better or worse are using it. if you could actually start to address that news feed so it was more permeable by information that without facebook having to impose this is important, this is not important, but letting the community indicate that, i think that could be, that could actually make a pretty significant difference in what a lot of people see. with a fairly low -- you know, that's not a whole new business for facebook to be. >> host: not a completely new behavior, either, just instead of like we are adding importance. >> guest: blight. >> host: thank you. it's great to sit down with you. all right. >> that was "after words," book tv signature program and it authors the latest nonfiction

books are interviewed by journalists, public policy makers, but as leaders and others familiar with the material. "after words" airs every weekend on book tv at 10 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9 p.m. on sunday, and 12 a.m. on monday to and you can also watch "after words" on line. go to booktv.org and click on "after words" in the book tv series and topics list in the upper right side of the page. ..

[applause] >> i've never gotten that reaction before. i am mike gonzalez, vp of communications at heritage. it is my pleasure to introduce ann coulter, the author of seven "new york times" bestsellers and a new one out now called "demonic." it's very funny. my colleagues know whenever to maneuver columns because i'm laughing out loud. but it ann is more than funny. she's witty, clever, courageous, it tackles but many will not stand that her beliefs. that's because she is deep convictions. she understands. many of us here obviously. but in the audience right now i want to recognize two people appeared former attorney general ed meese who was ronald reagan's distinguished fellow here at the heritage foundation, vice president. [cheers and applause]

and one more. at stand are you here? he told me he was coming. he is the author and he really wanted to scone. the reason i'm recognizing them as because they are conservative icons. they are lines of traditional values. and ann coulter, please -- she was trying to make remarks. shall take questions from you. i have start unfortunately we may not have time for pictures. afterwards if there's time, shall take pictures with your thirst time. [applause] >> thank you for coming. [cheers and applause] >> thank you. i would like to speak out because it turns out they are serving beer and wine mdot

audience firm you are right wingers a little liquor to. [laughter] i don't have prepared remarks. i'd never imagined cimino come a look ahead when your book is coming up, and while such a book, who would be competing with? and never in a million years imagine i'd be competing with something called weinert day. [laughter] but unlike anthony, you can tell if i'm happy in understanding behind a podium. [laughter] i assume you have all had a receives an update 8 million interviews in the last 10 days. i'll just quickly say "demonic" is a description of the mods. mobs are always demotic and demons are his mobs. i described the democratic party and liberalism as a mob starting with the french revolution. it has been that way for 200

years. in the process of writing this book, i certainly understand liberals in a way that i never did before. i consider myself something of an expert. very few things that always confused me. for example, paul krugman, frank rich, jonathan off and peer there must be barred or at least they did on their sat test colleges and yet they seem so. and that is explained as the crowd psychology. people in the crowd with some of their intelligence, no matter how educated there are, the grad missiles cannot turn opponents enemies. this is just a psychology part. beautifully describe liberals and not in the way in the way he can turn around and say the same

thing about conservatives. that's all i'll say about the book right now because you are all getting a copy tonight. i'd love to take questions. and i don't need remarks. >> right here, sir. actually it anon four times. they've been lovely to me. the event a great time every time since one. i was the penalty and a male adult acne and it has to wait for pastors to get something out. and now is the only time barbara walters was on the show. so by process of elimination. i think the rest of my lovely girls. and it's been kind of weird this book to her because usually the growth fixate on them mount point amtran pointless joke my book, twist and turn it to pieces and that's the only thing i talk about for the next month,

which gets really tedious. on the other hand, and really worried without a massive cap type, my book sales will suffer. >> since it looks like chris griese isn't running, his next clinics >> i would like to say if my boy does not run, you will go from being my love to my enemy for life and now designing it. shoot so i can dive in the governor's mansion he should run for one thing because the country needs him. he is head and shoulders above the candidates who are fantastic. one thing is worth noting. every single republican is better than john mccain. [applause]

where the whole mainstream media against us. i was shocked when he won. i would've lost that i'm not. or if you're planning on running for president. and thirdly, we have an amazing republican farm team coming up that can pitch in can be attorney general of virginia the rent for governors is like chris christie, stunningly articulate which is something to forget wine crisco back on the attorney general kansas city runs for governor, same thing. marco rubio is turning out to be a fantastic senator. he can run for president. so we applaud this amazing

talent and it's not going to be a cakewalk. particular because obvious foreign enemy if he doesn't run this time. >> how tall are you? i am 66. >> i think about it, seven, give or take. >> unshared [inaudible [inaudible] [inaudible] >> yeah, this should be aware county on the heritage foundation. they should be a good year for the republicans in the senate. in 2010 we had a lot of

enthusiasm, a lot of anger about obamacare. it was just the luck of the draw. even though the democrats will be 60, 70%. it was 50/50 republicans and democrats. but barbara boxer were in suit states. didn't have enough to pick up senate seats, but that changes next year and it changes three years from now. those are fantastic years and i don't know how republicans are going to blow it. i'm sure they'll come up with some thing to stop them. >> i just want to have your conservative, but not [inaudible] >> thank you for coming first of all, ann. you think liberals and i'm serious have a clue about the spiritual component to why conservatives are loathed?

it off like our policies, but it goes beyond that, does not quite >> yes, that is covered more extensively, about three bucks back, godless: the church of liberalism. i think that explains why you do see all of the mob psychology characteristics on the left and you really don't see demand right wingers. you really don't see it among republicans and we know from the polls are most republicans believe in god. most democrats don't. the ones who claim that you're running for office and most republicans believe in god. most democrats don't. the ones who claim that you're running for office and most republicans believe in god. most democrats don't. the ones who claim that you're running for office and if you believe in god, it's a vertical relationship. you cannot do care care what people say in the crowd around you. in fact, christians like to be hated because christ said we would be so it makes us feel macho. whereas if you don't have enough down relationship with god, then you really have to care what the people around you think. and that is when you want

approval from the imaginary "new york times" editor in your head, listening to your every expectation or hoping that john stuart won't say anything mean about you or will even like you. no, conservatives so don't care about what people around them think and that's what liberals don't believe in god. they are obsessed with the people around them think. okay, tumor questions. >> what advice do you have for you and conservatives on college campuses clinics >> first of all, don't go to law school. [laughter] [inaudible] >> okay, fine. you'll be throwing your life away. let the liberals go to school because the monster going to be a scumbag trial lawyer like john edwards, you won't make that much money. you'll be working beacons for the rest of their lives. there are a lot of great jobs out there.

i just met somebody with a stranger's child. but it? i forget, but i think you know you'd be doing this? of course she laughed because it was some crazy job she did know existed. the person who designs food for tv commercials so that it looks attractive. the lightning, how you put it on the plate. there are a lot of jobs out there and i think young conservatives should all be going into the media, to hollywood, become public-school teachers. by the way, the pay is fantastic. [laughter] college professors. if you're open to that republican on a college campus, you're apparently not going with the flow and that's where you first see the pathetic is that liberals, little apple polishers up to professors. teacher, teacher come i found another example of in hamlet.

[laughter] no, that's fine, johnny. settle down. and so come you really don't a device for me. they pick up great tips. who came up with the catching illegal alien game in which i am just bulldozer and admiration within the affirmative action. i don't think any to teach college republicans anything, but it played the truth is inherently appealing and a lot of college kids don't have political beliefs yet. that's what i'm constantly going and speaking on college campuses despite the risk of violence because they figure about half the audience don't really have clearly defined political beliefs yet. i'm the only conservative they're going to hearing for years of college. i've had a lot of things like this happen, but i'll give you one. a syracuse university went out and one of them keeps telling me what they see the green meaning.

green said the symmetry of the data. i said what are your secret vault? is that no, used to be green. i said retching shoe? is that i thought i'd give you the speech. it was right after 9/11. so it does make a difference for kids who are just forming their opinions. if you speak the truth, the truth is inherently appealing. >> thanks for stopping by. i'd like to read to quotes and ask you to comment on both of them. one you may know very well from page 14. islam is democrats can win elections, they're perfectly happy to turn america into a banana republic for social security putting us through the entire democratic party which fuses to do with entitlement. the second hokum american people want to cut spending because cutting spending both in fact treated better environment for job creation to mentally current issue with entitlement programs, that's what the next processes

for her. we'll have plenty of opportunities to talk about that. march 3, 2011, speaker of the house of representatives. is it safe to say both parties have a pretty unreliable record on pursuing entitlement? [laughter] yes, there is. by the way, if i was picking up a most choice quotes from the book, the one of social security reform would not be it. no, i've said this to republican audiences. they may complain about politicians and their chickens, but sometimes they're not chickens. the respondent to the people and that's the great thing about the tea party movement. you do have americans who haven't really been thinking about politics. they're busy. they have jobs. and now they are starting to notice that social security and medicare or ponzi schemes. there is setup as ponzi schemes. i don't know if y'all watch msnbc as obsessively as i do,

but they're constantly denouncing the idea that we are using the against social security. it is the definition of a ponzi scheme. incoming money goes out to current recipients. that is bernie made us plan. and you know, the creators of social security knew perfectly well they were creating a ponzi scheme. everyone above them and they'd be dead in very before it went bankrupt and that's what happened. we have to be able to educate people about that. i think republicans instead of proposing plans to reform social security and medicare should do nothing but go on tv and talk about what the problems are, how it's going to be bankrupt in 10 years, how medicare recipients receive three times with a pagan. just keep talking about the problem let's see what democrats have to say. >> yeah, sure.

[inaudible] >> you mean it is unfair to throw michele bachmann in the same boat as sarah palin? i think she emerged from that comparison on monday night. i think michelle bachmann is magnificent. i also think you can win the presidency from the house of representatives. so if any of you are from minnesota come you better do some organizing so she can run for governor or the senate. thank you. you see they take my orders. >> thank you very much, ann. >> thank you. [applause] >> please file an orderly line. ms. coulter will be here signing books. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> i keep seeing you at these things i don't get to talk to you. >> you've got a lot of fans here, but i just wanted to say hello. >> nice of you.

>> nice to meet you. >> who's that? [laughter] >> very nice young man. >> who's that? >> the third one is actually mine. >> this one will be for mary kate. >> mary kate. >> that was fun. are you from michigan?

>> no, i just went to school there. thankthank you very much. >> thank you. >> hello. goodbye at the the cover sign? make it to kevin, please. i'm glad you took the suggestions. beautiful cover. >> there you go. >> thank you very much. >> i thought you looked familiar. excellent. >> what you're doing now, elizabeth? >> great. don't go to law school.

>> nice to meet you, christina. >> i just want to say i graduated from college in your laptop be more than any of my successors. >> thank you. hello. nice to meet you, jesse. >> i think it makes an excellent father's day gifts. >> can you do it to don? >> where you from? >> i'm from texas. >> i have a lot of fans in texas. >> dirty work for? [inaudible] >> okay. >> hi, i'm sir. it's for father's day. he's a big fan.

>> i'm from maryland originally. they've got a growing tea party movement, though. >> nice to meet you. >> pleasure meeting you. >> yes, please. tom. >> i is an current family in maryland. [inaudible conversations] for who clark thank you.

>> hello. >> for more again? what he doing in washington? does this for you? i'm glad you were in town for that. was the graduation? >> students are graduating tomorrow. thank you very much. >> this way, sir. >> nice to meet you. sir with an h. >> you got it. >> what are we doing in libya? >> methane. >> thank you.

nice to meet you, erica. he looks familiar. >> this is for my dad, hoss. that would be lovely. thank you for all you do. >> that's because i always play mine. >> struggling under the iran thing. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> what are you trying? >> the last person who had done that. >> no, i talked to the staff there. he's not gone. >> can you have a cocktail and then we can finish this? >> you look as great as ever. >> you also mention mccarthy. >> i did. that's my girl. we can't let them go. >> see you later.

>> thanks. thank you for everything you do. >> thank you. is this for you? that's nice. we can read it at the same time. fantastic. you're a genius. otherwise there could be a fighter but the book. >> i have a question for you. [inaudible] >> i may be back there in the next month with a family reunion. >> hello. >> nice to meet you. >> nice to meet you.

[inaudible conversations] >> medical. now i can recover this. even when i'm really concentrating. >> hello, ann. >> nice to meet you, tom. fantastic father's day. due out this for patcher? >> utility that.

did you get a father's day gift? >> he passed away a few years ago. here, i've got to give it to you. >> thank you. that's very nice. my father is the quarter i get it from. >> i guess it's the irish catholic in me. nice to meet you. >> i wanted to thank you for your comment. >> thank you. >> we were stuck in traffic. we were afraid he was a distraction. >> exactly. >> sidney? >> yeah. >> it's the perfect gift. >> a good gift for father's day. >> thank you.

>> hello, nice to meet you. okay wait, i'm going to have you -- [inaudible] >> that's nice of you. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] relaunching her new book to demonic hosted by the heritage foundation. to find out more, visit anncoulter.com.

university chicago professor, hutu politicians lie to? >> basically to audiences. one, they lie to foreign audiences, the leaders in the public and the number two, they lie to their own people. >> to whom do they tell the truth? >> the often tell the truth. in fact politicians, leaders rarely lie to foreign audiences and to their own people. if you think about it it makes sense. if you lie all the time, nobody would believe you and if nobody believes you it wouldn't make sense to lie to reapply it is

most effective when you don't do it very often, and therefore, you are in a position to catch people off guard. >> keefer examples in your book why leaders lie. about american presidents and some specific examples about when they fly. >> i have a whole slew of examples. am i fever dixie glycol and noble lie is the speech of president kennedy told to end the cuban missile crisis. kennedy hoped to end of the cuban missile crisis by getting khrushchev to simply withdraw the soviet missiles from cuba, but the end of the crisis khrushchev told him he would only remove the soviet missiles from cuba if kennedy would remove the equivalent missiles that we had in turkey. those were the jupiter missiles. kennedy had no problem removing those missiles in fact he told the pentagon to get the missiles out of turkey before the cuban

missile crisis. but he understood full well he could not tell the american public and he could not tell the europeans especially the turks that he would agree to a deal we would take the jupiter missiles out of turkey, so he told khrushchev she could say nothing about the deal, and if anyone in the american media suspected the deal and asked him whether there was a deal, kennedy would have to lie so khrushchev should understand the deal was still on and of course the media quickly picked up the possibility there was a deal in the asked kennedy and his lieutenants about it and they like it, and i think that this was a smart lawyer to tell because kennedy ended the cuban missile crisis, and given the gravity of the situation at that time i think it was imperative that he bring it to an end without the possibility of war and he did that and felt the only way he could do it is by telling a lie. >> did fdr lie to get us into

world war ii? >> he lied to try to get us into world war ii. in late summer of 1941, there was a naval incident in the atlantic ocean and faulting the uss rear which was a u.s. navy surface ships that involved in an operation with a british aircraft and they ran into a german submarine and what roosevelt did is told law is for the purpose of getting us into world war ii because at that time he is desperate to get us into the war and he was having a great difficulty doing it because he was dealing with isolationist america. so he told a lie to try to get us in but it didn't work. it took pearl harbor to get us into the war. >> professor when the world leaders get behind closed doors to the lie to each other? >> hardly ever and the main reason is that there's not a great deal of trust to begin

with went to world leaders get behind closed doors. states tend not to trust each other very much. ronald reagan really hit the nail on the head when he said trust but verify. he said you really can't trust people you have to verify that they are telling the truth. so, it's really going to be a highly unusual circumstance where one leader is in a position where he or she can bamboozle another leader. so you just don't see much of that kind of lie. you see some for sure but not much. >> when you see a president having a special relationship with another world leader does that tell you anything about their truest level? >> i think it usually is a function of strategic factors. winston churchill and franklin d. roosevelt had a special relationship before and that relationship was very intense in the year before pearl harbor

because winston churchill wanted the united states to get involved in world war ii very much and franklin d. roosevelt himself wanted to get us into the war so the two of them worked hand-in-hand to do everything they could to drag the united states into the war. they had a special relationship, but they had no incentive to lie to each other. in fact all of the incentives were to work closely with one another to get us into the war. >> politically white leaders find it easy to lie to their own public than the other international leaders? >> it's actually quite simple. it's easiest to lie when there's trust between two people or to groups. and in international politics there isn't much trust between any two states. one leader dealing with another leader in most cases there is not much trust there for a kind of hard to live because the other side is distrustful. but when you're dealing with

your own the public in most cases public tended to trust their leaders. they think the leaders are working not for their own good. the president of the united states we think he's trying to protect us. international politics is a rough-and-tumble business and leaders doing their best to maintain the security of our country. so there's a certain level of trust between the public and its leadership, and whenever there is that element of trust, it means of the possibility of telling a lie or waging deception campaign is great, and of course we saw this in the run-up to the iraq war. i think the american people by and large trusted the bush administration. this isn't to say there were some americans who distrusted president bush, but most americans trusted him, and he was therefore able to tell a handful of law is that helped get us into that war. >> john mearsheimer, we often

hear about the special relationship between the u.s. and england, and given the special status of that relationship, are there lies told between the two nations as well? >> tony blair, bill clinton, george bush, tony blair, very close. >> i looked very carefully at the relationship between tony blair and bill clinton and then tony blair and george w. bush, and i know a great deal about the bush and lawyer relationship because both of them were involved in dragging their country into the war against iraq in march of 2003. and i think in both cases both the case of tony blair and of george w. bush there is evidence they told a hand full of lies to the republics, but there is no evidence that they told lies to each other. in fact they worked hand-in-hand to drag the united states and britain into the war. >> did you write the book

between -- before the wikileaks that was so? >> i began on the book a long time ago in fact in 2003 and what happened is i got a call from a man named serge in "the new york times" who was writing a piece for the review section of the times on the international alliance and he and i had never met but he said for some reason when he thought about the subject my name popped into his head. >> why do you think that was? >> i'm not sure, probably i am a well-known realist and someone who believes in the politics likely to expect the state's law a a lot and by the way when i first start of the researchers said i would find evidence of research laying all the time and i was actually quite shocked that is not the case here told quite rarely and i used to go around the country talking about the subject, this is before the book was published and i would tell the audience is i can't find much evidence of slowing. it was amazing how cynical people were. they said we can't believe that.

you're just not looking hard enough the fact is there's not that much evidence of lobbying. but anyway, she asked me on the phone with my thoughts were on the subject and i told them i'd never given any thought to the subject and moreover i knew of no literature on it so i asked him to tell me what he was thinking and i would just bounce off his ideas which is what we did for about an hour we had a very fruitful conversation and i made a short memo for the record and a few months later somebody asked me to give a talk at mit and i decided to talk on this subject and lo and behold a few years later i ended up in this book. >> would this be different if you wrote it after wikileaks? >> nope. in fact i felt quite carefully and a lot of the wikileaks documents and stories about the wikileaks that have come out over the past year and a half. and i think that what you see with the wikileaks document is pretty much in sync with what i say in the book.

you don't see a lot of evidence of mauney. in fact, it seems to me from the wikileaks document that the leaders are quite blunt with each other behind closed doors. this isn't to say you don't see evidence of lobbying but to the extent you do, it is of the leaders lobbying to their own country more often than lying to each other, and that of course is consistent with what is probably the main theme in the book. >> professor mearsheimer, how do you compare the u.s. to other countries when it comes to the issue of lobbying? >> i think you'll find more evidence of the united states lobbying than most other countries. this is in part due to the fact the united states is a democracy. one should expect to find more lobbying in the democracy than and authoritarians state. >> why? >> the simple reason the democratic leaders are accountable to the public. they have to explain to the public why they're doing xy or

z. any time a democratic leader pursues an unpopular policy, he or she is going to be tempted to tell a lie to get the public to go along with that policy of the leader thinks is nevertheless a smart policy. if you are a dictator you don't really have to worry very much about what your public thinks about a particular policy. you can pretty much do what you want. so the incentive to lie would be greater in the democracy than the non-democracy. also in the american case because we have a penchant for fighting a war iraq twice in distant places. presidents are going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting to get the american people to buy it on to these enterprises. this is why president bush went to great lengths to convince people and what president johnson had to lie about the gulf of tonkin incident in august, 1964 to get the american people and the american congress to bite on to the vietnam war

and it's why as we talked about earlier in the conversation president roosevelt had to tell a lie about the incident in the summer of 41 to get isolationist america into world war ii. the american people are not that enthusiastic about fighting a the war. they tend to be a much more enthusiastic and therefore it's going to be a serious temptation to deceive. >> is it dangerous for presidents to lie to congress? >> there's a potential danger for sure. first of all, one can tell a story where it makes good strategic sense for a president who believes he has a smart policy to tell a lie to congress or the american people and if he proves to be correct, then that's a smart why. but often what happens in these cases is that the reason that the president has to lie is the policy is not a very smart one and it's actually the people or the congress resisting the

president who had the better side of the story. if you think about the iraq for mack, president bush thought he had the better side of the story. he thought he could deceive the american people and in the end he would be proven right. but he wasn't proven right. the iraq war turned out to be a disaster and had negative effects for the war in afghanistan. it was an ill-conceived scheme. so on that resistance existed in congress and the american politics was basically correct. all the people who oppose the war were smart and president bush and his lieutenants were wrong. i have to be very clear here i do not think president bush and his lieutenants life for selfish reasons. they lied and they took the united states to the war and iraq because they thought that was in the american national interest. they thought they were doing good for america but the fact is they didn't. they didn't pursue a smart policy, and the naysayers have the stronger hand to play and

it's just too bad they didn't carry it. estimate 1976 jimmy carter's campaign i will never lie to you was one of the lines he used to read did he live up to that? >> he told of least one why i know of and that is when it became clear that the iran rescue mission was going to be exposed she had his press secretary lie to the newsman who smelled this operation was about to take place president carter and jody powell did the right thing. i'm sure none of them felt good about. what's very interesting about longing as a form of deception is if you think about it, we engage in deception all the time in our daily lives. what we call it is spinning. when u.s. president obama hauer

the american economy's today? she's been coming he tells you of positive news coming he downplays or omits the negative news. when a boy meets a girl the boy wants to date that girl he goes to great lengths to portray himself in the most positive light. he's spending. deception is part of daily life, but lobbying is a special form of deception, and most people in society, the vast majority of people in our society would require being called a lawyer. there's something really terrible about lobbying. as a result of that, i don't think leaders who lie to their people are leaders who lie to other leaders feel good about it. there may be a few exceptions, adolf hitler flexible, not going to care one way or the other but someone like dwight eisenhower, i think even john f. kennedy, very, very reluctant to lie for i think moral reasons, it's just a form of behavior that is

actually quite a detestable but the fact is when you're dealing with international politics, and if the security of your country is on the line, you wouldn't hesitate to lie not because you are an evil person but because you do what you have to do to protect your country, and that's really what i'm trying to get at in this book. >> are there examples in the book of leaders lobbying for personal reasons were not national security reasons? >> no, i made it clear in the front of the book wasn't going to consider those sort of cases. there are certainly lots of them, but i left them out. i have been on a few radio and tv shows where president clinton lied about the monica lewinsky of fair has come up and people have asked me what i think about that, and i say that that is a case of a leader maudine basically to save his own skin and that doesn't fit the

category of the allies and looking at. i'm looking at what i call strategic alliance which our lives leaders tell for what they think is a national interest. >> one more a symbol of a lie on the international level? >> i think a good example of an lie that backfired involved nikita khrushchev. most young americans would be shocked to know that in 1957 the soviet union was the first country to number one put a ballistic missile in the air, and number two, the first country to put a satellite in outer space. but after launching the first intercontinental ballistic missile, the soviets and here we are talking mostly about nikita khrushchev would be a leader at the time allotted to the american people and lied to the american leadership and tried to give us the impression that there was a missile gap that they had a huge a advantage in missiles over the united states.

in fact they did not have a huge of feige of missiles. we couldn't tell what the balance of power was regarding missiles because we didn't have overhead satellite at the time that could look down in the soviet union and count their muscles so when they told us they have lots of missiles most people assumed that that was true. of course they didn't have an advantage in missiles but what it did is it spurred us to build many missiles and therefore, when president kennedy came to office in 61 thinking there was a missile gap in favor of the soviet union, what we discovered was that there was a missile gap it just favored us because they had been lobbying and didn't have that many missiles and of course the response to their why is the ability a rather large missile. so that is the case of a lie that backfired, and i'm sad to say there's quite a few cases where the law is actually backfire even on the american presidents.

>> professor mearsheimer what is your role at the university of chicago? >> i'm a professor of political science department. i've been here for 28 years. it's been my only academic job which is very unusual for people in my age cohort. most of my colleagues had two or three jobs but i fully than a the university of chicago since my starting days as an assistant professor back in 1982. >> what courses are you teaching currently? >> i teach a course on great power politics. i teach a course on liberalism in american foreign policy, and i actually taught for the first time this past quarter a course on zionism and palestine. i've gotten very interested in the israeli-palestinian conflict and very interested in the history of zionism. >> of the reaction to the last book. >> welcome as i'm sure you know, the reaction here in the united states was loud and almost

overwhelmingly negative in the mainstream press. i don't think we got a single positive review in the united states. the most positive review we got was in israel and more or less "the new york times" of israel covered the book in three separate pieces including one major review by daniel and all were positive, so we got a much better -- we got much better treatment in israel than in the united states. >> why do you think that is? >> i think it's almost impossible in the united states to criticize israel for the u.s. is really relationship in the mainstream media, and if you do it, you'll pay a price. i think much more comfortable about themselves and much more

aware of their affordable, and it's much more open and free society when it comes to talking about israel and the united states. it's quite amazing the extent to which israel is a taboo subject here in the united states. >> why? >> well, mauney who view it is the strongest supporters of israel share in the united states war against israel and the united states to have a special relationship. they want the united states to give israel large amounts of material in the diplomatic assistance, and they want us to give that assistance and research, and other words without qualification, just give it to them no matter what they do. this is what makes this relationships so special, so we have these large interest groups what we call the israel lobby that has worked overtime for

decades now to put the united states in a position where it supports israel unconditionally. now, if you have an open debate where israel was criticized for pursuing the foolish policies or is criticized in ways that make it clear the american and israeli interests are sometimes at odds with each other, then you begin to question the special relationship and begin to say why are we supporting israel in an unqualified way with the interest of the two countries are at odds? so the lobby does not want people like john or steve saying israel and the united states often have different interests because that might undermine the special relationship. instead, what the lobby wants is for everyone to sort of be on the same page and say that israel is an indispensable ally and there's virtually nothing

that israel ever does that's wrong and therefore the united states should support israel and the argument steve and i make in the book is from israel's point of view this is actually a foolish policy. a foolish policy from america's point of view but israel we argue is a normal country. like every other country in the world, israel sometimes pursues smart policies and sometimes it pursues the foolish policies. we have never seen a country in the history of the world that got it right every time. so our viewers when israel gets it wrong we ought to be able to criticize israel just like we criticize the united states when it gets it wrong with the special relationship prohibits you from doing that and to maintain that rather unusual relationship, which again is unhealthy for the united states but healthy for israel. you have to make sure there's no criticism in israel and this is what expense in good part while there's hardly any criticism in the mainstream media. >> was there in the spinning or

lobbying and 48 when harry truman recognized israel? >> nope. i mean, there's a significant pressure brought to bear on harry truman. this is well document to recognize israel immediately and to help get to the united nations general assembly except paulson which would include a jury state and palestinian state so truman played a key role but he wasn't lying or spending in that case. to me the lawyer and spinning that took place at that time had to do with what the zionists and shortly thereafter the israelis did to the palestinians to create a state of israel. the fact is that what is today israel was once with many more palestinians and jews and in 1948 the israelis had to

ethnically cleanse the palestinians to create a jewish state that was about 80% jewish and 20% palestinian. and as you could imagine the israelis did not want the world especially the americans to know that they engaged anathema cleansing so they invented a series of myths about what happened that made it look like the palestinians were responsible for their own demise and not the israelis themselves but this wasn't true. >> john mearsheimer, why leaders lie, was this on to write? >> yes, it was very much a fun book to write in much part because i didn't know much about the subject, and i was sort of feeling my way around in the dark, and i learned a lot in the process, and i ended up surprising myself. as i said before i thought i was calling to end of telling a very different story which is that there's lots of lobbying in international politics, leaders like to each other all the time, but i found that the opposite was the case. there's not much lobbying and

international politics and i was even more surprised to find out that they lie more often to their own people than they do to foreign audiences. so i'm learning more things that's kind of exciting and fun and what this academic enterprise is supposed to be all about. >> john mearsheimer is the author fy leaders lie, login and international politics. also professor year the university of chicago, where book tv is on location. thank you for being with us. >> my pleasure. is there in nonfiction author were booked you would like to see on booktv? send an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org or tweet at twitter.com/booktv. >> what are you reading? book tv wants to