how environmental, economic and political crises will redraw the world map. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. here's our prime time lineup for tonight. >> coming up, chris hedges argues that america's liberal class has collapsed and with it the citizenry's protection against what he deems the corporate state.

mr. hedges contends that the liberal class, which includes universities, labor movements, the press, the democratic party or and liberal religious groups, has been gradually corrupted by corporate entities and without its existence it will no longer be a structure of checks and balances against corporate interests. chris hedges presents his thoughts at powells books in portland, oregon. it's an hour and a half. ..

>> when i turn the manuscript and, they hated it. they describe my critique of the american media as filled with negativity, which they generously offered to remove before they published the book. you can imagine how that went over. so i was out the door with the manuscript and as i i wrote the book, i kept running into the fact that the press was hardly existed in a vacuum, that the press was one of the pillars of the liberal establishment that has certainly failed us.

but there were other pillars in the liberal establishment, all of the pillars of the liberal establishment, which lsu decades have reduced themselves to functioning primarily as the role of courtiers to the power elite and to the corporate state. these would include the church, the liberal church which i come out of, my father was a presbyterian minister, i myself graduated from seminary. it would include the democratic party. it would include labor unions, culture, as well as universities. and so i broaden the focus to look at the liberal class, to look at what happened to those liberal institutions that were vital in maintaining a democratic state. and i ended up going back to world war i. world war i, or certainly the

eve of world war i, was the moment when powerful popular movements that represented the interests of ordinary americans, threatens their grip on power of the oligarchic elite. dwight mcdonald, who i admire greatly, wrote that the war was the rock on which these movements broke. and they broke because world war i saw the birth of the system of mass propaganda, which ever since have saturated our culture with allies. it saw the rise of the committee of public information, led by george creel, former journalist who appropriate ended his career working for joe mccarthy and richard nixon in the 1950s. and anti-communist.

and house affairs un-american activities american activities. because the war had no popular support, wilson in fact ran for reelection on the slogan that he kept us out of the war. but the bankers, wall street, had lent tremendous sums of money to the british and french. and if the germans won the war, that money was not going to be repaid. so there was pressure from the financial elite to push us into a conflict that had no popular support at all. very little popular support. wilson and walter lippman, arthur, all of them understood this. and so they created this remarkable system to saturate the country with propaganda, crossing the lines of many

disciplines. they had their own film division. they had a new division -- news division that pumped out one story after another. manufactured of course all of the atrocities attributed to the hated hun. they use graphic artists. they used radio. they established because bureaus. and it was the first time weather was a conscious understanding that what moved the mass of people was not fact or reason, but the manipulation of emotion. they do on the work of trotter and finally sigmund freud, edward bernays came out of the committee for public information, the father of modern propaganda. his book was one of the books that was closely studied as the is built their own propaganda machine.

and his insight into mass psychology, and millard, when he argues, bullard was one of woodrow wilson students at princeton, along with lippman, walter litman who comes across as a very dark figure with his book, public opinion, and that phrase manufacturing consent, how does one manufacture consent. bullard writes to wilson as their setting, attempting to set up the committee for public information, truth and falsehood are arbitrary terms. there's nothing in experience to tell us that one is preferable to the other ear there are lifeless truths and vital lies. the force of an idea lies in its inspirational that you. it matters very little whether it is true or false. and this understanding, coupled

with the resources of the state, to saturate the country with propagandpropaganda was effectively used by the power elite, to destroy all of those broad based social movements that were bring this country towards socialism. you remember there were a million votes that were huge publications appeal to reason, the fourth largest publication in the country, was a socialist publication, the masses. with several dozen socialist mayors. we had strong push within the cio, the wobblies, and so there was a kind of twinning of the war propaganda machine as, not only a vehicle to garner mass support for an unpopular war, but to break the back of these movements.

and he succeeded. some of the most poignant writing about this is done by randolph bourne and jane addams, to the amazingly heroic figures who resisted the tide. and what depressed them so deeply was how swiftly the intellectual class, many of the socialist themselves like sinclair lewis and others, were seduced into the war effort, replacing the tangible goals of hygiene and good public housing and good public education, and fair working conditions with that abstract goal of making the world safer for democracy, the war to end all wars. so that the actual physical forms of repression embodied in the sedition act and the espionage act were used on a relatively marginal segment of the society that still held out. and by the end of the war, those

who have built this system of mass propaganda and last well writes about this in his book, immediately found employment on madison avenue. they went to work for corporations who upended traditional american values of thrift, of self-effacing, and replaced it with consumption as a kind of inter- compulsion, with a cold of itself. they homogenized culture. they destroyed regional and ethnic cultures. and replaced it with corporate culture, which is of course what we call american culture. it's not american culture was effectively destroyed. they use the espionage and the sedition act after the war to go after the remnants of these

movements with the palmer raids, the deportation of anarchists like emma goldman to russia. they shut down an appeal to reason, although appeal to reason under pressure had actually editorially supported the war during the war, along with the masses they made war on the wobblies. trumped up murder charges so joe hill's executed, big bill haywood ends his life the last 10 years of his life fleeing trumped up murder charge as a refugee in the soviet union. so there was a new paradigm that was created which dwight mcdonald writes about as one where we entered essentially a state of permanent war. we entered a state of constant fear. the dreaded hun was immediately replaced with the dreaded red. and mcdonald i think makes a very important point, that none of the social and political theorists of the late 19th

century, including karl marx, understood that in a system of permanent war and skillful mass propaganda, you could get the masses to call for their own enslavement. the only time marx writes about war is during the prussian war and he expresses the hope that prussia will win because it will make the german workers stay closer to coming to fruition. and we have essentially been emasculated ever since. so radical movements are cautiously destroyed, and liberal movements engage in a kind of internal cannibalization where they push out figures who have a moral conscience, who have some kind of autonomy, branded him as sympathetic to communism. of course, many of these people

who were pushed out were not communists, although having lived in europe, including italy, there is nothing under our constitution that prohibits a communist party. i believe that we purport to support the free exchange of political thought and ideas. and the liberal class, without the counterweight of radical movements to keep them honest, begin to disembowel themselves. now, the liberal class serves an important function in a state. and that function is twofold. it acts as a kind of safety valve. it makes piecemeal and incremental reform possible. and the best example of how the liberal class works would be with the breakdown of capitalism in the 1930s, and the rise of the new deal. we have essentially centrist figures like franklin roosevelt,

or the great henry wallace, later in his own presidential campaign in 48, tart, smeared for being soft on communism and turned into a political -- the last later political figure in what may be the exception of george mcgovern to track to challenge the permanent war economy and the resources, taxpayer resources that are pumped into the huge defense industry. so we saw the liberal class to provide channels are mechanisms within the power structure by which the grievances and injustices and suffering of work -- of working men and women could be addressed. that is the role of the liberal class. and it's why traditional power tolerates the liberal class. so that they are not completely tone deaf to the suffering of

those outside the power elite. but at the same time they are used to discredit radical movements that challenge traditional structures and assumptions. which is true today. the figure that self identified liberals hate most is not glenn beck. it's noam chomsky. because noam chomsky exposes the collaboration of the liberal class with the power elite and the ways they serve the power elite. the danger is that when a liberal institutions no longer function when the ossify, calcify, then there is no mechanism by which the grievances of large sectors of the dispossessed population can be expressed within the system.

we saw, of course, immediate after world war ii the final round of the assault on radical and progressive movements, the remnants of them. universities purged themselves, thousands of professors, many of these cases it was a silent purge where people were just not granted tenure, dismissed for no reason after the fbi visited the dean's office, including hundreds of high school teachers, social workers. many, many social workers were purged. the press, that's how probably our greatest 20th century journalists i f. stone became an outcast, a pariah, because he refused to take truman's loyalty oath. and couldn't even get a job fun at the nation magazine.

well, i will go into the nation. and ends up putting i. f. stone's weekly in his basement. he right -- stone writes or says at the time that he felt like a ghost. he began a talk, and antiwar talk, and he said fellow subversives, and the fbi, because of course the fbi waste a tremendous amount of resources falling around figures like ironstone as they did howard soon. i used some of the files on sin that were just released under freedom of information act to describe the fault of the internal security. and i can assure you homeland security is just as buffoonish

as these guys were trying to recruit zinn on the street or filing a report from someone who they said was since his sister about sense of detail activity. billy pumping that that zinn didn't have a sister. the liberal establishment, by the end of the mccarthy period was the craven in its embrace of the cold war politics graduate institutions like the aclu carrying out an internal times for people who are either pink or red. and, of course, the people carrying out those funds were the most craven careerists, the people with the least moral center, the least moral -- the capacity to say no. so that not only did we decimate

radical progressive popular movements, but at the same time we destroyed the core of liberal institution as well. and this coincided with the rise of the corporate state. it saw probably the last great champion in this country, and we will rue the day that we walked out on this guy. it was ralph nader. [applause] >> who pushed one piece of great legislation after another. ralph was a good friend of mine, always as you know, the last liberal president we had was richard nixon. [laughter] >> no, in terms of legislation, that's true. osha, the clean water act, the mine safety act are some 24 pieces of legislation because nixon was still scared of

movements, and responded to those movements. and, of course, there was a conscious effort as anyone who's read the powell memo which i quote at length in the book to take nader down. and they created and funded powerful right wing corporate think tanks and centers like the heritage foundation, business roundtable, to destroy any kind of populist activity, especially the kind of populist activity that nader was so successful at when he still had allies in the democratic party in the 1960s. and once all of these checks were gone, we began to see what can only be described as a coup d'état in slow motion by corporations. where they dismantled everything that impeded the maximization of

corporate profits. they made war on the remnants of labor unions. they passed nafta, and that was passed -- bill clinton is the poster child of bankrupt liberalism. [applause] >> clinton understood that if he did corporate meeting, he could get corporate money. and that the working class and labor would have nowhere else to go. and by the 1990s the democratic party had fund-raising parity with republicans. by the time barack obama ran for president, they got more. but the price of that betrayal. of the working class, that

traditionally the democratic party and liberal institutions that once protected. and our great failure for those of us who care about ordinary, the rights of ordinary citizens is that in 1994 with the passage of nafta, we did not stand up for the working class and turn our back on the democratic party. [applause] >> we continue to support democratic politicians who spoke in the traditional language of liberalism, that betrayed every single core liberal value. the welfare reform, we now face the prospect with his new midterm election of unemployment benefits for tens of millions of citizens running out. not being extended. which will mean that many of these people will have to attempt to survive on the $143 a

month you receive from welfare, courtesy of the democratic party. the deregulation of the banking system, deregulation of the sec. i just spent a full teaching at the university of toronto, and they don't have a banking crisis in canada because they did not allow the firewalls between the commercial and investment banks which had been protected for us under the 1933 glass-steagall act to be ripped down. and so we saw the liberal class evolved into quartiers for the corporate state. and yet, they spoke in the traditional language of liberalism and were exposed as a

two-year administration of barack obama has exposed the deep cynicism and hypocrisy of the liberal. tragedy, if tragedy is the right word, of barack obama. it is that he made a faustian bargain with corporate interests. he sold us out, whether it's the pfizer reform act that retroactively made legal but under our constitution is illegal, borderless wiretapping and eavesdropping on tens of millions of americans. whether it is to continue the living -- losing by wall street speculators and swindlers have engaged in massive fraudulent acts that are criminal. using mortgage brokers and bankers to falsify information on loan applications that they knew were false to hand sums of

money people they also knew could never repay it. selling the subprime mortgages, its assets. whether it is the continuation of our imperial wars in iraq and afghanistan which, preemptive war under our laws are defined as criminal wars of aggression. ara crime and we have no right as a nation to debate the terms of the occupation. whether it is the -- [applause] >> -- swindle that became the so-called health care reform bill. $400 billion in subsidies to our for-profit health care industry, the equivalent of a bank bailout bill for aetna, cigna, wellesl

wellesley. and we are watching barack obama hand these corporations exemptions because they don't want to ensure chronically ill children. i spent enough time in seminary to tell you that we can only define these kinds of institutions as institutions of death. they make their money directly off of human suffering and pain and death. including the deaths of children. it is legally permitted in the united states to hold sick children hostage while their parents frantically bankrupt

themselves trying to save their sons or daughters. that is what corporations do. and the failure of the liberal class to stand up on behalf of the week and the sick, to challenge the perverted idea that nothing is sacred, that everything is a commodity. human beings are commodities. the natural world is a commodity, which corporations exploit until exhaustion or collapse means that is to is essentially cannibalizing not only our country, but the planet. and it is not accidental that the environmental crisis is intimately to end with the

economic crisis because profit comes before the urgent task to save the ecosystem on which human life depends. the rise of proto- fascist movements rising up around society expressed in the emotionally consistent but a rational political beliefs of groups like the tea party and the militias brings with it a hatred of government for the betrayal that government carried out, but also a hatred of the liberal class itself. for the hypocrisy that the liberal class carried out. and the rage is a legitimate rage. it should have been our rage and it should be our rage now.

[applause] >> the tragedy is that the core liberal values, which those of us who care about our dispossessed working men and women, that those guys have been utterly discredited, it's why you have the trash talking cable news and radio talk show hosts attempting to tar obama and the democratic party, with not only the tag of liberalism, but the tag of socialism. because their impotence in the face of the corporate state is one that they seek what they used to discredit the very values that say this during the new deal. remember during the new deal we could have gone either way. go back and read smedley butler

it was hired by a bunch of industrialists to carry out a coup d'état. there was tremendous support for fascism in the early 1930s. "fortune" magazine put mussolini on the cover, and lauded his breaking of labor unions and his exultation of the industrial class at the expense of workers. and we were saved because we had a liberal class that worked. that was able to push through the kinds of reforms that reincorporated a disenfranchised working-class back into the economy. we face now is situation and the possibility of an economic collapse that will rival the great depression. i'm sure there many of you in this room who read the front pages of "the wall street journal" and in your times this morning.

-- and the "new york times" this morning. they bought all our junk. the social upheavals are spreading throughout the count country. there's serious questions about italy's viability and its ability to handle its debt. and there's a limit to how much can be borrowed and how much can be lent. we have allowed our corporate to take from us the final resources that could have saved us from precisely that kind of social upheaval. if you've read paul krugman's columns into in your times,

krugman -- and he is right -- keeps calling for another bailout, another stimulus plan to create jobs instead of the faux jobs bill which was just past which turns out in fine print to be $15 billion in tax credits for corporations. and krugman is right. he said i'm terrified, terrified. but we are not going to get that money. were not going to get another chance. we took, $12 trillion handed it to speculators who are sitting on it and gambling on currency. in the 17th century in europe, speculators were hung. it was a crime. [applause]

>> i'm against the death penalty. [laughter] >> but hanging until choking i could embrace. [laughter] >> one man was obsessed with the breakdown of liberalism at the end of the 19th century in czarist russia. that's what demons is about. that's what notes from underground is about. notes from underground is probably philosophically the most important book for our time. it is about the rational liberal defeated dreamer who went to all the obama rallies and chanted yes, we can. and then was betrayed and was angry and retreated underground. and said only fools and idiots and buffoons take power.

rational educated people are discarded. and he knew that once the liberal institutions ceased to function, you entered in what he called an age of moralism which, of course, eventually open the door or lenin and the bolsheviks. it was the breakdown of liberalism that vomited of adolf hitler. and it was the breakdown of the centrist liberal establishment in the former yugoslavia which i covered for the "new york times" that gave us the repugnant figures of slobodan milosevic and others. the failure of the liberal class has grave political and social consequences because that rage

when it has nowhere else to go is expressed through mechanisms that make war on the traditional liberal establishment and are easily co-opted that the tea party is and has been by the very forces that create a destruction and that seek to wipe away the last remnants of liberalism. and so the question obviously is what do we do? what must be done? to quote lenin. there's an interview in the book with daniel berrigan, one of my great heroes, i come out of the religious left. my father was a presbyterian minister, he sort of had a habit

of being thrown out of one church after another. first for his stances on the civil rights movement, many antiwar movement, and finally the gay-rights movement. my uncle, his youngest brother was gay and lives with his partner in greenwich village, and my father had a particular sensitivity to the pain of being a gay man in america in the 1950s and 1960s, a stance that was deeply unpopular in the presbyterian church in the 1970s and '80s. but he writes correctly that we must hold fast to moral imperatives to what we can define as best we can defined as the good, and stop worrying about where the good goes it is our story member that all of the great correctives of american

democracy never achieved formal political power, ever. the liberty party that fought slavery, the suffrages, the labor movement, the civil rights movement. the most powerful figure in the united states in 1968 was dr. martin luther king. because he scared the hell out of them. when king went to birmingham, 50,000 people went with him. winking got up in april of 1967 at riverside church and denounce the vietnam war and called america the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, lyndon johnson took away the four plainclothes fbi agents that have been assigned to protect king, and both came in johnson knew what that meant. there's a beautiful moment,

remember team became a pariah at the end. he would be be used by the black power movement. ascension within his own ranks. southern christian leadership, and king stood up to months before he was assassinated in front of his staff and said, i take nonviolence to be my lawfully wedded wife, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. that it is only by going back and standing for these moral imperatives that we have any hope of protecting what is left of our anemic democracy. and we have to stop asking whether it is practicable, or even rational. we have to believe as these great figures before us

understood that the good tracks the good. we have to do so with nonviolence because if we did not and if we do not do it now, many opposition to this corporate state and these corporate forces will embrace the violence of the state itself. and i've been there. i spent 20 years as a war correspondent. i know the pollution, the violence. i know what it does. i know as nietzsche said how it is our monsters against our monsters. and it is incumbent upon us to walk away from these established institutions, even if we are alone. and believe and trust that holding fast to these moral imperatives will give our country another narrative and reclaim the populist that was

decimated. and is not going to be easy, especially as we see the rise of the lunatic fringe of the republican party come to power. they will try and use fear to make us conform. a simple pride should drive us at this point not to be used again. by these institutions and by the democrats. there has to be a breaking point if you make a moral stance. that's the whole point. there has to be a line that can be crossed your and i fear for our country. i fear for where we are going. i covered the breakup of yugoslavia and i see all of the same flashing red lights, the

economic crisis, the bankrupt liberalism, the way the airwaves are taken over by idiots who have one talent, and that is to mobilize hatred with undercurrents of racism towards muslims, towards undocumented workers, towards barack obama himself. and it's in our hands. it's in our hands. defenseless under the knife under and night, -- under the night, yet dotted everywhere. ironic points of light flashed out where ever the just exchange their messages, may i compose like that of dust, beleaguered by the same negation and despair show in affirming flame.

thank you. [applause] [applause] >> please wait for the microphone before you ask the question. go ahead. we will -- wait for the mic phone please. >> thank you very much. this was really spectacular. nasa's top side -- it will create -- maybe not quite as hot as this room now. so the powers that be are

educated to having us think that north and to not arrested but what can we do to take appropriate action to say, well, everyone and everything. >> well, i wrote a book before this called "empire of illusions" which is about the retreat into these electronic hallucinations, the kind of magical thinking that is fed to us by the corporate regime, that reality is never an impediment to what we want. and, of course, that is taught to us by over and the christian right, self-help gurus in hollywood and its magical thinking. it's what all the twilight of all dying civilization engaged in. you can read cicerone complaining about the arena and have the spectacle in the arena has poisoned political and civil discourse in the declining days of ancient rome. joseph roth wrote about it with the class of the

austro-hungarian empire. and that's precisely what's happened. because all the evidence is staring us in the face, not only the evidence of scientific reports, but the physical evidence of the death rattle of the planet itself. and yet we pretend it's not happening. we believe in the false magic of science and technology as if somehow these are neutral forces that will save us. science and technology serves human ambitions, most of which at this point our military and corporate. and that is why barack obama, the leaders of the industrialized world, and the corporate puppeteers. in copenhagen a loud kyoto to be fretted. and you're right, if we stop emitting fossil fuels today, we would still by many estimates rise to 550 parts per million, 350 parts per million being the level by which we can sustain life as we know it. and we have to understand that

these forces are not going to protect us. they are not going to save us. as things meltdown, they will retreat into enclaves, heavily guarded enclaves where they will have access to security goods and services that are denied to the rest of us. which is why all resistance now is local. the more we can do to be self-sustaining, the more freedom and power we have. and that's why sustainable energy, the food movement are absolutely crucial. and don't be fooled. these are soon going to become expressions of a political -- politicized expressions. i just did a story for the nation magazine on camden, new jersey, which per capita is the poorest city in the best states and not surprisingly the most dangerous. and there's no supermarket in the center of camden.

because we have allowed agribusinesses to create a system. i also live in new jersey where all of my fruit and vegetables are trucked across country. and poor people can't afford tomatoes. so we don't sell it to them. and if you want to eat in camden, you have either churches fried chicken or donut shops. greece and sugar. food deserts. you can go to areas of west virginia and it's the same. these postindustrial pockets, as our society is reconfigured by corporate forces into a neo-feudalism will only expand. and it is incumbent upon us to wake up to understand what these forces are doing to the environment and that corporate capitalism which is distinct from the penny capitalism that existed in the farm town where i grew up where farmers would come in and have a market and sell

their vegetables and their fruit. and its distinct from the original capitalism of the small business owner who has a factory or a hardware store and lives in the town and sits on the school board. corporate capitalism is something else. it is super national, that destroys like a parasite the host state that allows it to thrive, which is what nafta is. and now we are watching large-scale factory closures over the border in mexico as these industries move up, move overseas into the cat rate embrace of china's or vietnam's totalitarian capitals. there was a good book written by berkeley anthropologist on working conditions in southern china, and he said insource classical economic terms since

many of these people don't even receive their wages they can actually be considered as labor. and the message that is being delivered to the american working class is you have to be competitive. you have to be competitive with prison labor. and so yes, you're right. and i speak at the end of the book about climate change and how it is twins with this magical thinking, this divorce from reality. and, of course, courtesy of exxon mobil. how many millions of dollars did they spend to confuse people about the science of climate change? >> thank you. >> wait for the mic please. go ahead. >> thank you so much for your talk tonight.

you've written a lot recently about losing hope, insert we have spoken quite a bit about that tonight. and yet i understand as has been told to me by my veterans for peace friends that you're planning on joining the action in december, december 16 in washington, the veteran led action against the current wars that are continuing to perpetuate themselves. i was wondering, why now? and what would you say to people who are on the fence about whether or not they might want to join us? >> well, i have joined other actions. this is the first time i've agreed along with others and several veterans to go chain myself to the fence of the white house. [applause] >> because it's all we have left. it's our bodies.

and i think time -- we don't have much time left. we cannot keep borrowing much longer to sustain an empire at a level of consumption that we can't afford. and collapse, especially when it is not expected, when people are not prepared for it. as also with a break and come economic break-in in yugoslavia unleashes very, very frightening movements it in the undercurrent of violence in american from size runs very deep. i think it's incumbent upon all of us to begin to carry out physical forms of protest and stop worrying about whether anyone joins us. because that act of rebellion. and i suppose this exposes my anarchist roots. i distrust power and any guys

can any ideological form. i think that the moral life requires constant rebellion, a constant push against centers of power. and i believe that we have certainly reached a point where in nonviolent form we must begin to take radical measures because, as yeats said, we live in a moment where the worst are full of passion and intensity. >> at first glance this looks like a very impressive turnout that i'd like to see speaking to 10,000 people tonight, to 70,000 people which is a number that came out to hear barack obama when he gave his campaign speech in portland. i'd like to know if you're seeing an increase in awareness of the things you're talking about, the concepts, and increasing interest in your speeches around the country. and i would also like to know, who are the leaders? are there any there's eisley in office or potentially an office to raise awareness and talk

about these things? >> there's a certain a good people have been, having elected office. i think in local politics is not going to be on the national level. i think it precludes not going to be a solution to our problems. even when you get people out of conscience, people like conyers or kucinich or bernie sanders. let's look at the health care bill. when it came down to the public option, not one senator or house member voted for it. not want to including those people who have stood up and said they would fight for it. and i think that is indicative of absolutely how much control the corporate state has. is a very good book by probably our greatest living political philosopher sheldon mullins called democracy in corporative. and sheldon who taught at berkeley and later in princeton uses the word in front of how treason to describe the political system we live under. and by that he means that it's not like classical totalitarian movements we have a radical or reactionary force that seeks to overthrow a decaying structure and replace it.

but you have a totalitarianism, totalitarianism that finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. that you have these forces, they purport to pay loyalty to the constitution, to electoral politics, to the linkage of american patriotism. and yet they have so corrupted the levers of power as to render the citizenry impotent. and that in an advert in totalitarian have a situation where economics always trumps politics were as in classical totalitarianism all it takes trumps economics. and he says the way that the masses are pacified is through credit because real wage or 90% of americans have been on a steady decline since the early 1970s. and cheap mass-produced goods. well now the credit is gone for most people.

and the mass-produced goods are becoming because of the deprivation among our permit underclass unaffordable. and i spoke to one not long ago and i asked him if you take away those two mechanisms of control, can you see the possibility of inverted totalitarianism slipping into the kind of classical totalitarianism, and he agreed that we could. we are not immune from them. we are not immune from these sources. we are no different from the germans who were interested in the late 1920s or the yugoslavs or anyone else. and, unfortunately, the systems of mass propaganda and the resources in the hands of those who oppose democracy at this point, especially after citizens united to how they took and russ feingold for every add on tv, russ feingold there were five or six ads trashing the guy and we didn't even know who paid for

them. the "new york times" just found that 40% of the chamber of commerce -- about $83 billion was paid for by the pharmaceutical insurance company, and they use the chamber of commerce as the attack dog. and we never knew until now. stuck in the first few chapters of your book as you're laying out the different elements of a real powerful movement that the first world war destroyed, the only angle of the people of faith that you mentioned was really the social gospel, and the theology of walter -- [inaudible] >> soy. and i wonder if you could -- something was notably absent was the evangelicals, they call themselves the fundamental at the time. >> he wasn't a fundamentalist. there's a difference. >> all right. so i wonder if you could comment today on figures such as jim

wallis. could we see a return of the fundamentalism that the social conservatives -- >> fundamentalists, and evangelicals at the time were at war with each other because fundamentalists who believe in a strict miss of the bible saw them as charismatic about the many ways to come to christ and spoke in tongues as satan worshipers. there was a huge division. so you did have a progressive evangelical movement. i'm very critical of russian bush because what happened with all of these prgressive movement as they made a fatal error of trusting in the state. they put all of their faith in the mechanism of the state. without realizing that social movements always had to be antagonistic to power. and always had to force power towards the corrective. karl popper in the open society and its enemies rights that we

shouldn't ask how do we get the good people to rule. that's the wrong question. that most people attracted to power are at best mediocre, which is obama, or bush. the question is how do we stop the powerful from doing as much damage to us as possible. there was, after the self slaughter of world war i, all of the dreams of human progress being achieved through social movements, shattered. is a great deal of despair, and it was a book written by karl barks that in the aftermath of the war took down this naïve belief that we were going to create a utopian or a christian society on earth. and deliver church never recovered from that. my anger towards the liberal

church comes over the issue of the christian right. i've a problem with laws by the way because you know, i have read the bible as closely as jim wallis has come and i can tell you that it is utterly inconsistent. and our whole passages that are morally repugnant, and to somehow deified that book which does, although his politics are good, i just find that kind of thing intellectual bankrupt and kind of frightening. there are many ways to achieve the moral life. every society, every religion produces value and great figures, including islam i would add, the rights of on behalf of the oppressed to fight the oppressive. some of those people embrace religious language, some did not. and there are numerous routes. i happen to come out of the church but hardly believe that's an exclusive have to define

authority. and i think that my anger towards the liberal church is that they watched the rise of the christian right which, let's be clear, these people are not christians. they are heretics. [applause] >> they have utterly perverted and he formed the fundamental message of the christian gospel. jesus did not come to make us rich. [laughter] >> jesus did not come to bless dropping fragmentation bombs all over the muslim world. and liberal ministers who went to seminary as i did and study the christian gospel, walked out the doors of the seminaries, saw these heretics and said nothing. they remained silent. and that's why they have nothing to say to us now. of