>> host: ellis cose thank you. next month on both tvs "in depth" michael moore is our guest and as you know as regular viewers know we had and called on last month. you can follow the tv, you can follow "in depth" and watch this program when it re- airs. you can also watch all the tv programs online at booktv.org. thank you for being with us. ..

>> one thing you're going to learn tonight, ladies and gentleman, is that the guy that you are here to see, who is named mark steyn, is a this abuser of false notions. most of you think you are here to hear a critic, an author, commentator. let me begin by just reviewing a little bit of his life, because i think one of the need things about mark steyn is that his very existence is a thumb in the eye to conventional wisdom. the things that you thought you knew. mark steyn is from toronto, and

like any wise and intelligent person he got out as courtesy could. [laughter] and i mean as quick as he could, like 16. unfortunately he made the mistake of going east instead of soft, so he wound up in london. the back-and-forth between canada and england a little bit. now, can you imagine leaving home as a teenager bouncing back and forth. you know, the great british empire. what do you do-it-yourself? so this guy becomes lots of different things. rock-and-roll dj, classical music deejay, musical theater critic. [laughter] sea. he makes tectum injuries. he writes about opera, opera. this guy lives in the woods in new hampshire.

he is a culture critic. nothing wrong with the opera. i put it in the car when and taking the kids camping. it gives them a little culture as we are about to go kill fish and stuff. this is just a little bit about how cultured and varied a background mark steyn has. this is the getty you're going to hear from. people will tell you, especially people who don't like mark steyn, a conservative critic. they just dismiss him by saying conservative critic as if that is something, hey, people should aspire to be, but as if that is a billing or demeaning. he just criticizes people. and that, i think, does mark steyn a great injustice. sure he is an author, best-selling author. those of you who are here holding copies of his latest book might be interested to know that it was just announced that it made from debut at number

five on the new york times hard-cover nonfiction list. [applause] [applause] yes. [applause] pretty did for a conservative critic, hunt. but mark steyn, once he bopped around and did his deejaying and his theater criticism and documentaries, somehow he wound up being diverted into this life i think dismisses will call it a this -- conservative critic and commentator. they are also wrong. again, his life, his work proves them wrong. this guy is not a cultural critic or conservative critic. he is -- and i'm not exaggerating, human rights activist. now, some of you might laugh. your idea of a human rights activist is somebody who, you

know, might have dreadlocks, and has not made for a couple of days. holding a sign protesting we need to take money from free society and give it to dictators. that is what people who commonly associate human rights activists with. well, mark steyn is, in fact, a human-rights activist. his writing, his work is dedicated to promoting liberty, making people as free as they can be. he does not just walk the walk. this is a guy who, in writing about issues of freedom, oppression, was brought of on charges, many charge is too strong a word, but was brought before the canada human rights commission and the keys to of bigotry. he said things about muslims. he broke things about islam, radical islam that some of the more sensitive people in the

islamic community, if you want to call it that, in canada, took offense to. they took him for three different human rights commissions. now, we in the united states might find this baffling because we enjoy the freedom to be able to criticize and call other people out when we think they're doing wrong. in canada they have a human rights code that says you are not allowed to talk about a group, a person or group in no way that would subject it to hatred or ridicule and so forth. so this group said, hey, mark stein is making people think bad things about muslims. they brought him up in front of three different human-rights commission's. each time it was turnout. this is what i love about mark steyn. when it was thrown out of the kennedy human rights commission, the big national one, they said, look, nothing to be said here

rose to the level of being something we can lockout for or sensor his writing for, although in canada i think it is kind of frightening that there is such a thing as a human rights commission that does have the power to, as the people who brought him up to the commission to direct him and his publication what to say. they tossed it out, and mark steyn got mad and said, i wanted to lose. i wanted to lose so that you would take it to court, our real chord with real laws so that we can put this notion to rest and we could free the people of canada. that is the kind of person that mark steyn is. that is the kind of human rights activism that i think is so critical and important today and that you hear a lot about. with that, let's please welcome mark steyn. [applause] [applause]

[applause] [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. it is wonderful to be here in -- what the hell state are we in the end? oh right, my state, new hampshire. i hope you're sure about that. i never recognized the bid with indoor plumbing. we were supposed to be getting that in my part of the state and the the stimulus package, but it fell of the back of the track somewhere on i-93, so we never did. he mentioned opera, true, and his introduction. it is true, i used to introduce opera on the television a long time ago. a neighbor of mine up north who does sharing, and the upper were

coming. the opera or making a rare appearance. to some opera company. in lebanon, new hampshire. so he thinks, you know, because he is in the woods, like to see what this opera thing is all about. we get a couple of tickets, and he is on his way down there in his pickup truck with his wife. he gets pulled over by the cops for speeding. the guy asks to the driver for a license and registration. he opens the glove box and three guns fallout. it's not in there. he pulls up the thing in the middle and pulls out another fiver six guns. weiss is in registration. i know it's around here somewhere. paws around the back seat tossing another five or six guns on top of his wife. eventually the cops kits will then says forget it. just bring it into the police

station and wherever it is among the next seven days. by the way, where you going in such a hurry? him and he goes, to the opera. [laughter] >> no, you laugh. it makes sense to paki to the opera of. ever been to the first night, those arguments can get serious. i want to say something before we get going tonight, if you are from new hampshire and you listen to me very, very, very, very carefully you may just year a very, very faint trace of just zero smidgen of all we something in the accents that might lead you to believe that i am not a native. i don't want you to worry about it. it is a malfunction in the sound system. we spent all afternoon trying to fix it. the engineers worked on a

nonstop on what some kind of miss wiring. if you go home and gets this speech shown on your television, you will find that i have been busily remastered. there's nothing to worry about. i don't want to distress and in view. i love this state. discovered by accident. but it is beautiful and figured it would be nice to get a ski condo for a couple weekends a year and perhaps a week's vacation in the winter months. drew was asking how i wound up in new hampshire. i thought it will be nice. i walked into the realtors and what trenton is littered with the 200 year old farm house that needed about 200 years worth of work done on that. i follow london elan than never stopped. a spot i walked my dogs every morning. i still love the land. then i fell in love with the system of government.

during jacksonian two centuries ago. self-reliance this is governing themselves in their own townships. smarter than i. he certainly would never have bought my house. believe me. he probably got the ski condo police service to a new mountain. he is there every february. on the channel nine ski report when they talk about fresh powder, they are referring to his wake. actually, a lot of sports bars. just dies, believe me. [laughter] so i came for this land and stage the liberty, which kind of snuck up on me. delivery is allowed in peril, which is what i am going to talk about. my book is called after america, get ready for armageddon. so, a little ways from little house on the prairie type stuff. i was going to say available at

all good bookstores, but most of them have closed down. this state borders has gone out of business. normally borders on the stocks my books in the back propping up the legate the table for al gore's dvd box set, an inconvenient truth, the director's cut. this time around borders is so reluctant to carry the book at all they have taken the precaution of going out -- going out of business. [laughter] if you go to the bay borders command today is the last day. they might have decided to close early. if you go up in concord for the first time ever my book is in the front window because even the losers to now wanted. [laughter] when your launching a book you always want a bit of a publicity boost, something in a new cycle that gives you a lift. a lot of my book is about the

collapse. two days before the official release date s&p downgrade america from aaa status for the first time in history. if you are an author you can't buy publicity effect at. i mean, you can if you have $15 trillion are willing to toss it down the great sucking see whole call the federal treasury, but other than that is gets expensive. in part of the book i compare britain's decline with what america might be in for. that is chapter five, called the new britannia, the depraved city. today's before my book was published in the united kingdom that a mob of british welfare deadbeat's decided to reunite chapter five of my book on the streets of london by burning have the city to the ground. again, you can buy a policy like that. chairman jean i used to be a musical theater critic. this was like chapter five, the

musical. it was fantastic. can't buy a policy like that. so the new cycle moves on. by the end of the week everyone was all the talk about the iowa straw poll of presidential candidates. congresswoman michele bachmann has gone up and down the state's quoting my buck at every stop in iowa. she wins the iowa straw poll and in "my book on meet the press. in "my book on meet the press. between the downgrade and fell london riots and michele bachmann i had a pretty great week. if you read the penultimate chapter with its nuclear finality you might want to be out of town only to the publicity tie in. you don't write a book called after america because you want it to happen. he ready in order to prevent it. total societal collapse is not in my interest. if you are an orphan, the destruction of the banking

system makes it much harder to cast oral to check. i want to prevent the dawn of the first american world, and i hope you do, too. if you're in favor of the post american world, if you are a tenured lefty professor and an american college campus, i don't think you will enjoy it as much as you think you will. i am often asked my fellow conservatives why i'm being such an hysterical old queen about the whole business. if you recall, president obama now forgotten debt commission, i don't know whether you remember them, all very bipartisan and blue ribbon. a few months ago that produced the report melodramatically emblazoned from moment of truth. after that dramatic title the proposed such convulsive course corrections as raising the age of social security eligibility to the -- raise the age of social security eligibility to

69 by the year 27 -- [laughter] so with wake-up calls like that we can all roll over and sleep in for another half century. [laughter] but some of us have been here before. we foreigners know the smell of decay. we have lived it, and when we get the with of it in our nostrils in america today that is a worrying sign. we have an advantage. canaries in a coal mine. we know what that's no means. let me quote another foreigner he spends part of the year for the border in massachusetts. last year nile ferguson, a professor at oxford and harvard joined such eminent thinkers at the aspen ideas festival as barbra streisand and james rowland.

professor ferguson called -- told barbara streisand having blown up in a declining empire i do not recommend it. just not a lot of fun. and he is right. it is not. it really isn't. you don't want to go there, and we are well on the way, deep in decline and heading for the fall. greece or portugal or ireland are iceland. this scale is entirely different. no one uses the t word in lisbon or dublin. that word is unique to washington. when a multitrillion-dollar catastrophe slides off the cliff, made plans with a much bigger fed. one of the saddest aspects of the present debate is the assumption that american decline will be as comfortable for americans as british decline was for britain's when that tax britannic a yielded to that tax americana. it is not 20 of as many next

time around. next time around is already underway. by a 2016 the world's leading it, and it -- economy will be a communist dictatorship. if the imf is right that guy you a late next november will be the last president of the united states to preside over the world's leading economy. instead, the preeminent power will be a one-party state with the communist era of presiding over largely peasant population with no genuine market, no human rights, property rights to my rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, a land his legal, political, and cultural traditions are as alien to its predecessors as could be devised and will not only marked the end of a to century economic dominance but even more civilization harry stifling. unlike the americans and the british in the dutch and italians before them, the

leading economic power will be a country that does not even use the roman alphabet. is very silly to assume that this is just a matter of dollars and cents and debt to gdp ratio. when money drains, power drains. the week before my book came not everyone was very excited about whether we would reach a so-called deal on the debt ceiling before the clock chimed midnight on august the second. i remember all the big fuss. august the second is looming. or is the second at midnight if we did not reach a deal on the debt ceiling our glittering coach would turn back into a pumpkin and air force one would turn back into a large zucchini with to stick on wings and president obama beloved areola flapping limply as it tried to get airborne. i may be over extending the metaphor of the bit.

[laughter] this is classic peltry nonsense. the debt ceiling deadline was entirely irrelevant. negotiating to extend the deadline to maintain the illusion to 2:00 a.m. does not alter the fact that it is an allusion. that debate in perspective. there was a dispute between the speaker and the congressional budget office about scoring of his plan. the speaker said his plan called for $7 billion of cuts for the 2012 budget. the cbs said the plan reduced the 2012 budget by billion dollars, which is correct? every 37 hours. in other words, between now and the time and the end of the week

we will have borrowed back every dime of those painstakingly negotiated savings. if the cbo scoring is correct it reduces the 2012 deficit by just $1 billion. the cut represents with the united states barrault's every five hours and 20 minutes. in other words, and less time than it takes to drive from my pad that state to get back and the time it takes to watch harry potter and the deathly hallows parts one and two with a bathroom break in between all the savings of this painstaking initiated plan will have been barred back. 7 billion or 1 billion. who cares? that is the choice between dead or debtor. the month of shuffling back and forth between the capitol and the white house for "enforceable cut in "of one to $7 billion, lt me give you numbers that are rather more relevant. within a decade the united states will be spending more of

the federal budget on interest payments than on military. that is to say, more on debt service than the armed services. according to the cbo long-term budget outlook, by 2020 the government will be paying between 15 and 20% of its revenues in debt interest in defense spending will be down between 14 and 16%. america, just to get this in perspective, america will be -- is it possible for about 42 percent of the world's military expenditures. within a decade america will be spending more on debt interest, and this is not paying principal. this is like when you get your mastercard and can't pay off the debt and all you can do is stay current with the monthly interest charges. our monthly interest charge will be more than the combined military expenditures of china, britain, france, russia, japan, germany, saudi arabia with, india, italy, south korea,

brazil, canada, australia off, spain, turkey, and israel. add up all of their military budgets, and that is our interest charge and the debt. by 2015. by the way, and that is if they stay at their current historic low. if they return to what they averaged in the last 20 years, about 57% america will be spending more than the planets entire military budget on debt interest. by about 2015 we will be covering the entire cost of the people's liberation army of china. that is what you guys have to pay for. small businesses in bedford, suburban homeowners in nashua will be paying for the entire budget of the chinese military. no precedent on that anywhere in history. the roman empire got pretty stupid in its last years, but they did not say to room and taxpayers that as a matter of policy you are right to have to

pick up the bill for both militaries. and if they had the would not have been so bad because the budget was mostly just pelts. they would have gotten a better deal than we did. permanence is the illusion of every age. we are not just outsourcing the economy. we are outsourcing power. as american power fades is outsourcing the future to a very dangerous planet. this is -- this is -- this is bleak, and i understand it is a depressing scenario. i don't want to give away the ending, but when we do do the musical version we will focus the focus group, finale, and out of town previews and will change it to a happy ending in which michele bachmann sees the error

of her race and settles down with joe biden to run and all seeing all dancing department of community organizer grant applications in chicago. it will warm your heart. [laughter] but until we close the deal with disney on that particular project let me say, its starts with the money, but it never stops there. let me spell out where it leads, a is for addiction. we spend too much. not a revenue issue. it's the spending issue. the united states joined the rest of the world in voting itself a lifestyle that was not willing to pay for and can never pay for it because when you spend $4 trillion but only taking into trillion dollars, which is the federal government model, you can never close that gap with revenue. when governments bins of the scale washington has cut news to, it is not a spending crisis, it is a moral one. nothing virtuous about

demonstrating how caring and compassionate and progressive they are by spending money yet to be earned by generations yet to be born. we are lifting the future to bribe the present. indeed, we have looted the future to such an extent it is no longer clear we have one, and that is what so-called fiscal conservatives often miss. increasing dependency, this incentivizing self-reliance, absolving the citizenry from responsibility for their actions. the multitrillion-dollar does catastrophe is not the problem, but nearly the symptom. this is where i disagree. it is not about balancing the books. it is about rebalancing the very structures of society. art is for redistribution. leftists often talked about redistribution of wealth. when you redistribute from the feature to the president you are we distributing wealth that has not been created. meanwhile, day-by-day in this

republic we see an unprecedented transfer of resources from the productive class to be obstructive class, to government, regulators, bureaucracies. much of this wealth does not exist. what exactly are we be distributing? we are redistributing liberty, delivering a self-governing republic and to rule by regulators, bureaucrats, and social engineers. just this week a former legal the state of california, a baroque jurisdiction his rapacious government independency class are driving what is left of the protective passed a freak -- flee its borders. the burning priority is that it needs to regulate the seats in motels and hotels. it will be illegal under the california sheet regime for motels and hotels to put non fitted sheets on their beds. so there will be a sheet

regulate regime with sheets regulatory enforcers kicking down the door of room 73 of the orange grove motel to check that they are in compliance of the california she'd regime. you can try to resist, the but they will kick the sheet out of you. [laughter] there is an apocryphal quotation to describe the way pacifists assume the soldiery are there to defend the room. people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because of men stand ready to do violence on the behalf. people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because the state agency of sheik regulation stands ready to do violence to innkeepers with non elastic these sheets. by the way, if there is any to. >> clan members here tonight, because i

know you tea party guys. i know what it is really about. so if there are any members tonight, planning on flying in for a lodge meeting with ag grant legal in california, you will need effigy. okay? [laughter] when canada -- when canada decriminalized homosexuality, the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation. california says kamal, yes we do, if you are consummating your same-sex marriage on a noncompliant sheet. [laughter] and so it goes. i was talking to an undocumented immigrant from tijuana. he says that california is already a byword.

these are not trivial things. they represent the remorseless redistribution of liberty. 7-year-old julie was selling lemonade in oregon when two officers demanded to see her temporary restaurant license, which would have cost her $120. when she failed to produce it these officers threatened her with up $500 fine. a 7-year-old girl. they also made her cry. now, when i read these stories -- there was another one in the papers just the other day. u.s. fish and wildlife, an 11-year-old girl in virginia, had rescued a woodpecker from the clutches of a cat, spent a few days the senate back to health before releasing it. an agent of the united states department of fish and wildlife arrives along with an escort of virginia state troopers to

deliver a $5,305 fine to the little girl who rescued the woodpecker for the federal crime of transporting a protected species woodpecker. she transported out of the mouth of the cat who was eating in. serve the cat for illegally transporting the woodpecker down its gullet. these are not small things. two officers. two officers shake down the seven year-old girl for the $500 eliminates stand fine. officers from two agencies, federal and state, make the 11-year-old carol cried for rescuing the woodpecker. they should be ashamed of themselves. this is not a small thing. they do not understand the relationship between the citizen and the state. when i read the stories i always am reminded of saudi arabia's religious beliefs.

the commission for the promotion of virtue and prevention devices. except in this case our religious police is enforcing state power. like their peers bearded man, that could be issued with ribs and scourges. slave ace centers in this tree to the way they do in riyadh. when life hands you lemons you make lemonade and then once the state enforces turn it back into sour fruit. ask yourself this. it is exactly the same thing as gun-control. can control is not about guns, is about control. woodpecker control is not about woodpeckers. it is about control. if a second grader can no longer sell homemade lemonade in her front yard without $500 for the permits, what aspect of your

life can't the government regulate? more and more americans, law has been supplanted by regulation. a governing set of rules not legislated by representatives accountable to the people, but invented by an activist bureaucracy, much of which is well to the left of either political party. you may remember that congress stripped provisions for end of life counseling, the so-called death panels, out of the obamacare bill. but the secretary of health and human services put them back. why shouldn't she? the new law contains 700 references that the secretary shall, another 200 a hundred and 39 to determine its. made in shall determine pretty much anything she wants. the secretary shall develop all health care components that shall include tooth levels

surveillance. it to its level surveillance. that phrase is hitherto unknown to human history. [laughter] it is in obamacare. george the third never went in for tooth level surveillance. if the stories about george washington's wooden teeth were true, that would have killed the american revolution right there and then. i'm not sure even colonel don duffy does in for a tooth of the surveillance. from colonial subjects to dentures servitude in americorps millennia. [applause] [applause] m is for monopoly. i mentioned a moment ago that the aspen ideas festival has great thinkers like barbra streisand. i would like to cite another great thing. george harrison and the beatles. 1969, in the course of a wide-ranging ramble you briefly

de toward in to some remarks about the monopolies commission. he is, you know of others is the thing i don't like. the government says the man and system you are not allowed to monopolize who is going to send in the commission to solve that? that is one of the most brilliant observations on government that has ever been made. there was an old joke. why is there only one monopolies commission. [laughter] it is the main factors, and incisive observations on the nature of government. we would not like it if there was only one automobile company of one breakfast cereal, but by definition there can only be one government, which is why in

george's words, when the government is monopolizing, it should do so only in limited areas, particularly true for national governments in the nation the government is more than 300 million people dispersed over, and it. but i think it's worse than that because it is not just a monopoly of power. right now we have ruled by a monopoly of ideas, which is the most dangerous monopoly of all. in fact, a monopoly of gray matter as it were. take, for example, our so-called meritocracy. we are ruled by effectively not technocrats or a meritocracy, but a cartel of conform autocrats who impose essentially a sterile monopoly of an outmoded ideas. you may remember after president obama's election he was hailed it as the smartest guy ever to become president. why would you say such a thing?

i mean, other than an impressive talents to self promote, what has he ever done? even as a legendary thinker, what original thought has he ever express to his entire life? yet he is probably the smartest guy ever to become president. he is a presidential historian, so he should know. lending a hand, another smart guy, david brooks, the house conservative hailed the incoming administration has a collection of super smart egghead's. if a foreign enemy attacks the united states during the harvard-yale game anytime over the next four years, we're screwed. he was right. over a quarter of a obama's political appointees had ties to harvard. over 90% have advanced degrees. and we are screwed anyway. how did that happen? what kind of super smart guys of

think the same thing? we are governed by conforming croats who live in a self reenforcing bubble. we have a ruling class the things alike in cannot conceive that anyone other than a racist, terrorist to more mentally ill lunatic like my colleague at fox news, juan williams when he got fired for accidently wondering of the reservation for 30 seconds, they did what they do in the soviet union. we will send you to the sanatorium. lie down and let the men in white coats strap you up. you will soon be feeling much better. the new york times ostentatiously recruits by sending its editors to hire people at the african-american journalists convention, the women journalists convention, they hispanic, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered convention, recruits on the basis of diversity of race, gender, orientation, every diversity, except the only one

that matters, diversity of ideas. if anyone could use some new ideas right now, is america's rich elite ruling class. [applause] [applause] eight is part arteriosclerosis. which is really the shortest answer to obama. yes, we can, no, we can't. the zoning committee, the planning committee, the environmental impact study, try putting that on the end. america is seizing up. i cite the most obvious example, the ten year hole in the ground in lower manhattan that should shame everyone of us because destroying those buildings is something america's enemies.

where is that spirit today? that ten year old in the ground in lower manhattan is profound and eloquent in what it is telling us about americans sclerosis. she is for global retreat. as britain, and other great powers quickly learned, the price of big government is in ever smaller presence abroad. first comes reorientation. after empire britain turned inward. between 1951 and 1997 the proportion of government expenditure on defense fell from 24% to 70% while abortion on health and welfare from 22% to 53%. that is before tony blair's new government came along in 1997 to widen the gap further.

i'm sure, you know, for that 53 percent welfare spending you saw what a bang for the buck they got in the tv screens this last week. when they spend that -- in living memory every night. governed a fifth of the earth's surface and a quarter of its population. it then inverted its priorities and spend all that money on its state charges at home. spectacular results that you can see if he made the mistake of booking a trip to historic london. good luck with that. that is the same trajectory every great power embarks upon. you can have entitlements at home more global reach abroad, but not both. you can see it already. you remember the war in all the

papers for about 48 hours. still going on out there apparently. fell off the radar screen. i believe it is in the guinness book of records. there is that to be had. the president spent the first month of the war telling the american people, you don't need to worry. we're not running the show. just along for the right. on the need to know basis, and we don't need to know. not a war, a kinetic scope limited action. and eventually they announced so reluctant to have anything to do with it that they eventually announce to the new supreme allied commander of limited action was general bouchard, a canadian general. i am a canadian. i did not even know we still had generals. as much as i liked the idea of

commanders randomly invading muslim nations i really feel the gate should have gone to a mexican general. [laughter] after all, president obama has pretty much spent the previous month insisting that this is a job americans will do. [laughter] war is hell, but kinetic scope limited action is purgatory. they are all enjoying this clumps of the post american world and libya right now, world in which the global order of the last 60 years, not only can enforce its will, but no longer makes any serious attempt to do so. they're looking forward to that. he is for engineering.

the ideological homogeneity and social engineering of our education system would be regarded as child abuse in any other age. it diverts too many americans into for a less and unproductive activity. in 1940 and majority of the u.s. population had no more than a grade eight education. by 200840% of 18-started for your roads were enrolled in college. a world in which the typical american is almost twice as old by the time he completes his education as he was in 1940. spend over twice as long in the class from, and has gone twice as much attention. education is the biggest single structural defects in the united states right now. no country needs to send a majority, never mind all as is

president obama's ambition, all of his children to college, and no country should. not every child has the aptitude to benefit, and not every child has the aptitude wants to our needs to. for most who wind up there is a waste of time and money and life. hacks' pretend to teach, slackers pretend to learn, and employers pretend it is a qualification. we have a trillion dollars. american individuals all the trillion dollars justin, instead. that is the equivalent of a g7 economy in one small boutique in each market of debt. you will recall that before she ascended to the throne of first lady michele obama worked for the university of chicago hospital, not a nurse or doctor or janitor. she was taken on other hospitals to run programs for community

relations, neighbor and outreach, staff diversity, and minority contracting. she was adverse to crack, a booming industry, an elite america. this is how our husband was coming to national product can't. the happy coincidence with which the ruling crass in chicago are often blessed, she received an impressive $200,000 perret's and was appointed vice president for community in external affairs in charge of managing the hospitals business diversity program. famously complained that america is just downright mean. you can see what she is getting at. she has to make do with a lousy $3,169,602 plus benefits for a job so necessary to the hospital that when she quit to become first lady they did not bother replacing her. leave corporate america.

that is where she boasted. yes, indeed. leave corporate america and get a job as a diversity enforcement officer. that is where the big bucks are. go over the connecticut river to our neighbors in vermont. get to any college and talk to the students. the ambition of most of them is to work for a nonprofit. it sounds so nice. the entire state of vermont is a nonprofit. [laughter] injuries use to make a ton of money selling and scream, and then they begin a nonprofit. it worked out so well that they were bought by the anglo-dutch multinational unilever. i can't remember. been approved the deal and jerry didn't like it. the one he did like it said we are wholly independent subsidiary. the other guy just gets on with

all the nonprofits stuff now. so the entire state of vermont is a non-profit. so is america. when you are 15 trillion in the whole, you are the all-time champion nonprofit of nonprofits. president obama now wants the rest of america to follow in his and michele's footsteps. this is the diversion of too much human capital into wasteful and self indulgent activity. they don't do it in china. they don't do it in india. eventually those differences will tell, which is my next letter. t is for dictate. that formula, the governmental -- criminalization is a disaster. much of the united states will be on the fast track to latin america where there is a privileged corrupt elite presiding over a vast swamp of poverty. that leads to the next stage.

disintegration. becoming a highly singular united states of america. no advanced society has ever tried hyper regulatory director rules of 350 million people. will it work? is it more likely that increasingly compatible jurisdictions in social groups will conclude the price for keeping 50 stars and the flag is to line. prost -- post prosperity america is going to fracture. millions of poor white americans and black americans on the one hand and millions of poor illegals on the other. no jobs for either. i just mean cultural tensions. not clear that when this country is no longer the world's leading power that the molars of dearborn, with a call michigander stan will want to stay in the same policy as the gambling case of fire island. they might decide they're better off going alone. something more basic.

take a retired federal bureaucrat in her early fifties, retired on fantastic unsustainable pension benefits and health benefits and enjoying their early years of what is, in effect, 30-year holiday weekend, she'll visit 26 some street. the guy at 2412 is exactly the same school. he has to go to work at his harms -- restore every day until he drops dead. the retirement that he will never know. those two people cannot coexist in the same street anymore than they can in athens of london. what is left of american youth will be taxed to the helped to pay for their retirement and medical care of the baby boom generation who enjoy the life of american prosperity that their kids will never know. the flash mobs, greek -- lethal

rampage and ask yourself whether there will be more or less of that in oppose prosperity america. zero is for open season. he said earlier, find it hard to imagine a world without america. russians, chinese, and they're making plans. for 60 years the american security umbrella has absolves the wealthiest nations from paying for their own defense, and they got used to it. the united states army lives in germany. if you like the welfare system, good for you because you are paying for it. you free of the german military budgets of the kid beat their swords into welfare checks. now we have decided that we would like to live like this weeds and the belgians, but without a sugar daddy to take care of us as we took care of your. we live on a planet in with march -- north korea is assisting the iranians and the iranians are promising to share nuclear weapons with sudan. north korea has an undetectable

gdp. it does not just have a low gdp. it has a gdp it is not statistically measurable when you compare it with campbell. there is no gdp. all they export is nuclear technology and knocked off viagra. you cannot measure number three is jeep dp. we face the prospect of a world in which the wealthiest societies in history from norway to new zealand are incapable of defending their borders while basket cases go nuclear. how long do you think that race and is going to last? and on that kind of planet it is not hard to figure out what comes next. in is for nukes away. i have just given you -- i have just spelled out letter by letter that thesis of my book. a is for addiction, redistribution, monopoly, arteriosclerosis, global

retrieved, educational social engineering, decayed, disintegration, open season, nips away. put them all together and they spell the -- >> armageddon. >> yes, armageddon. [laughter] from state regulators lemonade sales to nuclear devastation, from fiscal room to planetary room in nothing flat. if you don't want that to happen you need to get serious and demand your candid it's it's serious. it's not about putting john kerry on a congressional support committee to report back about raising the age of medicare is all eligibility from 65 to 67. there is not going to be a 2050 if that is the best chicken do. the best he can do for america is to go and win nantucket.

[applause] [applause] that got up bigger cheer. don't be cruel. he thinks that does wonders for is figure. i think he should windsurf off nantucket until 2015. doing the least damaged. that's not let him make landfall til 2015. those of those on the receiving end need to understand it's not about mid century. it's about mid decade. the united states is still different. in the wake of the economic meltdown the decadent ease of france them raw -- rioted. elderly students in britain and

attacked the heir to the throne's car over attempts to constrain bloated, wasteful, and pointless university cost. everywhere from iceland to bulgaria, angry mobs besieged parliament demanding the same thing. why didn't you, the government, do more. america was the only nation in the developed world are millions of people took to the streets to tell the state i can do just fine if you can shove you're not stimulating stimulus, jobless jobs will come in germ multitrillion-dollar porter thon and stay the hell out of my life and out of my pocket. [applause] [applause] [applause] that is the america that has a sporting chance. even as america's spend the holiday government outspends not only america's ability to pay,

but the planet coming even as it follows britain into the tank bit of trans generational dependency in the failed education system and unsustainable entitlements, even as it makes less and less and mortgages its future, most americans including far too many of my friends on the right is innocent because they are american they are insulated from consequences. you can't argue we didn't deserve the downgrade. you cannot seriously argue that this nation was aaa. my friends on fox news, the most right wing guys in the american media said, what do you mean. of course we're aaa. we should have a quadruple a category just for us. these loser countries in the 18 countries in the tripoli category are loser nations. they cannot compare with us. we need to understand.

we are not aaa. when you have $15 trillion in debt, you can't be aaa. the unfunded liabilities. special roads, remarkably and present, but he did leave one memorable. forget where i was for a minute there. a big chair in new hampshire. big cheers in south africa. i have to remember. i took the wrong pill before i walked on. so deplorable british imperialists. [laughter] the assumptions of generations when he said that to be born and englishmen was to win first prize in lottery of life. on the eve of the great war george bernard shaw turned the thought around to taunt a ruling class too smart and

self-absorbed to see what was coming. to you think the laws of god will be suspended in favor of england because you were born in this? in our time to be born citizen of the united states is to win first prize in a lottery of life. as britain's did, too many americans assume it will always be so. steve you think the laws of god will be suspended in favor of america simply because you were born in it? think carefully about that question. when you live in the north country, when you live in a state where the weather spend six months of the year trying to throw a life of view, one thing you understand is the fragility of civilization. back in the spring and was walking on an abandoned road behind my house with my two boys one morning when we noticed a huge mother bear rearing up in the trees just off to our left. and then just ahead of us we noticed one little cub. behind us another.

and we were in the middle. [laughter] my boys were excited. [laughter] of those scared. and that is the way i feel as we embark upon this critical half decade. i feel excited, but a little scared, and i wonder if our society still has the survival instincts of that mother bear protecting her cups. if you disagree don't wait for a messiah to defend -- descend from the heavens on tuesday morning in november. we tried that in 2008. we entrusted a multitrillion-dollar enterprise to a guy who has never created a dime of wealth and his life, and then we were surprised that for some reason it didn't work out. this time is up to you. ..

>> about how we need to get our fiscal house in order, and we need to control the deficit. the only reason he's even pretending to care about it is because the media of public discourse was moved in 2009 and 2010. he's the wrong person being forced to pretend that he wants to do the right thing, that keeps changing the discourse into the wrong people are actually forced to do the right

thing. milton friedman is right about that. when i first moved to new hampshire, i carelessly assumed the general staff had said live free or die before some battle or other. i thought it was bit of red meat to rally the boys to the charge, a judge of the old henry v routine. and then i discovered that our states great revolutionary war hero had made his cri de coeur decades after the cessation of hostilities in a letter regretting that he would be unable to attend a dinner. and in a strange way i found it even more impressive because in extreme circumstances many of us can rouse people to rediscover the primal impulses, and the way the brave men of flight 93 day. they took off from what they thought was a routine flight and when they realized it wasn't they went into the general staff mode and cried let's roll. but it's harder to maintain that live free or die spirit when you're facing not an immediate

crisis but just a slow unceasing ratchet effect which is in stable societies and threatened by revolution or work within their borders, always the way liberty falls, traded away to the state, incrementally, painlessly, all but imperceptibly. live free or die sounds like a battle cry. we will win this thing or we will die trier. in fact, it's a statement of the obvious, of the reality of our lives and the prosperous west. you can live as free men, but if you choose not to, your society will surely die. live free or die, it's new hampshire's choice, it's america's choice. so make the right call because the fate of our world depends upon it. thank you very much indeed. [applause]

>> for more information on mark steyn and his work visit steynonline.com. >> when the deepwater horizon exploded on april 20, 2010, 50 miles off the coast of louisiana i was at houston with a group of activist, or actually not acted this is the wrong word. a group of people who lived in oil impacted communities around the world, nigeria, kazakhstan, alaska, california, texas, mississippi, who had all come together in houston for chevron annual shareholder meeting. and they came to explain to the shareholders what it means to live in a chevron impacted community, a place for chevron

operates. and while we were there and had been a couple of weeks during the course of our time there after the explosion happened, after the loss of life of the 11 men, after the oil started flowing, when we realize that this not only was this an enormous loss of life, was this not only a day disaster but a real crushing reality to people like myself who had spent a significant amount of time setting the oil industry, spending a significant amount of time being in places where oil operations take place. something dawned on all of us. the oil industry have absolutely no idea whatsoever what to do about it deepwater blowout. none at all. they have said they knew what to do. they said they planned to know what to do. the reality was that what they knew how to do is somewhat deal with a blowout at 400 feet.

and for most of the time, since the early 1970s the deep deepwater drilling meant drilling at 400 feet below the ocean surface. this well and what deepwater drilling means now is drilling at 5000 feet below the ocean's surface. that's just the ocean sure, the osha for cf 55,000 feet below. know well, this will was another 13,000-feet below that. actually, a well slightly further out, not even the deepest will anymore, is another book that is as far down as now everest is up. and what we found out that even though they guarantee to us that they knew what you were doing, they were trying to apply technology, developed in the 1970s for 400-foot wells, to a 5000-foot well. and they did know what they were doing and they were not able to stop the gusher. and not only that they had

guarantee does that were there to be a blowout, and everybody knows that there can be a blowout because that's what you plan for, the gulf of mexico is one of the most difficult places to drill in the world. one of the reasons why is it a very gaseous. there's a lot of gas there. it bubbles up. it makes drilling very difficult, and everyone knows this and every plan that's report drilling in the gulf says we can handle kicks. we can have a blowout. lowlifes have been increasing in the gulf, happening more and more frequently eric the people on the rig knew that history was having a difficult time. in fact, this was the second rig to try to drill this well at a previous raid, marianna, had been kicked so hard it was kicked right off of the will and had to go home. the deepwater horizon was replacement. the deepwater horizon was $100 million over budget. it was many, many, many days off schedule, and the people on the big knew that they were in

trouble. and they knew there could be a blowout. and the industry has promised that it could handle an oil spill, were the worst to happen, of 300,000 pairs of oil per day. what we found out is that likely at its worst, this spill with 80,000 barrels a day, and yet they have no capacity whatsoever to deal with it. they did not have ships ready to contain the oil. they didn't have underwater vehicles ready to address the blowout. they didn't have them to protect ashore. they didn't have skimmers. they hadn't prepare. and not only that, even though after the 1989 valdez disaster, they had been committed to responsible for, legally obligated to invest in research on what to do if they have an oil spill and prepare for it. they haven't. none of them. we were using the exact same technology that utterly failed to clean up after the valdez,

where only 14% of the oil is cleaned up today in response to this. now to put this into scale, what happened because they did know what to do and they spent three months walking around, well, that's not fair. they were trying very hard. they sat around a table. they were trying very, very hard. their engineers very hard at work. they wanted to stop discussion. but they couldn't for three long months. and what happened in the course of the three long months, and that's just the time in which the gusher was flowing, right, they finally did figure out how to put a cap on it, thank goodness. but they actually didn't know, no one felt secure that that will was closed until five months later when something else happened, and that was the drilling of the relief well. what the oil industry does very well is know how to do. what that means is what the nod to do is drill, so if we have another blowout there's no reason to assume that a cap would just be able to be

applied. because the only thing we're sure that worked was the release well. that means if there is another blowout what we should anticipate is five more months worth of oil. and what we know about the deepwater, remember, this isn't new. going out this borders on 148 of these operations in the world. they basically have been going on for about 20 years at this depth. they are pushing it this far because there's a lot of oil out there. so what we know about the deepwater is that when you have an accident, it's a long way to go to get to it and there's a lot of oil. and to put the amount of oil into context, we've all been hampered from being able to explain and really grasp, put into words the significance of this, the size of the spill, and that's because we can't say the words that would make it that much more dramatic which is the largest oil spill in world history. but there's only one reason why we can't say that. and that's because saddam hussein intentionally in the

most blatantly possible use oil as weapon in 1991, and intentionally opened up oil tankers to attack american and british troops with oil in kuwait. and that's hands-down the largest oil spill in world history, because he did it intentionally. had that not happened this would be hands-down the largest oil spill in world history. 210 million gallons of oil. one thing we know for sure, and when i started, when this happen and we learned it was going to be bigger than we thought, and that the 11 men who died, the story wasn't going to end within and it wasn't going to end with their families. it was going to spread and it was going to spread to all of the people across the five states who live around this, the ninth largest body of water and was going to affect the sea life and is going to affect everything that lives in the ocean. but the thing to note is everything that lives in the

ocean is part and parcel to everything that lives on the lan. it's part and parcel to all the people and their livelihood and their understanding of their community. and the affect on the seat is the affect on people and the livelihood and the communities of those people. and what i learned in going down in just the first couple of weeks and the first couple of days that i was there was one, this is a huge story, number two, transparency was a difficult. getting information was so difficult from the first time i went down, private security guards, police officers, sheriffs were keeping us off the beaches. you couldn't go look. you couldn't take pictures. you couldn't record the event. and one of the things that happened was controlling the story became very important of course everyone involved. and one tool that bp utilize, it was very powerful. if you saw the pictures, i hope you saw them in the beginning that john bushwick, greenpeace took such important photographs

of this event. not just the work that greenpeace did but the photographs that capture a. and they are used throughout my book, to try and make tangible or imagery the story of this event. but capturing those photographs became more and more difficult. one reason why was because if you remember in the valdez, it was those photographs of the oil soaked birds that captured people's souls. and people organized aggressively in response to valdez. they shut down exxon station. they protested. they demanded policy. and they got, out of the bush administration, the bush senior administration a critical piece of legislation, the oil pollution act. similarly and 196 tonight off the coast of santa barbara when an oil well blue, people organized. they were galvanized. they were ready. de son imagery that captured the hearts and soul.

and years later they got birthday. they got the clean water act. they got the clean air and. they got the environmental protection agency and 11 long years of organizing later, they got a moratorium on offshore drilling in some places. what happened here was that those photographs, particularly of the brown pelicans soaked in oil, the state bird of louisiana, captured people. captured our hearts and our minds. but those picture start to go away and i think what most people assumed was the pictures were going away because what? oil birds were going away, right? less birds, less images but that's not what happened. when i was able to track in the book is the number of birds was increasing, the photographs are decreasing but the reason why was because we started being threatened to be thrown in jail if we went within 40 miles, no, 40 feet of boom. everyone onto beaches where there was oil. i was trying to go out on both to take pictures and to talk to people, to go into the