no water. daniel patrick moynihan in 1965 lamented the fact that 25% in this country were out of wedlock birth and nobody would ever say that daniel patrick moynihan was a briefing breadwinner, but he was a thoughtful man and he was looking at this objectively. at the time, as a young staffer in the department of labor, which he saw startled him and gave him pause and he wrote about it and warned of the consequences of the growing level of out of wedlock birth cometh and 25% were shocking to him. how shocked were db to find that 75% of african-american births are out of wedlock types across the board, among all demographic groups, 41% of all american life birds are now vital for the birds. again, forget it was position on

the political spectrum. this is a concern because their economic consequences for those children. i'd like to think people on the radio just as interested in eliminating poverty of people on the left. but the reality of eliminating poverty comes down to simply putting more money in a government program does not address the root issue, which is that mothers and fathers are the most important form of government. i also want to mention that i think we sometimes forget that the origin of our country was one in which government was intended to be as local as possible and as limited as possible. one need only to read the writings of jefferson, james madison, john adams, to see that it was never intended we would have a massive federal government.

what has happened since 2009, even states and cities get more revenue from the federal government than any other source. this would be a shock to thomas jefferson, james madison and to our founders could never conceive the federal government would be so big that it would not just be as big as, but incredibly much bigger than the collect of states and cities that originally the federal government was to serve. but that's where we've come. and so, my title and this view is that the further from shore, the more likely you are to be lost at sea. the premise to music in a commonsense simple principle that if i govern my own family, i can do that because i know my own children. my wife and their three children, all grown, a 34-year-old son in a 28-year-old

daughter, two of those children are married. and for some reason and i don't think it was intended, but we ended up on the case have grown, we ended up with three dogs. so we had three kids and now we have three dogs. the kids think the dogs have replaced them. they also think we treat the dogs better than we treated them. i simply tell them to dogs behave better than they ever did. but this much i know. i know my own children. i know their personalities. when they were growing up, i don't think there is any person who could have phrased them any better because first they were of me and i knew them in a new when they were going to cry and when they were going to laugh. and i knew what they were getting angry and i knew when i was getting through to them. my middle son required a little more firmness of the discipline. my daughter, i could look at her

in a certain way. she was the youngest of the three and virtually could not hurt just by my look of disapproval. all of that is to say that the closer you are to the people being governed, the better you are able to govern because you know them. the government of the neighborhood or the community level is more effect this was a simpler reason your governing people you know, like and are accountable to and responsible for. i often tell people and introduce themselves and pam -underscore word. i was helping me of the hardest job in politics because people can sue at the grocery store. they know where you live in macon follows you and chew you out. he's taught them in several a dynamic festival and approachable, but i know where he can get away. you were on the school board. they got your home number. it is the toughest job in american politics. you know what? that's a good thing. the more the government gets

disconnected from the people being governed, the less likely it is to get it right because it means people making decisions don't really know those people. i'm not sure any person within 100 miles for a thousand miles from my neighborhood with better raise my children in need. now the application of that is that we have made a huge mistake. let me be very clear. i do so in the book, but whether the democrats or republican administration, both parties have made the unconstitutional and unconscionable mistake of moving government further and further from the local community in closer and closer to the city. in doing so, we've created not only a monstrous size government, but we've created one but is very unlike a one-hour founders envision. james madison and the federalist papers on page 29 of the book talks from the federalist papers as to why the power is not defined. it's not just that they were, but he explains why.

what we have come up with the formula in which the federal government by its own nature is able to get larger and larger by the granting of federal money to states and cities for programs, often enough to get them out on something, but the long-term money is left to the states and cities. i remember when i was governor at the big program for 100,000 cops on the streets that kind of like a thing. we're going to fight crime, help the states and cities on the first three or so is funded. what happened in four? at the cities and states don't have the money, they get to make the announcement were having to lay out some of these federally funded cops. the headlines never read, federal funds dry up for police. its mayor makes their city unsafe. governors cut back the police budget. so what we find out is this whole idea of federal money is kind of like a free sample of

hair when that drug dealers get away. the ultimate effect is you get hooked on the next thing you know the monkeys on your back for the rest of your life. we are seeing governors turned down federal money and many people in the city are throwing at their hands and saying what's wrong with these guys? what you mean they don't want money for high-speed rail? baidoa to expanded medicaid program? thirst were enough to understand the money is only good for two years or two years or four years, if it's not on their watch, some governor in a future with her son for having taken money they can't sustain with the federal funds other dry up. and that's why more decisions need to be brought back to a local community. i was vice chairman of the national governors association, mark warner worked on getting all the states and governors together on a medicaid reform plans using some 1187 that would get to the hhs come and go to the congress, go to the senate,

i send to approve changes that the federal government money in exchange give the governor's more flexibility. their 50 in america, 4999. that's remarkable. rod blagojevich did not sign on. he now wishes he had. had he done so, all these problems would've never happened for them. he was the only one who didn't. democrats and republicans signed on. we thought this out to be a slam dunk. we are presenting something that saves the federal government money. it's not a political issue, not partisan. mark warner night, when democrat one republican. the site to be simple. here, guys, we can save you several billion dollars. all we ask of you, let us governor medicaid problems a little bit more. not completely, a little bit more. and it was the biggest fight of ever been in. mark and i would look at each other and just shake our heads

and they, what's wrong with these guys? they wanted to fight sites that we weren't even hounding. it can't be an important lesson that the further you wrote about from the shore, the more likely you are to be lost at sea. i'm convinced we've got a lot of folks in this city who are lost at sea. justice brandeis in 1932 and i quote him because i think it's an important quote in the book, he spoke of states of being laboratories for experiments in government. this is the idea our founders had, that the states would be where the power was distributed and they would have the opportunity to try things. sometimes bold things. sometimes those things wouldn't work. and when they didn't work, not all the would make the mistake of attempting them, but that would've been one thing that was tried and put aside. mentally try something else. if it did work, all the other states could adopt it.

i think about what we've done in the last year with osama cares, which i specifically referenced as one of the prime examples of rather than protesting something in the states, which in essence have been road tested in two states, tennessee and massachusetts and has no work has proven to not be an effective way to lower costs and to increase accessibility and limit the amount of time people wait to get health care. but no one looked at those programs. they decided even though two states have put it in the laboratory and it didn't work well, let's put all 50 states and to the program so everybody can feel the lead. and it's that kind of insanity that i believe we have to speak to. by the way, speaking of insanity come every one of the attorney general, every last one of them complained to the office of the comptroller of the currency about the growing housing bubble in the fact we were headed for serious consequence is in dire

consequences if we continue to follow the policies without stepping in with different levels of regulation on making loans to people who could not afford to take those loans. again, bipartisan, all attorney general signal 50 states filed the complaint. this was a democrat versus republican. this was states versus the feds come in saying are you guys nuts? and basically, they didn't say they were, but their actions said yes, we are crazy and the result has been an economic meltdown out that his costs all of us germanic impact, whether it's in retirement account surrender value of our homes. and for that, we have to be outraged and angry and demanding a level of accountability. by the way, one of the things i want to mention and i want to cover the entire book before i take your questions because i know you have some, but i just

want to say part of this book was written last summer, june and july about this come up to bed in october and november. nobody is talking about public employee unions and their impact. if you look on page 35 of the book, i feel somewhat validated because i talk about becoming meltdown that we will see as a result of the public employee unions and the fact in the public employee unions versus the private sector, wages are 30% higher among public are union employees and benefit packages of health and retirement of 70% better in their corresponding private dirt. i simply pointed out and i've been a governor for nearly 11 years. it became obvious that if you look at the long-term calculations here, that it's unsustainable in the same way if you look at his medicaid program and see the costs going up anywhere from 6% to 12% come he

looks at the health plan in every governor runs the largest health plan in his state. and my state it would require all the employees of wal-mart and all the employees at tyson foods to two largest corporations in arkansas combined and they still wouldn't equal the number of state employees. in most states, the state employee body is the largest group of employees and if they unite, they are organized by the fact it has been disproportionate pay and benefits that is grown. and i call it a parasitic relationship with the state and the symbiotic with the federal government. as they say, i feel validated because you could see this coming and now it's playing out some of the story of every newscast in the front page of every paper in the country were in wisconsin and indiana and ohio and probably soon to a theater near you, there is a growing sense of urgency about how are we going to find these

costs? again, i'm going to tell you that some will try to pick this as republicans attempt to bump unions, this is a fact to jerry brown is stealing the in andrew cuomo in new york and neither are raping republicans any doubt they watch fox news every night. they showed, but i doubt they do. i want to mention one other thing and that is that we can't spend we don't have any camp are what you pay back. you understand that in your family. if you are in real serious financial trouble in your family come east of spending. i've never met a mother and father, husband and wife who sat wife who sat down and said you know what, i lost my job, i don't know what we're going to do. we are broke. we have no savings. you know what we need to do? let's go to disney world.

we don't go spend money. we figure out how to cut back expenditures and start a dream out what we can tell. my gosh, when i ran for office i knew i didn't have enough money to live on. i cashed in my insurance policy, cash and some annuities beardslee sold off things. my point is we don't want to recklessly spend if you don't have it. the last thing if you can't pay it back sand lake to borrow several million dollars. how we pay back? i've no idea. think of some rather ridiculous stories but i would love to do is be able to build a $100 million home in the hand and, higher servants to take care of it. why did i not do that? no bank would ever love me the money for that because they both back and say there's no way you can pay that back. and yet we had a whole series of times in this country with the government to encourage people to take out loans that they could not pay back.

why did they do that? the government has set the example. the government has borrowed money that it can't pay back. we owe more money than our total combined gross domestic product in the year. the fact is we now have a gross domestic product, all the things we make them in manufacturing put together is less than what we owe. when you do this in your family and your asset. and getting the question signal. either that or you are making a pass at me. i'm not sure which it was. [laughter] i'm going to assume it's about the question. but when that happens in your family, you are underwater. the last thing you need to do is pour more water and yourself. so what i hope you will do is take a good look at this book. i try to cover the waterfront from terrorism to border security and all things in between, but most importantly i want to say that this is an

attempt on my part to say here i stand. here is what i believe. the question you probably want to ask is very going to run? the question i have for america is, do you think this message resonates with you? if it does, that gives me a whole lot more encouragement to put myself through the sausage grinder of a campaign. >> for more information, visit mike huckabee.com. >> here are a few book fairs and festivals from around the country:

>> from new york city, lieil leibovitz visit the chinese empire in 1872. the boys are listed as members as the chinese educational mission were sent to the united states to lead the innovations of the west and return to china with new ideas. this is about 35 minutes. >> before i start to tell you the story of these remarkable

men, i'd like to tell a very short story of a far less remarkable man myself. i was born in tel aviv israel and i was born my mother took me to send the center any exotic faraway land filled with rich and splendid treasures. i am talking of course about the jersey. when i got to new jersey and attended summer camp for a couple months, i made a bunch of startling discoveries. some discoverers were small, like the fact they choose previously believed to reside in fruit, actually could come in a box or that there was a channel mtv but had nothing but cartoons. but other discoveries were significantly larger, like baseball. even with my juice and cartoon adult and 10-year-old mind, i

knew there was something profound and profoundly american about baseball, a game which you could strike at 60, 70% of the time and still go back up that, swing and still win. and i knew that i wanted to live in america. i went back home at the end of the summer tenures later moved to new york. a couple years ago, my wife and i -- i was in graduate school and we decided to spend some time in china. and here we are in beijing at one of these quintessentially beijing he smoggy, easy rainy afternoons and nothing to do except stare at the small television with exactly one channel and our hotel room. we see a picture of this boy and the picture was clearly taken some time in 19th century. the boy was clearly chinese in the building next to which he was standing with very clearly

be a university. i sort of thought to myself, i have no idea they were chinese students ideal university in the 19th century. and i started researching the story and discovered these remarkable young men whose story i will soon tell you. they wrote a lot of letters in the cab journals. and when i read their journals in their letters, i couldn't help but feel an immediate sense of tremendous, tremendous empathy. because like them, i came from a different culture. unlike they i came to a different school. unlike them, i felt i had to work really, really hard to understand what the culture was about and fit in. unlike them i couldn't help but feel that no matter how hard i tried, perhaps ensure that there would always be a little bit of foreignness. and on that cheerful note, let me tell you the story of the fortunate site. it begins in 1872 or rather a few years before in china.

in china and the second half of the 19th century as a country teetering on the verge of disaster. it controls about 10% of the world's territory and about one fifth of the world's people. and yet it is a country that is not yet industrialized and with population growth is extremely rapid. by the 1860s or 1840s, china reaches something along the lines of 450 million people. that's a lot of mouths to feed. they are famines, rebellion, all kinds of signs of corruption. famous of course, the western powers never miss an opportunity and they think it is an easy target and begin the game called carbon the chinese island, which means using their ambassadors for their flotillas, or forcing china into all kinds. china understands the method does something really fast and

really drastic, its future is very bleak. and the decision that you can't do is to send a group of young chinese boy's to be educated in america. in this task, they adjust the rate map. his name is gwen, grew up in the south of china, educated in the seminary -- western seminary in 1850, the reverend who is a teacher called back to the united states decided to go with an array of tear and what to yale university and became the first-ever chinese man to graduate from an american university. and here he is graduating in 1854, going back to china, brimming with the audacity of hope. he is thinking to himself, this is an opportunity to make this. all i have to do is make sure more and more boy such as myself

that the opportunity to have the same experience. but china is a very different place. he finds a small house in his native village and across the street from that house, i told you before china had 450 million people around that time. but i didn't say if they were governed by a bureaucracy of slightly over 40,000 clerks. you think our system of government is broken. and since it's a very small number to govern a very large number of people, corruption was absolute or very prevalent and each local governor had tremendous powers. and the governor controlling the region have a system. it would accuse you of theft or some other petty crime and continue immediately to death. if you had the money to prove yourself innocent, very well. across the street from young

quintiles with the execution grounds. across white house, bodies were piling high. and he looks at this and he shudders. he says to himself, something very radical needs to happen. he leaves his village, goes to shanghai, works hard can it becomes variable fee for urgent and by the time the people in the forbidden city, the mandarins are ready to move, they understand that this guy, the first-ever chinese demand educated in america is their man. they come to him and say okay, look, we don't want anything from the americans, except for there to elegy. all we want is their science. that's all you have to make sure. you were so things are little more complicated. so he puts together the mission. select from hundred 20 through is, do you through just that and a half.

they all were brought together in 1872 on an improved league named ship, the spirit of the king. now in san francisco, there were of course a lot of chinese people at the time. these are the son didn't, hard-working men who would doubt the transcontinental railroad. but the boys, when they arrive, they don't care. they see to which the likes i've never seen before. if the elevators, train cars, electric elves and most excitingly, trains, which equal fire engines. they are extremely happy about this and ecstatic when they take a train ride on the transcontinental brevet across the united states new england to their new homes. on the way, by the way, they are reportedly robbed by remnants of jesse james gang. they are attacked by bands of indians. they have this quintessential dime store novel adventure. but nothing prepares them for

the real adventure they are about to have, which is the adventure they have when they begin their lives in their adopting families in new england. now when they arrive, they understand very quickly that life is going to be very strange here. they land, they disembark, have these beautifully braided cues they had to wear to the emperor and long flowing accounts as is customary. of course, all the american kids call them chinese girls, which makes them very, very upset. in china when they left home and said goodbye to their fathers and mothers for a 15 year journey, you would've the most emotional gesture at the confucian culture would allow, which was a series of three very deep bows. of course when they reach her, their adoptive mothers grab them and hug them and kiss them, which modifies them to no end. in the culture seems very

strict. this doesn't last long. within a few months, definitely within the year, these kids are thriving. they pick up horseback riding. they pick up a rifle read. they started their baseball teams, which they wonderfully called the orientals and they are quite good. and even change their names. his best friend becomes crazy chat. we have cold fish charlie and a bunch of quintessentially american schoolboy nicknames. and the boys are doing very well. they are thriving young man penetrating young nation. in 1876, four years after they arrived, terrified to be guest of honor at the first centennial celebration which is a huge international expo philadelphia. there they meet alexander graham bell and this brand-new

invention of telephone and takes a very local economy developed by john heinz called ketchup and they meet president ulysses s. grant, mark twain. they have a of a time. but that time unfortunately is not to last for long. a host of fact there's are in play to make sure that the boys adventure is cut short. in america, in the west, into a chinese sentiment is on the rise. the railroad is completed. there is no more work. this rapid unemployment and of course the chinese are the first to kind of feel the rhythms. in 1882, the chinese exclusion act is passed signifying this trend. and in china, to come in the mandarins of the forbidden city or a crease in the suspicious of

america. 1881, did say, party is over. it's time to recall these boys back to china. mark twain writes letters on their behalf. mark twain rates new york and condenses former president at that point can ulysses s. grant to write a letter on their behalf. nothing helps. any 1081, they get back on the ship in a sealed the shanghai. now, they are not altogether sad. it's true they live behind friends. most of them didn't get to graduate from college, but they tell themselves, this is not the end of the world because before we left, all these years ago we were young children, we are promised upon our return to be the new mantra for china. who would be the new lords of the land. and they stand there on the deck, imagining the welcome and strong so would would meet them at the port in shanghai. they are greeted of course by policemen. arrested, accused of being spies.

no, they say we are scholars. imagine how strange it must've seemed to the local police, scholars for them were sedentary surly men who are long flowing robes and the perfect chinese. these boys could hardly speak any chinese at all. they spoke some weird language and were addressed by mark twain wrote, but in western meat suit. it took about a week and a half to clear this misunderstanding and they were released from prison. the troubles were very far from over. instead of getting these plum jobs that they were promised, they were sent to cleaning decks on navy ships and things of that nature. for 10 years, they had to work very hard to prove they were better, to climb up. and, if they did. their self-confidence and the resolve they learned on the baseball field and shooting ground of el proved themselves

very worthy and they became leaders in pretty much all the fields of modern china's growth industrial. the path wasn't always easy. when young man who had learned my name at yale university came to a small village in south of china started to do his chapter which is to dig a mind and were assaulted by the local residents who said this is very bad choice. you're upsetting the spirits. he said no and it yielded anything about this. for the ancestors. at first he sort of brushed him off, but then he understood the concerns are very serious. so we had to do things. the first event she married, which is actually very ingenious for the time still. the second is to learn how to sort of reconcile his desire for progress and work with the local traditions of the villages and

towns he worked then. in all the boys by now in this mission have to do the same. the times they lived through reported in the third part of this book are absolutely fascinating times. china through all kinds of wars with among other people, japan, france and other nations as a nation deeply, deeply changing. and by 1912, it was ready for the biggest change of all. millennia of imperial rule were coming to an end and the first-ever chinese republic was being born. and when the republic was born, these young men became modern china's founding fathers. the prime minister of that republic was a graduate, his foreign minister was to graduate. many figured out how to build

railroads on the large scale across canada with a graduate. the father of the commander of the chinese was a graduate was china's harvard was also a graduate. and here are all these young men walking around the forbidden city, talking to each other in english, saying things like that the right, old boy. it will be okay. this was the highlight of their lives. they were expecting that sooner or later china was very and they were heartbroken. china soon fell into a series of warbird of them and after that japanese invasion, after that, civil war. after that, communist. and as the successful men turned old and frail, they watch as everything they've worked to achieve with crumbled. so here we are many, many

decades later, walking around china, reading about these boys, reading their writing. and the question we ask ourselves when we wrote this book, it is if there's a happy or sad story come into the fortunate sons of a happy ending or tragic one? and the more we thought about it, the more we realized that although they died 70, 80 years ago, the story of the fortunate ones is not yet over. the lesson they teach us, the challenges that they had to overcome the challenges that still today we have to overcome. these are the challenges of america and china, having to learn how to speak to one another come not in the language of competition and conquest, but in the language of cooperation and collaboration, a lesson by the lake for president whose recent visit to the white house

is increasingly well that. these are the lessons of chinese and american understanding that china will never become america, nor would america become china, but instead each culture has to represent -- has to respect each other's cultures, each others' beliefs, each other's traditions and work together to make sure that this story indeed has a happy ending and this i hope truly happy now, i would like to turn this into a conversation. thank you very much. [applause] please. yes, man. >> t. speak chinese or the troubles in english chinese?

>> well, let them tell you a funny story. when we started working on this book, we learned that there were journals. and here we are, sitting in a coffee shop in new york city. and i say tonight, just our luck. here we are on this great story and these kids left behind all of these journals and all these journals are probably buried in the basement in shanghai and are probably all in chinese and will never be able to figure them out. do we start doing what people do nowadays, which is of course googling like crazy discovering the historical society is some sort of exhibition on the very subject a few years back. so i called the librarian in connecticut. by that point i'm convinced the journals indeed are in shanghai and i introduced myself as a writer and say, do you have a contact person in shanghai? and she says with in shanghai? i said the diaries of course. she says i'm looking to the diaries right now. they are an hour and half away. so of course we hope in the car,

the surveyor. the diaries are all in english. the sort of, you know, there's an interesting, the country because i don't speak chinese. we had a translator who worked with us, and excellent translators spend a lot of time in china. but these young boys for very large periods of time didn't

when he came about and offered this deal to families, to the prominent families of china come most of them said no thank you. will pass. in addition to that, it's a very hard tail for a chinese boy to ask that because confucianism is so much about respect for elders and family traditions. and you tell young boy, you're going to leave behind your parents, that's hard for anyone, especially in the confucian culture. so they went back to their own village, many of the boys were his family members were sons of friends and sort of put together -- he has had hoped the

best of the best. he selected at random. the empire at the most, for example, if you are chosen and ungratefully named, they changed her name so it would sound better to the american ear. then the end, they got a very good group of people. yes, sir. i really loved the book and upon reading it i thought, i wonder if the statue as a young wing because he was so amazing at shanghai when he left the scottish person. and you just -- the stories he told her so amazing. and i was wondering, there were a couple of boys who decided not to go back to china and they converted to christianity. as you have a chance to interview their defendant? are they still familiar with their great, great

grandfather's? >> let me say one thing first. there is a young statue. as it happens, it's right here in the city. there's a young qing schooled as a memorial. however, in china, especially southern china, the little village that he grew up in was sort of crazed and midway through the town. there are many, many statues and schools named after him as sole factor many other graduates of this mission. someone at a well-known story and a very optimistic one of how you could really work together and bridge the cultural gaps. as for the people who stay behind, there were a couple of these boys who thought this year was just too good to pass on. a couple of them the train before they are headed to san francisco to sail back, converted to christianity and never went back. their fates are not happy.

they learned that when they actually became american citizens as opposed to members of this international exchange, goodwill litigation, racism really hit them hard. and therein for not well met. but as for your other question about the students -- the generations, the next-generation, we have spoken to several of these young men defended. and it's amazing to learn how many of them lived either here or in canada and how many of them, even those in china followed in the first tops of their fathers and attended gill, columbia, mit, princeton. and they decided to learn this. they were generous as they opened up archives and letters in the photos in the book from there. there was a hard-fought discovery for a period yes,