war he could fight with a limited one. so that is a great debate. i cannot conceive of eisenhower having a okayed that operation but that doesn't mean he didn't have a finger on it. probably have a like to say, mixed with the flour in those situations. ..

>> the u.s. is destined for financial collapse and decline if current political and cultural trends continue. also this weekend sunday live at noon our calls and e-mails in depth with former new york times foreign correspondent and pulitzer prize winner, chris hedges. he writes about religion and war and its impact on civilizations. his latest is "the world as it is." booktv every weekend on c-span2. >> and now on booktv, a panel discussion of william f. buckley's book "god and man at yale," with a focus on the book's cultural and political impact following its publication in 1951. this is just over an hour. >> ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the second panel in this conference on the 60th anniversary of "god and man at

yale." bill buckley wrote or edited 40 nonfiction books at last count. cancel your own god damn subscription was the last to be published -- [laughter] during his lifetime. and two appeared posthumously, flying high: remembering barry goldwater and, finally, "the reagan i knew." as his son christopher said, bill buckley published more books when he was dead than many authors do alive. [laughter] but "god and man at yale" was the first. this one remains in print 60 years after its publication. our panel this afternoon will discuss why not as a publishing matter, but as an intellectual one this should be the case. what is living and what is dead in the thought of "god and man at yale"?

why and to what extent does it remain relevant to god and even yale? trusting god and the author to settle the third matter between themselves now. a peculiarity of the book as was noted in the first panel is that bill buckley doesn't describe himself, certainly not consistently, as a conservative in this book. he calls himself a christian individualist. the only thing he repeatedly identifies as conservative is yale. or rather, yale's reputation as, quote, a citadel of conservativism, unquote. whatever one makes of the difference that 60 years has wrought at yale and elsewhere, no one would be moved to think of yale now as a citadel of conservativism either by reputation or in reality. to discuss these questions and their ramifications, we have three excellent panelists this afternoon.

and my principle duty is to introduce them. midge decter is neoconservative royalty. [laughter] the wife and mother of the editor of "commentary magazine" -- [laughter] >> that's a neat trick. [laughter] >> that's right. it's a -- two successive editors of "commentary magazine" which, i think, makes a dynasty. in her own right, of course, she is a distinguished critic of contemporary morals and politics. she was the executive director of the committee for the free world which disbanded after it had saved the free world. she's the author of, among other books, "an old wife's tale," and serves as a board member of the heritage foundation. roger kimball will speak second, wears an amazing number of hats.

he is the publisher and president of encounter books, one of the leading, one of the best conservative publishers in the country. he is the author of, i'm sorry, the editor and the publisher of the new criterion, the distinguished magazine of cultural criticism. and he's the author of many books including "tenured radicals: how politics has corrupted higher education," and his forthcoming volume, "the fortunes of permanence: culture and anarchy in the age of amnesia." with linda bridges who is here and will be chairing the third panel this afternoon, mr. kimball edited a thwart history, the sprightly anthology of bill buckley's writings that appeared last year. our third speaker will be r. 'em

'em -- r. emmett tyrrell, the founder of the american spectator. he has written many provocative books and, certainly, none more provocative than "the new york times"' best selling "boy clinton: the political biography." his latest volume is called qualify after the hangover: the conservatives' road to recovery." ladies and gentlemen, we'll begin with midge decter. >> um, can you hear me? i never live at peace with these, this technology. [laughter] it's difficult for me to tell you adequately just how delighted i am to be here on this occasion. especially here in new haven where i have not been since sometime in the winter of 1970 on a few days' visit. whose sights and sounds, i will

confess to you, have never quite left me. the occasion i'm speaking of took place during what was either the first or second year, i can't remember, i can't remember anything, and i certainly can't remember that -- [laughter] the first or second year that young women had first been accepted as undergraduates in this school. and as you may not by now begin to imagine -- because things have progressed so happily -- the interest in the presence of these new female students on this campus was, it is no exaggeration to say, both deep and wide. i had been invited by yale to spend some time here as a visiting journalist. which meant in my case that i was then working as an editor on a certain national monthly magazine which had recently with no more than a mild degree of accuracy acquired the reputation

of being what in those days was called a hot book. i tell you this to explain why a fairly large group of these new female undergraduates had or shall we say at first believed they had a keen interest in what they imagined i had to tell them. mostly, i spent time roaming around my first time here and chatting both with the young women and then -- who were then so new to the campus, and with the young men who mostly complained that the shall we say social opportunities they believed this new state of affairs would present them with had turned out to be bitterly disappointing. [laughter] but in addition to such one-on-one conversations, took rather large meanings with those

high-achieving young women had been arranged for me to speak to. and to this day, as you can see, these occasions have remained vivid in my mind. as i'm sure i don't have to tell you of all people, neither of these gatherings was taken up with conversation about god or about man either. [laughter] at least man in the sense with which bill buckley had come years earlier to set a certain -- excuse me -- significant and growing part of the intellectual world on fire. but rather, most specifically with their own men; their fathers, their brothers if they had any, and if any could in any meaningful sense rightly be called that, their lovers. in the course of our first meeting together, i will confess these girls there -- there, after many years i finally

worked up the nerve to call them that -- these girls got themselves fairly quickly beyond the bounds of what could be called discussion. for one by one they leapt to their feet to complain of this or that aspect of what turned out to be their lifelong misooh treatment as females. to be sure, the women's movement that had been supplying them with all the finer points of such grand and high-powered analysis had been around and exhaustively familiar to me. but that these new yale undergraduates could for the sake of mere cultural fashion have become so quickly and so completely hostile to the truth of their privileged existence, chosen by yale as they had been from among what were surely thousands upon tens of thousands of eager, hard working and accomplished young female applicants from all over the

country, their complaints had, i will confess to you, taken me by surprise. arrogant and snooty and sure of themselves had i thought i might find them? yes, of course. after all, not without considerable reason. but oppressed? [laughter] i listened to their complaints for some time with a growing sense of unreality. however, before the evening's discussion was over, god -- as is his sometimes mysterious want -- did not leave me. i saw in the back of the room the best friend of one of my daughters. i saw her stand up and declare that she had since her early itself days in the cradle been socialized -- you remember all this stuff. [laughter] it's the way they talk.

socialized to be no more than a proper lady, taught that it was wrong for her to strive and brought up merely to be in every aspect no more than the wife of an accomplished and successful husband. many of you may not know 40 years later have been fully introduced to every detail in this description of women's oppression. the times and the indictments have quieted down considerably since then. but it probably would have been impossible to become a viable candidate for studying at yale without having been instructed in at least its main lines of argument. and i should, of course, have known that. in any case, as i said, god did not desert me on that occasion. emily, i said, when the young woman had finished ranting, i have known you for a long time, and i know your family well. if there is one girl this

university who was brought up with the idea that nothing would do short of her becoming at the very least the first female president of the united states, it's you. [laughter] need i say that after the e eruption of shouted objections that followed, the meeting did not last for much longer. [laughter] and need i further say that the next gathering arranged for me to meet with the young women was considerably more sparsely attended. [laughter] the conversation on this second occasion would at least not have taken me by surprise. for this meeting was to be doted -- devoted to a discussion of publishing. a field that had, in fact, for some time by then as was the case been aspired to by women and not without a considerable amount of success. but by now, of course, i had come to be almost more alarmed

by my conversation with the female underclassmen at yale than i had been reading those mad radical tracts written by women who were now busy leading the movement they so perversely called feminism. in any case, i was by then well prepared for what would be facing me and feeling more than a little mischievous. now, from my stay at the college i had been given a rather luxurious dorm room featuring what were, to me, two highly impressive accoutrements. the first was a switch with which up with could warm the tiles that made up the room's floor. no matter what happened to the denizens of that dorm at yale, cold feet would plano part in it. [laughter] and the second was a night table on which were piled a variety of booklets and pamphlets informing the room's occupant of the many and various conveniences available to her either on or

near the campus. among them in addition to the various institutions and locations nearby for her entertainment, a birth control dispensary, dispensary offering an impressive variety of means available for such, an emergency psychiatric office -- [laughter] and need i mention an abortion clinic? thus, when we had settled down for our discussion and the question so predictably arose as to how myself, i myself had managed as the young aspirants put it to break into, sigh, publishing, i succeeded in wringing both the conversation -- bringing both the conversation and my time at yale to their collective end by answering perfectly couthfully, by the way, that i had studied

typing. [laughter] now, for you facebookers and twitterers, by the way, that means the rapid and accurate use of a now-discarded piece of technology called a typewriter. [laughter] in other words, that i had, luckily for me, taken a class in typing during my second year of high school. from there in my case as in many another i could tell them of, my future in publishing, sigh, had resulted from a various combination of sweat, financial need for both up happy and happy reasons and luck, also of the good and bad kind. naturally, the outcry that followed was not much less audible than that of the earlier, more general discussion. i cannot remember exactly how long this gathering lasted, but any interest in it on my part as well as on theirs instantly vanished.

now, that visit to this campus took place more than 40 years ago which is a long and has been a far from uneventful time. for me, for yale and even, i would venture to say, for the young lives who have brought us together here today. wars have been fought and wars that should have been fought have been at great cost avoided, radical political movements have been created and died and been reborn and only slightly altered form. this country and its people have grown rich, sometimes wisely and/or creatively and beneficially for others, and sometimes with squandering too much of the nation's blessed good fortune on cheap and easy intellectual conceit. and if anything, even cheaper and easier national policies. please, do not misunderstand me, i don't mean to sit here this

afternoon and bedevil you about all the dreadful goings on among my neighbors like one of those classic old ladies of the neighborhood that i'm every day growing more -- at least physically -- to resemble. [laughter] actually, though it is important to remember that in matters political and even more so in matters ideological no victory is ever more than temporary. one has reason to be full of hope and cheer for the lasting influence of the idea so brilliantly nurtured and tended by william buckley. along with others on this platform and in this room in washington and many places over the country. i don't have to go into that, you have heard wonderful things about it before and will again on this afternoon. and yet in new york city where i

live and from there spreading to cities across the country we are at this moment witnessing the return of the leftist demonstration. replete with occupations, marchs, garbage, filth, violence, now and then even including rape it turns out, accompanying a variety of complaints of social injustice. on account of the country's problem of joblessness. now, the complaint of joblessness is more justified nowadays perhaps than those once given voice in the '60s and '70s by the privileged students of elite institutions like this one. i have only one more minute and, therefore -- [laughter] i'm going to stop my sad story or of all the reradicalization. [laughter] and get to what i've really come

here to say today. the irony is, of course, that if anyone is presently entitled to feel cheated, it is not those demonstrators on wall street, it is america's students. along, to be sure, with their parents. for no machinations of evil banks and mortgage lenders and wall street finaglers can begin to touch what has for two generations now been reaped upon this country's public by far too many of it best universities. not yale, of course. [laughter] and the more highly reputed the school, of course, the worse the reaping. for instance, when the government set out to offer the country's students loans with which they might pay for their higher education, the tuition demanded of them rose to the stratosphere.

just ask the presidents or the boards of governors of harvard, princeton, columbia -- i'll stop there. [laughter] just ask them for the number of the dollars now happily at let's in their endow -- at in their endowments. and be while you are at it -- and while you are at it, ask them what percentage of their undergraduate students are actually privileged to sit in a classroom with someone who has attained to the status of professor. ask them what percentage of that which is purveyed to students even in such a condition of special privilege is derived from some any serious and time-honored intellectual or literary tradition rather than some currently and fleetingly fashionable transatlantic fad or currently-sanctioned political slogan. of course, i speak here of

general education. if history is any guide, should a student aspire to be a future steve jobs, he need not attend a university at all. he'd be better off looking for an empty, nearby garage. [laughter] i don't speak this way to depress you, and we have been having such a good time anyway with the preceding panel. some weeks ago i did reread "god and man at yale," a brilliant book and, of course, nothing less than a tour de force when one considers both the condition of the country when it was written and it author's age. but i kept saying to myself, this brilliant young man ain't seen nothing yet. and, of course, he hadn'tment -- hasn't. or, rather, he had seen the general ground in which his

future as the nurturer and day-to-day leader of a lasting political movement that would first be sprouting and then growing taller and wider down to this very day. no, i've spoken to you about the condition of the university, first, to bless you organizers and members of the william buckley society and, second, to underline for you -- if you needed any such underlining -- that where you find yourselves is at the red hot center of a critical issue. critical both for yourselves and for the country. thus, as the denizens of yale you are not in any sense junior to any of the efforts to make fresh and vital the great tradition that despite everything continues to sustain us. you are at its very heart. just stay there and keep on

keeping on, and who can say what national high spirits might not overtake us all. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, midge. roger. >> thank you very much. um, we know there's a story about the poet, w.h. odden, that he said to a -- recounting a priest who was hearing confession of someone, the priest was always in the habit of saying be brief, be blunt and be gone. [laughter] and i am going to do that. it is not true, it is not true that, um, that i'm wearing this sling because of some altercation with an heir to george bundy or t.m. greene or any of the other, any of the other spoiled prof sore ya that

weighed in on "god and man at yale." before i get to the book, i want to mention one aspect of bill's life and work that i don't think has come up today yet, namely, you know, he was a very accomplished man at many things. one of his greatest talents was as a kind of talent scout. and there are many people in this room just looking around i know who benefited from that activity. and i just want to mention one in a new book that he has, my friend wally olson just published with america's premier conservative publisher whose name i will not tell you -- [laughter] a book called "schools for misrule." and you won't be surprised when you conjure with the word "misrule" that one of the institutions that figures prominently in this book about

america's elite law schools has its headquarters just down the street here on wall street. it's a remarkable book, and i urge you all to pick it up. well, "god and man at yale," our charge here was to ponder the question, is it still relevant? i think midge is absolutely correct when she says that 1951 bill hadn't seen anything yet. and yet when i wrote my book, "tenured radicals," which is about the corruption by politics of one form or another, the corruption by politics of the liberal arts and the humanities, i had not yet read "god and man at yale." i subsequently did, and i had that flash of insight that the philosopher yogi berra talks about, that it's déjà vu all over again. so, i mean, obviously, there's, you know, a difference in some of the characters, but so many of the concerns in this book

felt incredibly contemporary, and they still are incredibly contemporary. um, my own feeling is that that famous formulation at the beginning of the book that the, um, the fundamental struggle in the world today is between christianity and atheism or, that is to say, between individual and collectivism on another plane wasn't really what bill was interested in. it's curious that the second part of that weren't even his words. his mentor at yale, willmore kendall actually added that in in his between ink. but i think -- you know, i spoke to bill about this book on several occasions, and it seems to me that although he was certainly an ardent and i forget the other adjectives al used this morning -- >> [inaudible]

>> militant catholic and he took his religion very seriously, indeed, to me what this book is about is about freedom and its many entrapments. that is to say, the false freedoms that are so popular abroad and which seduce us from genuine freedom. one of the phrases that looms large in this book is academic freedom. now, one section is called the hoax of academic freedom. and i think we've seen in recent years how this virtue can be twisted and turned and turned into almost its opposite. someone this morning mentioned tenure and said the idea of tenure was not mentioned at all or at least if it was, not prominently in this book. that's true. but how curious tenure is.

here's an institution that was brought in not so long after, not so long before bill buckley wrote this book, and it was meant to be an institution that would safeguard academic freedom. and encourage the diversity of opinion. well, where are we now with the institution of tenure? and many institutions i know including, alas, this one tenure is largely institutioned to enforce intellectual conformity on any contentious issue. and then when you think about it, you realize that although i'm sure that yale -- like most other colleges -- that you can't open any official publication without running into the word "diversity" which, of course, is a good thing, you realize that what they mean by diversity is a

curious kind of intellectual and moral conformity. if you agree, it's free speech for us, for the liberal consensus, but not for you. not for anyone who, um, dissentses from that liberal orthodoxy. and just a couple years later after "god and man at yale" when bill started national review, his inaugural editorial has been mentioned a few times, but he said national review will be out of step in the same way that "the new york times," henry coming aier and the league of women voters are in step. in other words, here was a magazine that was going to challenge the liberal consensus about a whole host of things whether it was foreign policy, manners and morals, what a real education meant. and i think the magazine has done a very good job of doing that.

um, is "ford -- god and man still sell vapt? how could it be more so? so many things we read about here, these instances of, you know, intellectual irresponsibility and, um, for lack of a better term sort of moral latitudinarianism are, if anything, bigger now than they were then. and, you know, you can't go to a campus these days without having some wild left-winger acting badly in public and then wrapping himself in the mantle of, quote-unquote, academic freedom to justify it. so probably some of you in this room will remember the case of ward churchill who in the aftermath of 9/11 wrote an article, um, about how the real villains, the real villains of

9/11 were the people who worked in the world trade power because they were like adolf eichmann. just making sure the trains ran on time to their ill-saw lube rouse destination. now this, of course, is the kind of thing that college campuses love, you know? here's a guy who's really anti-american, at least we rally around the united states when it comes to, you know, people plowing jet liners into skyscrapers. but, no, ward churchill thought that the people that worked in the trade towers were the real villains. and when he went around the country to speak at campuses, and he was very popular for a while, it was always under the rubric of academic freedom. and free speech, they said. well, note the, note the sort of illusion there. academic freedom is not a blanket right. it is a privilege accorded to people who are engaged in a

certain activity, namely the pursuit of truth. that's what academic freedom means. academic freedom means you are free to pursue the truth. freedom of speech is something quite different, something very valuable. i'm glad that people can, you know, make fools of themselves in zucotti square and so on. i wish they, you know, their personal hygiene leaves something to be desired, indeed, their behavior in other ways, but, um, you know, it's quite, you know, it's marvelous that people can do that. it's like, you know, speaker's corner in london. you can get up on a soap box and say whatever silly thing you want. but that's not academic freedom. but these two things have been kind of blurred together on many college campuses today, and i think there's something -- although he didn't talk about free speech in quite the same way, there's something about that that is at the core of "god and man at yale." bill was, there, there's a biblical tag i always like to, i

always think of when i think of bill buckley. i think of the book of genesis and the line that says god made the world and saw it was good. and i think that really is right at the core of what bill buckley was. here's somebody who delighted in the panoply of the world whether it was racing or wine or the music of bach or helping young people or whatever. but what does that kind of delight and relish depend upon? one of the things it depends upon is freedom. and freedom especially to -- freedom against this kind of deadening homo yes nayty that you see in an institution devoted to diversity that is ruled by political correctness. i mean, who would have thought that an institution devoted to higher or education, to the liberal arts, of the arts that

are supposed to free us -- that's why they're called liberal -- would at the same time absorb this toxin of political correctness which is kind of the enforcer of this ideology of diversity? and, um, that's certainly one of the lessons i took away from this book. and just one other thing. um, toward the end of the book bill refers to a supreme court decision, so far as i know never overturned, pearce v. the society of sisters. and the supreme court in a unanimous decision said that teachers or shall be of good moral character and patriotic disposition. and that certain studies plainly essential to good citizenship be taught and that nothing be taught which is manifestly inimical to public welfare. now, can you imagine any university having the temerity to put that on its mission statement today? [laughter] i mean, quite amazing.

well, i think the fact that, um, that you can't imagine any elite university doing that shows not only how far we have fallen, but also the continuing relevance for this very eloquent book. >> thank you, roger. [applause] bob tyrell. >> well, first of all, i'd like to address a question that was raised earlier, i think, by bruce over the question of you're to be young when you're liberal and conservative when you're old. i think, by the way, churchill was one of the first people to raise that formulation, and i put it a little differently. when i was young, i was conservative. and as i got older, i became very, very conservative.

[laughter] and i look forward to a full life of becoming really and truly conservative. laugh -- [laughter] because it makes the liberals crazy. [laughter] and that's kind of a lazy way of saying it because they were born crazy. [laughter] but i gave a little thought to bill and to his books and to several of his books actually. and, um, i thought about many times when i was with bill, um, time and time -- the lectures, the public addresses and things like that, you all know about things like that. but you don't know about the one aspect of his life that i found, i ran into with him all the

time. i remember once we were crossing park avenue, and i was -- looked over at bill, and bill had a mound of manuscript held up to his chest. and he had something in his hand, a pen, red ink pen probably, and his glasses perched on his eyes. and i thought to myself, he's not going to get ten paces across park avenue with this whole thing is going to cascade down to the ground. and sure enough, it did. papers every place, the red pen, his glasses. and people came from all over to help him scurry around and pick up his papers because bill was, even in manhattan, one of the most famous men in america, one of the most famous minds this america. he was as famous as henry kissinger who hasn't been replaced. and many people like bill from

that era haven't been replaced. um, there is a judge from chicago, you perhaps know him. he's a kind of an idiot by the name of posener. [laughter] a moral idiot at any rate, grant me that. i think he's probably an idiot. he's excellent at cross word puzzles or something -- [laughter] but he's -- but at any rate, posener wrote an essay some years ago about the lamenting the loss of public intellectual from the square. um, i'd ask the learned judge where the hell that public intellectual would perform today because -- and who would listen to him or her. um, there's not such a creature because there's, well, as burkhardt said, there's a time and place for things, and things reach their fullness in a time

and, frankly, we've kind of passed the time today for public intellectuals. that was bill's time. and i, i guess i'd also say that i got to thinking about this, and i thought what's necessary for a public intellectual? i hate the term. let's just say an intellectual. and i think maybe the first celebrated intellectual in the 20th century -- and that's about the time that was ripe for this kind of intellectual -- was h.l. mencken. and he was ripe because, a, he was very thoughtful and very luminous and very witty, but also there was in place a mass, mass media to broadcast his words to lesser people. heretofore, theretofore he'd

have to talk out through his publication, whatever it might be, or through letters to people like mountain and people like that. but now he had, he could be a part of mass media. and he could kind of cross-fertilize, so to speak, with hollywood. there was a lot of that in those days. um, and it was a time, the time was right for him. and the time was right for bill. and bill was a terrifically famous and versatile intellectual. but how this kind of brings us back to "god and man at yale" is that mencken was a very famous atheist. and i think now we see that mencken triumphed.

the book is not at all relevant to any university i've ever been at. because the universities have gone so far toward modernity that it's hard to imagine them to come back. on the other hand, another way of putting it is the university is so irrelevant to our lives that we heard a speaker earlier speak about how, um, you go to the university -- professor gatus, you go to the university for four years, and most of them leave and believe exactly what they came in thinking. and i think that's probably pretty true. universities never changed my mind, and i've never been on one, on a university campus at which i was ever in the ascendancy. so i think the universities have kind of lost. but where bill triumphed was in society, was in america, was in

sophisticated realms of life and of the world life. bill's views weren't original, but his views on economics are now held, whether people admit it or not, felt around the world. bill's views on foreign policy are felt around the world. bill's views, in general, are the views of adult america. liberalism today is dead. you'll find out in 2012 if you don't know now, liberalism is dead. conservativism is in the ascendancy, it was in the ascendancy in 2008 when we outnumbered the liberals 40% to 20%, and now we've got the independents and the moderates on our side. so i think in a odd, funny way

mencken won the competition for men's souls. but bill won the competition for his point of view for conservativism, and i think, i thank bill buckley for that, and i thank you all for being here. [applause] >> thank you, bob. are there comments from panel members before we go to questions? >> just one comment. bob, your observation that, you know, you can't see that four years of education makes much difference, people seem to come out believing the same things that they went to college believing, i don't know, my observation, actually, has been a little different. it seems to me that -- and this is one of the reasons bill would appeal to parents or alumni.

you know, you you have this nice 18-year-old child that you've nurtured with care, and you send them off to this elite institution, now costing in excess of $60,000x within a year they come back having rejected every principle of haberdashery, personal hygiene, moral rectitude -- >> i doubt they ever had it, but at any rate -- >> that's one of the things, you know, when bill was appealing to trustees, alumni, parents, i was going to write a book called retaking the university, and i got so far as to write an article about it. and my thought was, well, you know, let's appeal over the heads of the ten youred rad -- tenured radicals to parents of alumni who if they only knew what was going on would be appalled. i think a lot of people regard a university degree, um, as, you

know, a kind of job ticket primarily. is it worth $250,000? that's maybe another, another question. but i realize that this wasn't going to, wouldn't work. why? well, for one reason the universities and elite colleges are now so insulated by money from accountability that they don't have to pay any attention to parents or the alumni fund. i mean, you have a tiny college like hamilton college in upstate new york, they have about 1500 students, i think, they have an endowment of a billion dollars. so what do they care if fund raising is off for a couple of years? >> well, they do care. and irving chris call wrote some years ago -- irving crystal wrote some years ago that the university alums know what's going on at universities, they don't like what's going on at universities, and they god damn well sit on boards and keep inflating those people's

endowments over and over againment but the truth is i don't think universities are taken very seriously. i understand that harvard state university has football players that are as big as the chicago bears. i know that, and they're very proud of it. but what they teach at universities don't really make much impact certainly by the time a kid's ready to get serious about life. that's about middle anal. middle age. [laughter] >> i'd like to as a footnote to this discussion, i would like to read you from a story in today's new york post. jersey shore star vinnie guidanino made a surprise cameo this week as a guest lecturer at columbia university. [laughter] i would -- i don't know what the tuition to columbia is this year, but i wouldn't like to

think about it for too long. where he traded in his traditional fist pump for a hearty high-five with captivated coeds. now, there's more and more of this story, but i want to read you one significant quote from tim rich, a 33-year-old graduate student. quote, if he brings more people into the sociology department, who cares? [laughter] >> well, i think probably the sociology department says it all. >> now, earlier we had referred to and quoted trilling who said something untrue and ghastly which is that conservativism was a nervous intellectual whatever.

>> that there was no conservativism -- >> yeah, that's right. >> what seemed to be -- >> an irritable mental gesture. >> not ideas. >> but lionel trilling is a 50-foot-tall giant compared with the sociology department. [laughter] at columbia university. >> you know, midge, i've got a -- i looked at that quote by trilling. i actually use it in my book that comes out this spring called "the death of liberalism." and i went over that quote. it didn't ruffle my feathers terribly, and i think that were he alive today, he'd be completely on our side. i think he was talking about a kind of conservativism that he couldn't quite imagine. within two years, of course, it had popped up in the person, you

know, bill buckley. and then i wonder what he would have -- i'm sure he was more generous towards conservativism in the end than he was in the beginning. >> not as i recall. [laughter] >> all right. let's invite the audience into the discussion. you must come down to one of these microphones, please, and make your question brief, blunt and then, as roger suggests, you may be gone. [laughter] >> something mr. kimball said got me to think about the whole question of herd instinct. at the beginning of this century when anson phelps stokes was the secretary of this university, he was an episcopal clergyman. he chose not to go all the way to ordination. he was a deacon because he felt this was quite properly a congregational institution. religion was important then. as you pointed out today, the new god is diversity.

and the great thing about "god and man at yale" was that it was a contrarian work. and i think what we need to do whether liberal or conservative is to make the university the academic world free for contrarian thought again. it would be difficult, i'm sure, to be a liberal at bob jones university. it's very difficult today to be a conservative here, certainly the dartmouth review proved that at dartmouth, how difficult they can be. so i'd love to hear thoughts from any of the three of you about ways to make contrarian thought more possible today. >> roger, do you want to tackle that? >> well, i mean, i think one thing is to subscribe to publications like the american spectator and the new criterion and commentary and national review. [laughter] i mean, i think, you know, you

know, i can't remember what it costs to have a yearly subscription to the american spectator, but it's $48 for the new criterion, and i believe that yale is somewhere north of $56,000. [laughter] so from one point of view, it's a pretty good deal. i mean, i think, you know, it's, you know, to some extent, you know, education is a recovery project, isn't it? i mean, we want to -- the past is sort of terra incog knee that for when you come here and you're 17 or 18 years old, and it would be nice to learn something about it, to learn what, you know, the best minds have thought about the most important questions like how should we live our life? that's what a liberal arts education is about. that's not what happens on many college campuses these days. [inaudible conversations] >> one thing that's very hopeful, i must say, at presenceton is robbie jordan's work -- princeton is robbie jordan's work, and he's kind of got an institute just set up on campus where you can take

courses and graduate and be just like a real princetonian. and i think you have such an institute at dartmouth, too, i believe. at any rate, and paul singer set one up at williams college. and so, i mean, somehow on to these -- either these universities are being colonized by cancers that we call conservativism, conservative institutes of things, and i find that very promising, and robbie george has done an excellent job at princeton. >> i'd agree with bob's characterization of that. but remember, princeton administration noticing how popular robbie's institute was have just recently decreed that any fellow he bring here must have an academic appointment someplace. couldn't bring you -- >> that's great. i don't want to go there. [laughter]

i like to go tonight clubs, i'm not -- >> i have long had a proposal for what would strengthen the american university. and because there is a notion that you cannot have a career or a really well-paying job unless you have a degree. and this is a notion that parents have, and so they send themself to the poor house to provide this to their kids. and then the kids come home described as they've been described here. i think if ten major american industries, businesses announced that from henceforth they would not be hiring college graduates -- [laughter] i kid you not, i am dead serious. within five years you would see a revolution in this country.

you really would. and what's more, they could all say if the kids want to read shakespeare, we'll give 'em shakespeare at night. but we will teach them how to do the work that we need done here. the world once worked that way. and i tell you, you would get the attention of people you wouldn't dream you would ever see serious. >> next question, please. >> dr. kimball, you've called american education the high ground of american politics. dr. kimball or mr. kimball -- is it doctor? >> no, that's the other guy. that's the other kimball. [laughter] >> anyway, so you've talked about, you know, bill's strategy of trying to go through the alumni. how do we get back to the high ground of american politics? is it possible?

should we send smart people to get their ph.d.s and become professors or what should we do? [laughter] >> well, i don't know. the brief answer. but i think both what midge said and what bob said, i mean, we need, i think, to encourage alternatives. i mean, the real irony of our moment here is that somebody's mentioning the herd of independent minds, that famous phrase by harold rosenberg. you know, diversity's on everyone lips, but conformity's in everyone's hearts. and so what we need to do is sponsor some genuine alternatives, things like the madison center at princeton. that's one thing. you know, unfortunately, it's ghettoized there, you know? now that they, you know, are refusing to have people from outside the brotherhood of the academic guild, you know, it becomes suddenly less, less of a

tonic force. but i think, you know, one of the lessons of "god and man at yale" is that heteroyes nayty and freedom are good things and what we need is to figure out strategies to promote them. and it's not complicated. and it doesn't require a program. bill, talking about something else, said what i'm offering you here is not a program, call it a no-program, if you will. what it requires is that most uncommon of virtues, common sense. >> right. next question. >> in listening to all of your comments, i am struck, first of all, by how enormously much american society has changed in 60 years. and one of the questions that goes through my mind is, if somebody wanted to set about to write "god and man at yale "today as opposed to the early '60s, what would the book look like? be what would the argument be? one of the huge differences

that's happened in those 60 years is the enormous increase in religious, i would say, in quote religious practice in informal forms versus formal forms. this takes place in meditation, it takes place in a whole variety of ways. and people who are in the, on the formal side tend to ignore this. but in ignoring it, they're ignoring the enormous commonalities that exist. and the commonalities that exist against the heart, the rationalist utilitarian scientific materialist essence of what's taught in the universities. probably no one in this room knows that the san francisco unified school district today has become a major institution committed to transcendental meditation as a means of reforming it schools. the san francisco unified school district bureaucracy has not only committed to this, but a

majority of the bureaucrats in the downtown bureaucracy are, have become regular meditators. and the motto of the san francisco unified school district which might be regarded as the most, quote, liberal bureaucracy in america is "change begins within." four of the schools in the district are now practicing meditation, and the extraordinary increases in learning and reduction in behavioral, ten other schools are lining up to do it. yet there is no reporting of this in the press, and there's no reporting it in the press, i think, for the same reason that there's no expanded version of what the struggle here really is. and it has to do with a rigidly-objectified scientific materialist essence in the intellectual idiom which still dominates the universities. anyway, i'd love to have a

comment. >> and there's a teachers' union. [laughter] >> right. well, um, i agree with you about the problems of a prom -- programmatic materialist -- i did not know that about san francisco. of course, it's california. [laughter] but i do remember chesterton once said talking about, he didn't use the phrase, but some of these new age things, the most horrible of all religions, the religion within. what he meant, i think, was there's something, something important about religious institutions and the sort of social glue they provide. ..

contrast with the atheist egalitarian goal lead. but beyond that, it is a curious thing because it maybe a religious society but also an incredibly secular society. that accounts for what -- the question is can you count on religion once stripped of its institutional force and

authority and legitimacy? churches don't matter so much anymore. >> that explains why in san francisco you hear this mmmmmmm in the background. i never quite understood. the last question and then we will stay seated. people who are standing man come down and find a seat and we will move to the next panel. next question. >> the question for the whole panel. how many people have you seen convert from liberalism to conservatism and if you have seen that miracle occurred, what was the trigger that the person comes and gained conservatism or become pro-life or read a great book or did they hear a speaker at their university or elsewhere? i would be very curious because i would like to replicate the cathartic moment? >> you are asking how many

people have lysine come from liberalism to conservatism? is that right? >> approximately. >> there's one right here. and her husband and james kirkpatrick and pat moynihan. we have seen a lot of it. that is kind of interesting. what i call in this new book of mine is a good liberal. they had a civil war in liberalism in 48. you probably know about this. parter/injured and people like that -- arthur/injured found it pretty good to me for a while. even arthur. then it happens again about 68

or something like that, 72 with midge decter and her husband and irving kristol and the whole gang but the interesting thing for me is that some point, it stopped. and the battle lines were drawn. that is something for serious medication. why did the movement of liberalism, liberals from liberalism to conservatism stock? i don't know. >> it is partly the one i am familiar with, it was made up of many fans. the world had gone through a cataclysm and now everybody was very cheerful in america. there was a big radical sense of we won and we can do it all. we can make this country just

and pure and perfect and rich and everything easily. and then we saw our children, how they were being educated, how they were growing up and by the time they reached adolescence and we were also bracing ourselves because we were the far superior parents. my goodness. those benighted old people who brought us up. we weren't just simply wonderful. then we saw our children and they were not for arriving. let me tell you something. you bring up the kid and you can't understand why in the world he is not thriving. you got a good life legalize home and parents who love him and you know there is something foul in the air and by the 60s

that something foul erupted in universities. this is a very sloppy and hasty history. it needs a lot more going in to than that. the country was taken over by a disease of in gratitude and some kind of phony notion of perfection. and this was what our kids were suffering from. and i mean suffering. and there's a were leading the best of lives, going to the best of places, the best of schools, drowning themselves in drugs, demanding crazy things and doing

crazy things and insisting that somehow or other all pain be lifted from them and they were not thriving. that was scary. that was really scary. that was the beginning of that. plus the fact that people who were known as neocons, one thing they always were were anti-soviet, and our socialist and anti-communist and there was a whole new revival of disgust going on in places where it shouldn't have been. universities, publishing houses, serious magazines. and it was a very serious -- anybody who wants -- you don't need to be a neocon now. you can just go and be a plane

con. [applause] >> anything but an ex-con. thank you, ladies and gentlemen. stay seated. next panel is going to begin immediately. [applause] >> is there a nonfiction all tour or book you would like to see featured on booktv? send an e-mail to booktv@c-span.org or tweak us at twitter.com/booktv.

>> booktv and american history tv of the history of literary life, booktv on c-span2 a trip to the mccaw that 10:55 p.m. this is about john paul barack when he was assassinated in 1793. it only aired once but maybe the most famous political had ever produced leaders and robert mann and daisy petals and mushroom clouds monday at 1:45 p.m.. on american history tv at 6:50 p.m. it served as the model for civil-rights boycotts to come, the impact of the 1953 bus boycott. and the louisiana state archives with materials dating from the louisiana purchase in 1803, the document that created the short-lived west florida

republican of louisiana. plus louisiana state documents. all this weekend on c-span2 and 3. >> booktv is on twitter. follow us for regular updates on programming and news on nonfiction books and authors. twitter.com/booktv. >> next booktv interviewed leo honeycutt, author of edwin edwards, governor of louisiana, as part of our cities for exploring literary culture of several locations around the country. >> edwin edwards was investigated 2 dozen times. he had never been investigated before. never. and in his public life, started in 1954 until 1972 and by the time he was taken the oath of

office there was a grand jury investigating on the first day. edwin edwards is louisiana's only four term governor. he was governor for 16 years. not consecutively but state constitutionally allowed you to serve two consecutive terms. so he served in the 1970s from 72 to 80 and from 84 to 88 and last term was 92 to 96. he was a record setter in years alone and the way the political system is set up, we will never see that again. >> what kind of governor was he? >> depends who you talk to. i talked to a lot of people about that but on balance he was probably one of the best if not the best administrator louisiana ever had for administrating state government. he had a quick mind and could keep -- he knew what all 144 legislators were thinking and

how they were voting and weather persuasion was. consequently he knew before they got to his office what is they wanted and so he would have a ready answer for all of them. he always knew what was politically expedient but at the same time he did move the state forward and he was a fiscal conservative so he forced the legislature every year especially in the 70s to balance the budget at the end of the year and not let it get out of control. to that extent he was able also to change the severance tax on oil and gas and when he did that he changed it from $0.25 a barrel to 12% of value at a time when opec was taking over the price of oil and oil began to shoot up. when he did that tens of millions of dollars suddenly floated to the state coffers. by the end of the 1970s the headlines read we were suffering

from an embarrassment of riches even politicians couldn't figure out so by the 1970s, we will most cash rich state in the nation, louisiana leading the nation as far as the highway construction when new york city was on the brink of bankruptcy. it got the eye of a lot of people. it got the eye of ted kennedy who was basically trying to overthrow jimmy carter for the nomination--democratic nomination for president. and kennedy contacted edwin edwards to see if he would be interested in going on the ticket as vp in the hopes that he could make some sense of the federal budget and try to get america back to a position of balancing the budget year to year. he became quite well known for that. edwin edwards was first indicted in 1985 and a federal indictment

and had the first trial in 1985 and the retrial in 1986. he was acquitted in the second trial. the charges back then, you was supposed to be rigging hospital certificates. at that time the federal government had a program where in order to serve rural counties, rural areas, federal government according to the states, the states saw they needed medical care in the countryside they would issue the certificates which would wind up being very valuable because health-care, health-care corporations would take those certificates and they would get federal money to help build these facilities. so it became very lucrative. he was charged with helping his friends out when he did that kind of thing.

the problem with that was the jury, final jury that acquitted him said these guys didn't do anything different than what any other business person would do. the first trial, who was appointed by jimmy carter, john bolts got to edward on the witness stand and said did you do this to your family and friends and edwards said you really help out your friends. that is true but you help out everybody because that is what you are there to do. i remember one time when you called me for some help and john bolts stopped that line of questioning. there were other reporters in the gallery who followed up on that and found out on boats called edwin edwards and called him to get pressure on two ranking senators on the part of justice to get the federal judgeship. of course it didn't work. it is funny he was being accused

of that. the dynamic of the trial was the federal judge overstayed the trial was the guy who got the job overseeing the guy who wanted his job, prosecuting the guy he had tried to use to get that job. so bowls went down in flames and i was convinced that that point in 1986 when edward was acquitted that he came out of the courthouse steps and railed against the federal government, called on everything else you could think of. the fbi, federal prosecutor, and he said more than he should have. the picture of his wife putting her hand over his mouth and so that was the beginning of the end for him. he had always been a smart alec.

people in power don't like that. he was always very quick with his wit. quick with the joke. in the 83 election, they trained his republican opponent, so slow it takes an hour and a half to watch 60 minutes. things like that. he could have been a stand-up comedian better than seinfeld, this guy. then he gets to the david duke raises in 1991 and says david duke, reporter said is there any place for you to be alike because you are all pro liberal and he is ultra-conservative. and without thinking he goes yes there is. we are both on the machines. not very many politicians get away with lines like that but it made very good theater here for those of us -- this guy has been profiled three times on 60 minutes.

he always has something on the ball of affairs, that sinister flow somewhere where people last time went on didn't trust him. and there were a lot of times when he probably could have benefited himself but insisted defending himself always made it worse. he saw people and other politicians and powerful people who were always trying to defend themselves against charges and the reality was the more they defended themselves the worse off they became so he could pass it off as a joke and move on. he was never bothered by things like that. the second major indictments were the most recent ones where he was indicted for extortion. 26 counts to be convicted on 17. and it was -- he was supposed to be regained riverboat licenses. the story is the truth of the story is there is only one license left by the time he

became governor for the fourth term. louisiana had mandated only 15 riverboats could be in louisiana so the license was up for grabs. all the others -- and so he was indicted and investigated and indicted for allegedly exporting the money out of the owner of the san francisco 40-niners to get that fifteenth licence. there was robert degree who already owned a riverboat and to keep his license he allegedly was exported and then there was ricky shatner who worked for a player's casino in lake charles who said he was exported for keeping the edwardses meeting edwards and his son steven from harming them at lake charles.

anyway, they never really believed it and their testimony proved that to begin with. so the real charge came down at the barlow. they had gotten together years before. is a father built most of the mall of america. the edward j. d. barlow organization. edward jr. his father gave him the san francisco 49ers. so he spent lavished all kinds of money on the 49ers. he is the reason for the salary gap we have in the nfl today. but the nfl also had dialogues that said you are not supposed to be associated with a gambling operation. he bypassed that. he ignored all that. so he comes to louisiana does sighting he wants to have a casino. so he begins to use edwin edwards to do the work, the paperwork of what it will take to get a casino. the only spot that was open was

in northwest louisiana. near shreveport. so barlow and edwards get together but edwards continues to send him retainers' but he never signed them. never returned them. he never paid it. but yet edwards continues to fill out everything in his facility. edwards put him together with hollywood casino's so they do a proposal that is far and away the best proposal on the table so he knows he is going to win. he goes to debartelow and says look. getting the license is the easy part. the hard part is selling it to the voters. so we need a quarter of a million dollars to begin a tv blitz campaign in louisiana so people will vote for it. it has to be passed by referendum. so debartelow says do it right. just blitz the whole thing and give you a half million dollars. we really only need 250.

he says just take $400,000 and i will get you a check debartelow never would deliver the check and it is because he had a guy in his office who said you need to stay away from edwardses because they're bad news and i don't want you to associate with them so he forces debartelow dermott-forces that were supplied to san francisco and pick up cash so edwards goes in and pick the cash. that instantly looks wrong and edwards knows that and he was dumb for making that move. the reality was debartelow state on the defense team after the charges were filed. he stayed on the defense team and ran up the hill and eddie jordan, u.s. prosecutor out of new orleans and assistant prosecutor go to the odor of the

san francisco 40-niners and said if we beat you in court cannot only will you lose the 49ers but you will spend a lot of time in prison. so are you sure your story is street? and so debartelow flipped. he came back and he said that $400,000 was extortion. so he flies to baton rouge and he says -- he says i am a victim. so the fbi had reported some 200 conversations for debartelow continually called edwards and said what do we need to do? we will do whatever we need to do only edward only initiated three of those calls. it is really hard to balance out who the real victims are. based on that. when he was convicted in may of 2000 he goes to prison in october of 2002 with eight years

and three month. you get a ten year sentence which was double the prescription. they have prescriptions -- and the federal judge if they had that discretion just doubled that. so he could have gotten out in less than five years under the prescription but david ten year sentence. he came out and said i came back with the wife. he is just unsinkable. this guy is unthinkable. he is one of the greatest politicians of all time because he actually did do something as far as administering state business but at the same time great theater. everybody likes their great theater. take only take back figures to a point. they have to have a gut feeling on whether or not they actually like the leader and edwards was a master at that. >> what made you decide to run this book and how long did it take you to put together?

>> edwards came to me through a friend and said do you want to write my biography and i told the friend i don't want to write the biography because there's a lot about that in life. i covered it for the better part of 25 years and he was too much of a smart alec for me and i didn't really like his politics. back room deals. all the stuff you hear about and think about. it is nice to know you are still an objective reporter and concede both sides of the story. i said i will go over and talk to him out of morbid curiosity and so i went over and talked to him and we struck an agreement that he would tell me what he thinks is the truth and then i will go back and follow-up with an incredible amount of research and tracking back these leads

and stories and at the end of five years i have 2,000 pages and 3,000 footnotes. took me two years to cut it down to 600 pages. i loved it. it was very tedious. it really showed me the greater picture. not just a man's life in the picture but it showed what created that life and what he created as being part of that picture. if you want an understanding of american politics and look at the players and tell who they are and where they came from that will give you an idea where we are headed. you can figure out the correction of where things -- how everything is going to finish and right now if doesn't look too good. >> is your perception of the change after writing this book? >> it did to an extent.

it didn't completely change. hy like to believe i held my objectivity as far as possible. i did like him as a person. when you spend five years with somebody every week or so then you do develop a sympathy. that is the temptation of all biographers to build sympathy for the person you're writing about and he did have good reasons for doing some of the things he did. but the other part of that is what every person who ever aspires to and grabs a high office, that is the power that goes along with it does compromise a person. i don't care how strong they are morally. it just does because people look at you and project that power on to you and the ego begins to feed into that and before long a person at the extreme end of that feels like they are above the law such as president richard nixon. when you start to look at it in

that perspective i don't care how strong you are or moral fiber you think you are, enough money and power will change you unless you quit while you are ahead. most politicians cannot do that. they cannot walk away from it. >> what is edwin edwards doing now? >> he is 84 years old and enjoying his life. he has a wife who is 51 years his junior. he says he is as incorrigible as ever and he says a man is only as old as the woman he feel. he just keeps going. this guy is unsinkable. he knows he is going to die one day. he says i had more good luck than most people had and more good luck than i deserve. spending eight years in prison was a small price to pay. did he finish out being a

multimillionaire? not by what i see. i can't really say he sold a bank or sold the treasury and he said that is one of the few things he was ever accused of. he never took money from the taxpayer. his trial back in 2000 was questionable. ice gold that out. i didn't cover the trial. for me to go back to the record, go back to see how reporters covered it and how the pundits and policymakers and some of the public opinion people in newspapers and how they all rode about it. is this america? can you really prosecute somebody like this and use testimony that is supposed to be secret from another