between now and 1940s the american people have become reliant independent on these institutions of the welfare state. americans have spent their whole life gained payroll taxes into mom expectation they receive these benefits and retirement so they have to be reformed. if we are going to reform them in a way that starts moving us back to the constitutional order

the founders envisioned and back to -- we have to do it the way paul brian wants us to do it. the social security reform that paul brian put together, the actuary of social security look back and say if we do this the social security system will be solvent. it is a great reform not just because it will make the system solvent but because it will allow people to have personal requirement accounts that they themselves alone that at the end of their working life they will buy an annuity with it will pay them the same benefit of social security that is not controlled by the government and anything that is left over they can either spend at their will or pass on to their children, actually increasing the wealth of future generations and the independent future generation rather than decreasing it so i'm all for paul ryan. >> i've been watching the hearings -- i've been watching the elena kagan hearings unfold in one amazing moment happens in

an exchange between senator coburn and elena kagan where they talked about the government's power to tell you to by your fruits and vegetables and i thought her book in relation to that and thought you might have a few comments to make. >> this interesting i have heard of the exchange but i haven't seen it yet. but in my book, i used the analogy of an orange to talk about what the government is trying to do in terms of the obamacare and ordering us to buy health insurance. ridgely they were going to argue commerce clause to justify forcing individuals to buy health insurance. the commerce clause says power shall -- congress shall have the power and my analogy is, what does that really mean? and let's say you are talking about an orange and congress. they grow oranges in florida and gorgeous in mexico. let's say there is a larger chain that wants to buy oranges from mexico. that transaction is a transaction with a foreign nation that congress has

expressed power to regulate, the same of florida. if you decide i want to buy norton you go to the grocery store in long island and look at the arches and you decide they are overripe or is there something wrong with them and you may suspect there is a government regulation that caused a problem with that orange you can decide not to buy that orange but you don't have the right as an american to claim that the government, the federal government of the united states did not have a right to regulate the trade of oranges that brought that orange from mexico. the commerce clause does and that power. as they decide i want that orange. i will take this money was going to spend on the orange input in the savings account because i want to take my kids to disney world next summer. now the government does have the power to say do you know, you can't put that money and that savings account. you can't take your kid to disneyland. you have got to buy that orange. the commerce clause doesn't give them the power to do that and essentially the argument they are making on obamacare is that they can tell you to buy the orange, and in this case they

are telling us we can buy health care that is orrin hatch said, if they can claim that it is constitutional to force us to buy health care than there isn't anything they can force us to do this is the beginning of tyranny. the cases case of better going forward challenging this in the courts must succeed. this is plainly unconstitutional and unwarranted expansion of government power over the individual choices of americans. does exactly what i mean by control freaks. >> hi, rob mentioned you were from san francisco originally. i am from brooklyn too, the area so i'm sure you understand back home people in the bay area might perceive control freaks would actually describe conservatives with drug laws, marriage, abortion and stuff like that so i was wondering how would you try to convince someone from your old hometown that no, it is the left that are really the control freaks and not conservatives? >> well, as i said, i try and

point to the constitutional principles that are in play here and the framers and founding fathers thought. there is also the underlying moral issue and if you go back and look at what the founding fathers said, at the founding of the country there were two great rivals, alexander hamilton and thomas jefferson. they disagreed on a lot of things. one thing they that absolutely agreed on was that there was an unchanging moral law that was authored like god, that existed from all times and all individuals of all nations must obey this law. of course jefferson wrote this into the declaration of independence. alexander hamilton wrote about it as an 18-year-old boy an amazing document called the farmer receded but it was written at kings college which is now columbia university. in the book i talk about this question of control, whether people can live or die.

say that to an eight-month old fetus that is getting its brain sucked out in a partial-birth abortion and elena kagan tried to protect when she was in the clinton white house. i wrote in my column week, say that to the human embryo that is chopped up and use as an instrument, purely as an adjuvant in federally funded scientific research that president obama has now approved by executive order. and the point i'm trying to make is, if you believe as jefferson and hamilton did that we all haven't inalienable god-given rights that every single one of us has these rights, every single human being on the face of europe has these rights and you argue like kagan or obama does that you can kill an unborn child whether it is an embryo or whether it is a 9-month-old fetus and a partial-birth abortion, you have to say that somewhere between the moment of conception where that human being came into reality as the scientific fact and sometime in that they be is born or 90 years

old, there are some place where it magically gets inalienable rights they didn't have before. in the book i call it the berlin wall. you have to build a berlin wall across human life and barack obama famously as someone who doesn't want to tell you where it is exactly that you get your god-given rights. in the illinois state legislature three times he declined to support a law that simply said it warned baby is a person. in that debate of that back to back interview at the saddleback churchland pastor rick warren asked him the excellent question which was very simply went as a human baby get human rights? barack obama said it is above my pay great. why is that? he doesn't want to say when you get human rights because of the definitively says when you get human rights, then he can't take your human rights away for you after that moment. he hasn't from the moment of conception. people want to kill human beings hadn't want to control something they have no right to control.

>> terry? would you say a few words about the press and the media? i was just saying since where at a briefing here at heritage could you say a few words about the threat to the media of liberal control freaks? >> i. this goes back to elena kagan who may soon be sitting on the united states supreme court. you probably remember in the state of the union address and president obama looked down at at the podium and saidurt justig to his speech, that they had issued a decision that would allow foreign corporations to bankroll u.s. elections. and the question really is, what was the issue in the case that was involved in the case with citizens united versus sec and the fact of the case were that

citizens united nonprofit organization made a documentary movie about hillary clinton and they were planning to transmit or market this documentary movie on video-on-demand so if you are sitting in the privacy of your home and he wanted to watch this documentary about hillary clinton and you actually have a contract with a cable television station that you are paying money to deliver television into your home of your own free will and he wanted to watch that specific movie you could ask and pay for it and they would send you that movie. now they didn't want to do all that stuff you didn't have to see hillary's new movie. but the federal election commission says it is illegal, that bilateral act of communication and commerce was illegal. why was it illegal? because hillary clinton they said, she was running for president of the united states in the democratic primaries were going on and you couldn't do this under the campaign finance laws. this went on in the supreme court. the obama administration marsha

2009 was arguing in defense of the idea, which was a provisional law called for for 1b that corporations cannot expressly advocate the election or defeat of the candidate. that is different than making a contribution. corporations cannot contribute to the federal election committee. the issue is whether a corporation which by the way could be a newspaper, could be a television station, could be a radio station, corporation or people who get together and want to pool their money want to speak that they cannot -- in the colloquy that went back and forth between the solicitor general, the question came up and it was chief justice roberts and me and to really push it and anthony kennedy and alito were pushing the issue too are going finally said yes a corporation can be barred from publishing a book that mentioned a candidate for federal office or advocated election of a candidate for election from its treasury

account. the court decided it wanted a to hear a second argument in this case that came back in september of 2009 because they want to look at the underlying presidents. elena kagan this was their first first argument supreme court. ruth bader ginsburg a liberal justice asked at the beginning of the argument early in the argument, last time you guys came in here you said you would ban things like campaign biographies. can you really do that? kagan said they have rolled back from that little bit. but, john roberts asked her about a pamphlet. she said a pamphlet would be different because the pamphlet is electioneering. she asserted there was other media that they could in fact ban political speech. so is john roberts wrote in his concurring opinion since united versus sec the government accepted a direct prohibition on political speech. this is exactly what they did. unfortunately there was a 5-4

majority. no the federal government cannot have that political speech. the first minutes as congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. elena kagan and obama do not believe that. they believe if you happen to be in the form of a corporation when you are engaging in your speech, they can prohibit certain kinds of political speech. that outrageous. >> i noticed in your book that in your first chapter you talk about they want to control your movement. what do you say about this in light we are getting this 41,000-dollar. >> it is part of it. it is part of that and i think that is part of their environmental vision. and, but it has all been part of their idea. that car can only hit 40 miles if i understood correctly.

secretary of treasury ray lahood who is a republican former of congress and is what the national press club in nathan asked about his livability initiative and the question was some critics suggest -- he said it is a way to coerce people out of their cars and he has repeatedly said what the administration would like to do is replicate portland around the country. portland is in oregon. they have this all -- idea they talk a map around the magic pendleton area. the zoning to push people and, push development inside that line they get densely packed, and make it near government mass transit systems scheduled by the government so people can walk and bike and make it difficult including reducing the number of parking spaces, make it difficult for people to drive because that is the way they want people to live. in the book, make an argument that this is very contrary to american pioneering spirit and

also to the idea that we vote with their feet in the united states of america comment when people don't like the politics in portland or places like portland they moved to other places. that it's been our history and that is why we have a variety of communities in the united states of america so people have freedom of choice in where and how they are going to live and i think this idea of using government this way is an impasse on that freedom. .. >> it is different things one of the things i talk about in my book is certain environmental visions that sees the growth of population and economic growth itself as a threat. that seems a sort of a zero sum game that the more economic growth you have come off more

population growth throws off the balance of the planet we are actually reaching a threshold thisows is dangerous, so in orr io -- and you see this in theouh climate change idf -- in orderc. to save the planet fromdestruiou destruction, you n need to contl the activities of human beings n beings. i mean, it's plainly obvious that we keep spitting out carbon, it's going to heat up that appeared double melt the ice caps and it's going to cause drastic changes in the weather patterns. and therefore you need to have government control to stop that from happening. >> we have another question. >> terry, thank you very much. we appreciate you being here today. for those of you didn't get a copy, there are more in the back. if there are many questions, i'm sure he would