meetings in the space of just a couple of weeks all designed to do exactly what you say, are we doing everything possible to make sure we are succeeding in implementing the security counsel resolutions and the goal of the united states. ..

there are one different ways of doing it. i mentioned the reference in the contemporary financial mechanism which is something we are working with allies and partners within britain and i think you're planning a particularly important role thinking through how we can get donations to such a mechanism where there is any way to use oil shale there's a way for the resources they need three the number of countries have looked at the asset which we have all said to belong to the libyan people and not to the regime and looking at ways to translate that into support for the libyan people. so all of these are being carefully studied both here in washington and with our partners and the common goal is making

sure -- >> being considered right now? >> i don't have the dollar amount for you, no. >> if i could follow up, clearly, yes you did prevent a kind of run on and prevented the killing of many people, but after that initial kind of saving of lives it does seem as if that although i know the campaign wasn't to officially help the rebels it seems as they have lost ground, because what they are not able to fortify the city's more lives are at stake and it does seem as if the initial nato campaign and the kind of preventing of a large number of casualties has kind of fallen back in some ways and it doesn't seem as if the campaign is as successful as it was in

its initial weeks and we are even hearing the rebels are talking about the mean who need to have them defending again, so how do you regain some of the momentum in terms of preventing the killing of civilians although it might go down to how well the rebels are doing in their home countries? >> welcome a look as we've said protecting civilians is the mission and that certainly includes the civilians what we and our partners and allies have already done is contributed to that. when this mission was stricken because he was fleeing their plans with impunity and striking targets. >> it does seem though as if his campaign had changed do you think that you need to readjust your tactics command do you think the fact the united states isn't actually in, quote on quote lead in terms of its heavy assets do you think that is for the psychological effect of the alliance on the campaign? >> as i've said in response to

previous questions we will constantly be assessing how we can make sure we are meeting or goals and acting as efficiently and effectively as possible. what i started to say is we have already stopped any of his planes from flying command without what we've done so far, you can be sure that qadhafi as elsewhere. we have acknowledged he has changed tactics and we need to be prepared to change with his change of tactics and we will constantly be looking at ways in which we can do so. we are though as we speak continuing to take action including in misrata and various elsewhere. we look to the commanders to tell us, to advise political authorities with the need to do to successfully undertake that mission to vignette senate can i follow on that? you said that we and i am

assuming you meant nato is continuing to attack the qadhafi forces. the united states is not involved in that though. i think we dropped three bombs over the weekend they were all air defense and one radar. is the u.s. during the meetings last week and in the continuing conversation is the u.s. getting any pressure from the allies to get back involved in that mission that involves specifically targeting the ground forces, the tanks and what not? >> the president made clear from the start, the united states made clear from the start that after the initial phase of the campaign which the united states was very much in the lead through its air assets and strikes and suppression of their enemy defenses and submarine cruise missiles the intention of the united states was then to transition through nato and to focus its contributions on our unique capabilities and intelligence, surveillance and

reconnaissance, and the refueling of which we are continuing to do the bulk of the mission and that is what we said we were doing in advance and that is eventually what we are doing. and we said that we had confidence nato allies and other partners and others who were contributing had the capability to successfully conduct the rest of the operation and that is what has been going on. we have made clear that again we take a device from the commanders on the ground the united states has other assets in the theater and the commanders on the ground feel they need access to some of those assets they can make that request and the secretary of defense will consider that request. at this time, those commanders haven't asked the united states to do so. >> these reports the other members of the missions may be running short of ammunition ordinance where the missions are not accurate or is that

something you are addressing and to what extent can the u.s. actually help them provide that for e alleviate shortages? >> first why don't want to get too much into the military tactics and strategy which is for others and i would refer you to the pentagon and specifics about the munition and stocks, but my broad comment applies if we get to a situation in which other assets are needed that we don't currently have in the nato commanders ask for them and obviously the united states would consider this request but that's not the situation we're facing now and i would add would not in any way a dominant theme of the discussion in berlin which focuses on all the things i described. >> right here. >> do you share the concern of the libyan who rebels that the turkish government is taking the qadhafi position? and also, when do you expect the turkish government to face

turkey? >> you have to ask them on the second part. on the first part, i would note turkey is one of the 28 allies and partners that signed up to this very specific commitment that i outlined and also the allies that agreed to enforce the no-fly zone and the arms embargo and carry out militarily protecting civilian missions including the the common nato aspect that turkey is part of, and so you know, let's just be clear turkey is a part of this and they are one of the strongest voices for the nato taking over the mission. and so, as a part of the alliance and bilaterally we are in close with of the turkish government about ends and means and turkey is absolutely on board for this common mission of nato.

>> talking to both on that would you elaborate is it helpful for the alliance commitment or it is kind of a distraction? >> and to -- again, i referred to what has come out of doha and berlin and turkey was a key part of all that. what is clear is what all of these governments have signed up to is the basic principle that qadhafi needs to go. any discussion that has been had it's true that a couple of young boys from tripoli have gone off and had discussions and we understand they are hearing the same thing everywhere they've gone including turkey. so i think the line of international community is pretty clear. look at the statement out of doha, where it said that qadhafi had lost all legitimacy and has to leave power and leave the future of libya of to an inclusive political process for

the people of libya. the nato government, the 28 allies plus the six partners who were there including turkey signed up to a statement that strongly endorsed those conclusions and doha and i think the united states was adequately clear as well that qadhafi needs to leave power and i think that's what they hear from us. any envoys or emissaries that have come out of tripoli have heard just that in unison from the international community. and where benghazi has been engaged with a number of countries including ours secateurs clinton has twice met with an important representative of the tnc. mr. jibril spoke to the conference and was in london with a man in the heating semesters and in doha spoke to the foreign ministers and presented his vision that the tnc vision of the future of libya and its received significant support. in turkey has been a part of

that process together with many others. >> we have time for about two more questions. i'm wondering has there been any talk about where qadhafi would go. has that been a matter of discussion between the partners and also about the international ground forces it seems the british haven't ruled it out and even general him brought it up before congress recently. >> well, president obama has ruled out ground force. i think that's pretty clear. >> he's ruled out u.s. troops. >> we can't speak for other countries. >> but the idea itself of ground forces you're not opposed to? >> i didn't say that, nor did i hear any discussion of the forces in doha or berlin. just didn't hear it to talk to others if that's what they're saying. it obviously seen the six we've been clear he has to leave power

and president obama said it and as i mentioned he collected leaders and doha in berlin said the same thing. that is the core point, he needs to go and leave power. of course crossed people's minds and there's a number of options and discussions have been had but there is no formal process under way of identifying a place. we want to focus on the first part of that. >> you would like him to go sooner rather than later. there's nowhere for him to go. >> that's why people are thinking about -- the most important thing is that he leave power as soon as possible, and if going to and getting out of libya would keep him further away from power that would be a good thing. and so people are thinking about places he might go and he should do so sooner rather than later. >> i was wondering if you could give more details. it is almost two years since the

nato members. how do you see the process? how was the member need to to -- nato membership? >> i can tell you ministers reaffirm their commitment to supporting georgia bureau atlantic aspirations and continue to stand by the process of strengthening georgia's candidacy for the institutions, and they are working with george on its international plan and other mechanisms that make georgia a stronger candidate. and they also expressed appreciation for the contribution to the mission which was also represented in berlin. >> thank you very much.

>> we talked about all the things that can go bad. and one of them was we may not find weapons of mass destruction. i mean, it was right their britain sent a note to the member's consent to the president come and we thought about those things and i was on a program with o'reilly not long ago and he kept saying why didn't you tell us that things might go wrong? and i said wonderful lady. but still the enemy every conceivable thing we think we might have a problem with so that they can get about doing it. no. that's not the kind of thing you tell the press or talk about publicly but there's a list of i don't know, page after page of things that doug and other people in the government thought about and we talked about and pete basin, dick myers, and it was circulated and people were worried about it. >> watch this discussion from

the hudson institute tuesday night at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span. are you telling me you can't go to 10t party express stocks and get enough footage to make the case this is a racist organization? you think there isn't a time among those 100,000 people that they say i don't care whether it is true or not? you don't think you can capture that on tape? like they don't care whether it is true or not and i think the news media on the issue should say that is a dead issue. anyone who brings it up is ridiculous. if you get a phone call and they say do you support donald trump? your answer should be no, he's an idiot, he's trying to sell me something. [laughter] he is trying to hustle be out of

my boat with a dead issue. no, i don't support him. >> watch this discussion from the aspen institute on tuesday night at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span2. our international coverage continues with a discussion on the political unrest in the arab world. and a look at the conditions that give rise to the revolutions. this is hosted by the cato institute. it's about 50 minutes. >> thank you, david. it's a pleasure to be here at cato. thank you everyone for coming. i know it's tax day so he may have pressing issues on your mind. but, i'm sure there's a lot of curiosity about events and north africa. why did the dictators who seem to be immovable suddenly find the strength of their regimes fail and their power dissipate.

i think peter is absolutely correct, the skills and the power of the deliberate campaign of the nonviolent resistance are the immediate answer, these movements in tunisia and egypt were not spontaneous outpourings , they were the fruit of years of organizing which had produced numerous student demonstrations and labor strikes but it took years in certain locations for the organization to strike a chord and draw the support that was necessary to strip away from support from the leaders i would say i also believe it's important leaders in many ways created their own weaknesses and vulnerabilities and was the combination of this vulnerability by the ruling family and a well-organized will

fall out campaign of civil resistance that produced a rapid change what were those weaknesses? in fact the regimes in tunisia and egypt had become classic instances of with the fury of revolutions call a neo patrimony of regime. that is a regime that does not recognize the normal functions of law that invest so much power and a chief executive in places themselves in a sense of of the law and disposes of the wealth and resources of society largely as he is fit. now rulers who had that type of power had many letters to keep themselves in power. usually they would use patronage to gain the support in the military and security forces,

and among a variety of eletes. and if managed well, the use of patronage can keep them in power for decades. indeed, many personal sticklers stayed in power for years sometimes throughout their lifetime. such a regime can also slip op. it's possible indeed tempting to occur. what type of mismanagement in particular can we see in tunisia and egypt and i will get to the cases of libya and some of the other countries in a couple of moments. first, in order to keep money flowing to the regime to fuel the patronage, an authoritarian leader in the modern world usually has to invest in some degree of foreign investment, educational improvement, productivity gains. but this effort at modernizing

society in and of itself creates potential problems. what an education by into this part of the regime or will they find reasons to oppose it with a gain a certain amount of material benefit from improving the economy feel they have a stake in the regime or reason more people be shunted aside and excluded from the games that arise. in other words the dictator has to play careful game with patronage. if necessary to win over the key segments of society but not to alienate or exclude those who are also seeking to gain the benefits of growth. it's a tough game to play and sooner or later most such and dictators cave in to the pressures from their family members were from cronies or

even the feeling of invincibility that comes from a decade after decade in power and the start treating more and more of the national wealth and more and more of the growth in the economy that something exists for the benefit or the benefit of those closest to them. what happened in both tunisia and egypt is that regimes that started out as defenders of their country succumb to temptation to create a narrow circle of cronies whose corruption became the first noteworthy, been a source of natural revulsion. the situation in to nisha was one in which although ben ali wasn't himself as corrupt as some other rulers, his family members essentially started running a protection racket challenging every business that stock its head up and gained a

profit to contribute a share of those profits to the family purse. building seaside mansions, dictating terms, taking advantage of their closeness to power, ben ali's family's undermined his moral authority at the same time they enriched themselves, family members, sorry, i should say. now, it is a critical factor as dr. ackerman pointed out for the regime to keep the pillars the leaders of the economy, the leaders of the military, leaders of the security forces on the site of the ruler. that is also a of a rift in that inhalators strong business leaders to emerge allow the strong military leaders to emerge they would become potential rivals and so to the plea we will see these neo patrimony all leaders try and make themselves indispensable by

not creating any visible successors, not even creating a process for the succession, and trying to keep potential rivals at a distance. one common tactic is to divide the security forces so that the regular army and the police, the intelligence forces all have separate commands which report independently to the leader. this allows him to keep these forces separate with an eye on each other as rivals we can control them. but it also makes it much easier for one of these groups to defect if they feel a situation is going against them. it's also the case that the leaders because they don't prepare an institutional path to succession often looked words family members at the end of the day as the way to secure the regime and patrimony in egypt

even though no one foresaw a revolution analysts had been warning for years that the succession as hosni mubarak aged was when to be a moment of great risk there were no obvious successors, there were no strong rivals, and mubarak seemed more and more interested in shifting the succession to his son, jamal, who hadn't come up through the military, who wasn't a particularly popular figure, and indeed who had been enriching himself through his banking career and access to foreign investment and sales of each option property. the succession was going to be a problem in terms of keeping the elite on the side of the regime. but what we didn't anticipate is

the regime's would face in 2010- 2011 a perfect storm of global changes. first, prices which had risen sharply in 2007-2008, and we thought that's an exceptional event, well, they looked forward again in 2010, 2011. problems in a major wheat producers and rice producers, restrictions of imports led to an increase of about 50% in the price of the core steeples between the middle and then the 2010. now, governments and north africa had been subsidizing, they had been subsidizing energy committee and in guaranteeing jobs, all part of the patronage based safety net designed to keep the population on their side. but since the late nineties under pressure from international financial agencies to reduce the subsidies, these

regimes had been cutting back on the volume of subsidies, on the number of families who qualify for them and more and more families faced market prices for some or all of their basic needs. they felt these price increases. in addition, the number of young people had been building up rapidly in these societies. we are familiar with the concept of the large number of young people compared to adults and that is found throughout the world is who. what had been happening in march of north africa in the middle east the was a huge surge that is a recent increase in fertility combined with hollen child mortality that led to huge increases, 50% over a few decades in a number of young people who had survived to become active young adults but

not actively employed. those government guaranteed jobs that have been the way to assure the loyalty particularly of the educated youth had started to run out. and so while unemployment was modest among people who grown-up in the 70's and the 80's, for young people born in the 90's and reaching the late teens and early 20s just now, unemployment was horrific. officials on and when it was perhaps 25% in the middle east that's double the rate of youth unemployment elsewhere in the world, but unofficial estimates suggest that as much as half the population under age 30 didn't have regular jobs. we know that in egypt only about half of the men under 30 were married. very unusual in a family centered society, but that reflected the inability of people to get jobs that would allow them to start a family.

so the sharp impact of the rising prices fell upon societies with high rates of unemployment, low rates of marriage and therefore exceptionally large numbers of young men who were not attached to the social order by marriage of employment, and frankly felt not only frustrated and poor, but humiliated. they felt the system was denying them the dignity of a job and family, denying them the dignity of any control over their own lives, and it was this type of struggle to express themselves with dignity that led him to set himself aflame after he had been humiliated by an official of the tunisian government. and people reacted to his self a malaysian by understanding the degree of english, despair and

humiliation. he felt by saying we don't have to do this anymore. and starting small with a student movement that gained advice on the civil resistance from veterans of this movement, reaching out to labor, student and labor organizers planned days of resistance in a rural towns and cities first indonesia where the movement spread quickly with a fruit vendor expressed his rage to herself a malaysian, spreading to the capitol where the military fairly quickly resolved that although the mission was to defend the country they wouldn't kill large numbers of their countrymen to defend a regime that was widely seen as corrupt and even a threat to the national welfare. in egypt, labor and youth groups

assembled and called for resistance on brilliantly national police de a new holiday that was supposed to celebrate the police and people turned out in the streets and said we will celebrate the police. we will ask them to stand up for the country and therefore against a corrupt leadership that is damaging our nation. and although there were some episodes of struggle, there were real risks of violence and threats against protesters that escalated to a tax by both uniformed and non-uniformed security forces, the young people and their supporters from the labor movement, from the muslim brotherhood they all agreed on one thing. now's the time, now the hitchens. after they saw what happened in tunisia that it was possible to wrest control away from a dominant leader.

just as an two nisha the military in egypt, which had been increasingly excluded from the fabulous wealth seized by the civilians in jamal nagareda's circle decided they wouldn't turn their guns on people who were simply asking for the government to be accountable. and as the protest escalated, it wasn't clear what would happen. but in many cities throughout egypt, people for the first time set i'm going to stand up. i feel like a citizen. i'm proud to be in the egyptian today because i am acting to control the destiny of myself and my country. the movement spread not only through protests in the square or alexandria, but at the very end when mubarak seemed determined to simply leave power with his recently elevated

second in command professional strikes, lawyers, doctors, professors, shutting down critical institutions persuaded the military that mubarak had to go. this vision, this belief, this power is now spreading throughout the middle east. even syria, a country that people assumed was on lockdown and in which this was the kind of country in which things could not occur. civil resistance to first reached in a town that has now spread to dozens of cities throughout the country. and the leadership is already on the defensive. they are trying to decide do we strike back with more violence or would that be counterproductive as it has been already? when a regime has lost legitimacy in the sight of its people, striking back is no longer a way to gain strength. it may gain power briefly, but it does not resolve the

situation. let's talk about libya in a moment where we see exactly that. and syria the government is now concerned. how much can we give, where is the line at which people will accept a change without calling for more? we see a example that isn't really a state. the gadhafi family has their own regiments, loyal mercenaries were tribally affiliated groups that are not a part of the regular military. rather these are troops that have been trained, they are called in the press loyalists and that is an accurate description. many of the mainstream institutional militaries have already defected as have many bureaucrats and leaders. the question now is will civil resistance be enough? we are seeing enormous bravery

in the more technically advanced and better trained forces of the loyalists the of come is in doubt this is something perhaps we can explore and questions. i simply want to say that civil resistance began the struggle here. it's not clear whether the civil resistance alone will in it. and this is where nato needs to make a determination. and where the world has to decide is this indeed one of those cases where the governments can work effectively for the freedom of others? or is this a case where the government effort well as they often do make things more difficult and move the goal further away? every one of course once a prediction now. what's going to happen in the middle east? is the muslim brotherhood going to rise to power? will more extremist islamist groups takeover hijacking these revolutions?

or will they move smoothly to a space outcome? my answer is none of the above. what we've seen, however, that should give us hope is that in the last 30 years there has been a major global shift in what happens in the popular revolutions, such as those that took place in egypt and tunisia. up through the 1980's, there were many revolutions against dictators. overthrew in mexico, john in china, cuba, there are many others. with the prevailing vision that intellectuals held was the view of virtually dictator, the way to achieve freedom was to form a revolutionary party, arm of that party and overthrow the forces of the old regime. unfortunately none of those are the resistance movements as the doctor said led to freedom.

the strains of the military campaign, the ruthlessness required to take power to read over and created a ruthless of authoritarian one-party states. since 1986 and the people power revolution of the philippines, we've seen something different happened. the prevailing models, the model of communism in china, cuba or the soviet union, even a model of an islamic republic in iran had lost their appeal. people who want freedom, who want to be free of an intrusive state that mismanage as their economy seizes national wealth and strips away their dignity. people who are striving to reclaim what they call the normal free life, the last thing they want is to enter a society that looks like iran or the soviet union, and they are aware of that. global communications, the

internet, al jazeera, network tv and radio have separate divisions of different societies and the iranian model, the soviet model, the chinese model do not look equally good. the chinese model of the free markets with a firm hand has some appeal especially in parts of the third world struggling to catch up economically. but for people who have just struggled to rid themselves of repressive government, the attractive model is for democracy. is this move will functioning consolidated democracy? at first, no. this time. dr. ackerman spoke of patients. after a revolution that takes five to ten years to be consolidated and stable what we've seen in georgia and serbia that after dictators have been

driven from the scene, the impetus to struggle for work and find a way to maintain democracy to make it work remains strong. dictators in the last 30 years, not in indonesia, not in the case as i've mentioned has led to an ideological extremist authoritarian regime. it doesn't mean that can't ever happen again. but the odds of history suggest that the people of egypt and tunisia will continue struggling towards democracy. there may be backslides to the authoritarianism. there may be episodes of instability. there may be concerns about a rule of law. but it takes time. even our american and united states struggled under the articles of confederation for a dozen years trying to figure out how to make democracy work. now that we have the constitution in many languages, we have a model when front of us but we shouldn't assume it's a

model that translates in all respects. so i'm optimistic but called for patience and seeing what will happen. and i watch like the rest of the world with a society about what might happen in libya or to mention yemen or syria. i am, however, glad to see the tide of democracy finally washing ashore north africa and the middle east. [applause] >> thank you, jack. let me know if there are those of you that can to see the film we have another film that we are showing friday of next week april 29. it's a sneak preview of a pbs documentary that updates mulken friedman's free to choose with my colleague, johanna nordenberg, hosting and traveling to some of the places friedman did. so look on the web site for that event. now that the open up to questions. be sure to wait until you are

called on and a microphone gets to do so that everyone can hear the questions. yes, right here. >> regarding the the military situation in libya, it seems to me that this isn't that difficult. i understood that they perhaps have only 10,000 men under arms and that he already has. does that also mean that a substantial number of the rank-and-file and 7,000 supposedly the rebels have about a thousand people which doesn't seem like much. but that seems like something nato can handle. perhaps the italian army can be involved, perhaps the foreign legion. what are the chances, the possibilities, the consequences of the sort of thing?

>> i wish it were that easy. you're correct that in military terms if we were not concerned about the civilian damage, if we were not concerned about the image among the billion muslims in the world of the western armies invading another muslim country, it was just a matter destroying gadhafi's defensive capability, that could be accomplished. the problem is the boundary between somehow trying to do that, while not creating a massive disruption and resentment of the kind that took place in iraq. we don't -- we want to end the civil war might and libya as soon as possible. we don't want to plunge the country to the greater civil war. as to what is to be done, the good news is that the scholarship on the civil war suggests they in the either with a victory by one side or another, or a hurting stalemate and which both sides are

persuaded that they can't defeat the other and therefore the only way to resolve the situation is through some type of a third party negotiation. i think at this point what nato is trying to do is not become an object of hatred by anyone in libya. they want to be a key player people turn to to settle things one way or the other. they want to create a situation where gadhafi cannot impose his will for what the country, and by treating that type of stalemate i think they hope to open the way for turkey or the gulf cooperation council or someone else to negotiate a solution. there are already kind of rumors of such discussions going on. gadhafi said they would fight till the last bullet but they will run out of bullets and they will run out of targets as long as nato is able to keep their military forces limited to one half of the country. so i think that is the strategy

right now. limited force, minimal civilian casualties, stop the civil war, create a stalemate that leads to negotiations. >> in the back. >> thank you. i'm with the u.s. africa 2017 task force and i am the lead for the special operations division at the carnegie endowment, there was a panel with a british minister for the international development and marina and the former deputy of libya, not deputy come after they finished talking, i made a statement. i said with all that you have said, do you see an eminent popular uprising against the political class in those countries and in africa?

and before i finished i said listen, from what we know, there's going to be an uprising in which the political class. i said what you need to do, what america needs to do is support free and fair elections. [inaudible] get out of libya, don't mess with libya, don't mess with gadhafi, because you are in for a big surprise if you continue with what you're doing. >> i don't think either of our panelists is doing that. [laughter] but if anybody wants to respond, you can. >> let's take another question. >> yes, in the front row there. >> you mentioned that 27% of the violent revolutions have succeeded, and we now have violent uprisings in libya and yemen. can you distinguish what it was

above the 27% exceeded the differentiated them from the remainder that did not? and are there any parallels to yemen or libya crux that is what support other than the fact that the one can be distinguished from the ones that lost? >> we haven't done that study. the purpose of the study if you look at the pamphlet on the international non-violent conflict the study is in there and by the way it is turning into a book called weiss of resistance works which i commend it to all of you. it is a seminal work that is the debt-ridden. but our purpose was to show that the dynamics create lower probabilities of success than the corresponding on violence. we are forcing -- we didn't do the study to determine why the other 73% were more successful

or less successful than the 27. if i may, the reason that there are several reasons why the doubling of probabilities for successful nonviolent resistance exists, it mainly has to do with the staying power. if you are in the process of losing a violent insurrection, you lose my basically having the insurrection small group of people detached from the population be destroyed. and the author terry and has the dilemma not being able to destroy the opposition it seeks obedience from so the civil resistance movement a great deal of staying power because it is limitations on what the authoritarian can do. some commanders and the the vantage of the civil resistance over armed insurrection, but what about the armed insurrection, the database is pretty small.

>> we had 323 conflict and two-thirds were violent, i'm sorry, we didn't do that study. perhaps we should have read in fact i would suggest we maybe should in the future because it might create some interesting conclusions and in fact we had to gain the civil resistance where we inject into the civil resistance movement violent tactics to see with the amex are, and i guess if we are better schooled into what tactics and more successful than others, we might have a more credible way of integrating the to to see how that plays out. so, it is an omission, sorry but it is an omission. >> i'm happy to try to respond to that since i've studied revolutions per my career. i think the answer is the regime's the fall to both violent resistance and nonviolent resistance are regimes having difficulty holding elite support from a

financial or personal reasons to begin with. if you attack a strong unified regime, you generally fail. now the lot of people historic kleeb, revolutionary leaders have believed that power comes from the barrel of a gun. they've chosen military options, they have attacked a strong and unified government and the field. that is unfortunate. and if the use of violence, they are more easily identified and that makes them easier to crash if they are isolated from the population in general. violent groups cannot cause a revolution acting by themselves. the need to be strongly integrated with and supported by the general public. this is something we learn from the warfare and the don't do the organizational work and they don't do the political work, they won't succeed. now that's also true of nonviolent resistance. nonviolent resistance has simply

gained much greater awareness as a tactic that can succeed. in recent years, people have chosen to attack the former rebel government's less often with rifles, recognizing that makes them more visible, more vulnerable and often repel the popular support. but using nonviolent means allows them to gain favorable media attention control the popular support more readily. but the basic conditions need to organize come and get popular support coming you need to attack a government where the connection is between the leader and the supporting pillars that holds in both types of resistance. >> we have a question in the back. go ahead and bring the microphone down here to be ready. >> todd palmer from cato and the network. i would like to ask the discuss sense to describe what happens after the resistance, mubarak is also pretty much all of the same guy is the first win power but

they changed the faces of the top. does their need to be a deep look at the political institutions, and i will address the question to the executive as weekend of the constitution. we had george washington which is one reason why ours has worked pretty well. he stepped down after two terms. most places the chief executive when he's commander-in-chief decides stepping down is not a good idea [inaudible] he said the problem is the system for africa and he supports that it's less likely to lead to 20 years later the same thing is to happen because [inaudible] tire rent in power. do you have any thoughts on whether there should be a follow-up move to prevent the west minister style space institutions as opposed to the exit of systems in which the president is also the commander in chief for the military?

>> may i start? >> for some the conflict in egypt particularly isn't over. many of the participants in the group don't feel it's over. they feel that things are not necessarily going the way that they had hoped. and they've asked us what they should do about that and what i said to them is go back to thinking about the ingredients that led to success in the first place when they are all in place. and that's what i said in my opening remark is if you want to know what happened in egypt in the future, you have to understand the dynamics of how they get to this point. so, in every single nonviolent resistance movement success depends on three things. the first is the capacity to unify around a vision and organizational structure that would see the leadership to a group of people to respond to. that probably wasn't completed

before events overtook and surprised everybody in resistance, so that still needs to be done. there still needs to be a more sharply rendered vision of what the future needs to be. to get by many more groups of diversified by gender, by geography, by whatever is required to get that and i think the tactics that got them their protests have to be diversified and other tactics that are destabilizing so that you can continue pressure on the military elements that might be considered in recalcitrant. of course like keep telling them is that they have to plan every day for the next day and the day after. they have to come together with a thought about how they're going to mobilize, how they are going to push back, how you're going to integrate their tactics with a larger vision. so these elements of unity and modify what discipline planning,

which is the key ingredients at the start are still the key ingredients at this point. i don't know at the end of the day with the final structural solution would be, but i think they are far from that right now. right now the battle was still there. >> there are two keys to resistance turning into a successful regime. one is transforming a social movement into an effective political party. that's not easy to do. a lot of people think the work is done when the social movement has achieved immediate goals. but there's a lot of work that remains in building a party structure that can consolidate those gains. sometimes revolutionary leaders get outflanked by people who are better organizers so we may see that happen. the critical factor for the long run is the one you point to. whoever becomes the first president of the new egypt whether it is someone else, will

say at the end of the constitutionally mandated term-limits step down and peacefully hand over power to whoever succeeded him? this is the george washington nelson mandela moment. it doesn't need to be cared as much a leader who does this but it needs to be a leader that accepts the rule of law and is willing to elevate leaving a democracy behind us more important than his own political power. do we always find that? no. if we don't find it, what happens? two options, one it may degenerate back to the amount of authoritarian and some, or it may require another round of popular protests. my belief is that younger people who have seen the power and learn the method of organizing are not going to go away. they will be allergic to this risk and if they keep organizing and keep communicating there will be an effective check on the system. >> we have a question right here.

>> i'm going to be a little bit critical but while agreeing with the analysis that's gone on in most of the council. first of all, tunisia had the best demographic picture in the muslim world, and fertility has been dropping in every country but palestine for example for decades now because of the reason you felt as the mortality rates drop twice as fast as fertility rates, and then use element of tunisian has to do with the population, not the numbers. they don't have the numbers and tunisia. in terms of the protests there was no -- the most important protest is for anybody that has run, i doubt anybody remembers that come october 18th, thunderstrike. the tunisian opposition was badly organized as the libyan one so there wasn't the labor

movement. a significant was in the south -- >> get to the question. >> what we are seeing is to countries that have had a successful oppression and change of regime. one country in the civil war, defending the chaos. major protests going on and seven with minor but importance. we have 19 countries, all of whom would be on the front page of the news relative to the normal political such region. so i would like the panelists beyond the sort of ingredient for the revolution approach and beyond the sort of tactic for the regime change approach to think about this world historical moment, this wave of change and you were just getting at it right now. and how looking at we should be on the right side of history. >> welcome you point to a very

happy trend i'm glad to discuss and that is the number of countries in the world that have some form of space government has been rising steadily. it's a strong global trend as the fall and mortality in the fall when fertility. the only exception was during the period of the great depression in the thirties we had a rise of fascism. but since then we've seen an uninterrupted expansion of democracy and in a sense, you could say north africa and the middle east, middle-income countries, growing educated youths way behind the rest of the world even behind sub-saharan africa, and it was overdue for there to be some type of the space movement and reform. i think that's right but the other factors i mentioned help explain why it can together now. i will say this about to nisha. tunisia the fertility dropped 20 years ago and so the number of under 20 is the lowest of any arab country that actually gives

them good prospects for democracy because they have not quite as much volatility but the engine number of youth and to nisha, 20 to 24 is about two or 3% lower than the other countries, may be 10% lower than yemen but still relatively high. this is a youthful region. >> okay. we have time for to more questions. we are going to take one there and one here. >> yes. i think using the terminology dictator and popular movement is a bit misleading. according to caroline dhaka, there's a number of ships that were unexpected and then they went to sierra and not long after there were missile attacks. also in the mediterranean is the shortest route from the east coast of the united states. you have to go out of the suez canal. there's no other way and that is near yemen, and also the supertankers. the oil tankers to the suez canal and the somali pirates

according to have about c fair hostage. can you talk about the impact on the national issues such as shipping, oil, u.s. support of the military and the defense of israel? >> i'd like to just step back with this question and leave that to you. >> the work we do is not about tactics. it's about linking tactics into a strategy and the importance of developing a strategic theory. as a skill based activity that might occur under any set of conditions, and that in fact you can take two steps of conditions and get different results and the difference is based on the fact one group is working with greater skill than another so i just want to add that clarification, but i will leave that question if i can to you. ..

>> although it will take a decade or two to play out. i think the questions that you raise are very important, but even the issues of trade through the canal, whether pirates will be controlled, all of this is part of the bigger question of what type of governance structure is going to replace the monarchies and dictatorships that have prevailed in the middle east for the last 30 years? are we going to see accountable

popular movements? if so, are they going to align with the east? west? independent? and how well will they control their borders? all of those are questions we can't answer yet. >> all right. last question right here. >> my major question is who gives a damn? it seems to me what you have been talking about is changing the political structure of nation. if you leave power in a centralized format, which neither of you have addressed, if you are a military dictatorship, use the existing structure, coup d'etat model, and civil society, you want to remain in power. after it's over, who cares? market economies and other forces can disperse power, all democracy does is disperse political power. political power is the danger, not whether it's exercised by

the mob or dictator. at least that's what i believed in at cato. >> i think to you want to talk about, fred, the prospect of property rights, i think as a result of the civil resistance, the advancement of property rights which is something i know is a concern in my opinion will be much, much higher than it was on mubarak. nobody had admit they had in property. you couldn't get contracts. there was no mortgage market. let's see what happens when we play out what a secular government looks like and open to the rule of law and property rights. then we can see whether we give a damn or not. i personally do give a damn. i'll see what the professor says. >> let me give you two anecdotes of people who are care and directly affected by this. i teach a course on democratic. i had a student from lebanon. the key point i tell my students, it's a mistake to think of democracy simply as

electoral competition for power. if all it is in people choosing which nastier, corrupt party steals from them, it's not a serious choice. what democracy is about is really a way of holding government's accountable and protect human rights and market choices that allow people to realize their control. the student from lebanon said, you know, i never understand that democracy was about human rights and freedom. it's that thought that was penetrating into the middle now. i see this in the second anecdote. which is a person in syria who was interviewed just in the last week who said we went out in the streets to shout. that's all we felt we could do. as more and more people joined us and as you start shouting, i started to feel for the first time like a real syrian who matters. a citizen of my country who had a voice. those are messages of democracy that are very different than, you know, your concern.

now there's always a risk that democracy can be taken over. but the people who are making these revolts and organizing and taking the risks, they have vision of freedom, self- realization, government, and citizen accountability. that's what their target is. that's what they are shooting for. >> thank you, jack goldstone, thank you peter ackerman, we should probably do the event in a few months. i suspect there will be more to say. now let's go upstairs and have a glass of wine. [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> in a minute, a discussion about state's rights versus federal authority. also a look at the political unrest in the arab world. >> tomorrow on c-span, president obama travels to northern virginia to hold a town hall meeting to discuss the u.s. federal debt. watch live coverage at 10:15 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> now available, c-span's congressional directory, a complete guide to the first session of the 112th congress. inside new and returning house and senate remembers with contact information, including twitter addresses, district maps, and committee assignments and information on the white house, supreme court justices, and governors. order online at c-span.org/shop.

[silence] >> program. but now let me say a little bit about our remarkable panel here today. we have a divorce, talented -- diverse, talented and intriguing panel. i urge you to consult your program for more information about their accomplishments. starting at the tar end, terrence mcnallly, actor, producer, film maker and general artistic genius. terrence's career had the -- my favorite fact he directed "earth

girls are easy." [laughter] >> next to me, robert g. kaufman, a distinguished scholar now with the heritage and pepperdime. who's books have considered arms control and careers of united states political figures, generally, but not always republican office holders. he's currently working on a book on how the republicans can recapture the white house in 2012. i'm told that remarkably jack bauer does not figure in his scheme at all. lou dubose who is the editor "washington spectator" and had a long career in "weekly" and "long form journalism" he co-authored with molly ivins, and like professor kaufman, he has frequently written about the political career of republican political figures, although i

believe with somewhere less admiration than professor kaufman has for his subjects. >> correct. >> and richard mack in the yellow shirt there has had a long and honored career in law enforcement, including a sheriff of graham county, arizona for a decade. he was plaintiff in a landmark case before the united states supreme court challenging the constitutionality of the brady bill on state sovereignty grounds, and he's written several books about his life and works. he's a frequent speaker at tea party events, but he assures me he understands this is not so much like one of those. [laughter] >> this is a cupcake. >> we will begin with terrence mcnally. thank you for being here today. >> thank you, mimi. i read the bios about the

members. there's no way i know as much as they do. this is important, and one that i suspect many people are not clear about. a little fuzzy about what are the issues around state's rights and circumstances and so on. i'm going to start but offering some questions i'd like them to answer in the remarks or afterwards. first of all, i asked myself what i thought of when i read the words states rights. i read civil rights with states on the side of segregation and unequal access in the '60s. the federal government asserting it's right to ignore california's medical marijuana law, even though it commands no interstate commerce, the supreme court stopping florida's presidential recount in 2000 on the claim that harm would be done by offering difference

standards in differing counties. although they had been counted once already. i usually feel we don't gain a lot by labeling things conservative, liberal, right, left. because i don't feel there's enough consistency and i don't feel either of them still holds to the original definitions. i see others described as conservatives who want to interfere intrusively in the private lives of citizens. i see others described as progressives or liberals comes to the aid of wall street much more aggressively and successfully than to that of working families. it seems to me what we want in an issue like states' rights is consistency. as in basketball and soccer, we want the referees to calm the same for both teams. it's my sense that people likes states 'rights or don't, want to maximize or minimize depending

on the outcome that would happen when you took either position. that's my impression. my big question is how accurate is that impression? questions. do regular folks think the questions of states' right is important? how many do regular folk really care? i know they are important to some people. who are those people? who is it that makes them care about it so much? am i right that most people, most general citizenry are pretty unclear about either what the constitution says or what the various arguments actually are. and if we were going to make the general population more informed, what is it important that they know? about the origins of state rights, or history, or critical decisions, or important questions that we face today? finally, can the arena of states' rights be boiled down to a few clear principals? and how much agreement is there

on the two principals? a couple of bonus round. what's up with the st. st. st. f washington, d.c.? and they lack representation. it's not states' rights, but rights. finally here's my biggest question with regard to states' right. we would all be better off if lincoln had allowed those states who wished to secede to do so? half of the nation was moving in a modern direction. they saw slavery as evil. another set of states said no, it's our cultural and economic institution. we want to continue. lincoln chooses to fight for the preservation of the union. 600,000 people died, which would be equivalent to five million today. you know you are not going to purr suede -- persuade the south to change their mind.

although you emancipate the slaves, they don't actually get the freedom for another 100 years. a sharecropper is worth less than a slave that was property. you build up a deep resentment among southern whites which i feel actually pays off in every election to this day. was it worth to preserve the union at that cost? those are my questions. now i want to offer you one observation. how much time do you have? >> of plenty of time. >> great. about something that's not quite states' rights, but something i find exciting. a fellow named tom lindsey is the co-founder of community and environmental defense fund celds. anybody that's interested, celds.org. their mission is to build sustainable communities by assisting people to asserting their right to local self-government and expand the

rights of people's communities and nature over the rights in corporation. in 1998, they began to assist communities in draft and pass laws. they have assisted over 100 communities in passing laws that outlaw the rights that corporations claim to have been given by the constitution. this is a great reversal. what tom lindsey learned after years of dealing with environmental regulation was that regulation do not work. regulations are defense. regulations tell an offender how much pollution they can do, how much harm they can do to your community by fracking. no, you are on their side of the court. pass a law that says corporation do not have the right to do that. because -- and this i think will appeal to some of the other folks on the panel, the state of pennsylvania constitution says that the power, the sovereign in the state of pennsylvania, is the people. now it turns out basically if

you look at the onlial -- original documents of the united states, the same is true. corporations originally were granted their right to exist in all of the rights that they get in terms of, you know, liability protection and so on. but they -- their grants of corporation charter was at the pleasure of the sovereign. in england, that meant the royalty. but in the united states, that meant the people. corporations originally were entitled to do a public good whether it was exploration if you were the east india bay company, or hudson bay, or east india, or perhaps build a bridge or something else that a simple group of people couldn't afford. yet when the public good was done were their license was over. that's how corporations originally worked. now lindsey realized that -- he started looking into the law. he saw that it was after the

civil war that the corporations realize that if they were really going to make it, they had to actually fight many laws in this country that still held that way. and they did a concerted effort to it. as we pretty well know, they succeeded probably beyond their wildest dreams. with the 1886 finding that corporations were persons. what lindsey and celds have done, they said we are going to set the rules for how our community works, for how the nature in our community, we're going to say it's the people's rights that matter, not the corporations. won't the corporation just fight the laws? the answer is yes. if you can see what you have done then, you have flipped the game. instead of being on defense, they are now on defense. and the more -- as he points -- you points to the abolition movement, women's suffrage

movement. it was all -- you had to actually fight to say that a right which you may have assumed you had, you actually had. and you actually can impose -- not impose, but you can bring rights to bear. and so what the attempt there to do is to do exactly that. what's interesting is most of these communities are rural communities, they are conservative communities, so it's a wonderful melding kind of the american spirit that it's the people and it's the local that matters. but it's finally rising up against corporations, and one thing he says which some of the other folks on the panel may want to speak to, he says you can't fight these things in the state legislatures. because the state legislatures have now been overwhelmed by the corporations. in the way that money runs elections now, the laws, rulings and things are very often written by corporate lobbyist. while 100 years ago, 120 years ago, they were strong enough to

have made the rules, now he says you got to go down to the community level. where the panel is about states' rights, it maybe the real hope becomes in lower community rights. and as i would think a lot of you know, that fits what we are realizing about society. the totally centralized way we do power, food, so many things, is not working for us. and it's the resurgence of the local that maybe our salvation. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, terrence. professor kaufman. >> in looking at states' rights, i'd like to go back to the actual constitution and the debates over the constitution, particularly james madison's definition for the constitution as the starts point found in the federalist papers.

one the objections of the anti-federalist, the people that believed the national government was too strong, it obliterated the rights of states. to that madison responded our system was unique. it was unique in that it confirmed mixed sovereignty. on some issues to the national government, on other issues to the states. and without that concession -- without that concession, the constitution wouldn't have been ratified in the first place. what was the theory underlying states' rights? why did the founders and later commenting on the american system identify the federal nature of our system where much was reserved to the states as part of the genius of it? one reason is that the founders believed that in order to infiltrate the skills of self-government, people needed to have responsibility suitable

to the issue, at the local, state, and then national level. so literally, local and state government was considered to be the training ground of national government. the second thing is that the founders also believed that many issues were best decided by those people closest to them. the catholic church calls it the doctrine of subsidiarity. there were enumerated powers reserved to the national government. that's why we have a constitution and not the articles of confederation that gave too many rights to the states. but our founders believed that a large reservoir of states' right was necessary to make the habits of self-government, good government, and also to prevent the accessive centralization of power that had been the bane of republican and democratic governments in history. so the founders believed that

states should have major discretion on many issues, although not on issues they deemed national. that's point one. second, however, terrence is right. although there's a very good case that states' right theoretically should be something we should encourage. on many issues we should, because it provides 50 separate laboratories for trying things, education, policy, health care, rather than a one-size-fits-all, you can learn from the comparative successes and failures of states if you give them a wide degree of discretion on many domestic issues. the unfortunate thing about states' right even when it was legitimate and legitimate much of the time, is that historically, the greatest effort in invoking the doctrine of states' right was invokeed for the least offensable cause,

slavery, and to maintain the southern system of segregation up until the 1960s. one the problems in discussing states rights is how do you delink states right as a theoretical and practical idea. an idea that has much merit and much constitutional sanction. how do you delink that from the misuse of the principal of states rights that happened during the precivil war period and the period of segregation after reconstruction that didn't end until the voting rights act of 1964 and the civil rights act of 1965. so there's a paradox at the heart of states' rights. there's a third issue. what the founders thought is significant for me, very significant, but we also have to take into account that the supreme court particularly since the 1930s has dramatically

narrowed the scope of states' rights through the use of the commerce clause. whether you agree or disagree, and i disagree, it will be very hard to move to an originalist notion of states' rights, even delinked to slavery based on 75 years of experience where the court has dramatically broadened the role of the federal government. on the last issue, whether we should have fought the civil war, i must say that's the easiest one. i say this in humor, terrence, but in all of the bizarre ideas that i've heard here in my five years of coming, including one panel on what would jesus cut in the budget? [laughter] >> this one takes the cake, and usually it's associated with some recallsic southerner.

had lincoln not fought the civil war, they would ascended into the 9th chamber of hell. we would have broken up into three or four republics, europe would have played us off of each other, the way we played to gain independence, although it wouldn't have solved the issue, because the south would have become an even more deeply appar tide system, fugitive slaves, causes for war, and if you think discrimination was difficult with the civil war, we would have multiplied by an expotential had lincoln not fought the civil war. people say kaufman likes war. he defends the bush doctrine. indeed, he does. if you don't want to take my word for it, take the word of james princeton, who wrote the book on the civil war, battle cry of freedom. the civil war was absolutely

necessary, and it's a tragedy that it took 600,000 men and brave people to eradicate the sin of slavery. it's a legitimate principal, the contours of which will be affected by the courts. there are some issues where the federal government has been given primacy from the beginning. such as immigration. there are other issues, traditionally, the reserve of the states. such as education. there are some issues like the environment which the founders couldn't have anticipated that is actually in my view a national rather than a state issue because the effects of environmental problems don't scrupulously respect state boundaries. what is an issue that is a public good that is better suited to the national government? what is an issue better suited to state or local government?

that set of issues that the founders pondered in 1787 at the constitutional convention is still with us today. and the reasoning of the founders is the best way still for all of its problems, to think through the problem of the proper responsibility of the states versus the national government in our great successful social experience called the united states of america. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> thank you. >> can i say one thing? >> i wasn't advocating the lincoln position. i was raising the question. >> well, you are nuts to raise it. [laughter] >> professor kaufman, i think you should just speak your mind. >> i have to over come this pathological shyness. help me. >> thank you very much for your comments. next lou dubose to my suspect

has been wondering what his beloved town of austin if texas had remained in the old confederacy and been permitted to succeed. >> we might find out again, we have a governor that has advocated or come close with secession. i'd like to talk with housekeeping, to the guy with the gray hair who was standing in the urinal when i said this is where i make all of my friends, i thought he was steve. that was the extent of it. it was a senator craig moment. my stance was wide. anyway, should you see him, or should that rumor begin to circulate the conference, he looked like -- at least his profile. his profile. >> what? >> all right. now starting from there, i can -- [laughter] >> i can go nowhere but up.

i'm not going to take on terrence on this or professor kaufman on the civil war. but i would like to remark about something terrence said. you know, i spend half of my time in washington, d.c. and half of my time in austin. in a weirdly gerrymandered congressional district that makes me vote in san antonio. and in austin, i'm represented by lamar smith, and d.c., i'm represented by eleanor holmes thornton who does not have a vote. i prefer a congresswoman norton to smith. it is an oddity to this day, washington, d.c. has no congressional representation. it's more than an oddity, i think it's a travesty. i went to indulge you for a few moments in a bit of my personal

history that has nothing to do with what i started with. and that is -- [laughter] >> -- in 1971, i was hired at a public school in texas. i had just graduated at the university of houston. i went to work as a public school. here's my trip. i a '66 dodge dart. i started out on telephone road. the telephone road of the steve earl song, i crossed the houston channel, one the most polluted bodies of water in the nation. i was a casual workers on the docks and the ila had warnings about the possibility of death should you fall into the water. on down highway 90, i passed -- i knew it before -- miles before i got there, after i crossed the

river, on my right, was the french is limited slot pit. which was later an epa -- a super fund site. in this pit, 100 ship channel companies dumped 70,000 gallons of industrial waste out of the backs of their tanks. it went on through 1970 and ended in 1970. i get to lynchberg ferry road and i turn right. crosby, texas was rigidly segregated by i-90. barrett station on the right, 100% black. i would differ slightly with professor kaufman in that i don't think we have quite taken care of all of the regular -- of

slavery and racism. on the north side was crosby, a white community. still pretty much the same to this day. their at crosby, some the kids that i taught sadly went into the texas penal system. one the most brutal, brutal corrections institutions in the history of not just the country, but really, really, you know, dogs attack dogs torture. the nile of health care, now, you know, and at the same time, my good friend dave richards was litigating in east texas 100 miles to the north where the population was about 20%, 20-27% depending on your county, african-american. yet there was not a single african-american county commissioner. you know, william wrote a famous letter from the alamo. and living in texas, at that

time, the letter that read to the people of texas and to americans all over the world, we beseech you to come to our aid. we are surrounded by, and in our case, we were in the same circumstances. we were surrounded by us. by the people of texas and the government of texas that would have done nothing to rectify any of these -- any of these really serious problems had it not been for the supremacy clause of the constitution of the united states. you know, the school that i taught at in 1970 -- '71, had been integrated in 1970. that's -- brown v. board was 1954. you can do the math, i'm working on little sleep. the school was still segregated in 1970.

if -- you know, you had the notion that the texas authority -- texas government and any agency of texas government -- would have cleaned the ship channel which now is a better story. no one is swimming in it yet, but, you know, it's not a cesspool. or undertaken the cleaning out of the french super fund site, that was going on under the supervision of the texas government -- of the texas water quality commission. there's a notion for you. for six years. it required federal intervention, and it required in many cases, one remarkable judge who's career -- who's career arc was defined by many of these cases and the one texan in the room is nodding yes, it's judge william wayne who died two years ago. he was an activist judge. now on liberals are activist.

you can be a conservative and have an activist agenda, but you are not an activist judge. wayne justice was an activist judge, and he believed in it aggressively in enforcing federal law and aggressively imposing the constraints of the constitution and the case law by which the south was integrated on states like texas. you know, last you think this was all resolved in 1970, in 1993, -- in 1993, i was following a wayne justice case to an east texas town called vider. vider was a sundown town with a legacy of racism. there was a sign in vider in the '60s that said nigger don't let the sunset on your back in vider texas.

i use that ugly word because the emotional impact that that had on an african-american who had to drive through that city. the case that wayne justice was litigated was -- involved the integration of public housing. vider had never had an african-american citizen that lived within it's city limits. and wayne justice integrated public housing in vider. from my perspective, you know, he also cleaned up the -- really remarkable judge. wayne -- william wayne justice also presided other a lawsuit that ended the most brutal practices in one the most brutal prison systems in the country. my point being is there was no relief from local government. none. there was no relief from an african-american who wanted to serve on his city council in texas in 1968, but the dave

richards filed suit and wayne justice's court and the relief came. by the graces of our constitution, and by the supremacy clause. and by the equal -- there's more than that, of course. there's the 14th amendment, the equal protection clause, there's case law. but i'm confounded by, i'm really confounded by our current states' right movement. in particular, the nullification movement. i have been for the past two months doing something that i think progressive journalist, liberal journalist, i'm not afraid of the term, i use it on occasion. i've been out talking to tea partyers. and in wyoming, in wisconsin, in arizona, and the notion that i keep hearing again and again and again is that the 10th amendment which guarantees -- which reserves for the states right --

the state that are not enumerated to the federal government of the constitution because it passed after the supremacy clause, it has -- it take precedence over the supremacy cause. there are nullification bills in montana. i was in helena last week. there are laws that would require us -- citizens -- to disobey the endangered species act. i'm sorry. you know, it's a really interesting movement. you are probably both relieved, i'm a little off. everyone is relieved to see the two minute time. it's based on the politics of resentment, i spoke with one really terrifically nice guy, sincere man, legislator who was

in his first tell, -- term, who had just filed a bill that will allow the state of montana to use eminent domain to reclaim land. i heard heard -- the saw the sal filed by a senator in arizona two months earlier. and he said we're going to start filing suit, and we're going to start taking the federal land away from the federal land. i'm thinking, dude, the grand canyon, they are going to take the grand canyon and tell it? i would think it were amusing if it weren't taken so seriously. i think it really represents the threat thought common will and to the notion that we are a united states of america. i'll close and try to be better in the lightning round. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you.

lou, a little bit of -- i was with judge william to some the years that you described. >> really? >> the situation in texas pertained to people of color is exactly as he describes it. >> and what a judge. >> what a judge. i miss him very much. just like i miss molly. i think the two of them are laughing together somewhere right now. >> the best of texas. >> richard mack. >> thank you. it's a pleasure to be here and to be on the panel with these distinguished panelist. first of all, i'd like to just add that the supremacy clause does not grant supreme power to the federal government. it's something that is in my lawsuit, justice scalia addressed this issue. it only makes laws supreme of the federal government that are made in pursuant of the

constitution. you can look and see nothing, because they don't do anything that's unconstitution nap. there's nothing supreme about degrading the constitution, or making law that is are clearly unconstitution mall. -- unconstitutional. that would be both sides of the aisle. the patriot act was done by the republicans, and it's the most unconstitutional law that we've had in america in the last 50 years. maybe more. [applause] >> okay. i was a sheriff. i was in law enforcement. and that's all i wanted to do. i wanted to be sheriff in my hometown. and by the way, my hometown county is 95% owned by the federal government. and it's not their land. and as inept and red neck cowboys we are in arizona, i still think we can run the grand canyon without the federal government.

i don't know. i might be stretching that. you know? but i really think that the bottom line of this is, you know, the federal government has just gone out of control. is there an answer to that? yes, there is. the founding fathers put it in the constitution. it's called the 10th amendment. and the reason that that's there is to keep the federal government, to keep the federal government in check. and while i was sheriff in arizona, the federal government, united states congress, passed a law known as the brady bill. it was advertised and propagandized by the clinton administration as a five-day waiting period to buy a handgun. i thought it was stupid. i thought it was an infringement. it gives us time in law enforcement to do a background check. who's going to oppose that? we want to make sure people aren't criminals that are getting handguns; right? no one in washington, especially

president clinton were telling the truth about the brady bill. until the brady bill was signed into law, november of 1993, then on january 21st, 1994, three agents of the batf show up at a sheriffs association meeting in phoenix. there's only 15 counties in arizona. i'm one of them. 12 sheriffs are at the meetings. the batf hands us a document. and says, sheriffs, this documents details your marching orders as what you will do to comply with the brady bill background checks. we're kinding looking at each other for sheriffs and go when did we start working for these guys? they don't hire us. then he went on. not only do you sheriffs have to do the background checks, but you have to use your resources, your departmental moneys and budget, your personnel, keep all of the records, and this isn't a

carrot on the stick grant, there's no money attached here. you have to pay for it all yourselves, oh, and we're sure the federal government won't do that. but if you fail to comply, you are subject to federal arrest. folks you need to understand what they are saying here. this is the united states congress, the federal government, for the first time in u.s. history, telling the office of a local elected sheriff for federal bidding and if we don't like it, we could go to jail. everybody support that? well, we didn't. you never heard so much cussing in your life when these three agents left the room. and it actually started before they left. i think that's why they tiptoed out. but every sheriff in there was against it. and after about five or six more hours of discussion, the cussing waned and emotions waned and they said there's nothing we can

do about this. you can't fight city hall. the federal government supreme. baloney, they are not. all of the other sheriffs said we have to do the best we can and go along. i said you guys, no way. i said, come on. they don't hire us, they can't fire us, we don't work for them. we work for the people of our respective counties. no way. so i decided that -- it took me a while, i decided i was going to sue the federal government. i'm going to sue -- i'm a small town sheriff, a county of 35,000 people. david v. goliath, i'm quick to take on the clinton administration. i'm going to sue them. i wasn't really excited about it either. you might look at history and see of all of the people that sued bill clinton, i was the only one to do so on a nonsexual matter. [laughter] >> yeah, be that as it may.

the case went much further than i ever thought. and on january -- february 28th, 1994, my lawyer with the help of the nra they helped pay for most of this, i paid for my own lawyer, filed in federal district court in tucson, arizona, in the courtroom of one judge john m. rolle. i hope you remember him. he was killed on january 8th in tucson in the rampage. there was a very staunched, principalled judge, a man of honor. he ruled in my case that congress exceeded it's authority under article 1, section 8 of the united states constitution, thereby encroaching upon the powers retained by the states pursuant that the 10th amendment. he's also the only judge that

heard this case. it violated the 5th amendment. because of the threat of arrest, the law engendered, he was against the federal government thinking they could threaten sheriffs in order to have us work for them for free. this whole thing about states' rights keeps coming back to the civil war and segregation and prejudice and hate. let me make this very clear right now. i uphold such. freedom is for all americans. i don't care what color, religion, or who your daddy was, american principals are for everybody. and freedom is for everybody. and as far as i'm concerned, one the greatest heroes in the history of america was rosa parks, because she taught us all a very important lesson. what we do with stupid laws, and we've got thousands and thousands of them today.

and the question is what do we do? yes, the states have every responsibility to tell the federal government it's time for you to back off. you've gone too far. this is not your land. these are not your water ways. right now the federal government, all in the name of the endangered species act, or all of the other stuff has shut off the water to the juan joaquin valley where we get 50% of the fruits, nuts, and vegetable. they did the same stupid thing in 2000 under the bush administration. i don't see a lot of difference between obama or bush. we invade countries, attack farmers and ranchers, and do all of the subsides and of spend all of the money. i don't see any difference really. but the thing of it is, it has to happen is the states have the authority and the responsibility to tell the federal government

you got to stay out. you've gone too far. that's what the 10th amendment is about. it's a check and balance system that was enate and engrained and inherit in the constitution. the founding fathers believed it. james madison said this: we can safely rely on the disposition of state legislatures to erect barriers against the encroachment of the national authority. end quote. and my other favorite quote is thomas jefferson. he said without government should be drawn to washington as the center of all power, it be become as venal and oppression as the government to which we separated. end quote. the question is my dear friends, when government goes too far, when the federal government thinks it owns everything, our air, our land, our education, our children, our health care, and it returns every facet of our lives to whom can the people

turn for peace, safety, and protection? it's local officials having the courage to stand for state sovereignty. where do you think the 10th amendment is going to be enforced? where do you think state sovereignty is going to be enforced? who's going to enforce the 10th amendment? are you waiting for barack obama to pick the state sovereignty czar? well, that's probably not going to happen. the states are sovereign. and as horrible as a division between the south and the north might have been, they had every right to do it. i have horse slavery, i have against segregation and all of that. as horrible as it might be, the states formed the union. the states formed the federal government. not the other way around. and they could certainly back

out of it any time that they felt it was necessary. as horrible as that might have been, i'm sorry, the states are sovereign. they do not ask permission to do anything from the federal government. and as a matter of fact, i have in this little booklet is the synopsis of the supreme court decision. let me do a couple of quotes here from the supreme court. this is one i really like from judge rolle. mack is thus forced to choose between keeping his oath, the oath to the constitution that we all take in law enforcement and all government officials swear an oath of allegiance to the constitution, or obeys the act or following the law. then justice scalia goes we have hailed, however, that states, state legislatures are not subject to federal direction. don't you wish your states knew

that? they are not subject to federal direction. that kind of shoots the supremacy clause, doesn't it? the federal government, scalia says, we hailed, may not compel the states to enact or enforce a federal regulatory program to administer or enforce aid, federal regulatory program. what do you think that does to obamacare? sounds like he's talking directly to the issue. just in closing, i'll say this, i'll quote justice scalia one more time. the federal government may neither issue directives requiring the states to address particular problems. they can't even give us directives, or command the states officer, or those of their political subdivisions, what are the political subdivisions, counties, cities, school boards, to administration

or enforce a federal regulatory program. it matters not whether policymaking is involved and no case by case weighing of the burdens or benefit are necessary. such commands are fundamentally incapacitiable with our constitutional system of duel sovereignty. end quote, i'm done. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> thank you, richard mack. now i'm going to invite the panelist if they wish to comment on one another's remarks. mr. kaufman? >> sheriff, i respectfully disagree. the resolution was not a compact of the united states, it was ratified by the people in conventions in the states precisely because we rejected the compact theory under the articles of confederation which you just gave me about the

states being supreme has rehashed john calhoun that would not be accepted by justice scalia. as much as i think the constitution does respect the realm of state's rights, the founding fathers clearly considered the federal government supreme in areas where the constitution conferred primary authority. i think the federal government has done too far. it's not that simple. for instance, everybody has sited article 1, section 8. that's the section that enumerating the powers. there's another clause. that's what we debate. it's called the necessary and proper clause. the enumerated powers plus what is necessary and proper to carry through those enumerated powers and from the beginning, the debate between hamilton and jefferson over the national bank. we have debated what the phrase

necessary and proper means. i do believe that the congress and the president have gone too far in using the commerce clause in areas not justified by the original intent of the founding. to be fair, however, even though i don't agree with the principal, there is an alternative view of how to interpret the constitution, associated with justice breyer and others, called the living constitution, that argues that the constitution is a living document. so this debate about what the founders meant and how that applies to today's situation is a serious principal debate where reasonable people can disagree where to draw the line. it's not that simple. >> could i? >> yes, of course. >> could i jump in the lightning round? >> yes. >> i might be better in the lightning round, actually. i, you know, under that -- one, i'm glad not to be arguing with

robert. you never argument with the rabbi and with the law professor. so i'm good. >> if you agree with me, i'm going to take it back. because -- >> i like that. >> but, you know, i mean, listen, i'm reading a law. and that passed the montana house two weeks ago. that takes richard's position. and it says that it defines certain federal transgressions of the 10th amendment. and it says -- and the law goes on to pay that if any of the federal government commits any of these transgressions, then the compact by which the states were formed, and there was no compact, i agree with richard, -- robert, the compact is dissolved. and as i read it, it's not just dissolved for the state of montana, but this one contractor

who's in the state legislature which is the pinnacle of people's power has written a bill that will dissolve our union in the event the federal government transgressions or crossed one of his red lines. it does allow, i was comforted to see, for the reconstitution of the union by a 3/4 votes of the state. you know, this -- so but states that want to get in. so, you know, this -- you know, you go from the 10th amendment to nullification and secession. it's a slippery slope. and i think as it becomes mainstream, it's -- it represents a real threat to our way of government of the country. because it ends up in endless fight that is were put to rest by the civil war and they were put to rest by countless case law. so i just -- you know, this -- the kids in texas had we and

cost by would have been waiting until this day for integration and an end to separate versus equal where it not for intervention by the federal government under the supremacy clause. i say the argument as very clear and i'm going to defer to sheriff. >> well, thanks. it's -- >> sorry. >> never would i ever say that states' right supersedes principals of freedom. and certainly when segregation is in the south we're still forcing blacks to get at the back of the bus or even worse, much worse, the federal government comes in and moves in. that's fine. because even scalia addresses that issue here. in incursions occur that the governments, the separate governments, the different governments are here to protect us from the incursions of the other. and thereby he says that hence a

double security arises to the rights of the people. in other words, this is how we protect freedom from both sides. the federal government, yeah, keeps the checks and balances on the states. you can't do that to people. but the federal -- the states also have the same responsibility. federal government, you can't do that either. now the fair and proper clause -- what did you call the proper -- i called it -- >> necessary and proper. >> necessary and proper. that does not give carte blanche to the federal government. they founded to create with the federal government an extreme limitation. some of the founders said it doesn't go far enough. we caught fought a war to stop that.

for anybody in the room to pretend at any time, the founding fathers wanted to establish another government that would tell us what to do and run every facet of the lives that king george was doing in the first place is absurd. >> may i ask the question, could you read the preample of the constitution? >> i can quote it. >> if you read the article of the confederation, we the state. we are a union first, and in the realm -- look, i agree a lot about what you have to say about the federal government too far. when you make the claim which is untenable we are a compact of states. >> i never said the word compact, you did. >> actually, you did. it's on tape. >> i never said the word. >> if you make the case that the south had legal right to secede, which is the compact theory.

>> you says lincoln says if you don't say here, we'll kill you. if texas leaves, we're going to invade texas and kill them all. >> gentleman. >> you are discrediting -- >> gentleman this is. >> you are making it extremely -- >> gentleman. this is a wonderful conversation. i think it's time to bring some of the members of our faithful audience into it. if you don't mind my intervening, i want to make sure we have times for questions. :d answers. if you wish to ask the question of the panel please come forward and line up here at the microphone. those of you who are veterans know that it's one of the greatest traditions of the conference on world affairs of students have a prayer before asking questions. so as to why not, maintain your place in line but there is a student before you please allow the student to get in front of you. his other great tradition. i will get to you in a second, that although i am sure that many of you have a lot of knowledge and information that you can share, this is an

opportunity to ask a question, not to make a speech. now we realize that certain questions have to be prefaced by a brief kind of prefatory foundation. that's okay. but if i see that you embark on a speech rather than about to ask a question i'm going to ask you to get directly to your question. so, before we begin with questions, did you have something you wanted to add? >> i just want to briefly quote justice marshall in talking about the necessary and proper clause. he said the result of the most careful consideration is bestowed upon the walls is that it does not in large, it cannot be construed to restrain the power of congress or to impair the right of the religious to exercise its best judgment in the selection of measures to carry into the execution the constitutional powers of the government. i mean, i think that is the balance, so what happens then is i think you end up making, you know, decisions, rulings and opinions based on how you

interpret the balance. the other thing i want to mention is just a wonderful point of irony. last night i was researching for this panel and i was looking at the sheriff and i found myself drawn to this page that said to save american convention the share fix once states rights it was a web site called the desk of brough in your resource for breaking obscure news from around the world, and then describes the sheriff mack's lecture on the constitution what applies to state rights and sovereignty after reading just a few minutes about this appeal for the greater freedom for individuals like me, my computer screen was filled with pop-up ads asking me if i wanted to clean my mack and offering only one option, okay, and the only way i could get out is by turning off my browser. [laughter] >> it's my fault. >> i know. it's just wonderful the irony of the site is declaring individual freedom taking away mine as i read it. [laughter] >> we need to regulate more of

the internet than. a greater federal regulation on the internet. [laughter] >> let it began here. >> federal government -- >> thank you very much. let's go to the young gentleman in the green t-shirt. >> my question is to mr. mack, and you mentioned among the things the government has no right to regulate school books so wouldn't brown be unconstitutional? >> brown? >> yes. so, if you could tell on that, you said that who is there to protect the peace and prosperity of the people, well, what i would say, and correct me if i'm wrong, that brown v board was to protect the peace and prosperity of the people come and if that's -- the federal government over stuffing it's bound, i don't see

why the federal government is there if not to protect the peace and prosperity of its own people. [applause] >> man. i must say, for being a student at the university of colorado -- [laughter] you have a great insight. i would say -- i would just say this, that i would love to see the federal government dedicated to those principles that you mentioned. but learning every facet of our lives and in putting education isn't one of them. i honestly believe that colorado educators are smart enough to do without the federal government, to do it without the department of education. one of the things i will add, there's a famous american that agreed with me on this and promised when he was president to abolish the department of education that he didn't do it, and it was ronald reagan, and i

really believe a local board of education, if they need to be called in to check local people can do that. and i still believe all of this is based on weak, the people come and the government needs to be aimed at that. and i want it to be smaller and more efficient and less expensive. if we get rid of some of the departments in washington, d.c. that is the way that will happen. >> and ronald reagan also supported the brown v. board of education with few supreme court rendered by the nine to nothing decision because it wasn't an educational decision, it was for the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment that this meant racial apartheid system which was the expressed intent of the civil war amendment. so in that case, the court would have had the right because that is an area where the constitution says the federal government is supreme over the prerogative of the stage for good reason and we had to fight a civil war not that we should have to get those amendments.

>> and we the people in 1970 in the form of elected school words as close to democracy as one can get have flocked african-american children in the historical system of apartheid that in some places in texas it's no secret its alexis today. so i think it is a point well made. and i wish that the guy were my nephew. [laughter] >> sur? >> thank you for coming. everybody seems to be appealing to the constitution like religiously, right? is it true that we, the people, represented the people? it's my understanding about 200 guys and won a small place making, pointing at the map saying we all this stuff, this is all our stuff and therefore we owned the people. >> you understand incorrectly that especially for the standards of the time the constitution was ratified by 13 separate state conventions. and not only -- they were not

conventions conferred by the authority of the states. the work conventions in the 13 separate states of the people, and let me add one more thing. the requirement for the suffrage, the requirement for the voting in the constitution was that it had to be as broad as the broadest agreement suffrage for any office, meaning by the standards of the time. the constitution was ratified by the broad potential voting group in each and every state. so by the standard at the time, it is more than legitimate to say that we the people clause actually has not only historical but substantive meaning. >> so you are appealing to democracy than. if the majority of the people want to do something, therefore it's right. >> no, it isn't because we are not a democracy and that's a word that has been -- >> i'm just saying --

>> you're constitutional republic. we don't pledge to democracy, we pledge to the public. if one person disagreed with the constitution, was it right to force their will upon another man? >> but you're saying you are assuming that they did, and this backing of the states and the state's actually -- the states actually formed this very separately, and in fact any of the states could have backed out of this union and it still would have gone forward. but that state would have been a separate government, it would have been a separate country. and that is how this was. and the states ratified the bill of rights. not the federal government. >> this note real estate, there's just individuals. all the talk of state -- >> but it was all aimed at by, for and of the people. it was aimed at that, protecting the god-given freedoms. >> thank you. can we move on to the next questioner? thank you. is sam? >> my name is ellen hilliard. i wanted to bring this back a little bit to what terrance said

because if you point was well taken that this isn't a conservative issue or liberal issue. this isn't a republican issue or democrat issue or progressive issue. in our county here even the issue of state ownership or property rights is one that always seems to be kind of a double-edged sword. i think it was the elephant journal that actually broke the story of our land is being taken with taxpayers' money and being rented to the gm note monsanto for sugar beets. even though the national park issue, i read that it's been used as collateral for the chinese debt. so this issue is much greater. my question to you is to someone that's an organic farmer and holistic practitioners trying to maintain the sovereignty of my own land when we have all these like the food safety act and then codex on the basis trying

to control my property and telling me my dogs can't even go there how do you -- does someone like me -- if you can't use the state's rights issue, how do you take back ownership of your own land and make the decision on your own land? is there a process we go to of the people? >> i think on the individual basis, that very challenging. is it to the celdf, basically what they have stopped is floods, factory farms, it is usually, my guess a corporation that's going to do things in the way they want to do them and is going to pay off with its lobbying or whatever the legislators to get the way they want and what they found is that at the grassroots community if they come together and they make

laws returning the the sovereignty to the people that they can borrow those things. and so i could recommend getting us or them they do a three day democracy school that can bring and they will come out and do it in the teacher community how to keep these stands. >> that is a proper equals question under the constitution. i would look to the calls and maybe make the case under the fifth amendment. but the positive revelation state or local constitution taking without just did not acquit compensation. but the constitution rather than the states' rights as your best bet for looking at your prerogatives under the circumstance. >> getting your rights to the life liberty and property should be protected by local officials and that is your local sheriff, chief of police, they should be protecting you even against other governments if necessary.

rosa parks is a typical example of that. as somebody in uniform should have protected rosa parks instead of arresting her that day. somebody with a badge should have made sure that she didn't go to jail, that her life, liberty and property life and liberty were protected that date. we failed in the law enforcement community to do that with rosa parks, and we need to make sure we are doing it today. >> and unfortunately it took sending federal troops, not state and local. i don't care what it does as long as the job gets done. >> and therein lies the fallacy in the tenth amendment argument, and that there were legions of state and local officials who refuse to act, and required -- list call me an old fashioned for nannystater that the federal

government in almost every one of these instances in terms of expanding individual liberty or cleaning the individual liberties and civil rights that we had it didn't happen at the state's local level. and i'd like to see where it has. >> he started while he was president and was in the federal government standing up. you think you need federal government to protect all of this and stop all this? i am for anybody stopping it, but it's the best -- thomas jefferson said of the best government is at local level and that's the local sheriff, local officers. it depended on the federal government you're going to be waiting a long time for that. >> thank you for your question. sir? >> i found the united states is like the old soviet union, the only country in the world that science virtually every human rights treaty there is but doesn't enforce it. the process by which the government is liable for the

misconduct committing injuries to citizens as it pertains -- demint your question, sir? >> that's what i'm getting too. the new hampshire constitution states this and contact theory where if the government doesn't do its job, the contract which is the constitution is noel and void. on the states necessarily have both a right and a duty to secede or threatened secession if the government doesn't do what it's supposed to do as defining the constitution which it does all the time? >> first of all the united states is nothing like the soviet constitution of 1934. if you read the black book of communism published by harvard university press, written by the neoconservatives but by frenchman, the soviet system conservatively estimated 30 to 40 million people. so you are comparing the gadfly to an elephant.

as for the issue of secession, 1865 settled that one. >> it was legal, good and we've benefited immensely from it. >> yes, sir. >> first, professor of think you spoken a little too grand about this father's, hamilton who is as great an authority on the constitution as a madison proposed the unitary state. >> okay. my question is and is a tenant -- my question is a tenant of legislation that a legislator drop a piece of legislation for each word in the proposed legislation have an equal meaning and apropos of the brady bill, mr. mack i'd like to know what your interpretation of the phrase well regulated in the second amendment means is

limited means well-trained and equipped >> [inaudible] >> it's talking about the militia and it's defined in the u.s. code section 10 is every able-bodied male 17 to 45. the militia was we the people so there's no contradiction there. is the - than or does it now? every citizen. every a bold -- >> so no. >> so yes. blacks were citizens, blacks our citizens now. it's dependent on the state. he's asking my opinion. >> whose opinion are you asking? >> i was asking your reference to the fact. >> okay. the militia is we the people and

every citizen as part of the militia. with the states did about that? >> let me offer a bill i read last week that defines the extreme to which the measures are being taken, it is a bill that is a concealed carry the bill, the right to carry coming into only have to establish -- you are qualified if you are not mentally incompetent and were not a film. so why ask the author of the bill how one would go about determining the process, and the process itself is certification. [laughter] and that's the bill that is written in the montana legislature. so it requires a mentally incompetent person to conclude that he's competent and then he can carry a gun to read this envisions a government so

strained that it is no government and it's particularly acute on guns. >> this is the state's rights issue and the gun rights issue is the next tomorrow i think. >> there is going to be a panel i believe it's on wednesday. >> it looks like three more questions. let's see if we can get to them before we have to leave. mr. mack or the one for me that represents a state or could see representing state why question is i feel the federal government has to step in where the states don't do what they need to do for the people. and with arizona would be willing to pass a health bill would take care of every person in the state, one of its comprehensive, that's the question. >> i hope not.

arizona will lead that issue alone and -- put the question is when the federal government refuses for political reasons to protect the borders as constitutionally designed and required, does the state of arizona have a right to protect itself? obama says we don't. >> thank you. >> thank you. gif sam? >> it seems we are not having the correct conversation. we are talking about the power, but we are not really talking about how to do with these issues we are calling them. things like state rights and for government you have on both sides, the ego power on both sides and the act the same way. >> do you have a question? >> when jefferson was or not there were not things called corporations that have international stature. so here's to regulate. how do you manage those? what is the proper approach to

deal with situations which didn't accessed with the constitution was sworn which isn't in people's minds that not exist so how would you handle something like that and we aren't talking about how to handle that, we are pointing fingers or we are taking power but not talking about it and that's the issue that's going to destroy it. >> i disagree with you from the beginning. we had a system that took into account ego and power. it's called the power the james madison federal paper number 47. if all men [inaudible] no government would be possible to read our system is designed as a way of regulating competing interests federalists can putting the ambition against the ambition because that is, according to the founders, the safest way to prevent anybody from achieving absolute power which to quote the acting

corrupt absolutely. that principle is sound and how we apply it to the specific circumstances of the 21st century and reasonable people and continue to disagree about that. suggested a different perspectives. [inaudible] >> i'm not hearing the part of the conversation. >> thank you. >> they're always going to be a conversation about the ego. >> we have three guys with pretty big egos of here. [laughter] >> how are we managing -- >> that is a corporation -- >> the federal government has allowed it. >> the states as well. you're right. the corporations are an american. >> my question is particularly

-- >> can you speak up just a little bit? >> my question is for the professor kaufman, once upon a time, there was a change in how the senators were elected, and because of that, has actually been a change in states' rights because once there was the legislature's who elective the senators and today it's done by the presidents. >> you are absolutely correct. i was at eight -- justice scalia made the same point that if you want to work of the watershed that altered the original allocation of power under the constitution, it was the amendment to give that indirect voting to the people to choose the center's senators because when the senators will be called in to the state legislatures they are more likely to take the interests of the state into account and there's a counter

argument in the progressive tradition that it is much better to have direct elections, but in terms of identifying probably the watershed event that shifted the balance toward the federal government, you are 100% right for citing the example, very perceptive. >> let me piggyback on that, a number that i know i cited in the past panels is at least a couple of years ago max baucus of montana who had the leading role in the health care negotiations received 13% of his funds for election campaign finance from the state of montana and the other 87% from people that have interest in the committee and the previous one was also correct and it seems like we actually have a fair amount of agreement here, but i think the largest problem facing

this country right now is that at almost every level of government except for a brave and courageous individuals, corporations are now in charge. [applause] >> if i could add one thing. i don't say this to be facetious, justice scalia never covered a session of the texas legislature. i'm not sure that i want them with the balance of power, but i don't know that the state legislators are the places that should be choosing the centers today. >> i'm so sorry that we are out of time. >> i'm trying to pull the threads of the panel together to see if i can find some common ground, and believe me, this is very challenging, but i think i might venture this much we would all be very happy if the sheriff's would protect the corporations --

[applause] enjoy the conference on world affairs

the finance minister of pakistan talked about u.s.-pakistan relations. he's in washington for a spring meeting of the international monetary fund and world bank. this is hosted by the woodrow wilson center. it's almost an hour. >> dr. shaikh has agreed toeak speak to us for 15 or 20 minutes

today. after which point we will -- heg has agreed to take questions from the audience.re deliged to mr. shaikh, we are delighted toe have you and turn things over to you now. introdnk you for the very nice introduction.. i should hang around here in the u.s. more often if i keep getting such recognition nobody seems to have much good to say about me in pakistan. [laughter] i'm delighted to be here. it's an honor for me. thank you for the invitation.

i think we are meeting at a critical time. the pakistan u.s. relationship has acquired a sycophant it never had before. it's seen as important both for the security and region and perhaps indeed for the whole world. the need to learn from the past as well as the recent experiences, and to shape and configure the relationship to fulfill the expectations and the needs of the two parties is more critical than it has ever been. the u.s. and pakistan have enjoyed the long relationship. it has been an episodic and transactions that time, and

sometimes there has been a desire to make a strategic and on sustained footing. i think one of the key features that is characterized this relationship is the degree of the variation that it has seen. pakistan has sometimes been labeled as the most allied ally and other times the most sanctioned ally, and all of this in a period of years. right now in the post 9/11 scenario is in on how nato ally. a political security considerations have often led to government, the government external assistance on the economic front as well, and the growth dispersed that pakistan in the 60's, the etds and in 2000 have somehow been linked to

the u.s. external assistance or at least have coincided with of the periods of external assistance from the u.s.. the key feature of this in the u.s. has been that it has coincided with the war and in the cold war and the second case the soviet afghan war and in the third case the so called terror war in each case when it ended so has the external assistance and in this departure has had tragic consequences at least in the last case. now it seems like we are entering a new era of we have entered a new era, and the question that we want to ask is why did the u.s. walk away in the past? and how can we learn to put this relationship on a sounder and

more solid, more sustained footing, which is not subject to shocks. i think one of the answers the u.s. could find it easy to walk away is because the relationship was based primarily on non-economic considerations. therefore this is one of the lessons we have to draw, and this is an area that we need to focus, and i think the new administration and our government appear to have recognized this missing dimension in the relationship and they are trying to remedy that and we will see how it unfolds. the second point apart from this variation in the the need to

learn from the dining parts of our engagement of the past is that economic relations have always been there between the u.s. and pakistan. they've spent a significant interaction but it's never realize its full potential. so, in spite of that, there's a significant degree of economic interaction that has been throughout the politics. trade, for example, is roughly $5 billion a year. the fbi from the u.s. roughly half a billion dollars on average per year $1.82 billion a year from the u.s. and government to government assistance now targeted at

$1.5 billion for economic matters. so the second question that we want to think about is how to seize the potential that exists, and to build up on what this nature of love economic integration to a new plateau which truly realizes the full potential and is truly insulated from the happenings on the political and other fronts. ..

in the period the president went to italy and it over to the parliament, and in turn the federal government has voluntarily handed over responsibilities and additional resources to the provinces. a dramatic development has been the message of the national com finance commission and which three to 400 billion extra are a going to be transferred to thewh provinces. which is what most people in this room would want, which is t what most pakistanis would wantt because the things that matter to the people, education and health and drinking water and wa municipal services and police and and security at the local levell are all departments within the l provincial mandate.he some more resources they have,e the more they will be able to respond to the demand of theso e

people. and so, the service delivery cas be improved, and this has been i think any dramatic and far-reaching step, and its consequences will begin to be seen over time. another aspect of the new thate democratic is we have institutions that are working for transparency andbility, lie accountability, the likes of which have never been seen before. and again, in the first inhief parliamentary industry and where the chief accountability officer of the government of pakistan ie a person whose official leader a of the house, leader of thesitii opposition in the parliament. the leader of the opposition and the parliament is also the chairman of the public accounts fommittee, which is the chief ce accountant of the organization of o the government.erful

so you have this wonderful experience of the leader of the sition opposition in the position to summon anybody to ask a question from any of nettie and demand am explanation from anybody from the prime minister down to everyone.an withheyo does that. you also have a supreme court, the chief justice and the court is highly active in the scrutinizing and investigating in askingfr all sorts of questis from everybody in the is government. this again i think is anvelopme, exciting development.t and makes our society open,we ao makes the officials accountable. again, you can comment, critique

and question and criticize, and every evening from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. talk shows which do very little else but to focus on public issues, and i think they perform their job with enthusiasm. going to the economic matters. this government inherited a difficult situation and an economy on the verge of collapse. a lot of footsteps have been done to try to restore macroeconomics stability, try to mobilize taxization, try to cut down expenditures, even in this most recent budget, expenditures were frozen at nominal levels of last year which means real rediction of 10%-12%. new taxes have been levied on capital gains tax, on

stockbrokers, new sectors have been broadened like fertilizer and tractors and textiles and others which were excluded before. 700,000 new people with multiple bank accounts, with international travel, with the best addresses of pakistan who are not paying taxes are being pursued to broaden the income tax net, and so you have a new drive, a new initiative, and the goal is to raise the tax to gdp ratio to less than 10% from 14% over the next three to four years. at the same time, while these painful decisions like passing the oil prices to the consumers, there has been a conscious

attempt to have a social safety net. do not forgot the already forgotten and to try to reach out to the poorest of the poor through automated systems of cash transfers, and this is a system that now even the world bank has accepted as one of the best managed and best executed in the world, and so a combination of balance is being struck between looking after the very poor during the transition was going on with the most difficult decisions in the political environment that is also not very conducive and remains fragile. on top of this, pakistan has had multiple challenges to face over the last year. we have the continuing expenditure on security and on

war and our soldiers have sacrificed their lives. our citizens have been targeted, and the people had to bear a great burden, but this is a war to which we are committed, and naturally in the middle of a war, you cannot starve your soldiers, so the fight has to go on, and the moneys have to be paid. second, we had the greatest disaster of our history because of the great floods of 2010 when 20 million people were affected, crops were destroyed, and infrastructure was damaged, lives were shattered. over $10 billion in damages were incurred, and two percentages of the growth rate of the gdp was wiped out. we now have to struggle and get exposure to the rising prices of oil which we are talking $70 a

barrel in our budget making with the deficit at 120, and at least likely to remain above 100. despite the fed like i said, the government and the people have shown resilience. we have continued to pursue the economic reform agenda trying to focus on public sector efficiency, even the federal cabinet has been slashed by two-thirds from 60 to 22. our government budget for development programs, for government projects was slashed from 280 billion to 180 billion so the idea is to secure the public finances, to maintain a fiscal discipline, bring down fiscal deficit which when the government came into power was above the 7.5% to around

5%-5.5%, and so try to create a platform for growth, so we've been working on a growth strategy to try and give jobs to our young people and to get back on the trajectory of growth approaching 6% or so. some of the results are beginning to show, and i'm happy to share those with you on the front. experts have -- exports have shown dramatic increase of 26% in the last nine months. if you compare february of february of the last year, the growth is a phenomenal 46%, and the exports are likely to cross $24 billion, the highest ever. similarly, we're approaching $1 billion a month and likely to cross $11 billion this year, the highest ever. the benefits of these two is being shown, and the reserves of

the foreign exchange which have also reached the highest ever level of $17.5 billion. at the same time, we rationalized our government program, and we feel that the combination of all these must be shared, the merging benefits in the economy must be shared with the large segments of the people, and government has adopted pricing policies for agriculture sector to insent vise them to grow -- insent vice them to grow more from the commodity boom and share in the global prosperity emerges from the rise in the price of food products, and this is being off. we are expected now to have a bumper wheat crop, the highest ever, and because the pricing is geared in such a way, this will lead to large scale prosperity in the countryside, so these are

some of the merging -- emerging areas of positive results, and i have time now in my last set of comments to u.s.-pakistani economic relations. i believe that because there's a reformist government in pakistan, a democratic government, that it's not burdened with trying to do funny things to achieve legitimacy, and we have a global configuration in which the destiny of the two countries appeared to tied for some time and hopefully for a longer time, that a new way of thinking about how to secure the foundations of the relationship is indeed the speedometer of leadership -- responsibility of leadership of the two sides. i think the u.s. government has responded or tried to respond to

this challenge and a new external assistance has now has been passed. it attempts to give $1.45 billion every year. in reality the amounts dispersed are less, but i think a platform and institutional arrangement exists under which the two countries can work out. five areas have been identified under the kerry-lugar arrangement. these are energy skirt, food security, economic growth, particular focus on the affected areas in the tribal region and global sector including education and health. i believe that if the money is dispersed and if it's widely used, this can have far reaching consequences. at the same time, given the demands and the requirements of

the country and the potential that exists in the private sector and the lesson from the past of not relying upon governments alone, it's very important to think of platforms for business-to-business dialogue and for venn cheers in -- ventures in which u.s. businesses can make money so they remain motivated and participate in the economic development of our country while also benefiting theirñi shareholders. severalñi opportunities exist oe of which, of course, the kerry lugar berman itself is trying to develop, and that's the idea of pakistan and american enterprise fund. that's of $300 million. it's under the process of legislation, and we are on the mistake that once --

optimistic that once it is passed, u.s. businesses can draw and do larger projects, and it will be potentially a mag innocent for -- mag for attracting investors in general. pakistan has tremendous opportunities. sometimes i'm asked what other sectors we should focus on, and my answer is that government administers particularly inept on answering such questions, because if i knew which sectors, i would be in business myself, but i think what i can say is that every, and i've had the opportunity to work in two dozen countries, and i think the student of development, the opportunities in pakistan are second to none compared to all the 24 countries i have worked in. the opportunities are in agriculture, services, in

telecommunications, and in energy, and in oil and gas in particular, and ever where you -- everywhere you look you will see opportunities. the question is, is there a liberal investment regime that allows people to come in and participate? on that score, let me share with you the parliamentary team. i believe it's the most liberal or one of the most liberal in the entire world. we don't discriminate against foreigners. they are welcome in any sector of the economy. they can participate 1% of equity or 100% of the equity. there's no requirement for any local partner like in some countries. there are no limits on how much capital you can bring in or take out. there are no limits on how much money you can repaypatriot in the form of profits or on

licenses or whatever. here's an environment that is conducive, very welcoming, and the government is beginning another hopefully exciting program of privatization in which government assets in liquidity and in oil and gas and manufacturing will be available, and i think above all, what one needs to do is instead of listening to this speeches of ministers is to talk to your own colleagues who are already there. there's american business association of pakistan. you can talk to them. most of them are already expanding, and the last two to three years. state government bank was telling me they have been the best for most of them, and they will share this information with you. if they want to keep pakistan as a secret for themselves, of course, you can always look at

their books. they are vaiblg, -- available, and they will collaborate the story. i think i will stop now, and hopefully we can have interactive discussion. i'd like to learn from you. let me also, in closing, appreciate the u.s. government and its leadership for the focus that they are giving to pakistan, for their recognition of the strategic nature of their relationship and the benefits that will accrue to the world if we invest into in relationship and recognize each other's strengths and each other's capacities to contribute, and the fact that they have initiated a certain dialogue between our two countries to which pakistan has responded which covers a large set of areas including security and

defense and energy and economy and trade and so on, and also i want to end by thanking the u.s. government for the support they gave us, particularly the initial phase of our floods and rescue and relief operations and for being a part of the international correlation through the united nations network in supporting our suffering. brothers and sisters and also for the support they've extended to us in trying to help us at other multilateral settings. thank you very much. [applause] >> well, thank you, mr. minister for, but also very encouraging

remarks and fact. your optimism and confidence is very striking and all the more so because it flies in the face i think of the conventional wisdom. maybe i'm talking to the wrong people, but when i read the pakistani press, when i talk to pakistani trends, when i talk to people in this town who follow pakistan closely, they don't seem to have nearly the optimism and the confidence you do, and i'd like to get your views as to why that is? how do you explain the gap as it were between what you say is the real situation to the general perception that things are not going particularly well and perhaps we're going in the wrong direction. is this simply a question of the right information not getting

out, or is something else at work here? >> well, that's a good question, and i, myself, think about it a lot because your observation about negative perception in certain segments of our people i think are well founded, and we have to obviously take some blame for the failure to communicate our point as effectively as one can. at the same time, i believe when you live in an area with -- where you have so much capacity of other areas to get their points of view, and when expectations are running so high and you have a situation of a

coalition government, and you have within your own country a free press which i think is just beginning to find the rules of the game which are not developed i think at the moment. somebody asked me how do you feel like getting your point of view across, and how do you feel -- and i said it's like if you're in the democratic party in the u.s., you have another republican party to deal with, and you have i think one general to deal with, but if you're a democratic party or any part ruling in pakistan, you have maybe five republican parties to deal with and 16 fox channels to deal with, and, of course, it is daunting to get your point of view across in that situation, so i don't know. i have tried to state some

things which are facts, and, of course, one can try to get that narrative across, and i would say also in the u.s. that we have the question of public lack of trust or trust deficit, and i think sometimes when we talk op this issue with the u.s. counterparts within the strategic dialogue and public diplomacy, both sides are dim to figure it out because we also pose this question to the u.s. that why is it if you have good intentions and why is it if you're trying to support our country, that there is -- that the point of view doesn't get across? why is there a trust deficit?

so i think this is a question that needs greater scrutiny by people you know who are experts in this issue. i think within the u.s., obviously, there are all sorts of interest and all sorts of point of view, and there are two or three things that somehow are against us. one is, of course, there's a perception that a lot of money is going to pakistan. at a time when there is requirement for fiscal restraint and, you know, expenditure cutting at home, so there we have to come out and explain the facts. i think it's largely a myth that pakistan is a beneficiary of these tens of billions of dollars. the truth is that in the

kerry-lugar arrangement this year, we have not even received $300 million, so but when people go to the hill and talk about tens of billions of dollars, and you have public representatives, nay naturally have -- they naturally have to think about it, and i think foreign assistance never has a strong lobby, so we don't want to think of pakistan as a country that is primarily attempting to simply get foreign assistance. no, sir. we are saying let us have trade. we are saying let us open our narcotics to each -- markets to each other so we can give arrangement where the american businesses can flourish in pakistan, and our pakistani

businesses can flourish here and it's good for everybody. this was our approach with the european union, and i'm happy to tell you we have succeeded in opening new areas with the european union for trade because this is the message we want to give is that if we are to have lasting relationships, and if we are to break some stereotypes, then it is important that we focus on trade, but if there are barriers to trade, then obviously, they have to be tackleed, and so, yes, i think a lot of work needs to be done, by both sides, by friend of both sides within their countries, to try and get this view across, especially in this country there's a perception as if we are asymmetrically dependent on

the u.s. whereas what we want to get across which, of course, we as a signal third world -- small third world country have difficulty getting across in a place like this, but part of the reason i'm here is precisely to do it in my own small way and to get, you know, the benefit of people like yourself to subsequently take the message to a larger audience in a more effective way than i can. >> well, thank you. we'll now turn to the audience. let me remind our audience that he is the minister for finance revenue and statistics. i expect some of us would be delighted to ask questions on a variety of other issues, but i think to be fair to our guest and given particularly our limited amount of time, i would request