decency, good people, but there are also a few people, they are not immune to the false of human nature. and occasionally you find people who will be pulling, who will misuse their power, they recognize that whereas they don't have to pay for the lawyers, and people there containing with really region and they may not be able to afford combating and protecting their lives. .. mentioned, jim, in "freedom

at a risk" is term limits. you say you favor term limits. and so i was thinking about this and i was thinking well, that might meant the early retirement, for example, bob kaft or barry goldwater and even newt gingrich before they became famous and those are important

conservatives. >> also congressman frankie. >> yes, yes barney frank, yes indeed. are you supportive of term limits. >> yes, i am. >> talk megapixel >> the constitution involves all kinds of compromises. human nature is human nature. and service -- as we have moved from a system of citizen legislators into career legislators, i think from my own experience, if i had been able to see and i think from what people have been able to put together in reading and following the news carefully, the temptation to protect your right to get re-elected -- the ability to get re-elected overwhelms your willingness to

always vote the way your conscience tells you how to vote. when i was elected -- even though i was elected as a candidate of the conservative party, i joined the republican caucus. and shortly after we were sworn in, john tower, who is then in charge of recruiting -- so i had a member with the new members. and he opened by saying, your first obligation from now on is to assure your re-election. now, so many -- when you're in office, the bell will ring and you're supposed to race to the senate floor to vote on something you've never heard of before, as a way of keeping track of anything anymore. there used to be. and so what do you is to find yourself a friend whose judgment you trust on the relevant committee who -- and ask them,

you know, how he should vote. there was a particular friend of mine, a westerner on the finance committee. and during the last year, an issue would come up on a bill that he had -- had been on the committee he had voted out, john, how should i vote on this and this is the correct way to vote. but you're running for re-election in new york this coming year. you got to vote the other way. that was the accepted premise and so i think that there has been as a result such a subordination of the public interest to the superior interest you have been re-elected that this restraint on tenure will serve the public

good. yes, those wonderful people would not have stayed in -- i figure i had in mind was 12 years. >> 12 years. which is enough time to accomplish what you want to, especially if no one would have more than 12 years seniority on you. and then you can serve as senior statesman. >> hmmm. well, jim, let me ask you this, did you have a chance to vote on raising the debt ceiling? this is going to be a big issue come march april. >> i had several occasions to vote on raising the debt issue. and in my day they attached something they could never have been voted into law to the resolution increasing the debt limit. >> hmmm.

>> to try to sneak bad legislation in on something that in the last analysis has to be approved. you cannot risk destroying the credibility of the united states's obligations. no responsible person will vote against doing it. my solution at the time and i put in an amendment which was voted down and that was to abolish the debt limit. it never has had any effect on suppressing the drive to spend more money. that has to come from some other source. >> it might be another possible legislation act by this new congress as well with all these wonderful new ideas that we're coming up here. you talk in the book about many, many things.

one of them is the role of religion in the public square. would i are so many intelligent people in public life so seemingly afraid of religion? and do you agree that we should pay more attention to? >> well, i'll answer your question in two parts. i want religion to be in the public square, which in part it goes to -- let me start with that one and i'll get to why so many intelligent people oppose it. in anticipation of that question, i actually brought something i can quote 'cause i think it's important. again getting back to the original understanding of the people who created this country, who wrote the first amendment. the thesis that you'll find throughout the early writings is that can only be protected by

people who are not only self-reliant but virtuous, moral people. and the moral people is informed most reliably by religion, so while the federal government will establish a religion it is not unfriendly to religion. and the congress that adopted the first amendment also reenacted a provision in the northwest provision that follows, religion, morality is necessary in good governance in good schools and forever be encouraged with the understanding that its schools and a means of education -- you learned about the bible and all

kinds of other good things. the congress that enacted the first amendment also made grants of land to serve religious purposes and to finance sectarian missionary work among the indians. in the 1960s -- 1860s, what became known as considered the most authoritative analysis of the constitution and what it meant by thomas cooley, who published this treatise in 1868. he said the framers considered it totally appropriate for governments, quote, to foster religious worship and religious institutions as conservatives of the public morals and valuable if not indispensable assistance to the preservation of the public order. so that is totally at odds with the current thesis that religion is purely a private concern.

why are so many intelligent people saying banish it from the public square, if you can find it anywhere in the public school these days. we have been engaged in the cultural revolution since the 1960s. a lot of the leaders of the cultural revolution are highly intelligent. they fear the power of religion. they know the americans are the most religious people on earth outside of the arab community. and they fear its influence. they're intelligent. they want to keep it out of the public square which doesn't keep from having their antireligious within the public square. >> jim, we're -- i think we're all pretty much agreed that we're at war with terrorism. that we, of course, are engaged in two military operations, none

-- none afghanistan and one in iraq. i want to talk about the van are there any real lessons that we can apply? >> i think there's some real lessons that you don't back away from commitments you make under domestic pressure, political pressure. if you do, you invite all kinds of problems in the years to follow. in vietnam, this has nothing to do how you get into an engagement once involved. you have an essential interest to protect ours and those you went in to, to serve. we ended up assigning the paris accords. and incidentally we got a lot of people to go in with us in reliance on american determination, american strength and american -- the police chief

that the united states would accomplish its goals. towards the end, all american troops were brought out of vietnam, they sign the paris accords which was supposed to settle the war. and in those accords we undertook the obligation to keep the south vietnamese military supplied sufficiently to offset onslaughts from the north. the communist bloc continued to pour in weapons and highly sophisticated ones into the north. and at a certain point the congress voted to not send another nickel to vietnam. at the time, incidentally, the south vietnamese were doing a very good job not only holding their ground but even gaining some ground but once they

couldn't have the fuel to run the tanks and planes and couldn't buy more ammunition, they collapsed. as a result the soviet union was so emboldened that it had a dramatic expansion where the areas where it assumed not physical control but brought people within the communist circuit, namely, the horn of africa, yemen. they went into -- they lumped into the southern part of africa in angoallangola. but if we are perceived to withdraw from afghanistan under domestic pressures meeting our minimum requirements that's

required for our own security then we can trigger that same kind of more aaggressive expansion of jihadist on the one hand and a shying away of others who had been relying on us to get the job done. i think there's serious consequences but it also suggests that we should never take on commitments beyond those that are necessary for our security. democratizing afghanistan should not be one of our objectives. >> hmmm. you talk so much about, and properly so, about federalism and you did make reference to the tea party movement. do you see that -- i think -- i'm trying to come up with some more optimism here perhaps. [laughter] >> do you see that their success

in the recent elections for the american people, they're still for limited government and for freedom and responsibility. and that they would like to have their congress follow them in that same way? >> you used federalism earlier and you didn't end with federalism. first of all, there's no tea party. some of the glorious of the grassroots and constructive ways in some areas and less constructive in areas but i think it's a tremendous sign of hope because the underlying themes are less intrusive government, less expensive government and for god's sakes don't saddle the next two or three generations with levels of debt that can't be paid off. i think where federalism comes if is that the easiest way to achieve those three objectives is to restore the kept of a

viable federalism in which the federal government is excluded from intruding into telling the states how to run their own affairs. >> perhaps we could have a couple of questions from the audience with our program. please. please. >> thanks. my name is derek from scott brown's office. you talked about a lot about devolving power back to the states and the federal government being too large and where the republicans differ is where the republican plan have a dea have a one-drug policy for the nation and i was wondering how you settle those two things? where you were on allowing states to differ on drug policy? >> i think you pinpoint one of

the dangers and that is you're sitting here in the capital of the united states. you've got all of this power and all of this authority and i say there's something that's got to be done. and i know how to handle it. i'm going to do it and let's forget what the constitution requires. so even though i would -- i tend to agree that this is such a national problem, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, i think in terms of the overall health of the community -- and why should we deny the state of delaware or the state of alaska the authority to decide on their own what is best for their people? they're closest to the problem. they're not going to have a one program that fits all sizes. i think there's much to be said. you're going to get far better approaches to the drug problem

and there's something else. there are a lot of people, including conservatives, who believe that the legalization of drugs will prove a less costly and less damaging to individuals than the present system. and if a state is allowed to follow that policy, the whole country will have the bicep of understanding how it works. >> yes. please. here? yeah, thank you. >> i have a question about federal regulations and as a d.c. circuit judge and as a former senator, is the vast regulatory state administrative law. do you think that's unconstitutional or that it should just be -- congress should just reassert its authority to be -- you know, the

legislator and not just delegated to the executive branch? >> it is not unconstitutional. it's extra-constitutional. when something is extra-constitutional it's unconstitutional. my guess is never having the issue presented to me, that there's a lot of examples, even back in colonial times to understand that certain responsibilities -- that there must have been an agency in the first congress created by the first congress. and it must have been getting some authority. but there is a point and never having studied it, i don't know what that point is, where there is an unconstitutional delegation of essentially

legislative authority to an agency. and i suspect again without knowing that multiple examples of that will be found or could be found in obamacare and in the new bill, the dodd-frank bill regulating the commercial -- let's put at this way, in reading articles about the consequences of obamacare, time and again you run into an analysis that says, we don't know today how this bill will ultimately affect x, y or z aspects of medical care because the regulator hasn't yet come out with the legislations. it seems to me that congress should never enact a law without knowing what is the fact it's going to be?

>> thank you. in wanted to ask about term limits because i had initially supported term limits and -- but then i've seen how it has been enacted in some states, the particular example that i'm thinking of is ohio which i have some familiarity with, where the -- they've had term limits for a number of years. they've had -- what happens is people take their maximum in the lower house of the legislature or the upper house, wherever they were when they started, then they run for the other seat in the other house of the legislature. pretty soon you've got 20 years in there. and the other aspect of it about people first come in, they're often reliant on the nonelected staff a members to do things so this is kind of a continuing legislative bureaucracy.

so could you address those points? >> yes. first of all, even though i had 12 years in the house, 12 years senate which means some individuals might end with 24 but that would be a tiny minority in time. in terms of staff, if you're lazy, you can be run by staff. i wasn't run by staff but i had a marvelous staff. i had -- i think i had the brightest staff in the senate at the time. but i came in as kind of a phenomenon. i was the conservative event of the year and so all kinds of people gathered who have gone on and have done all kinds of years. no, if you know what you want to accomplish, it seems to me you

get your own staff. but it doesn't mean there aren't elements of truth in everything that you but that's going to be true that no matter when you have a. but i do feel that the greater burden is that you have people so -- the way i put it in my book is that persuade themselves that the constituents be re-elected than they be honest with their constituents. a weighing of alternative arms and benefits. >> yes. >> thank you, mr. buckley, for coming here today. my name is travis gear with the heritage foundation. you have talked today extensively about federalism and given the willingness of the federal government to force states into submission as with arizona, the immigration bill, and the extensive web of red tape and financial dependence of states on the federal

government, what would you say is the first step that an individual state could take to re-empower itself and assert federalism again? >> they can always go to the supreme court which i have -- i speak with great respect. i have to, i'm a member of the federal judiciary. but when 4 out of 9 justices with the supreme court agree with me, case after case, i don't feel totally out of -- out of harm's way. what we need to do is get people in congress, a majority, who accept the premise that the federal government has gotten so unwieldily that it cannot effectively do very much. that constructively, that it's distorting the whole system and threatening our freedoms. that we have a huge amount of money going from the federal

government to the states with the strings. if i were emperor for one session of congress, i would convert all existing grant and aids programs into bloc grants, one education, one on roads and phase them out of a ten year's time. if you want to take that much time for the states to re-engineer what they want to do and you know the rest of it. >> yes, please yeah. >> i was on your staff in the '70s and handled a lot of your congress committee work. and when you were in the senate you got involved rather deeply in the deregulation movement for transportation. and after you left office, all the deregulation took place under the carter administration. i'm talking about airlines,

trucks, the railroads. and when carter left office there were people in the reagan administration who fought regulation tooth and nail. my question to you, what happened to the republican party in that era so that most of the regulation was done by the democrats? and why was the role of the parties reversed? >> the corruption of power. [laughter] >> no. i don't have the answer to that. and, of course, that's the problem we're facing with the new congress now. we have been -- gingrich brought in a bunch of great people. the contract with america, it was observed in the early years and then over time we found expenditures accelerating and so

on. so i think the pressure -- what is required is that the pressures brought to bear the last election cycle these sustained year in and year out with constant vigilance over how the newly elected members are, in fact, operating. >> yes, please, in the back. [inaudible] >> in your defense of freedom, is it based more on freedom as a fundamental value or is it based more on society, people are better off, more productive, happier if they have freedom? >> i'm not sure i made that distinction in my own thinking. it's an interesting one. well, freedom is inherently --

has something to do with human dignity, autonomy, responsibility and so on. but people who are free and at the same time responsible, if they've got virtue are in turn will create a better society. i'm not sure that answers your question. >> well, ladies and gentlemen, i'm going to have to reluctantly draw this conversation to a close. we've been privileged to spend an hour with the gentleman who pulled off a political hat trick representing all three of our branches of government. did that so wonderfully. and i recommend to you highly that you can learn about his service and also the recommendations so that we don't become a european-style democracy by getting copies of "freedom at risk."

. mr. buckley will be happy to sign them all. thank you. [applause] >> for other books on the current state of the federal government, visit booktv.org and search federal government on the upper left side of the page.

>> coming up, richard rubenstein professor explains why americans are amenable to war. the u.s. government sells war to the populace and examines the way that involvement in foreign conflicts are proposed to the nation. he discusses his book at the cambridge public library in cambridge, massachusetts. it's just under an hour and a half. [applause] >> thanks very much. it's wonderful to be back in cambridge. and i appreciate that fine introduction from brian core of the cambridge peace commission. very interesting organization. i'm beginning to think maybe we need a peace commission in washington, d.c., too. [laughter] >> anyway, i want to thank brian for that intro. and also thank the cambridge public library, this wonderful

building and thank marilyn in particular for inviting me to be here. i also want to say a special thank you to my classmates, to fritz donovan and the class -- the harvard class of 1959, several of whose members are here today. you make me feel very much at home. as i was listening to brian speaking about this book, i found myself questioning, wondering whether it's really an antiwar book. it's called "reasons to kill: why americans choose war" and i don't think i wouldn't have written it if i didn't believed the united states has become involved in too many unjust wars. but on the other hand, the

question that i'm asking, why do americans choose war goes in a way beyond the question of which wars do you like and which wars do you not like? it goes to the question of how we become convinced that a war is worth fighting? or not. because one of the things one finds very quickly when doing research on a subject like this, the ubiquity, the strength, the power of antiwar movements in the united states. with the exception of world war ii, there's never been a major war in america that hasn't generated a sanction antiwar movement and because of that, that raises an interesting question. because of that tmz there's a debate about war. we don't automatically go to war. we don't say it's our patriotic duty and march lockstep off to

war. we have to be convinced. therefore, what does it take to convince us. well, many of us are familiar with the definition of war is a continuance of politics by other means. and the realist notion that we go to war to pursue national interests of various kinds, territory, resources, et cetera. it's certainly true, i think, that our leaders often go to war for such reasons. geopolitical ambitions, even to stay in office. abraham lincoln famously called the mexican-american war an unjust war of conquest fought to catch votes. so there are certainly such motives at work among the leadership but why do people follow -- why do people follow the leadership into war when they do?

two theories that are frequently bandied about in order to try to answer that question -- i call in the book the innocent dupe theory and the frontier killer theory. innocent dupe theory suggests that americans go to war because they're gullible consumers. they'll buy anything if it's well enough packaged and like many half-truths there's half a truth there. if we do go to war sometimes we are conned into going to war at least partially sometimes. the mexican-american war that i mentioned before is a good war. president polk went before congress and said american blood has been shed on american soil. war exists by active mexico alone when what we know now, in fact, and what the whig party

knew then and abraham lincoln and others knew then was that polk had sent american troops into territory which was disputed, which an international court would almost have certainly awarded to mexico in order to evoke the attack on the troops which would give him a right to war which is a conquest which we know as the american west. and there are many examples. the most recent of which, of course, is the iraq war fought in order to seize nonexistent weapons of mass destruction from saddam hussein and fought because a false allegation that he was in league with al-qaeda. even so, even after one rehearses the sorry story of americans being fooled by their leaders, one comes to the

conclusion it's not -- it's not an adequate explanation. it's not simply a question of our stupidity. and the ability of the authorities to manipulate us. and the proof it seems to me of that is that antiwar movements have been so strong including in the mexican war. the proof of this also even where manipulation takes place there are often more important reasons why we go to war than the manipulation. in the spanish-american war was manipulated believing that the spanish had blown up the battleship the u.s.s. maine in havana harbor and the hearst press and the other yellow journals trumpeted that it was a spanish deed. and they herd jeopardy up a

panel of experts to look into that probable causes of that explosion which came to the explosion as many did before because the battleships were fueled by coal and the coal stores gave off coal gas, in the case of the maine the gunpowder, magazine of the ship was placed dressel above the coal stores. it would have taken nothing but a spark to blown the maine out of the water to put it at the bottom of the harbor and others could reach the same conclusions by recognizing neither the spanish nor the cubans had anything to gain by sinking the maine. nevertheless, that's not why we went to war. that certainly played a role in building up the prowar sentiment in america. but it's much more to notice that for months and months before the maine was destroyed

and afterwards the press were running perfectly accurate stories about the horrible atrocities committed by the spanish against the cuban independence movement. a counterinsurgency movement in cuba in which at least 200,000 cubans died and many as 400,000 died and a counterinsurgency campaign featuring the relocation of relocation of villages, featuring the torture of counterinsurgents, featuring an equivalent of waterboarding american went to war in cuba to liberate the cubans from the spanish, and they did for a few months. after liberating cuba from the spanish they, of course, took cuba for themselves. and worse yet, went to war in the philippines and conducted a

counterinsurgency campaign which was almost a mirror image or should i say the exact image of the counterinsurgency conductedgin the spanish for the cubans. it raises several questions. one of the things it points to is the fact that americans don't get convinced to go to war unless there is a powerful appeal made to what i call in the book their civil religion following robert bella's article on civil religion. that is to say that there is an appeal to our values. our cherished most cherished values. americans are not convinced to go to war because it's allegedly in the national interest. nor, i may say, do they go to war because they like to fight. the other major theory, which i also classify as a half truth is

the theory that because we had particularly in appalachia, a civilization, scotch-irish, et cetera, et cetera, of people who spent a long time fighting against the indians and developed a kind of warrior ethos, a warrior culture, that that is driving american militarism today. that that's the reason americans want to go to war because they envisioned themselves as indian fighters on the afghan frontier. again, some truth to this. jim webb's book on the subject contains some truth. but if we were simply lovers of violence, if we were gun-crazed people who like to fight and don't care who we kill including ourselves why would we have such powerful antiwar movements?

why would we have such deep and searching debates. why would it be necessary to appeal to us on the basis of our value system and not simply on the basis of our love of fighting? no, it's the value system that i believe is central in convincing americans to go to war. and one sees this, i think, most clearly when one looks at the main reasons that we -- that are used to induce us to fight. or to support wars. what are they? very quickly, one is self-defense. self-defense in anglo-american culture it's not a matter of convenience it's a sacred right and a collective duty. if we've been attacked we believe we have the right to defend ourselves and if we've been attacked we believe the government has the duty to protect us. the problem with self-defense is what is the self that's being defended?

what does self-defense actually mean? in the earliest days it meant what it seems me, the contest definition. americans were being attacked on american soil. but even then if one goes back to say the seminal war, the first sem natural war which was fought by andrew johnson he became president one finds jackson and his friends asserting indians and escaped slaves located in florida were attacking american settlements across the florida-alabama border and, therefore, we needed to retaliate in order to defend america. looking more closely into that which i do in the book, one finds something very interesting. first of all, those attacks by the indians were not initial attacks. they were retaliatory attacks.

they were retaliatory attacks because the indians were welcoming escaped slaves from the south. and making them seminoles and treating them with dignity. and because of that, white southerners were attacking across the border to reclaim their property and because of those attacks there were a few reprisal attacks, not very many by the indians. the moral of this is, when jackson marched into florida and seized the territory which became florida he was not doing it in defense of american lives endangered. he was doing it in defense of the southern slave system. we were already seeing the explanation of the notion of the self that requires defense. from people and property in the u.s. particularly in people to the domestic institutions of the

u.s., to the idea, if you like, ideas that were important to the u.s. a development which takes another giant step forward in world war i and world war ii. when what is being defended is not american territory except for pearl harbor, leave pearl harbor out for a moment. is not american lives but rather the idea of america, the idea of freedom. the idea of political freedom of free enterprise. a religious freedom of human rights. so this is a defense of american ideology. it seems to me then that we have to make a distinction between the two world wars because in world war ii we actually confronted an adversary which is capable of threatening us physically and materially.

germany and japan, the number two and three the economic powers in the world southwest being fascist as well as being aggressive. were also capable of waging a struggle, a worldwide struggle which would -- had they won would have been to our disadvantage. it certainly would have been to my disadvantage. i would be a lamp shade today if we had lost. world war ii an entirely different appear. world war i -- when one reads the world war i propaganda today and sees the fantasies of the kaiser marching across the atlantic to establish german power in north america, when one sees the propaganda about german atrocities in belgium which was blown out -- it was blown out of proportion, one realized world war i was not the same of world war ii in terms of any real

threat to the united states. and coming more recently, the kind of -- in a way, the self-defense doctrine is the notion that self-defense means defending the last established imperial outpost. that if the united states invades a country, even for the wrong reasons, like iraq -- as soon as we have some troops there, if anybody attracts the troops, it's self-defense. we have to support the troops. it means it's self-defense. we're defending ourselves. we identify with the legions in the same way, i suppose, that romans must have done, identify with their legions. so self-defense now has reach the point where there's no difference between self-defense and aggression. self-defense will justify anything. it becomes meaningless and so in my book, i beg my readers and

the american public not to always distrust the government, not to believe there's no such thing ever is a just war but to think about what self-defense means. what does it mean? ordinarily we're a very hard headed people, we americans. we don't give to charity unless we know where the money's going. we say we're from missouri. show me. we say we're not going to trust the government just because the government says this, that or the other thing. but somehow when it comes to war making we do. there's a tendency to buy into these scenarios, these narrat e narrativ narratives. so really what my book is an attempt to have americans become americans. i don't believe you say it. prove it. prove it. prove that the taliban is

endanger us. prove that when taliban has left town and they are in pakistan, yemen, wherever they are, that we have to continue to fight in afghanistan to save ourselves from al-qaeda. well, self-defense is one value it's appealed to and others without going into such great length -- i mean, name is couple of others. especially when self-defense arguments falter. it's common for prowar forces to trod out the evil enemy. and the existence of an evil enemy does what self-defense alone maybe can't do. it suggests that there is loose in the world that's demonic, that's diabolical. that we can't negotiate with, we can't deal with. we can't eliminate its causes because the devil is a transhistorical figure.

if people hate us because as bush said after 9/11, they hate us because we're free -- if they hate us because we're good, and they're not -- if they hate us because they're crazed by power unlike us who couldn't care less about power, these -- it's what psychologists would call projection of our one wanted tendency on the enemy or at least create a satan-like figure and american history is full of such figures beginning from the indian days on. figures who don't exist in history and, therefore, are not amenable to historical solutions. they're not amenable not only to negotiation. they're not amenable to any sorts of reform because the concept is that they want to destroy us because of their own destructive nature. and that's straight augustan

diabolicalism. that's what the devil is. well, i deny that there are absolutely evil forces in the world. relatively, yes. relatively evil, yes. good and evil still have some meaning. but even with a force as destructive as al-qaeda, so say they dislike us and they want to do us in because that's their evil nature means that we can't face the fact that we are involved in a relationship with them. and it's not to excuse anything that they've done but the fact is we've done things to them, too. we've done things to their people, too. that make sense of the vicious relationship between us. we can't make sense of the

relationship unless we talk about what america does in the world. about who's representing us abroad and what they're doing in the islamic world, in israel, palestine, in iraq, everywhere. this is not to blame america. this is not to blast america. this is to say if you diabolicalize the enemy you remove them from history and you remove yourself from any possibility of dealing with him historically. i would also say then that the same kind of critical thinking that i'm pleading for in the book needs to be used when somebody says the enemy is evil. and a good skeptical american should ask, what do you mean evil? absolutely evil? relatively evil? how do you know? compared with whom? is every enemy we face a hitler? et cetera. and let me say also that the

same kind of critical thinking needs to be applied in the hardest circumstance of all and that is when appeals are made to our values as humanitarians, and lovers of humanity, as lovers of human rights. and people who believe that their power ought to be used for the good in the world. we've gotten into so much trouble in so many places by intervening in so many places in moral crusades that it's long past time to ask when such appeals are made to us, what's in it for us? when we intervene in cuba, for example, and liberate cuba from the spanish and next it is philippines and doing to the filipinos exactly what the spanish did to the cubans, why did that happen? what's the logic of that?

when we intervene around the world, in the case of the war on terrorism, and we worry about the way women are being treated by islamic fundamentalists, extremists, and we worry about democracy versus dictatorship, and we worry about fanaticism and fundamentalists beliefs being imposed on people, all of which it seems to me are things worth worrying about, we need to ask, are we, therefore, intervening as some kind of neutral third-party to bring justice to the world? or is this part of an imperial ideology? are we faded again and again to repeat the dynamics of the spanish-american war and the philippine -- the massacre of 2 to 400,000 filipinos in the

philippine counterinsurgency because we can't recognize -- because we want to portray ourselves as a selfless force for good as liberators not occupiers. not recognizing that this a nation that assumed an imperial role and that liberation is always for us a prelude to occupation with perhaps the exception of world war ii. something we can talk about in the question period. but in most other cases the liberator becomes the occupier. i mention in the book that one way of understanding is to think about the importance of the moses figure in american civil religion. and the fact that in the moses story, moses who liberates the

children of israel then becomes their ruler, stamps out rebellion and then, although he dies short of the occupation of the holy land and then their leader in an occupation. the notion that the liberator also becomes the occupier is acceptable if one believes in the unique virtue of the liberator. we are uniquely virtuous in that -- and we're not subject to the same kinds of temptations, the same kinds of greed, the same kinds of greed as other powers in the world are. it's deeply ingrained in some ways in american religion, civil religion to believe that since we left europe originally, to found a uniquely virtuous republic that we still possess that kind of unique virtue.

president bush started saying at a certain point, not god bless america but may god continue to bless america. that involves a kind of patriotism, may i say, that i try to talk about also in the book, which is a complicated subject. a kind of patriotism which has gone from -- has moved from a pride in one's heritage from a love of one's -- of the place. the spacious skies, et cetera. a fondness for one's country people, a love of one's customs. it's moved onto a quasi religious plain and this is a fairly recent development, a love of military violence is

part of the patriotic -- is part -- it's become part of u.s. patriotism so we could go to the bowl game and sing "take me out to the bowl game" in the seventh inning stretch. we have to sing "god bless" and the next time you're at the ballpark you decide not to sing "god bless america" see the folks around you -- the kinds of looks you get from the folks around. we can't have super bowl at half time without having military flights at half time. it's become shall i say omni present and the problem with it is not only that it's militaristic. it's that it inculcates the notion, it's an attempt it seems to me to inculcate the notion that patriotic duty means being willing to fight on demand. do you love your country? yes. would you fight for it? you're supposed to say yes. would you kill and die for it?

yes. that's the proof that you love your country. no, no, no. no, it's not true. maybe you love your country so much that you won't fight for it. president wilson, when he was running as the peace candidate in 1916, before he committed america to world war i nine months later, said there's such a thing as a man or a nation that's too proud to fight. great patriots from abraham lincoln to john quincy adams to eugene debbs, jeanette rankin and dennis kucinich have combined their love with country -- of country, of combined their patriotism with an insistence that the country that we not fight, that we not shed blood, that we not shed our own blood or shed any other's

blood except in a just cause. and what's so corrosive about what we're experiencing now, it seems to me, is that -- and may i say it seems to me un-american as well. is the attempt to undermine the just cause doctrine. i started out this little talk by saying that we uniquely in our country don't fight unless we're convinced that it's in a just cause. yet, many people would like to us to fight because war is now normal. and because the appeal is not made to just cause. so that, for example, if one looks at the current situation with our wars in afghanistan and

the war ending in iraq, sort of -- if you call leaving 50,000 troops in a country ending a war, the war not -- not at all ending in afghanistan although there's some signs there's possible negotiation, more than 60% of americans