seriously, some form of maybe not piewn tie, but enforcement mechanism is needed beyond incentives. how would the white house ensure adequate urgent sigh from the firms? >> guest: yeah, and, of course, security lines was created 11 years ago specifically to advocate or enhance cybercurat. we've been advocating for this activity for over a decade. it's just a forum of activity that we are differing on, but we welcome the debate. i don't think the administration's proposal does i think i can see to enhance cybersecurity, but i think there are a number of things that we could do, so let's, you know, the thousand ways to divide this. let's divide it into two different areas i think is useful.

.. is the reason corporations are into new lot of things, cost. so we have to find ways to make those investments ne he economically viable for the enterprises sweeny to be protecting the systems and so that's one thing we can do. we have suggested a few

insurance, streamlined regulation, a range of things to provide those incentives. that would address the vast majority of people. on the other hand, we have these ultra sophisticated attacks i was talking about before. one of the characteristics of these attacks is that the bad guys are going to get in. that is what persistent refers to. they are so persistent and you have no perimeter defense. so what that means is we have to go through the model and the perimeter defense to a different strategy. however, we have ways to do this and we have proposed these to the government. for example, we don't have a lot of control over the attackers when they are out there in the wild as we like to say. the internet is too fast, etc.. if they want to get in the are going to get in. we have a lot more control over

them on the air inside our system. so, if you do the internal analysis you can find them when they are in the networking and most cyber attacks of the sort we are talking about our sophisticated ones aren't successful when they break in. they are successful when they break back out what. so if you lock the fields in the vault so to speak, you really do more for the attack. so if we can come up with ways to find the web sites that they are sending the data to back out two and a block of that unauthorized outbound traffic even when they succeed getting inside we can still thwart the attacks in the mechanism we have used a number of companies have used it is pretty successful in its costly. the kind of sophisticated internal analysis. what we need to do is develop a sort of structure where we leverage the company's that do

this well like lockheed and northrop and boeing, they are going to invest in this kind of stuff. but if we can share the information that this sophisticated people do about this on authorized site we can actually create a different model of security for these ultra sophisticated attacks and what we are advocating is several things. one, to deal with these basic attacks we have to deal with a core issue which is economic, but we don't know how to handle security is that we don't want to buy security and like most people ask about the security on the smart phone that you bought and what can they do so we all ask about it, everybody does. it has to deal with that economic issue and then the old to sophisticated things we've to

the ultra sophisticated companies which we have and leverage their ability so they will share that information, and a lot of them are willing to do this and they have proposed this and we would love to have a good constructive engagement where we can develop these sophisticated and enhanced strategies to deal with these sophisticated enhanced threats. >> final question. >> it sounds like when you talk about these attacks you may be indicating that perhaps more intelligence or military involvement is necessary because obviously there are calls for that and that is viewed as the alternative to the white house as the dhs model is the intelligence agencies would still have a lot of involvement. is that what you're coming to rely on when you're dealing with these sophisticated attacks? >> obviously dealing with defense companies they do a lot of work with the military sophisticated banks and others in this very sophisticated analysis of the symantec and a

number of other companies. so, what we are talking about really is a system that the private sector collaborating with each other and then sharing broadly with the broader private sector would there be intelligence agencies i don't envision it. lefty -- the big problem in cybersecurity with regard to information sharing is trust coming and the reason we don't have the trust now is the intelligence community doesn't want to give up source data because they are afraid it will get out the bad guys and the private sector doesn't want to give up the proprietary data because they are afraid of will get out to competitors. the model light just described circumvents both of those problems. we are not talking about any more giving up the source data. most companies don't care who is doing the the attack. most companies don't care about that. they just want the attacks

stopped. so simply by changing of the model of information that we are sharing, we can stop this without getting much more involvement from the intelligence community, etc., and i am offering this as an example. what i am saying is when you are dealing with a basic attack we need to be incentivizing that and we want them to want to do it to try a regulatory model and the resistance to giving it. on the other hand with the sophisticated tax we need to evolve our thinking about the defense strategy in a variety of a different ways that i shared with you but this necessitates the sort of broad involvement on the military structure critical infrastructure. >> larry clinton is the president and ceo of the internet security alliance and technology reporter with the hill newspaper. gentlemen, thank you. next week the conclusion of the

series on cybersecurity. we have three cybersecurity experts talking about the threats the u.s. faces. the defense institute, katherine of georgetown university and jim lewis of csis. we will see you next week.

♪ >> notice the color of the one bourbon. the color that you see is coming from the char on the inside of the barrel. this is where bouron gets all of its color and a lot of its flavor.

currently they've discovered over 200 flavors just in the barrell. >> this weekend we highlight frankfurt kentucky on book tv and american history tv. throughout the weekend looked for the history and literary life of the state capital. on book tv on c-span2 device, violence corruption and urban renewal douglas boyd on frankfort and kent masterson brown but kentucky with calvary soldier.

next from the harlem book fair a four dimond manning marable's biography of malcolm x. this is a little more than anbig hour. >> good afternoon, everyone and welcome again to the 2011 harlel book fair. i am the assistant professor ofo history at fairfield university and the chief historian at theyh jackie robinson museum and i to thiswelcome you forum. we're here to discuss manning marable's recent book, "malcom x: a life of reinvention." and its impact on our a life of reinvention and its impact on our appreciation of the life and legacy of this african-american icon. manning parable began his study as a corrective to the influential autobiography of malcolm x which for five decades stood as one of the most important works of african-american literature ever produced. despite its widespread influence and a claim there have always been questions concerning its

authenticity. publish nine months after his death the autobiography presents a unique portrait of malcolm's life as a quintessentially american morality tale but also has been at odds with the complex individual many new him to be. in addition the liberal controlled press enjoyed the final draft bags the question what malcolm himself might have excised or included in the book had he lived. when confronted with many of these obvious errors and distortions in the book one scholar, manning parable asked the question, quote, how much isn't true? how much hasn't been told? for two decades manning parable made answering those questions his life's work. the product of that work is now x:a life of reinvention. from the outset manning parable contends his primary goal was to uncover the truth about malcolm divorced from any personal or political agenda, quote, the expectation for the biographer

of an iconic figure is to portray him either as a virtual scenes without normal contributions and blemishes that all of human beings have. i have devoted many years to understanding his personality and concluded this temptation disappeared long ago. the work manning parable produced has been hailed by some as the most important book on malcolm x ever written. others have denounced as careless scholarship. an attack on malcolm's legacy of, quote, and proven facts and speculation. our panel will help us sort for the controversy as we examine the legacy of malcolm x and manning parable's reinvention. we would like you to join the conversation. there are microphones position up front so we can take your questions. given to the turnout for this event i will ask you in advance to limit your remarks to questions for our panel. having said that we have this

afternoon a distinguished panel of scholars and activists to discuss the book. let me introduce them so we can move on to our discussion. they are award winning author, journalist, co-author of civil rights yesterday and today and editor of the forthcoming by any means necessary:reviews of malcolm x's life of reinvention, herb boyd. [applause] >> award winning historian, university history professor and author of darker days and bright night from black power to barack obama, dr. peniel joseph. next former associate director of columbia university, malcolm x project and research assistant for manning parable on reinvention, historian zaheer ali. last but not least we have award

winning author, activist pleaded will play right, african-american icon in her own right, harlem icon and national treasure dr. sonia sanchez. [applause] >> let's move into our discussion and begin with assher ali since you worked so closely with malcolm on this prectect. what drove manning parable's research and how might he have surprise -- responded to the criticism the book has received? >> a lot of us began to use his name because he spent so many years working on this project. this was a dedication of his for two decade and the actual work on this book took a concentrated effort of 12 years. he initially wanted to

apolitical biography of malcolm and as he read about autobiography more closely what he discovered was the autobiography is a very powerful story of personal transfoobamatn but is a politicized and contractual ties story. personal transfoobamation does t take place in isolation. what malcolm experienced take place in a specific social and religious context. what manning parable set out to do was mass that architecture. this life is one of certain continuities and seems. we see a very robust detailed discussion of his history which

is something malcolm dracts not treat laying the understanding of the conversion malcolm experience in prison with the nation of islam because he was introduced to the nation of islam. it was as much a religious converleton as much as coming home to is family. many of the ideas about black institutions and independence movement and reorientation towastors africa in the thistor world was something here heard echoed in the

elijah muhammed. we look and to enroll all men of lafayette made everything happen on there and. what manning parable set out to do was give a sense of the world in which this person worked and struggled. >> you new malcolm. he would be 86 years old this year. is this an accurate reflection of the man you knew or does it fall short of his portrayal of this african-american icon? >> i didn't know him as a cherished friend but i knew him as other people knew him by following him, listening to him going to university and listening to him. i talked in real terms about the first time i spoke to him. we thought we were the most militant organization on the

planet earth because if it wasn't doing right we would shut it down. when new york took that vote to come back to a place called harlem to engage harlem with change, a note came from brother malcolm that said we are going to have a demonstration that you cannot do anything in harlem without me because i am harlem and i am not a revisionist. who does that man think he is? can you imagine saying that u.s.? he is racist. we are reminded he was racist. someone said he is racist--but that day i went in front of the hotel theresa on the island and spoke and i was with some corps members who said after he finished speaking -- sometimes

on this cloudy day you watch the building is gained color from the dullness of the day. i watched malcolm's face gain color from the dullness of the day and i jumped off the island. i am so tall i was able to manage to go in and out and touch him on the shoulder and said mr. x and he turned around looking for the person who attacked him on the shoulder and finally looked down and by that time they were getting ready to remove me and he shook his head and i said i didn't agree with most of what you said, my brother. he looked at me and said you will leverage the my sister. i looked at his eyes. we should always look at people's eyes. he had the most gentle eyes on the planet earth.

i read the book our dear brother manning parable wrote. every now and then came across the idea of this man who was a kind of gentle man. when he expected malcolm to cast somebody up because this aggressive man, this righteous man looked at the person with gentleness and began to teach. the point about me in this book is i don't think brother malcolm reinvented himself. i think he continued this journey that he was gone and he went from change after change after change. reinvention means at some point there is something underneath that you are reinventing yourself for some kind of end. i think this brother was one of the greatest intellects of the 20th century. in no uncertain terms he had the

ability to look at what was going on in new york city and this country. he had the ability to look and say i am going to get this information and change and like the boys -- we teach the boys we also teach the most important period in his life. in the same manner we should give malcolm the same benefit that he wasn't reinvented. he also liked the boys and thinkers of the 20th century and also was able to we imagine what it was being african-american. 3 imagine what it was to be a black man in a place called america. that to me is the most important reinvention. you reinvent yourself quite often doing it for an ulterior motive and i don't think there was an ulterior motive here. i talked the autobiography of

malcolm x. did not teach just that. became informational so that manning parable had. >> reporter: information -- the history of our dear brother. we also understood part of that book was not just a written by the brother. there were other people -- it was an understanding that we also had to add to the book and in addition what malcolm had done after his return from mecca how he set up the various organizations and that was very important to us and how he changed and the most important thing was how alarmed people were around him that he was changing so fast. manning parable was right on that. he was changing fast. he was making other statements. people could not keep up with

him. to this day people fixate malcolm at the point that he was in the 60s. right in the early 60s and you and i know when you to a close reading of his life and his work you understand truly that he had moved to another place. >> thank you. peniel joseph, in your book malcolm x figures prominently in that narrative. you talk extensively about his impact on american democracy and the black power movement. what other revelations of the new biography and how does it change the intellectual landscape in which we understand him? >> from the outset manning parable takes malcolm seriously as an organizer, as an intellectual and a global figure. right now we are in harlem. harlem is a city within a city. when i refer to harlemite think of it as a city. some people say it is a neighborhood in new york city.

it is really black metropolis. when we think about malcolm x, malcolm x standalone alongside dr. martin luther king jr. and don the in the postwar age of colonization. he is that big a figure. when we think of the post civil-rights era malcolm is written out of that script. what is very important for us to understand about mao x, he is an organizer. what is great about this book is it showed the inner workings of how malcolm transformed the nation of islam. there has always been a dialogue with nation of islam and malcolm x in the aftermath of malcolm x's assassination. people say malcolm could not have been what he was without the honorable elijah muhammed.

he was the greatest fruit of that tree but when you look at what was going on and how he organized the nation of islam you see a real dialectical relationship. a real symbiotic relationship. nation of islam has few numbers before malcolm x and once mao:joins the nation of islam he is paroled from prison on august of 1952. the next 12 years he works day and night to transform the nation of islam and not just as a religious institution but a political institution. when we look at malcolm x, he is the quintessential organizer. what is interesting is in the last year of his life he doesn't have time to organize the organization of afro-american unity. some say how come he had less than 500 followers at the time of his death? he had helped organize a group making millions of dollars that was now global in scope and he was under threat of death last

year of his life and tried to organize two different organizations. i will conclude by saying what is so important about malcolm is he was a local organizer who transformed the black freedom struggle but impacts what we mean by democracy. he has a long running dialogue with people like martin luther king or organizations like student nonviolent coordinating committee for emmylou hater. transforming democratic insulations. if we exclude malcolm from the civil-rights landscape and the human rights landscape, if we exclude malcolm as one of the most eloquent critic of american democracy and imperialism and capitalism we do him a disservice and we do ourselves a disservice and when we think about where we are now in the age of obama, malcolm would have been a critic of where we are because he was an indefatigable critic. he even criticized the nation of

islam and the honorable elijah muhammed who he said saved him. when he found corruption wherever he found it, wherever he found immorality or wrongdoing malcolm x spoke true to power even under threat of jeff and that is the example the need to follow today. [applause] >> many critics including activists and former associates have denounced the book and accused manning parable of tarnishing his legacy. what is your position on the book and the controversy and do you believe the book has elevated or diminished malcolm's legacy? >> let me say from the start that nothing can diminish malcolm x's legacy. [applause] >> one of my friends said he is beyond that. welcome to the new york sauna. this is an intergenerational thing and that is absolutely

necessary. the kind of dialogue leeboard has stimulated, we need even more than manning parable's book. there are other books we need to consult and read in order to frame and contextualized malcolm's life and legacy. i had a chance in 1958 i met malcolm and he changed my life. heaven only knows what i was on my way to but he showed me a direction and i was eager to follow him. first time i went to the mosque in detroit i was mesmerized. my cousin took me and we were sitting there and he would have a lectern or blackboard on the stage. he is writing all the time as he is talking to people and he misspelled word.

i nudged my cousin. do you going to tell him? not going to tell him. no way in the world by will correct him on that and after it is over we have a chance to meet demand you stand in the aisle when he goes up and down shaking everybody's hand thanking them for coming out. later on in life i shall will chamberlain's hand but i remember malcolm's hand. one of the most powerful groups i ever experienced. like you can pick up a flower and point down a road with it and the strength of that hand and his integrity has lived with me all these many years. i knew ahead manning parable very well at the same time. ..

>> and we've come up with a book it's come up with/a book titled by the means necessary ma looking at thens conversations d reduce and critiques of around manning's book and just lookingg at going over these reviews and everything and trying to gather the impressions of people like peniel joseph, dr. burrows is also going to be a part of this particular effort, and it's an attempt, zaheer, to keep this dialogue going. i think it's a very important discussion. those of you who may have seen

this morning's new york times in terms of erasing, a possibility of reopening this case and looking at some people who for according to manning have escaped their prosecution, and some people who were unjustly accused who had nothing at all to do with that assassination. so you've still got a lot of work to do to sort out exactly what's going on. and i think i'd like to be a part of this whole pursuit of the truth. one of my students asked me, says is this book, is this fiction or nonfiction? and i say, well, and i thought about, you know, alex haley and the whole "roots" thing, and we end up saying that was faction -- [laughter] because he had to create a whole lot of things that's impossible for him to know the kind of discussions that they have gone on with distant ancestors and that sort of thing. well, i don't want to go that far in terms of putting manning's book into that kite of

category, but it warrants discussion that we can talk about the the infidelity and the homosexuality which, of course, triggered discussion around the book. so i stand right in the middle, i'm prepared to take it from both sides. >> great. and picking up on that. i want to direct this question to sonia, but everyone on the panel's welcome to debate this. manning argued memorably that a black scholar has a specific mandate to produce scholar that is descriptive, prescriptive and corrective. did manning meet the responsibility in this particular book, did he meet that standard in this book by writing a study of malcolm that is descriptive, prescriptive and corrective? >> i'm not too sure that he did all of that. um, you see, i come from a generation that truly believes at some point that we learn many

things about people when we write about them, but we're not necessarily obliged to reveal them all or to talk about them if it does not, if it will not benefit the people, if it will not benefit, um, the scholarship. and i think that at some particular point, um, i don't think that if i had been writing the book, that i would have, in a sense, included some of the things that he included when with it did not benefit be our knowledge of this man called malcolm and our knowledge of sister betty. i mean, that's just my opinion. i do know, however, my brother, is that what manning did do in this book is that he did show us that malcolm demystified, that manning demystifyied the sense of malcolm, and he also talked

about how malcolm demystified, also, white america. i think that this is really crucial. because i think the young people sitting here you've got to put this in context at some point. to read this book in 2011, you know, you really have to in a sense have been in that place to understand what it was to have a man like malcolm on television. people who should be challenge inside washington d.c. i think, by golly, malcolm would really put them in their place or, you know, he would tell them exactly what they should know at some particular point. so i guess what i'm saying on some levels when i look at what manning was attempting to do with this man called malcolm

that i wish at some point that we would, he would not have, in a sense, become a voyeur to this man's life. i think that we are so attuned even as scholars and writers to this voyeuristic part of people's lives; whom they slept with, who came to the hotel, who didn't come to the hotel. that's unimportant as far as i'm concerned, as far as this man is concerned, and i don't think it should be our concern. i think what we could truly -- we should truly understand at some point, and i'm suffering from vertigo, so if i go off a little bit, it's because i do go off. [laughter] it's a disconnect, vertigo. it's the very -- i was in the tornado in alabama, and i come back with ears that still hum and hurt, and the head that still hurts. and be also the body -- and also the body that is not on balance, you know? so at some point i just want

to -- is this man malcolm who asked, who taught you to hate the color of your skin, who taught you to hate the shape of your nose, who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? who taught you to hate your own kind, to hate the race you belong to so much? malcolm liberated our minds by dissecting america transforming police, integration, liberals, our government. he did all of this, you know, in no uncertain terms. and he made us also begin to look at the idea that it was possible to challenge white america, um, you know, this political murder, this economic murder, this social murder, this mental murder that happened. he showed black america posture, the private emphasis beneath the public words. and he called at a very early

time along with people like kwame for a black united front which many people are not really talking about again at some particular point. and i think what i'm looking at in this book what -- is that the conversation that will happen now again about malcolm, the conversation by the black united front, the conversation, also, about america, the conversation about what does it mean to have a black president in america, you know? the conversation that we don't have someone like malcolm necessarily talking. i don't mean people who respond to what goes on, but you see the point about malcolm, he was an initiator. he initiated. his life was not just response at all. and i always called him and the people in the freedom moment the thunder of angels. that's who they were. they were about reconciling us with ourselves and helping us reclaim our histories. because i wanted to begin by saying there's an ancient saying if you want to create a new

body, you must step out of the river of your own memory and see the world as if for the first time. and our brother malcolm and martin and the freedom fighters, the brothers and sisters in the south and the north helped us see the world of our foremothers and forefathers and ourselves as if for the first time. this man, this man, this man, this careful crafts person of words. and you see, what i wanted manning to do always is to be as careful a craftsperson of words as malcolm was. you have got to be a careful craftsperson talking about him. this aristocratic sourcer is or, this man, malcolm was, with a communist eye informed us that activism and work that flows from the heart is god-conscious activism. his eyes went back to africa and the caribbean and america and told us to take god out of the

sky and put god in our hearts, our feet, our hands, and we did. and we are forever grateful for that man for doing that, for teaching us, you know, what america was truly all about. and i think that, you know, this man, manning, you know, attempted to do this in some uncertain terms, but i think also, too, um, his idea of always that this man was reinventing himself, that this man was always packaging himself, you know, for america and for his, you know, for blacks, i doubt that he was doing that at all. he was not packaging himself, and he was not reinventing himself, you know? at all in this place called america. >> well, i'd like to tackle that because i think that one thing many people have not read the book, some of this criticism of the book in terms of there's two pages of the book where, that talks about homosexuality and suggestion.

there's deferent points where -- different points where it talks about alleged infidelity with sister betty she because, the overwhelming terms of that book is really the political side of malcolm x and how malcolm little -- i won't use the word reinvention -- is transformed into malcolm x and changes over a period of a very, very short time. >> right. >> malcolm x is the quintessential self-made african-american of the 20th century, and that's a huge tradition because we have got frederick douglass, we've got david walker, we've got harriet tubman, and these self-made black men and women talked about self-determination. so the bulk of that book is a dramatic example of the way in be which malcolm's call for political determination was also reflected in his personal life. because his family are actually pioneers of black nationalism sent to omaha, nebraska, and who are run out of omaha, nebraska,

by racial terrorists, by white supremacists who are eventually run out of lansing. and his father is killed and lynched in lansing. so when we think about malcolm x, malcolm x transforms himself over time based on the situation that he finds himself in. he finds himself growing up in an america where small d democracy does not exist, and even though he joins the nation of islam and talks about armageddon and says that the whole country is doomed, malcolm spends the rest of his life trying to transform these institutions even to the point, like sonia sanchez said, when he becomes this human rights activist which he always was, he becomes a global evangelist for a human rights version of islam. he becomes a revolutionary pan-africanist that people like kwame carmichael are going to pattern their own lives after. so malcolm is always on the cutting edge of transformation and self-determination. and the book we're talking

about, manning marable's malcolm x, the life of reinvention, it's important for everybody out there to read it for themselves because manning is getting a lot of criticism from people who didn't read the book. >> right. >> and, remember, in the black community we cannot have sacred cows. malcolm had no sacred cows. everything was open for criticism if it was corrupt, if it wasn't helping people. that's why malcolm is the quintessential black working-class hero of the 21st century. so we can't say we can't criticize malcolm x. we have to be able to criticize all the icons that we look at. now, when we say that, is it constructive creatism or deconstructive creatism or destructive criticism? i think you can have constructive criticism. so personally i think -- do i agree with everything in the book? and no, like herb said, it's not a perfect book. but the bulk of that book, 95% of the book is about malcolm as a political figure, right? and the personal biography in

the book is about malcolm as this gentleman that sonia said. the other stuff that we've talked about, issues of infidelity or suggestions of homosexuality form a droplet of that book but have overwhelmed the reception of that book. the bigger, the bigger revelation of that book is that malcolm x is this quintessential human rights organizer in the 1960s whose impacting dr. king, who's impacting the civil rights movement, who's impacting the state department and cia who's following his every move because they're scared of what he's doing in the north africa and the middle east. and malcolm's revolutionary approach to islam is something we should all think about now in this age of the war on terror. malcolm had a different conception of islam. malcolm looks upon islam as this global human rights philosophy that can be melded with anti-imperialism, a critique against capitalism and a human

rights revolution. so he goes to both conservative and liberal muslim clerics and says how can we refashion, um, islam in the united states and build these bridges for a human rights movement? >> can you comment on that as well, please? >> yeah. well, first there is, you know, manning marable taught that history is a con testation of interpretations over facts. so there is, you know, think of how many books there are on abraham lincoln, on george washington, on john f. kennedy, on martin king. there should be no one book on malcolm. there's always going to be an ongoing conversation as more materials become available about how malcolm was, about what he did, about who he spoke to, about what he meant. so manning clearly expected, you know, a vigorous discussion around the issues that he raised -- >> and it should be. >> absolutely. because malcolm was not a sacred

cow, and neither was manning marable. and manning marable writes with, to me if you read the book, great humility where he can be definitive, he's definitive. where he cannot, he is not. and people have criticized him for the should have, could have, would have, must have, might have, but this is the thing. history is not -- a historian doesn't deal with, often times, certainty. you also deal with probability. and your job is working with a string of artifacts that maybe you have maybe three artifacts to cover a month of activity. what is the meaning of these three artifacts in kruking the subject's life over -- in constructing the subject's life over the course of that month? we don't know exactly what he did day in this and day out, but you can approximate it based on patterns that you see from these artifacts. so when manning set out to do

this biography, he began building a chronology. and i just want to give people a little about it because i don't want people to think he approached it in a flippant way, right? there are some points many where i think the language may be a little flippant, but for the most part i think people should know that he approached these issues, including the sensitive issues, with great gravity and grappled with how he should represent it or if he should represent it at all. so he compiled this massive chronology, drawing on letters, correspondence, bureau documents, manhattan district attorney's case file, oral history interviews that he did, that were archived here at the schaumberg, at columbia, at the research center at howard, um, you know, so muhammad speaks newspaper, amsterdam newspaper, i mean, he -- so, you know, drawing on all of these materials begins to plug them into this chronology. and where you find or where we

found and where he found clusters of these sources, those events, those items became sign posts. they, obviously, were significant if they generated three or four newspaper articles. i'll give you an example. in the autobiography of malcolm x and in malcolm's popular narrative as we know most people believe his first international travel took place after he left the nation of islam. that is not true. malcolm travel toss the middle east and africa in 1959. now n his biography it's one line, and then he moves on, right? manning gives it three to four pages of detail because malcolm wrote articles from khartoum, from saudi arabia, the bureau of special services and fbi documented this trip. while he was in egypt he met with anwar sadat who was not yet -- and this was before he became president. nasser invited him to a meeting.

he said, i'll hold on that, you should meet with elijah mohamed first. he writes this article in the pittsburgh courier about all of these connections he's make anything 1959 while still in the nation of islam. fast forward to 1964 when he's traveling, guess who he begins writing? guess who he begins contacting? the people that he met in 1959. so this is the kind of work that is done in this book. so you get a fuller sense that what happens in 1964 doesn't come out of nowhere, it comes out of this longer engagement malcolm had with the muslim world. now, as to the, um, the human side of malcolm, you know, malcolm, um, most of us who have studied malcolm, read his autobiography, read his speeches or listened to his speeches captivating -- one of the best speakers of the 20th century, sharp political thinker. but he was not a political machine. he was a human being. he was, i mean, he really tried

to be a machine at one point according to what we have in this book. he has to check himself into the hospital for exhaustion. and, like, a few days later he's back out the hospital on the road again. but what's important, you know, and this may be a generational thing in terms of historians, and manning really tried to debate or really tried to come to an understanding of what was public and what was private, and why with was the private important in certain instances. in the case of malcolm's challenges that he had with his marriage with dr. betty she because, i think -- and what this comes across is the head of a religious community that is patriarchal, right? that promotes a certain gender-constructed gender roles of men and women. >> all about -- [inaudible] >> right? that's true. so he is trying to impose this part of the challenges in his family is his trying to impose this, these gender roles and

expectations in his personal family. malcolm as much as he was a dynamic political thinker, we have to be critical of him on the issues of gender. in his own autobiography, you know, he says of his wife, like, i think i trust her, right? maybe 75% of the time. in the his evolution as a political organizer, it isn't until he's with the oaau that he appoints a woman or several women to lead up his organizing. so, i mean, i think one of the reasons why we have to explore his personal relationship to gender and gender roles is because as we move forward as the black freedom movement, we have to have a conversation about gender. we have to have a conversation about -- and it's not just about, you know, protecting women. that is part of it. but if you're protecting women only if they submit to your understanding of what women should do, then we have to be critical of that, right? and so these are some of the areas where i think, um,

manning -- and people have said humanizing, and now humanizing is, apparently, a bad word, called a human being. but manning's humanizing of malcolm, i think, gives us a couple of things. one, it tells us that you don't have to be perfect to accomplish great things, and malcolm was not perfect and accomplished great things. see, when you have this vision of an unblemished hero on a pedestal out of reach and then we try to present that to ourselves and to our children who know we are not unblemished, who know we have human failings, we're like, oh, that's somebody to be worshiped, that's somebody to be adored. that's not somebody like us. and and i think what manning tried to do is give us as comprehensive a view of malcolm and all of his complexity. and we can debate different aspects of this, but i think manning would have welcomed that debate. he was not perfect himself, and like i said, a historian oftentimeses has to rely on

probabilities where certainties don't exist. and if you have, like, if you have to construct the life of someone who lived 39 years, and you, you know, think of your own life. how much of your life is documented so that if a historian came along would they really be able to compile an accurate accounting of your day-to-day activities? probably not. they would go on maybe two or three letters you sent, a few christmas cards, a few birthday cards, a few e-mails. think of, my god, what you've posted on facebook. [laughter] do you really want somebody building your life story off of that? but this is what historians try to do. and in some cases they succeed admirably, and be i think many cases manning does that using malcolm's diaries which are here at the schaumberg. he's the first scholar to publish a critical investigation of malcolm's life based on his diaries. you see malcolm writing islam is our bridge to africa, and

african-american is the bridge to islam. i mean, you see him working and trying to make these connections. and so i think, um, those are the ways that this book really -- and i just wanted to convey that. because, unfortunately, manning is not here to convey the spirit with which he worked. and those of you who know his work, race, reform and rebellion, capitalism underdeveloped like america, this was a man who was a committed activist. nothing was too big or too small for him to do. i saw him speak at universities, i saw him speak at public libraries before ten people. he had a deep commitment to social justice for black people, and be he did not set out to smear or take down or destroy malcolm. he wanted to bring malcolm closer to us because he felt that malcolm had been taken too far away from us. and malcolm needed to be closer to us to inspire to do what we needed to do in the 21st century. [applause] >> go ahead. >> and this is what happens when

you have a dynamic panel, and i want to in the spirit of malcolm make sure we have enough time for questions from the audience which will be in about six or seven minutes. i want to direct the final question to herb. herb, malcolm is perhaps the most authentic lead freres the black working class who ever lived. in what ways did his personal biography offer hope to the urban under class and society's margins? what cowe take from that example? -- what do we take from that example? >> beautiful question. let me say a couple of thing before we get to that. zaheer, you talk about -- how many people out there have read the book? show of hands? i should say in the process of reading the book since we're talking about 600 pages, you know, so it's a pretty huge upside taking. but -- undertaking. but i think you have that responsibility, you know, listening to what we have to say up here, you have to arrive at your own conclusion about this

project, about this book. no investigation, no right to speak. you've got to get into it. in fact, one of the things you can do is check out the exhibit that's right upstairs here. i think one of the coordinators who helped pull that together, christopher moore, is here. by all means, visit the exhibit before you leave because you can see, you know, some of this here kind of so-called reinvention. transformation is fine, you know, but i like political evolution. i think that malcolm was ever evolving. it's like a process, you know? new information is coming in. again, zaheer, as you say, think about your own lives in the terms of how you've changed from, you know, one year or from one incident, you know, or from one meeting to another. and begin to get a better feel on who you are and where you stand within the context of all of this here matter in motion. so i think it was a political

evolution that malcolm was undergoing, and he in 1964 and 1965, those are the most important year of his life as far as i'm concerned. because he had reached a certain kind of plateau of awareness. can you imagine here's a man who's traveling all over africa and meeting with some very important revolutionaries, people who had changed the whole dynamic, political and social dynamics of their country. that's high cotton. he's in real high cotton. it's kind of like in a process of learning on the run too. because he hadn't read all these things and gone through all of these kind of changes and a kwame, you know, julius, nasser, and he's sitting talking to these individuals.

can you imagine at certain moments it must have been a little bit of intimidation, a bit terrifying for him to meet with such important individuals and be his own sense of preparation. however, you are talking about someone who was a quick study. you look at that diary. i remember when the two crates first came in here to the schaumberg, and we opened those crates up. i was fortunate enough, howard dotson invited me and the late james gilbert, photographer, to come over, and we opened up these crates and saw all of this here, a plethora of information. tremendous stuff. it had gone through a circuitous change because one of the daughters had put it in storage down in florida, it had been auctioned off. a man had bought like a pig in a poke, he didn't know what he had. my goodness. he sent it off to san francisco to butterfield's where it was

going to be auctioned off. the family stopped that process with a court injunction. all of it came here. you must understand that. zaheer, you mentioned 1959. that's a very important year because that's the year, march of 1959 is when punitively he, malcolm x, wrote a letter to elijah mohamed about troubles he was having in his marital relationship with betty. what malcolm said in that letter and, of course, that letter has to be challenged because it's only one reference that manning gives to that letter, and it's coming from that gary senate. the same man who claimed to have had the original letter and be t up o .. for, i think, $125,000. it was the same man who supposedly had the letters of adolf hitler, original letters

from hitler that turned out to be a fraud. so we have to question then, you know, the reality of that letter, the authenticity of that letter because it stimulates this whole discussion about the so-called infidelities. the other concern about the homosexuality comes from a man named malcolm jarvis that who was fingered by malcolm as part of his burglary crew and went to prison. so you understand here's a man who may have had some grievance about, you know, being fingered in that particular ordeal. so, again, you know, all of the things we see we have to go back to the sources, go back to the sources of these concerns in terms of infidelities and homosexual allegations. take it back to the sources and find out, like, can they stand scrutiny? are those worthy and authentic documents? >> i'm going to let you respond the that quickly, but we're going to take questions so if you have questions, please, move

forward. >> very quickly. you know, when manning was, as i said, when he did this chronology and pulled all these sources and where he found clusters of sources where he found sign posts, he didn't include anything in the book that he didn't have at least three different sources for, right? in the case of malcolm's challenges in malcolm's marriage to betty, that letter mentions many things that could be verified in other sources such that -- including malcolm's relationship with evelyn, you know, according to other documents, letters, um, the memoir of collins who were malcolm stayed. evelyn was known to be someone who knew malcolm when he was detroit red. so there's certain things referenced in the letter. i mean, i think what your point is fair, and this is why scholars have citations, and i think manning is fairly transparent in be saying where he gets these materials from.

even if you throw out that letter, it's true that malcolm and betty had challenges in their marriage. actually after each of his first three children were born, and he left the house after each of his first three children were born. i mean, we have to come to terms with that. if you want to throw out that letter allegedly written in 1969 on the homosexual allegation thing, and i think it's really important how we have this conversation so it's not like a charge that's being made because it's something bad to be called. first of all, manning isn't the first person to raise the issue of malcolm's potential same-sex encounters with oh -- other men. this was done by bruce perry in 1991, and bruce perry claims many, many more encounters than just this one. and around this particular one he found particular sources, one was jarvis, one was collins, one

was malcolm's -- what he wrote in his prison record he wrote paul lennon as his employer. paul lennon is this white businessman. the other was letters he wrote to his siblings saying that paul lennon would vouch for him to get parole. so manning from this says, and it says plainly, based on circumstantial but he believes strong evidence. so it's circumsubstantial. you don't have to believe it, and he goes on to say very clearly there is no other evidence of any same-sex encounter that malcolm had with anyone after this point. so i think it's really important to say that. manning never says malcolm was gay because gay is an identity that is, has evolved over the last half of the last century. at the time, you know, some people have a one-drop rule of gayness. [laughter] like, if you, if you look at another person of the same

gender, um, automatically you're put in this box. and that's not what manning did. so i think it's important to say. and i think it's transparent. you can challenge it, and i think that's fair to raise those questions, but i think to understand how manning reasoned his conclusions is also important. >> thanks, zaheer. >> why don't you recognize dr. ben is here. [applause] >> yes, please. >> dr. ben is back there. >> dr. ben, can someone help dr. ben? [applause] thank you for recognizing dr. ben and his incredible contribution to the history of our people. we're going to take questions from the audience now, we'll begin here with this gentleman. can you state your name and ask

your question? the. >> yes, my name is leslie, i'm a high school teacher and graduate student at rutgers university. fantastic panel and enjoying it tremendously. >> pull the mic up a little bit. >> malcolm x was in harlem in the 1940s, and manning marable introduces the fact that during his time this '40s he was around the formation and experimentation of modern jazz. did malcolm -- that malcolm was in contact with charlie parker, felonious monk and dizzy gillespie. and this music is, in many ways, music of resistance and rebellion and race. i was wondering if you could talk a little bit, because this was something i was not aware of, how jazz was influential to malcolm's life. >> one of the great thing about the book is that manning marable argues that the jazz he listened to as a young man, and he even said that malcolm perform inside

a jazz club as jack carlton as a drummer, and, um, that they were reflected in the his cadence and his speech, right? so in addition to the fact that malcolm being around all these big time musicians, some of whom he sold marijuana to, um, he's really influenced by, um, their showmanship, he's influenced by their sor tore y'all flare. he's influenced by their presence in a way. and like sonia says, i'm not going to say reinvention or packaging. a part of that political evolution that mall.com x undergoes is connected to being in that world of harlem in the 1940s. and i think it really influences his rhetorical style because, without question, the best speaker of the 20th century is malcolm x be, a person who can get his point across the best while saying the most succinct

words possible, and he speaks in the ordinary language and vernacular of black folks whether they're from the rural south or the urban north. it's going to be malcolm connect today that. >> one of the important words that -- very good, peniel. one of the important words that associates him with that music is improvisation. for the jazz musician, that's the life blood of their creative activity. there's one good book, there's no way we can do justice to that, it's a very, very intriguing question, but the best book i've read on that connection between malcolm and be the world of music and particularly jazz is frank cover sky's book. and he does a remarkable job there certainly from comparing the kind of discipline, the kind of articulation, the kind of understanding, the sentiments of that music and its connection to

our history and cug -- culture and struggle particularly as it relates to john coltrane. >> also, my brother, he also was a poet. and no one really, many be years ago, i mean, the year after he dies w.b. asked me to come and put together some of his speeches, and i put it together as a poem and read it. i wished i had that tape to this day. but it's a staccato and the pace that he did, you know, it's the music that he did that you heard, um, it was the high and the low, you know? he would take you there and then bring you back done. and as you say, my dear brother, the improvisation, the poet of the sixes, we learn how to give speeches from listening to malcolm. we learned how to come in to arouse people, but also before we left, we brought them back down so they could go home and be safe. this is what we learned from him, and it was all in terms of this thing called jazz, this thing called music, this thing

called the beat that black folk had, you know? you talk in this very hip fashion, you know? and his, and his -- if you listen to him, you saw him, you spot him as a new yorker. you know? i mean, he was a new yorker, you know? because of how he spoke. um, and because you knew that he was as hip as most new yorkers were. yeah. [applause] >> and i think one of the important pointing to the highlight is when malcolm set out to write his autobiography, he did it initially to highlight the transformation of islam. so he did it pre-nation, post-nation and rendered his activities as apolitical. but when we cover the political subtext of much of this formation, and i think just as detroit red the hipster was very political in many ways, so are many be of our young people

today. i think it's important for us not to dismiss cultural formation as lacking any potential for political consciousness just as we shouldn't do that with our young people today. >> great point, zaheer. brother, your name and your question, please. >> i don't have a question, i have a comment. my name is todd stephen burrows, i'm a lecturer at morgan state university, and i'm co-editor on a second book that's going to collect reviews of manning marable's malcolm x. the first book is going to be published by -- [inaudible] i wanted to thank those two publications for rising up and doing this. >> i hope you have some women in there because all i hear is men. >> thank you, sister sanchez. [cheers and applause] but i have, i'm sorry, dr. burrows, i have to get to questions. so thank you. take the next one. and, you know, one of the things that manning does get credit for, we definitely want to -- he said comment, but i have to move

on, folks. >> thank you. >> next one. thank you, sir. >> hi, how are you doing? >> hi. what's your name, sir? >> [inaudible] >> and your question? >> i haven't read the book, herb, hopefully i can say something. we did study under dr. clark, and, of course, he knew malcolm personally. and helped malcolm. um, i'm going to wait to read the book, all this hysteria to calm down over this relationship with your wife. i mean, i don't think that's strange that a husband and wife have an argument from time to time. particularly a guy like malcolm who was a world traveler and had to leave home many, many be times, and she had a family, and they had a family. this thing about his same-sex relationship, i haven't heard from the panel that any of these, um, folks that said they

knew anything about it themselves had a relationship with malcolm. so i'm just going to take that with a grain of salt. >> sir, i'm sorry, your question. >> my question is that it doesn't seem like marable in his life's work ever approached anything dealing with icons in our community that would have stirred so much controversy, so i have doubts that even some of the stuff that's in the book is authentically, can be awe they wantically attributed to dr. manning marable, particularly since he passed away a week or so before this thing came out. i have suspicions about it. >> zaheer? >> he wrote the book. [laughter] and just very succinctly, the book, you know, this was not something that was run off at kinko's the weekend after he died. [applause] >> good question. >> it was completed last year,

so it was, he wrote the book. >> yeah, or definitely. >> not the illuminati, manning marijuana bl wrote the book -- marable wrote the book. >> what's your name? >> my name is whereas min brody, i'm a writer, and i want to say i feel blessed to be in the presence of sonia sanchez. and dr. ben. my question is, do you feel some books have to put a little tinge of sensationalism in the book just to be able to sell the books? >> well, i, i would say in terms of this book i don't think that, and zaheer would be an even better source. i don't think that anything manning put in the book was for sensationalism or to sell books. he was not that kind of author, he was not that kind of man. he had a lot of integrity. i do think that the publisher is going to take the two instances where he raises question and suggests that there may have been same-sex -- not to say that

he was gay, but this happened in the 1940s, and then to also talk about alleged infidelity, i think, when they're sending out press packets and they want to get some publicity and get some newspaper interviews and sell some books, they're going to take ahold and say, hey, what's the juiciest thing in a biography that's really talking about malcolm x's political transformation, his political evolution and the way in which that resonates for us in our current contemporary historical times. so the idea that the author in this case was thinking he wanted to sensationalize malcolm, i say absolutely not true because of the integrity and the kind of person manning marable was with. but in terms of the publisher and in terms of trying to sell, well, a publisher's trying to sell books. >> yeah. sir, dr. ben wants to say something. i guess we could wheel him over to the mic? the. >> absolutely. can someone take the microphone -- >> take the mic to him.

[inaudible conversations] >> i don't know if it'll reach. >> [inaudible] >> they're bringing a wireless mic. >> they're going to bring a wireless mic. do we have any questions as they're getting dr. ben taken care of? any additional questions? come on down, sir, please. quickly. >> while that's happening, we haven't talked about this one thing. one of the things that manning felt very strongly about was the unanswered questions around malcolm's assassination, and the role, the potential role of the state not only in surveilling him since 1950, but in disrupting all of the organizations that he was a part of. and i think today's new york times has a story that suggests some of the traction being generated from this book. >> yes. >> around the questions of his assassination. that was something that was really important to him. >> great point. la glad you -- glad you brought that up. >> yes, sir, your name. >> i'm rodney jenkins. i love the book, i read the book, and one thing i wanted to ask because i hear reinvention, transformation.

to me, i think, malcolm always had a pan-african outlook, so i wanted to know how important was malcolm's early socialization in his younger years? i feel like, yeah, he did transform and reinvent himself, but he also had that pan-african outlook to reach back on. so i want to know how important was the socialization, and how can we use that to educate our younger youth in today's society? >> well, very quickly, listen, let me recuse myself because that's one of my students at city college. [laughter] >> i'll say very important because one of the things that's great about the biography, i think, is how he shows how malcolm is consistent as well. up with of the things that we -- one of the things that we have talked about as reinvention, evolution and transformation, but malcolm x is one of the most consistent human rights activists of the 20th century. what i mean by that is he's consistently on the side of pressed people, working class people, he's consistently

connecting antirace struggle in the united states to what's going on globally. he consistently talks about a black united front. ever since 1955 he's talking about a black united front, something people still talk about to this day, and he's consistently and energetically criticizing the evils of economic injustice and racial justice. and, remember, malcolm is the person who talked about democracy's jagged edges. martin luther king talked about black america as a defense attorney. malcolm is a prosecuting attorney. king is defending black folks, white folks and white folks to black folks. what malcolm does, he takes black humanity as a given and says there's something wrong with a society that doesn't appreciate black humanity and black citizenship. and that society should be held culpable, all right? he's a prosecuting attorney in that sense, and he's consistent even when he's part of the nation of islam. he says that there's something

wrong in a country that allows child abuse, that allows racial segregation, that allows poverty and that allows violence to be perpetbe waited against citizens just because they happen to be black, and that's why after john f. kennedy's killed, he's not rejoicing in the killing of kennedy, he's saying that the killing is connected to chickens coming home to roost because the united states is the biggest purveyor of violence in the world, and that violence has had a boomerang effect and killed a sitting u.s. president. he's not happy, he's sad. he said that it's a tragedy to be in a country that claims to be a democracy but actually isn't. [applause] >> dr. ben is micked up. we'll take his comment. >> a comment. >> okay. >> dr. ben. >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon. >> i'm very pleased to attend this affair. and i know i have concern.

[inaudible] sonia sanchezs has made me understood some of the errors in my book. and i teach at cornell with my -- [inaudible] i understood that it isn't so good what mapping marable was doing. -- what manning marable was doing. sonia sanchez was able to see what was done. the book was written because of -- [inaudible] the written because manning marable wanted to -- [inaudible] about malcolm, and he personally -- [inaudible]

>> all right, thank you. >> thank you, dr. ben. thank you. thank you. [applause] zaheer. >> um, thank you so much, dr. ben. to the previous question about socialization, and be i think, um, again this comes back to the point of no one occurs or comes of being in isolation including great people. and it's important to understand that if we want more malcolms to be produced, they're not just going to pop out, and they're not just going to come out of the prisons and be malcolm, they're just not, you know? the social context that we provide for our children and for people's development is incredibly critical. malcolm as a child, his mother read him newspaper articles from the negro world newspaper which was marcus -- [inaudible] what are we reading your children? you cannot be teaching your children consciousness and want them to be malcolm x. [applause] this is the point be, like, understand that this man comes

of birth in a social, familial community, religious, political, economic, social context that makes him malcolm x as much as he makes himself, he is made by his environment. and so if we want to see more malcolm xs, right? as opposed to just a historical figure, we have to be very conscious of the social environment we're creating for ourselves and our young people. >> and let me add on to that. yes, he did have all that history with his mother and his father, but also when that family broke down, then he is at a loss, you see? and we understand how then he will move into crime to a life of being a criminal, a life of being a hustler. you see, it's one thing you can have a base, but if you don't have, also, the community base -- >> that's right. >> -- if we are not out there support being our children, you see, if we're not out there making sure that they eat and they have a place to sleep, then at some particular point they get lost. we're blessed that malcolm didn't stay lost because most

certainly he was lost. we're blessed that at some point and a place called a prison, you know, that his brothers would write to him and be tell him about that figure, that little figure, that little man who was going to change. i want you, the brother, who asked that question, from this book you learn this man was a thinker. this man was a person who was constantly learning. this man always had a book in his happened. he was always learning. he was not just listening, he was reading, and he was an educator, and he taught us. and above all he loved us. how many of you can say you love us? he loved the good and bad in be us, you know? he was willing to wait, he was willing to walk up to a brother who was on drugs and in a sense by touching him and telling him that you are this man, this black man, you see, and make them come and drop all those -- [inaudible] and tell me that patriarchy runs

rampant in here. of course. you understand the thing that women talked about, that patriarchy is a monster, that it still is a monster. and the point is we didn't get up and jump people and fight 'em, we began to move this these organizations in such a way that we challenged them. and this is what this man will do coming out of the nation. he is naturally going to come in with his new organization, going to give women places of power because the women who came in dealing with him were accustomed to places of power, you see? so what i'm saying simply is that read the book. you must read the book. >> yeah. >> but don't go in as voyeurs looking for dirt. >> absolutely. [applause] >> go in as men and women. >> absolutely. >> that's right. [applause] >> as men and women who say what can we learn from this man's life? you know, that will help us survive this place called america, that will help us continue to learn, will help us with our children?

what can we learn from this man as we travel to africa that if he were alive today, africa would be a different place. you know it and i know it. what can we learn from this man that will teach us that we've got to go down at some point and support this man, obama? teach him the language, the language of resistance. because he doesn't have it. obama doesn't understand the language of resi dance. but you -- resistance. but you will understand that malcolm taught us the language of resistance, what it was to resist in this place called america, you know? and we've got to teach our children that language of resistance. it'll get better. every day we whisper, it'll get better. it'll get better. it'll get better. and we didn't contrary to what manning thought. we were not people who just honored malcolm, we learned from him. he changed our lives. i could not be a fool on the stage because of a malcolm. i could not be a woman who would

go and try to take someone's husband because of malcolm. i could not be a woman, you know, who would get into a class room and look up even though at the same time he was saying, devil. but i have whites, browns in my classroom, but because i understood underneath this man, he was saying devil at some point because he was saying the worst thing you could call a white man was the whole, the term "devil," because that was the exact opposite of being spiritual and good and be religious and an angel. hear that. >> ladies and gentlemen, i am sorry to cut -- [applause] dr. sonia sanchez off. but i want to thank you again for the panel this evening. there is a book signing that will immediately follow at the penguin booth on 135th street. you can catch up with our pan panelists there, herb boyd, peniel joseph, zaheer ali and my

sister and your sister, sonia sanchez. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

don luskin on his book, "i am john galt." he writes what he sees as parallels between characters and characters of ayn rand. this is a little less than an hour and begins with an introduction by chip wood, the founder and ceo of soundview publications. >> how many of you can respond to the question, who is john galt? does that mean something to you you are going to love this next

program. by the way, i don't know who is doing it but when i drive south from jacksonville, there is a billboard on i-95 that says, who is john galt? may be our next speaker will be able to explain it to us. if you heard our all-star prediction panel yesterday, you know there were fireworks. well, don luskin was the gentleman who lit the first match and got things really going. he is if you have read the program notes an avid believer in technology, but what happens? it stops. anyway, to tell us today with the future could be, please join me in welcoming don luskin on "i am john galt." [applause] >> thank you. thank you for that great

introduction. there is one substantial inaccuracy. i actually am john galt. but, you all are too. that is the secret of ayn rand's popularity. her books are lessons. her books are self-help books. her books are guides to how to live. we can all be john galt. we can all be heroes. just read what is in their carefully. my new book, "i am john galt," is a readers guide to "atlas shrugged" and "the fountainhead" to help you learn to live by can ayn rand he robe and at the same time to teach you what happens in the world when there are ayn rand type villains out there. now, i assume everyone in this room has probably heard of ayn rand. how many people here have read "atlas shrugged"?

i am actually stunned to not see every single hand in the room go up. here we have got two big thumbs up, fantastic. if you haven't read "atlas shrugged," and away i envy you because you have before you a fantastic treat. the first reading of alba shrugged is a transformative experience. in poll after poll when americans are asked what is the book that influences you the most, à la shrugged is always in the top two or three. "the fountainhead" her her other masterpieces also in the top two or three. i have to tell you there's a message in there. it is that we libertarians and individuals one of the -- we tend to sometimes think we are long.

i tell you i can feel very alone. it is fantastic to be here at freedomfest. i thank mark skousen for hacking me for years to come here. is great to see their like-minded people. they just don't happen to live in my zip code. back to ayn rand. à la shrugged was written 54 years ago and probably the best-selling book in the english language which is an amazing thing. it sells more copies every year. sold more copies last year than ever before in its history and when it came out in 19 50/50 seven and was a bestseller then. there is a narrative ding promoted by the conservative community and we know that is different from a libertarian committee and t. saying they reason it is having a surge in popularity is because "atlas shrugged" per tray soup world that is eerily like our world so for those of you haven't read it let me tell you what the world this. it is a world of decay, economic collapse, of corruption and despair, things just getting worse and worse of an invasive

parasitic government that takes over private capital and everything it does, makes things worse and when i make things worse it does them again. well yeah it does sound an awful lot like our world so you can on most say that ayn rand had some amazing prophetic powers nostra dominus so we ought to embrace her ideas. those of you have studied ayn rand's life knows the conservative movement is full of ayn rand. she's an atheist. the conservative movement is riddled with religious threats as she is never been popular with conservatives. we are going to talk in a minute about how that is a bit of a misreading of rand. the world described in "atlas shrugged" talks a lot more, talks about a lot more things than what is wrong with big government. it also talks about what is wrong with big corporations. so we are going to get into all that.

on the surface, the narrative of the conservatives is actually very good. you read "atlas shrugged" and sometimes you think you are reading today's headlines. one of the most memorable villains in "atlas shrugged" is a fellow named wesley mouch. they chose to pronounce his name mouch. i just don't get that. when i read "atlas shrugged" for the first time in high school it was definitely mouch. it has always been mouch for me. we have our own real-world wesley mouch. his name is barney frank. now, i don't normally use notes and i apologize for waiting these notes around but i have them because i want to be able to make exact quotations without error here. you might remember one of the refrains in "atlas shrugged" is every time wesley mouch did some ridiculous thing that made the economy even worse, he and his

cronies would meet in washington and they would say, we need broader powers. you know government is the only enterprise that when it makes a mistake repeats the mistake bigger. well let me quote barney frank. after the collapse of the u.s. housing industry in the u.s. mortgage industry, a collapse more than any single individual, he engineered by from his position in the u.s. congress, getting fannie and freddie to loan money to subsidize loans of money to people who couldn't possibly ever own a home, could never pay back the mortgages. that was all barney frank's work. when asked what we should do to clean up the mess, he said quote, unquote the way to cure that is to give us broader powers. you can't make this stuff up. the amazing thing is ayn rand did 54 years ago.

frank is more like mouch then you can imagine. you might remember that mouch got into government in the first place, started as a lobbyist. he was a lobbyist for henry rearden, one of the great heroes of "atlas shrugged." he gets into government by betraying rearden who has a certain kind of corruption. this is one of these things where when liberals are corrupt it doesn't get very well reported so you might be surprised to know that barney frank was censured by the congress for a scandal in which he ended up admitting to have used male protestant -- prostitutes and paid them and sustained them in his apartment in washington as a base of operations for them. did you know that as a member of congress regulating fannie mae and freddie mac, he placed one of his lovers as a financial analyst at fannie mae. as a libertarian i have no objection whatsoever to his

sexual preferences. i have a serious objection to corruption. we are talking about a deeply deeply corrupt man whose corruption daree nearly destroyed the world. another villain from "atlas shrugged" alive and well in our world is alan greenspan. now what character in alba shrugged is alan greenspan like? anybody remember dr. robert stadler? a minor character but a very key character. he was one of two college professors who was a mentor to the young john galt. and when golf was -- statler left academia to found the state science institute so he could do his experimental physics, theoretical physics, three of the grubby supportive capitalist and the people who pay tuition and things like that. john galt disowned him. he him.

now at the climax of "atlas shrugged" when the world finally totally goes down the drain, the climactic scene is when the government, having expropriated dr. stadler's work, this weapon almost accidentally detonate and dr. stadler's presence in the description of his death at the hands of his weapon is the science in a berkeley created one of the moving passages in "atlas shrugged." alan greenspan is dr. robert stadler. he is the most because he knew better. it is one thing to make these mistakes out of ignorance or peer power less like arnie frank did. alan greenspan knew better. alan greenspan for 30 years was a close associate of -- apostle of ayn rand. he was with ayn rand the day she died in 1982. best friends forever. he had no excuses. he knew better. when he first went to washington in 1976, as president gerald

ford's chairman of the council on economic advisers, ayn rand and her husband frank o'connor were right there in the white house as he was sworn in by gerald ford. why didn't ayn rand's him? she actually said to the press that allen is my man in washington. she did an long -- live long enough to see them become chairman of the federal reserve. she probably thought then that he was a double agent for capitalism right in the heart of washington. it sounds good if you say it fast, but if any of you guys have spent time watching it, the atmosphere is just an addictive drug. washington is like an aquarium instead of being filled with water it is filled with power. if you swim in around in it for a while you want more of it. alan greenspan did. the federal reserve chairman is the most highly empowered, most unaccountable economic czar on the planet earth. it is better than economics. economics. is master of the universe and an

ayn rand accolade got that job. the rest is history. he had an 18 year run as chairman. seemed like it was okay for a while. a lot of bad things happened on his watch. it seemed he always bailed us out. i remember seeing him on the cover of "time" magazine where the headline was chairman of the save the world committee. i met greenspan recently in washington and let me tell you what happens when you go into his office in washington to meet alan greenspan. you see a shriveled little man who was wearing a sign saying, broken. he is 85 years old. his mind is still totally there. his spirit isn't there. he is the broke and man. i would be broken too t if i was hauled before congressman henry waxman. have you ever seen henry waxman? this guy looks like a combination of the original phantom of the opera with rod

chaney sr. and mortar mercer. waxman grilled greenspan, got him to admit that all that self-interest ofcom all that virtuous selfishness of all that individual self-regulation stuff didn't work very well on the credit crisis, did it? greenspan said, yeah i guess it didn't work so well. he basically recanted. so when i met him i said did you really recant? i kind of thought it. he said no, not at all. that is completely taken out of context. no it is not. it was just like a year had passed. i had my copy of -- my favorite ayn rand nonfiction book is capitalism the unknown ideal which has to chapters written by alan greenspan wanted which is called gold and political freedom.

and i have a first edition copy of that with rand's signature and i dotted with me to my meeting with greenspan to get him to sign it. i said, do you still sign onto this? he said i stand by every word ayn rand said and every word i said foran rind. it is all stood the test of time. well, go to youtube. i don't know what he said to henry waxman. one of the lessons you can learn from "atlas shrugged" is if you don't want to end up being a broken man, have a little integrity. stick by your guns. now, one of the secrets of "atlas shrugged" during popularity is it describes the nightmare world of villains like this but it is also a profoundly inspiring book. it is the best of times and the worst of times. the heroes and it are absolutely inspiring. who can read that book and not

identify with characters like dan mctaggart and hank rearden and francisco d'anconia. it is a very inspiring book and i'm here to tell you that our world as meek as it seems is absolutely populated by those kinds of heroes. like all heroes, some heroes are tragic heroes like some of the heroes in "atlas shrugged" in fact. so let's look at some of the heroes of "atlas shrugged." henry rearden, the steel tycoon who invented a revolutionary new rearden metal had it taken away from him by the government that was blackmailing him. ring any bells? how about bill gates? exactly like bill gates, a college dropout created a revolutionary technology that transformed all her life's and extended all her lives, life, expanded dollar wealth, became the richest man in the world in the process, well-deserved and then in 1999 using tax dollars that bill gates himself had sent

to washington, washington sent to bill gates a lawsuit from the department of justice seeking to breakup microsoft on antitrust grounds which is a polite way of saying because you have succeeded too much. now just like rearden, when that happened, gates couldn't be bothered to dirty his hands hanging out with those yucky people in washington and i don't blame him. microsoft is a gigantic company. i think it only had two or three lobbyist at that time. boy did he learn his lesson. he kind of won the suit. he settled it on fairly favorable terms but microsoft is still struggling with the echoes of it and still straightening out their antitrust issues in europe for example. but there is another broken man. he stepped down as ceo as soon as the suit was settled. have you seen microsoft's stock rise lately? you can draw an x on the microsoft stock price were bill gates stepped down. that x is above the current stock price.

it is a broken stock because bill gates is a broken man. bill gates created the world's largest fortune. if he had stayed at the helm he could've taken the world's largest fortune and made it even larger. now he is giving it away. what do we call this? doctors call the stockholm syndrome when you identify with the kidnappers. our culture vilified bill gates for making money. now we'd love him because he is giving away money. that is sending a wrong message to our children. what is the lesson the bill gates? there is a life lesson and a dark lesson. the light lesson is you can drop out of school and become the richest man in the world. the kind -- and by the way this below are a effect to all of us, people rail about income and a quality. let me tell you the good side of income inequality. when there's a guy as rich as bill gates that sets the bar.

that means that something is possible for everybody that was impossible until he proved it to be done. it is like when the first guy up the four-minute mile. thank you bill gates for showing what can be done. we can still have it in america. the other lesson that bill gates is watch your back. don't make a the mistake of ignoring washington. let me switch to "the fountainhead" for a minute and talk about a hero from "the fountainhead." he happens to meet my favorite character from the ayn rand camden, the rebellious architect, the ultimate individual and one the most fascinating characters in all of literature from page 12 page 1000 or however long the book is. he is the only major hero in the history of literature who undergoes absolutely no transformation during the book. he is presented as perfect on page one imperfect on the last page. and what is it that is perfect about him? he is an absolute individual and

every step he makes, every success he has come every trial he faces, he is faced with absolute other integrity in his individualism and a sheer joy in his work. in our world, that man is steve jobs. steve jobs dropped out of college. he was an orphan. a guy that just came out of nowhere. think what he accomplished simply because he loves it. he is obsessed with this stuff. these are toys for him to play with, a campus rim to pay not. when he founded apple computer he completely transformed the computer industry from a command to control mainframe model to an individual empowerment desktop waddle. he made that happen. a few years later, he bought an obscure little digital rendering company on fire sale when george lucas needed to get rid of it,

called pixar. he had this idea that this could be used to create full-length animated movies. he thought that would be pretty cool. he would like to see a movie like that so he found this guy named john lasseter and they worked on a movie that would eventually be called toy story. he spent so many years on it and so much a steve jobs's when he came near to personal bankruptcy funding it and they also almost and discontinued boy story. toy stories in the top 10 dig is grossing movies of all time. has had two sequels which are on this top 10 list for the biggest grossing movies of all-time all time and he did it not to make money. he just thought it was cool. i remember meeting steve jobs in the kiddie pool and a resort in hawaii years back when we both had young children, and i went with my daughter into the pool and steve jobs is in there. he sticks out his hand and he says hi, my name is steve. i make movies. what do you do? the secret is to just love your

work. what else has he done? he created itunes and ipod. that is his third industry. he completely transformed computers and completely transformed movies and then completely transformed music. then he creates the iphone and completely transforms telephony. now he has created the ipad and gone back and re-transform the first industry he transformed, computing. so don't tell me there are heroes in this world. on that panel yesterday, i was the only optimist in the room. look, you can't meet steve jobs and not be optimistic. that is what is possible. i know there a lot of problems in this world but there are a lot of solutions to matt. another great silicon valley figures a man named t.j. rodgers. he is the ceo of -- and it's been a freedomfest guest in the

past. get on his cell phone and look at all the miracles inside of it. quite a few of them probably come from there. t.j. rodgers is like the character in "atlas shrugged," francisco d'anconia. d'anconia showed up in critical scenes when the main heroes were having a moment of doubt. he would show up to tell them what is what. one of the most often quoted passages in all of ayn rand is his famous speech about the nobility of money, where he is at a cocktail party and some eras says money is the root of all evil and he then goes on for 20 pages proving that money is the root of all good. t.j. rodgers is that kind of guy. he is completely politically incorrect. he is the ceo of the major companies says things that ceos are not supposed to get away with and he doesn't die having absolute moral clarity. so i'm going to quote some of

t.j. for you. like many ceos he is constantly trying to get them to have more gender diversity and religious diversity and more racial diversity on their boards and workforce. in franciscan nun named mary gormley, insisted they diversify their boards for gender and race. t.j. responded in "the wall street journal," choosing a board of directors based on race and gender is a lousy way to run a company. cyprus will never do it. furthermore we will never be pressured into it is bowing to well-meaning special-interest groups as an immoral way to run a company given all the people it would hurt. we simply cannot allow arbitrary rules to be forced on us by organizations that lack business expertise. i would rather be labeled as a person who is unkind to religious groups then as a coward who harms his employees and investors by mindlessly following high founding but false standards of right and

wrong. and he survived. [applause] in 1999, jesse jackson came to silicon valley. he was part of this program he had at that time where he went to wall street and declared wall street to be racist and went to detroit and came to silicon valley and declared technology to be racist. t.j. whose company at that time had 35% minority employees every one of them was a shareholder and 44% of whose executive bp's were minorities. he gave the quote to one new station and when i say quote unquote jesse jackson or are my two day siegel. he flies in an over everything and then flies out. [applause] the lesson here is simple. just believe it. have the courage of your conviction. just say it. if they sense weakness they will

kill you. don't show any weakness. just believe what you believe. the hero zeidman talking about are businessmen and a lot of people misread alva shrugged to say what it is really telling you is that all businessmen are good in all government people are evil. go back and read "atlas shrugged." who is the main villain? the main villain is it businessman james taggart. the great pension that runs throughout the book is the conflict between james taggart the bad executive and his sister the good executive. all of the political imaginations executed by wesley d'anconia and the government parasites in "atlas shrugged" or because james taggart is pulling the strings with his own crony capitalist games. in our book when we are looking for an analogy to james taggart, we happened on a fellow named angelo rossillo. is that a name that is familiar to anybody? is the former ceo of a company, guess we should call it the

former country -- company countrywide financial. countrywide financial is the poster child for everything you could possibly do wrong in sub-prime lending. after mozilo secretly sold his stock in countrywide in 2007 the same week he gave a shareholder presentation saying everything was fine, from that .7 months later the company lost 80% of its value at which point it was acquired by bank of america and i am sure they thought they were getting quite a bargain. it turned out there was no bargain big enough to buy countrywide financial. not only did he carry all kinds of unknown liabilities but bank of america still paying. two weeks ago they paid $8.7 billion to settle lawsuits and regulatory complaints about the fraudulent documentation of countrywide mortgages. let me tell you just how fraudulent some of these mortgages were for anyone who thinks all businesses noble.

it is not. a lot of businesses and some government, but a lot of business isn't. countrywide "lancet" $339,000 to a part-time chicago housekeeper who made $200 a week, three and $39,000, $200 a week. after receiving a mortgage he went home to poland and never made a single payment. $350,000 to an illiterate california dairy worker making $1100 a month. $398,000 to a woman unemployed since 1988. now, why would anybody lend money to people like that? it is simple. he could you make a feed when you write the mortgage and the actual mortgage itself gets transferred to all of us through government-sponsored organizations like fannie mae and freddie mac. thus, the connection between angela mozilo and barney frank.

the unholy alliance of corporations and government. that that is what ayn rand oppose. that is what alva shrugged was about. when corrupt companies and corrupt government get together. now angela mozilo was so deep in bed with fannie and freddie it is ridiculous. countrywide had an exclusive deal with fannie and freddie to pass on toxic mortgages at organ rates. why anybody would want that i don't know but fannie and freddie did. actually i do know. there is a program that countrywide called vip loans known formerly as friends of angelo. this is where influential people in government who are able to get loans from countrywide on specially favorable terms. they would have to be pretty darn favorable and when he will than three and $50,000 to a part-time housekeeper i don't know what you could do to be more favorable than that but they were doing it. let me give you a list of the people in washington who were beneficiaries of friends of angelo. this read like a who's who of

some of the sterling characters of our age such as john edwards. some surprising characters have actually survived and are in positions of special powers. senator kent conrad who at this very moment is the chair of the senate budget committee. i love this one. chris dodd, the guy whose name is part of dodd-frank of the financial regulation bill that was only necessary because the stuff lieu up. alphonso jackson the secretary of housing and urban development and this is the best, daniel h. mudd. this is a guy who grew up having to deal with that famous saying your name is bud. his name actually was mudd. is also the chairman and ceo of fannie mae. so, this is what we libertarians need to watch out for. the unholy alliance of government and corporations.

now to draw the contrast of i don't want to leave you the idea that all corporations are bad or all bankers are bad just because angelo mozilo is. the hero given the most loving treatment and my book is a fellow named john allison. is the former chairman and ceo of bb and t.. bb&t is one of the top dozen banks in the jena ranked by a asset size. they absolutely dominant throughout the 13 southern states of the united states, so out here you won't see a bp and t. ranch but if you are in alabama, tennessee or washington you certainly will. allison builds bb&t on utterly different principles than angela mozilo build countrywide. countrywide lieu up in the financial crisis. bb&t totally survived the financial crisis. it in jpmorgan were the only

two large banks that did. how did allison do it? allison happens to be an ayn rand fanatic. in 1985 when he became ceo he instituted a policy of having this whole executive group read out less shrugged. he created -- "atlas shrugged." he created a mission for values for bb&t. i have a copy of it here. this is a remarkable book. i am proud to say that this was an scribe to me by john. speaking of inscribe i john, after i'm done here there will be a book signing of my book as they lost a fair book and john allison who is here will be speaking at 10 time to 30 in the silver room on the financial crisis. he will join me for the book signing so if you would like to have not only the author of the book with the main subject of the book sign the book we would be happy to do it for you. john is a wonderful caring man

and this is your opportunity to interact with him. "atlas shrugged" has been a best-selling book but they are 30,000 employees employees of bb and t. now and over 25 years who knows how many hundreds of thousands of copies of this book have been produced. this book embodies john golf's famous speech at the end of "atlas shrugged." this is basically a summary of objectivism applied to how to run a business. ..

we are in it for the money. who knew what? [applause] they were all in it for the money. this is a guide that is honest about it. what happens when you're not honest about it? instead of having 30,000 employees you have 30,000 lawyers. it worked for countrywide. don't try that one. be honest with your employees. this is a noble mission. we all want to succeed and make money and we understand shareholders have to make money. just say it. there are fundamental values that support this at bb&t i'm going to tell you how this avoids the financial crisis. all you number one is reality. why say that, right? don't we have to respect the reality in the work?

apparently not. angela didn't expiry of the, but people let aig didn't expect reality. i don't know what fantasy world they were living in. but you look back at some of the stuff they did it it makes no sense. it was not about reality, so reality is the prime virtue. the second virtue they ask down to the counter line is reason. okay starting to see the ayn rand connection? objectivism. how did she characterized herself? she's a i'm a philosopher of reason. this is what it is about. reality is out there. it's apprehending and dealing with out there you have to use the reason for your business. aig didn't use reason, lehman brothers didn't use reason. what did they use? computer models. maybe if they threw in a few more letters of would work out.

the third of virtue is independent thinking. how about that? event that one's employees to think independently. let me tell you what that meant two bb&t. while the entire u.s. banking industry was figuring out how to compete with countrywide and earn those big fees and other words to be short-term greedy what were they doing? inventing all these crazy new so-called exotic mortgages and the were exotic has now gotten anagramed in toxic, and those mortgages consisted of things like the negative amortization and the so-called payments. this was the way that all banks in the united states made their money in the 2000 except for bb&t because there was an independent thinker who was in high in the executive hierarchy who said this is a bad idea for customers. we are not going to do this.

john allyson didn't even make the decision. he heard about it after it was made. it was the right decision. so they didn't blow up the world and they didn't blow up when the world blew up because of independent thinking. the next dalia was productivity. probably nothing needs to be said about that and honesty. of course bankers are supposed to be honest they are not supposed to have their hands in the cookie jar but let me tell you, dishonesty brigades business especially when you lie at the beginning about what the purpose of the business is. honesty pervades businesses when you promote and give power to and perks to and looked the other way when somebody bends the rules and happens to make a lot of money that year for the company that doesn't happen at bb&t. the next virtue is integrity. it's one thing to say fancy words but let me tell you how they put this in practice.

everybody here remember the supreme court kilo decision, kelo? the ability to seize private property and hand it over to law to use it for government use like to build a freeway but to hand it over to other private parties like for real-estate development. scandals, scandals decision against property rights. when john allyson heard about that he said there's nothing more fundamental than property rights we can support the so what we need to do? i know. let's declare that bb&t will never make a loan to a real-estate developer to put up one brick or motor on a property acquired through eminent domain. [applause] now it just so happened that she got about a million letters from

customers saying yeah, way to go there there is a banker with integrity i'm yelled in my checking account to you. so you can do well by doing good. another principle is justice important for a company like bb&t. they've done lots of acquisitions of the takeover that is a very hard thing to do because when the takeover like xy and z the employees are afraid they're going to lose their job and the look at the employees of xy and z and they say you're not in a particularly functioning area and you do it better than the bb&t company does that, so it's only justice to give you the job. that makes them a preferred acquirer which means it can acquire companies at a lower price than the predatory companies. justice has another meaning. bb&t is headquartered in winston, salem, that is an area where racial discrimination is

historic the big issue, racial awareness is a big issue everywhere all the time and a national obsession. let me read to you from the book about the sale of their policy on race. at bb&t we do not discriminate based on them on essentials such as race, sex and nationality. is that coal to call race and nonessential? [applause] it gets better. they go on to say we do not discriminate based on a competency, performance and character. you have to love these guys. [applause] now, bb&t is the bank that spoke absolutely bulletproof but there's a tragic ending to this story. in the summer of to the sunday after lehman brothers fell and treasury secretary henry paulson

came up with t.a.r.p., during the three or four week period when the was violently debated in the congress and among the american public, john l. listened to a very courageous stand opposing t.a.r.p.. the fact is his bank didn't need it but he opposed it in general on the grounds of moral hazard and that he didn't want to see the government taking over in the industry including banking than a very sad thing happened when tar passed henry paulson had the idea that if the treasury said okay this bank needs, this bank does, this one doesn't, then all the ones who did would be identified as part of ideas, all the depositors would run so you know what we are going to? all of you in the room are not sick but you're going to give you all the medicine because we don't want you to know which ones of you are sick. so what was that medicine? that medicine was that the government became a preferred

shareholder in your bank, the government took options on the common equity and the government that may decide to enter a 50 page contract the last section of which said the government was developed in the future rules for compensation which you would agree with no matter what they were and further the government might come up with all kind of other rules with respect to you that under this contract you will not mention. bb&t had been audited in the previous week and passed with flying colors created in one evening bb&t's regulator met with john and said you really need to sign this contract. he said i don't need to sign this contract. my bank is absolutely bulletproof. you just audited us. and the regulators said that was last week when we would change the capitol requirements. we would change them, too. we don't with the new capital requirement is going to be but they didn't pass, please sign this. so what is he to do? it's a terrible position to be

in. absolutely morally opposed but if he doesn't sign that, the government destroys the bank. so he signs it. he is now the former chairman and ceo of bb&t. she is john galt retired. when he left the economic world he began an agent for the model the of capitalism and that is what john is now doing through the bb&t foundation. she is a endowing programs that dozens of universities throughout the footprint in the south to teach the morality of capitalism where a sign reading is atlas shrugged. so he was doing the work. [applause] the last ayn rand character in the real world and then in - note to talk about a villain,

back to everybody remembers in the fund had the name of dillinger was ellsworth tooley, a socialist, a dwarf, newspaper columnist who used his column to tell lies and manipulate. you guessed it, i'm talking about paul krugman. [laughter] now back to the you can't make up stuff, the analogy between krugman and toohey, i'm going to quote krugman here he says i'm an unabashed defender of the state i regard as the most decent arrangement yet and he advocates a state that offers everyone who's underpaid additional income she and toohey both hate rich people and krugman once wrote in the column rich people must be defenders of the downtrodden otherwise they have no hope of quote on quote

justifying their existence. so what to kill them if they disagreed with paul krugman? there's a little bit of a hypocritical thing here i was surprised paul krugman happens to be a wealthy man we know from public record that he has a million-dollar home in st. kitts and a million dollars apartment in new york and a multimillion-dollar estate in new jersey where he teaches and i think it is a 6,000 square foot home with 12-foot ceilings and a music room and according to an article in the new yorker it has a fire pit where he and other faculty members have been known to build an effigy various politicians. associates the rich except for himself. toohey and krugman its salt the incompetent at the expense of the competent. here's one of my favorite quotes. the official ideology of america's eletes remains one of the meritocracy. that won't last.

both toohey and kronman are simply outright fliers. no less than daniel and the public editor of ombudsmen of "the new york times" wrote paul krugman has a disturbing habit of shipping, slicing and selectively spicing numbers in a way that pleases his acolytes. both paul krugman and ellsworth toohey are physically very small, they've got napoleon complexes. it is destiny i agree with that. crude monroe by not imposing to be aspiring of only i were a few inches taller they call him no michaud lehane some. [laughter] i agree with the nomish part. if the reason the oppose the bush tax cuts, when he said they are a step on the way to a system in which only the little people pay taxes you be the

judge, i report, you decide. krugman is also probably a little crazy. he once wrote and i quote my economic theories have no doubt been influenced by my relationship with my cats. this explains a lot. [laughter] okay. this is the part somebody says didn't he win the nobel prize? isn't he a respected economist? come on. yasser arafat won the nobel prize, barack obama won the nobel prize. anybody can win the nobel prize. why do you have to be the liberal or a terrorist? [applause] the estimate of the economist is whether you can make a correct prediction. in 1982 when paul krugman was coming get this, part of the council of economic advisers in the ronald reagan white house. and he wrote a paper in 1982 when we had just come off at the all-time peak in u.s. inflation at least since the civil war.

he wrote a paper called the inflation timebomb predicted inflation would skyrocket and for the world bank into depression. basically ever since he brought that paper inflation has been lower. it's been practically zero. she hates the big government deficits in the bush administration made he's terrified they're going to create sky-high interest rates but he loves deficits now in the obama interest to the school administration. he says don't worry that interest rates. the u.s. has borrowing capacity. in 1983, i treated a project called the paul krugman truth squad. nowadays the fancy word for what we did what the crowd sourcing, where you use the internet, blogs to get dozens of like-minded people to participate in a joint project and the project at the time was every time that he writes a column all of the members for the truth squad stay up all

night, fact checking it, catch every law, every ever come every distortion come every out of context quotation, e-mail me with it and i will have it published on the "national review" online the next day as a truth squad column. we did about 100 s columns over the seven years and it resulted in dozens of major retractions by krugman on the lies and distortions and the quotations but before that, it had to result in not once but twice getting "the new york times" for the first time in its more than century long history to institute an official policy under which its opinion columnists are obliged to correct their errors. they didn't have that policy. [applause] let me tell you what is so powerful about that. when they can't fly the liberals have nothing to say.

[laughter] [applause] >> i just got the two-minute mark so i'm going to end by saying i had a personal experience with paul krugman that wasn't entirely pleasant. in the midst of all this i've been talking about, i went to a book signing of his, i listened to him give a lecture to an audience that hong on every word. at the end of i went up and grab a copy of this book, and i identified myself to him. the next week she went on national tv and said that i was stalking him. [laughter] stalking is a felony. he went on national tv and accuse me of committing a felony because i paid for his book and asked him to sign at. let me tell you what happens in the age of the internet when

someone like paul krugman goes on tv and accuses someone like me of committing a felony. for the next three weeks, i lived in a 24 by seven world of hate, death threats, death threats against my family. this stuff is blood sport. make no mistake about it. this is why such rotten people are in public life. either they are the kind of insensitive people who are not hurt by those kind of things or such puritanical fanatics you can't get anything on them. any way you don't want them rolling in. so, what is the ayn rand less than? well, you can fight the power. you identify a force of evil like paul krugman you'll get your hobby or your mission like i did, take him down, pull a few things out of him, make him less

powerful but pay the price. you can do it. now we have a book signing coming up with me and john allison is going to be in the les keefer booze right after here. i want you all to come showing you bought a copy of the began get your book signed and i promise i will accuse none of you of stalking me. [applause] thank you very, very much. [applause]

>> dr. martin luther king was not a president of the united states. at no time in his life did he hold public office. he was not a hero of the foreign war. never had much money, and while she lived, he was reviled at least as much as he was celebrated. by his own account, he was a man frequently iraq without, a man not without flaw, a man who like moses before him more than once questioned why she had been

chosen for so arduous task, the task of leading the people to freedom, the task of healing the wounds of the nation's original sin. mix a forum with presidential biographer james macgregor burns and historians michael beschloss and susan dunn. from the roosevelt reading festival this is a little lessos than an hour. >> good afternoon, everyone.ter welcomeev to this t-note session of the eighth annual roosevelt reading festival being held at e the franklin roosevelt t presidential library henry

wallace a visitor education centerbrary, henry a. wallace visitor and education center. i'm bob clarke the center organizer at the library and it is my great push an honor to introduce our concluding session today, and james macgregor burns, conversations and ratings with james macgregor burns, michael beschloss and susan dunn. because of the special format of the keynote session there will not be a question and answer period. mega-band. i'm certain a wide-ranging discussion between these eminent historians will provide more than enough food for thought today. i would also like to balance the presence of our friends from c-span who are here today. we appreciated as always their support and participation in the roosevelt reading festival and the good work they do in bringing the festival and into the homes that are not able to come to hyde park in person. franklin roosevelt a great collector books and an amateur historian in his own right once wrote that books are always faithful friends and ever cheerful companions. the thing -- same could be said of our three guests on stage today. james macgregor burns can rightly be called the dean of roosevelt biographers.

he of the pulitzer prize-winning political scientist and historian and a pioneer in leadership studies. indeed he is the devoted his entire professional life to the study of leadership in all its forms. small wonder then that he turned to franklin roosevelt as a focus of examination. in 1971 professor burns won the pulitzer prize and the national book award for his landmark study of fdr, roosevelt soldier of freedom. he is also the author of the acclaimed companion book, roosevelt the lion and the fox. together with another of our guests, susan dunn professor burns also co-authored the three roosevelts, leaders who transformed america and the 2004 biography of george george washington. professor burns' 1978 book "leadership" is still considered the seminal work in the field of leadership studies and the theory of transformational leadership has been the basis for more than 400 doctorow dissertations. what he has written about he is also lived. professor burns served as a

combat historian in the pacific theater from 1943 to 1946 and he was awarded the bronze star and four battle stars. user democratic nominee for the first congressional district of massachusetts in 1958 and was also a delegate to four democratic national conventions. a member of the american academy of arts and sciences he is also the past president of the american political science association and of the international society of political psychology. he received his b.a. from williams college and his ph.d. in political science from harvard and attended the london school of economics. he is currently the woodrow wilson professor of government emeritus at williams college. james macgregor burns scholarship leadership and character have inspired devotion loyalty and friendship among the generations of historians and political scientist whom he has taught. one of those is michael beschloss who we are honored to have here with us today. a student of professor burns at williams college mr. beschloss attended the harvard business school.

he holds five honorary darkness and lectures both in the united states and abroad. he has served as a senior associate member of saint anthony college at oxford, visiting fellow at the harvard russian research center and a senior fellow at the annenberg foundation. he is a trustee of mir at school the white house historical foundation and the national archives foundation. he has written nine books on american presidents the most recent of which residential courage, brave leaders and how they changed america and the conquerors, roosevelt truman and the destruction of hitler's germany were both on "the new york times" bestsellers list. his previous works include two volumes on lyndon johnson's secret tapes, the crisis years, kennedy and khrushchev and kennedy and roosevelt the uneasy alliance. he is currently writing his trip american presidents during wartime. i'm sure many of you also know mr. beschloss from his television work. he served as nbc news presidential historian on the "pbs newshour" and in 2000 by the one and emmy for his role in creating the discovery channel's decisions that shook the world of which he was a host.

and last but certainly not least as professor susan is professorn dunn another protége colleague and friend. she is depressed in pairs third century professor of arts and humanities. most recently she has written roosevelt purge how fdr far to change the democratic party published in 2010 by harvard university's l press. roosevelts purge has received a henry adams prize awarded by the society for history in the federal government and was a finalist with "the los angeles times" but prize in history. as mentioned earlier professor dunn is is the co-author of james macgregor burns of the three roosevelts, printers and leaders who transformed american in a 2004 biography of george washington. i think that has everyone adequately introduced so enough of me and let's get to the real reason you are here. ladies and gentlemen please help me and welcoming james macgregor burns, michael beschloss and susan dunn. [applause]

>> michael you and i were freshmen at williams in 1973 together comics that you were freshmen student and i was a freshman faculty member. >> my memory is that susan was seven years old when i was a freshman at williams. [laughter] >> i like that version but you had the good fortune to be jim's student and i hope he will tell us about that and also tell us about the senior thesis that he wrote with jim. >> as you may have noticed by now the three of us have williams college in common. happy to say it again, just in case anyone did not get the point. [laughter] there is no better undergraduate teaching done on the planet then at williams college in williamstown, massachusetts, not far from here, and are only alumnus who was the president was james garfield who did not serve as president very long unfortunately, but didn't mean that he wasn't wise. one thing that garfield once

said about his time at williams, he was talking about the mark hopkins with the president of williams college for think almost 40 years, jim, susan? and he said my definition of the best education is mark hopkins on a log and a student on the other end of the law. all i can say is jim burns was my mark hopkins. [applause] and experience unparalleled to be able to study with and work for one of the great scholars as an undergraduate, williams college is one of the very few places where that is possible. i thought i would talk a little bit about how jim came to write roosevelt, the lion and the fox. he claims that this is because his memory is not as good as his mind but actually it is because he is very modest and he doesn't like talking very much about himself. so i thought i would talk a little bit about how this happened as he is told me over the years and actually as i have

gleaned it from other sources. perhaps to give a little bit of background on this, jim came into a family in eastern massachusetts that was not necessarily a new deal family, wouldn't you say jim? he had a father who was a dartmouth republican as i remember. there would be very large arguments add dinner and sometimes members of the family would go to bed without speaking. am i right on that? so that was his first exposure to the world of franklin roosevelt. it began to get him very interested. that fact did not prevent him in 1936 from being a central part of the national franklin roosevelt campaign. i think you are living in lexington, massachusetts at the time? and jim organized his own soundtrack with an amplifier and speaker and he spoke through a microphone loudspeaker. we want roosevelt and other roosevelt slogans. the problem was that there was a thunderstorm an