will reair again next saturday at 9 a.m. eastern time. happy new year. >> and now on booktv, a panel discussion of william f. buckley jr.'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. ..

flying high, remembering barry goldwater, and finally, the reagan i knew. as his son, christopher, said, bill buck lee published more books when he was dead than many authors do when he was alive. but "god and map and really" was the first. unlike many of his later works, this one remains in print 60 years after its mexico. our panel this afternoon with discuss why, not as a pushing matter -- publishing matter but as an intellectual matter. what is living and what is dead? in the thought of god and man at yale. why and to what extent is it relevant to man and 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 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, citadel of conservism, up quote. what difference the 60 years has brought no one would be moved to think of yale now as a citadel of cover tim. to discuss their ramifications we have three excellent panelist and my principal duty is to introduce them. midge dexter is neoconservative royalty. the wife and the mother of the editor of commentary magazine. >> a neat trick.

[laughing] >> two successive editors of commentator 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 saved the free world. she is the author of, mook other books, an old wife's tale, and serves as a board member of the heritage foundation. roger kimball will speak second, animations number of hats. the president and publisher of encounter books, one of the best conservative publishers in the country. the editor publisher of the new criterion, the distinguished magazine of cultural criticism. and he is 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 -- >> and mr. kimball edited a -- our third speaker will be emmett tyrell, the editor of 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 which came out a few months ago is called, "after the hang year. " the conservative's road to recovery. we'll begin with mitch decter -- midge decter. >> can you hear me? i never live in peace with these, this technology. 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 anything, and i certainly can't remember that -- that young men

were first accepted as undergraduates in this school, and as you may not by now begin to imagine, because things have progressed happily, the interest in the presence of these knew female students on the campus was, it is no exaggeration to say, both deep and wide. i'd 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, 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. but in addition to such one-on-one conversations, rather large meetings with those so famously 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. at least man in the sense with bill buckley had come years earlier to set a certain 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 right by be called that, their mothers. in the course of our first meeting together, i will confess these girls, there after many years i have 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 throat their feet to complain about this or that aspect about their life

long mistreatment as females. the women's movement had been supplying them with all the fiber points of such grand and high-powered analysis, had been around and exhaustively familiar to me. but that these new yale undergrad walts could for the sake of mere cultural fashion, have back to 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 females applicants from all over the country, their complaints had, i will confess to you taken my by surprise. arrogant and snooty and sure of themselves, and i thought i might find them, yes, of course. after all, not without

considerable reason. but opressed? i listened to their complaints for some time with a growing sense of unreality. however, before the evening's discussion was over, god, as i is his sometimeses mysteryious wont, did not dessert me. for in the back of the rhyme saw a girl whom i knew well. she had indeed for some years been the best friend of one of my daughters. i saw her stand up and declare she had, since her earliest days in the cradle, been social -- you remember all this stuff, the way they talked. -- socialized to be more than a proper lady, taught it was wrong for thor strive and brought up to be no more than the with a of an accomplished and successful husband. many of you may not these 40 years later have been fully introduced to every detail in

this description of women oppression, but times and the indictments have quieted down considerly 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 dessert 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 in 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. need i say that after the eruption of shouted objections

that followed, the meeting did not last for much longer. and need i further say that the next gathering arranged for me to meet with the young women was considerably more sparsely attended. the conversation on this second occasion would at least not have taken me by surprise. for this meeting was to be devoted to a discussion of publishing. a fact that had in fact for some time 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 tracks written by women who are now busy leading the movement they so perversely called feminism. in any case i was well prepared

for what would be facing me and feeling a little more than mischievous. for my stay at the college i had been given a rather lex surous dorm room, feature are what were to me two highly impressive additions. one was a switch that warmed up the room's floor, no matter what happened to the dorm in yale, cold feet would play no part in it. 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, birth control dispensary, offering an impressive variety of means

available for such, and emergency psychiatric office, and, need i mention, an abortion clinic. that when we had several down for our discussion, and the question so predictably arose as to how i felt, i myself had managed, as the young aspirants put it, to break into publishing. i succeeded in bringing both the conversation and my time at yale to their collective end, by answering perfectly truthfully, by the way, that i had studied typing. now, for you facebookers and twittererrers, that means the rapid and accurate use of a now discarded piece of technology called a typewriter. in other words, i had luckily for me taken a class in typing

during my second year of high school. from there, in my case, mass many another, i could tell them of, my future in publishing side had resulted from a various combination of times swept, financial need, for both unhappy 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 far from uneventful time. for me, for yale, and even, i would venture to say, for the young ones 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 in 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 mach 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 the dreadful goings-on of my neighbors, like the elderly lady in the neighborhood i am growing, at least physically to

resemble although at it important to remember 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 ideas so brilliantly nurtured and tended by william buckley. along with others on this platform and in this room and 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. repeat by occupations, marches, garbage-filled, 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 now days, 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, i'm going to stop my sad story about the radicalization and get to what i have really come here to say today. the irony is that if anyone is presently entitled to feel cheated, it is not those demonstrators on wall street. it is america's students. alone to be -- along, to be

sure, with their parents for the machinations office banks and wall street fin nagleers can begin to touch what has for two generations now been reeked bon this public by far too many of its best universities. not yale, of course. and the more highly reputed the school, of course, the worse the reeking. for instance, when the government set out to offer the country student loans with which they might pay for their higher education, the tuition demanded of them rose to the strat stratosphere. just ask the presidents of harvard, yale, and columbia -- i'll stop there -- ask them for the number of dollars at risk in their endowments, and while you're at it, ask them what

percentage of their undergraduate students are actually privileged to sit in a classroom with someone who has obtained the status of professor. ask them what percentage of that which is pervade 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 sad or currently sanctioned political slogan. i speak here of general education. if history is any guide, should assume aspire to be a future steve jobs and need not attend the university at all and be better off looking for an empty nearby garage. 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 re-read "gow and man at yale." a brilliant bork and a tour deforce when one considers the condition of the country when it was written and the author's age. but it i kept saying to myself, this brilliant young man ain't seen nothing yet. and of course, he hadn'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, bound to this very day. i have 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 yourself and for the country. but, as the den den -- but you are not journey evidents to make fresh and vital the great tradition that 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 spirit might not overtake us all. thank you. [applause]

>> thank you, midge. roger. >> thank you very much. we know there's a story about the poet that he said to a -- recounting a priest who is hearing confession from the -- the priest is in the habit of saying, be brief, be blunt, and be gone. and i am going to do that. it is not true that i'm wearing this sling because of some altercation with an heir to george bundy or green or any of the other spoiled professors that weighed in on "god and man at yale." i want to mention one aspect of bill's life and work that i don't think has come up today. namely, 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 and i know who benefited from that activity -- and i just want to mention one, and a new book he has, my son, wally olsen, just published america's premiere conservative publisher, whose name i will not tell you, a book called "school for miss rule" and you won't be surprised when you conjure the word "misrule." one of the institutions that figures prom ineptly about america's elite law school is headquartered just down the street on wall street. a remarkable book and i urge you all to pick it up. well, "god & man at yale." our charge is to ponder the

question, is it still relevant? i think midge is absolutely correct when she says in 1951, bill wouldn't have seen anything yet. when i wrote my book about the corruption of politics, of liberal artsed and the humanities, i had not yet read "god & man at yale." and i had that flash of insight that yogi berra talks about. that deja vu all over again. so obviously there's a difference in the -- some of the characters, but so many of the concerns in this book felt incredibly contemporary, and they still are incredibly contemporary. my own feeling is that the famous formulation at the beginning of the book, that 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 the second part of that weren't even his words. his mentor at yale, wilmore kendall, added that in his green ink. but i don't -- i think -- 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 -- militant catholic and he took the revision very seriously indeed. to me, what this book is about is freedom and its many entrapments, that is to say, the false freedoms that are so popularly abroad and which

seduce us from genuine freedom. one of the phrases that looms large in this book is, academic freedom. now, one session is called, the hoax of academic freedom. i think we have seen in recent years how this virtue can be twisted and turned and turned into almost the opposite. someone mentioned tenure, and the idea of tenure was not mentioned at all, at least it wasn't not prominently in this book. that's true. but how curious tenure is -- here's an institution 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 economic freedom and

encourage the diversity of opinion. well, where are we now with the institution of tenure? and many institutions i know, including this one, tenure is largely an institution 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, you can't open any official publication without running into the word "diversity," which 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 disscents from the liberal orthodoxy. and just a couple of years

later, after the book started national reviews, his inaugural editorial, but he said, national review will be -- the same way "the new york times," the league of women voter and could have upon on and on -- 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, matters and morals, what a real education meant, and i think the magazine has done a very good job of doing that. is "god and man" still svelte how could it be more so? so many of the things that we read about here, the instances of intellectual irresponsibility and, for lack of a better term,

sort of moral latitude, aren't anything bigger now than they were then, and you can't go to a campus these days without having some wild left-winger asking -- acting badly in public and then wrapping himself in the mantle of academic freedom to justify is. probably some in this room will remember the case of ward churchill, who in the aftermath of 9/11, wrote an article about how the real villains, the real villains of 9/11, were the people who work in the world trade tower because they were like adolph ikeman. just making sure the trains ran on time to their destination. well, when -- this, of course, is the kind of thing that caused

cam -- campuses -- this guy was really antiamerican. we rally around the united states when it comes to people plowing jetliners into skyscrapers, but he thought the people who worked in the trade towers were the real villains, and when you go around the country to speak at campuses and was very popular for a while, and always under the rubric of academic freedom and free speech. academic freedom is not a blanket right. it's a privilege accorded to people who are engaged in assert activity, namely the pursuit of truth. that what academic freedom means. it means you are free to pursue the truth. freedom of speech its something quite gift something very valuable. i'm glad that people can make fools of themselves in the

square and wish their personal hygiene leaves something to be desired, and they're behavior in other ways, but it's really quite -- it's marvelous that people can do that. it's like speakers corner london. you can get on the soap box and say whatever silly thing you want. that's not academic freedom but the two things have been blurred together on many college campuses today. although he didn't talk about free speech, there's something about that, that its at the core of "god & man at yale." there's a biblical tag i always like to -- when i speak of bill buckley, i think of the book of genesis that says, god made the world and saw it was good, and that is at the core of bill buck lee, -- buckley.

whether it was racing or wine or the music of bach or helping young people, 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 homogenous that you see in an institution devoted to diversity that is ruled by political correctness. who would have at the time thought an institution devoted to the liberal arts, would at the same time absorb this toxin of political correctness, which is kind of the enforcer of this ideology of diversity. and that's certainly one of the

lessons i took away from the book. one other thing. toward the end of the book, bill refers to a supreme court decision, as far is a know never overturned, pierce versus the society of sisters, and at the supreme court in a unanimous decision, said the teachers shall be of good moral character and patriotic disposition, and certain studies, plain by essential to good citizenship be taught, and nothing be taught which is against public welfare. can you imagine any university having the temerity to put that on its mission statement today? quite amazing. i think the fact that -- you can't imagine any elite university doing that. shows not only how far we have fallen but also the continuing restitution -- relevance of this

very eloquent book. >> thank you, roger. [applause] >> bob tyrrell. >> i'd like to address a question that was raised earlier by bruce over the question of -- 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 is a got older, i became very, very conservative. [laughing] >> and i look forward to a full life of becoming really and truly conservative. because it makes a the liberals crazy, and that's kind of a lazy

way of saying it because they were born crazy. but i gave a little thought to bill and to his book, and several of his books, actually. and i thought about many times when i was with bill, 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 caught in park avenue, and i was looking 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 is not going to get ten paces across park avenue but this whole thing is going cascade do toe the ground, and sure knife -- sure enough it did. and people came from all over to help him scurry around and pick up his paper because bill was, even in manhattan, one of the most famous men in america. one of the most famous minds in america. he was the same as henry kissinger, and many people like bill from that era haven't been replaced. there's a judge from chicago, you perhaps know him, an idiot

named posner. a moraledat. excellent at crossword puzzles or something. but at any rate, posner wrote an is say some years ago about -- lamenting the loss of public intellectual from the square. i asked the learned judge where the hell that public intellectual performed and who would listen to him or her? there's not such a creature because there's -- well, there's a time and place for things, and things reach their fullness in a time, and, frankly, we have kind of passed the time today for public intellectuals. that was bill's time. and i guess i would also say -- i got to thinking about this, and i thought, what is 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 hl menkin, and he was ripe because, a., he was thoughtful and witty, but also, there was in place a mass media to broadcast his words to lesser people. so he would have to talk out through his publication, whatever it might be, or through letters to people, like paine and people like that. now he could be a part of mass media, and he could kind of

cross-fertilize with hollywood. there's a lot of that in those days. 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. all this brings us to "god & man at yale" is that menkin was a very famous athiest, and i think now we see that menkin 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 you go to the university -- professor gadis -- you go 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. the university's never changed my mind and i've never been on a university campus in which i was ever begin the tendency. so i think the universities have kind of lost. but when bill triumphed was in society, was in america, was in sophisticated realms of american life and of the world lives. bill's views weren't only but his views on economics are now held around the world.

bill's views on foreign policy are held 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. covertiveism is -- now we have the independents and the modernists on our side. so, i think in an odd and funny way, men can -- the competition for men's souls, but bill won the competition for his point of view, for conservativism, and i

think bill buckley for that, and i thank you all for being here. [applause] >> are there comments from panel members beautiful we go to questions? >> just one comment. bob, your observation that you can't see that four years of education makes much difference. people seem to come out believing the same things they went to college believing. i don't know. my observation actually has been a little different. seems to me that -- this is one of the reasons why bill would appeal to parents or alumni. you have this nice 18-year-old child that you have nurtured with care and you send them off to an elite institution, that costs $60,000 -- think about that -- and then want it year, they come back having rejected every principle of haberdashery,

personal hygiene, moral rectitude -- >> never had it. >> that's one of the things that bill was appealing to trustees, alumni, parents, and i was going to write a book called "retaking the university." and got so far as to write an article about it, and my thought was, let's appeal over the heads of the tenured radicals to parents of the alumni, trustees, who if they only knew what was going on, would by appalled. some would be appalled. some people regard a university degree as a kind of job ticket primarily. is it worth $250,000? that may be another question. but i realized that this wasn't going to -- wouldn't work. why? well, for one reason, the universities and elite colleges are now so dependent on money

that they don't have to may any attention to parents or the alumni fund. you have a tiny college like hamilton college in upstate new york. 1500 students. they have an endowment of a billion dollars. so what do they care whether the fundraising is off. >> they do care, and irving kris cal wrote years ago that the university alums know what's going on at the universities. they don't like what's going on at the universities, and they goddamn well set on boards and keep inflating those people's endowments over and over again. 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 elm know that, and they're very proud of that. but they -- what they teach at

universities don't really make much impact, certainly by the time a kid is ready to get serious about life. that's about middle age. >> 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 shores star, vinny, made a surprise cameo this week as the guest lecturer at columbia university. 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 co-eds. 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? >> well, that says it all. >> well, earlier, we had referred to and quoted something untrue and gastly, which is that conservativeism was a nervous intellectual -- whatever. >> made in gesture. >> irritable -- -- but lionel trilling is a 50-foot tall giant

compared with the sociology department. at columbia university. i looked at that quote by dish actually used it in my book that comes out this spring, called "liberal -- the death of liberalism." and i went over that quote. didn't ruffle my feathers terribly, and i think were he alive today he would be completely on our side. i think he was talking about a kind of conservativism that he wouldn't imagine. within two years it had popped up and the person of bill buckley, and then i wonder whether -- i'm sure he is more generous toward conservativism in the end than he was in the beginning. >> not as i recall. >> all right. let's invite the audience into this discussion. you must come down to one of this microphones, please, and

make your question brief and blunt and then, as roger suggests, you may be gone. >> something mr. kimball said got me thinking about the whole question of herd instinct. at the beginning of this century when stokes was the secretary of this university, he was a clergyman and chose not to go to ordination. he was deacon because he felt this was quite probably 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 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 how difficult that can be. so i would have to hear ways to make contrarian thought more possible today. >> roger? >> i think one thing is to subscribe to public lick indications like the american spectator and national review. i mean, i think -- you know, i can't remember what it costs to have a yearly subdescription but it's 48 for the new criterion, and i believe yale is somewhere north of $56,000. so, it's from one point of view it's a pretty good deal. i mean, think -- to some extent,

education is a recovery project. we want to -- the past is sort terra incognito when you're 17 or 18 years old and it would be nice to learn what the best minds thought about the most important questions, like how should we live our lives? that's what a liberal arts education is about that's not what happens on many college campuses these days. >> one thing that i must say, at princeton, robby jordan's work, and he has kind of got an institute just set up on campus where you can get -- take courses and graduate and be just like a real princetonan, and i think to have such an institution at dartmouth, i believe. and paul sayer set one up at williams college. so, somehow on to these

universities are being colonized by cancers we called conservativism, and i fine that very promising, and robe jordan has done an excellent job at princeton. >> i would agree with bob's characterization of that. but remember, princeton administration noticing how popular robby's institute was, any fellow he brings here must have an academic appointment someplace. >> that's great. i don't want to go there. i'd like to go to nightclubs. >> 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 them to -- send themselves to the poorhouse to provide this h8bhemselves s -- i am dead serious. within five years you would see a revolution in this country. you really would. and they could all say if the kids want to read shakespeare, give them shakespeare at night. but we will teach them how to do the work we need done here. the world once work that way,

and i tell you, you would get the attention of people you wouldn't dream you we're see serious. >> next question, please. >> dr. kesler you called higher education the high ground of american politics, and dr. dexter you talked about getting around the high ground, and mr. kimball -- >> that's the other guy. >> anyway, you talked about bill's strategy of trying go through the alumni. how do we get back to the high ground of american politics? is it possible to send smart people to get their ph.ds and become professors or what do we do? >> well, i don't know. is a brief answer. i think that both what midge said and what bob said, we need, i think, to encourage

alternatives. the real irony of our moment here is somebody has an independent mind, and diversity is on everyone's list. but conformity's in everyone's heart so we need to sponsor some genuine alternatives, things like the madison center at princeton. that's one thingment unfortunately it's getowize -- ghettoized there and refuse to have anybody outside the academic guild. it's become suddenly less of a tonic force. but i think one of the lessons of "god & man at yale" is that 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 is talking about something else. said what i'm offering you is not a program. call it no program. it requires most uncommon of virtues, common sense. >> next question. >> i am 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 & map at yale" today, what would the argument be? one of the huge differences that 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 medication in a whole variety of ways.

and people who are on the formal side tend to ignore this. but in ignoring it, they're ignoring the enormous commonality that exists, and the commonality that exist against the hard, rationalist, utilitarian essence of what is hot 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 transindentle medication. and the bureaucracy has not only committed to this but a majority of the bureaucrats in the downtown bureaucracy become regular made e meditators and the moto of the san francisco unified school district, which might be roared as the most, quote, liberal, bureaucracy in america, is changed begins

within. four of the schools in the district are now practicing medication. 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 ridge edly objectty identified essence in the intellectual idiom which still dominates the universities. >> and there's the teachers union. >> right. >> well, i agree with you about the problems of a programattic materialist secular society. but when i -- i did not know that about san francisco.

of course it's california. but i do remember chesterton once said, talking about -- using the phrase -- the new-age things, the religion within. what he meant was there was something important about religious institutions and the social glue they provide. i mean, once the ways in which this into would have been written differently today, is the author wouldn't say that the struggle is between atheism and christianity. which tells us something. and the part here, the as citizennible focus wouldn't have been on religion, but still, 1950 was -- 1961 was a time when

the'll institutions in the country were still fairly strong. 92 people in the united states said they believed in god and go to church and contracting it would be the sort of athiest thought, toto tall tearan gulag. button that, actually is a curious thing. ... >> you hear this hmmm. [laughter] >> in the background. so i never, i never quite

understood -- this will have to be the last question, and then we will stay seated. the people who are standing may come down and find a seat, and we'll move directly to the next panel. last question. >> this is a question for the whole panel. um, how many people have you seen convert from liberalism to conservativism? and if you have seen this miracle occur, what was the trigger? did the person come to the faith first and then gain conservativism? did they become pro-life? did they read a great book? did they hear a speaker at their university or elsewhere? i would be very curious, because i'd like to replicate this cathartic moment. [laughter] >> you're asking how many people have i seen come from liberalism to conservativism, is that right? >> um, approximately, yes. >> yes. well, this one right here. [laughter] and her husband and jean kirkpatrick. >> oh, yes. >> and for a while, pat

moynihan. >> a brief while. >> well -- [laughter] but he, so we've seen a lot of it. it did stop, however. and that's kind of interesting. it stopped. the, what i call in this new book of mine the good liberals, they had a civil war on liberalism in '48. you probably know about this war in '48. and arthur schlessinger and people like that rid liberalism of its radicalism and, boy, they sounded pretty good to me for a while there. even arthur. but, um, and then again it happened again about '68, manager like that, '72 with midge and her husband and irving crystal and the whole gang of neo-cons. but the interesting thing is that at some point it stopped. and the battle lines were drawn.

and that's something for some serious meditation. why did the movement of liberalism's -- liberals from liberalism to conservativism stop? i don't know. >> well, it's partly that, the one i am familiar with -- [laughter] it was, it was made up of many things. the world had gone through a cataclysm, and now everybody was very cheerful in america, so there was a big, radical sense of hooray, 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 praising ourselves because we were, of course, far superior parents. i mean, my goodness, those beknighted old people who brought up -- whoo. [laughter] >> and then we saw our children, and they were not thriving. and let me tell you something, you bring up a kid and you can't understand why in the world he's not thriving. you've got a good life, he's got a nice home, he's got parents who love him, and then you know there's something foul in the air. and by the '60s that something foul erupted in the universities into -- this is a very sloppy and hasty history. and it needs a lot more going into than that. but the country was taken over

by a disease of ingratitude and some kind of phony notion of perfection. and this was what our kids were suffering from, and i mean suffering. and suddenly there they were leading the best of lives, going to the best of places, going to the best of schools, drowning themselves in drugs, um, demanding crazy things and doing crazy things and insisting that somehow or other all pains be lifted from them. and they were not thriving. and, boy, that was scary. that was really scary. and that was the beginning of

that, plus the fact that people who are known as neo-cons, one thing they always were was anti-soviet, anti-communist. and there was a whole new revival of this stuff going on in places where it shouldn't have been; universities, publishing houses, serious magazines. and it was a very, very, very serious lesson. you -- anybody who wants to, you don't need to be a neo-con now. you can just go and be a plain con. [laughter] [applause] >> anything, anything but an ex-con. [laughter] thank, panelists, thank you, ladies and gentlemen. stay seated, please, the next

panel is going to begin immediately. thank you. >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@cspan.org or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> well, on your screen is the newest book by long-time washington foreign correspondent georgie ann gyer, anticipating the impossible. georgie ann guyier, what is this book about? >> well, this book is a compilation of my poems since the onset of communism. and i have thought for many years that what we have to do, those of us in the foreign field, we have to anticipate things. we have to predict them. and that's what this book is trying to show. >> throughout your years as a

foreign correspondent, where have your travels taken you? what are two or three of the most exciting places you've been and situations you've been in? >> oh, i've been all over the world. egypt, israel, all over latin america, vietnam -- not so exciting. cuba, i've done interviews there many times, and really almost everywhere. i can't think of places now. [laughter] >> so if people sit down to read "predicting the unthinkable," what are they going to find in there? what would you like them to take away from that book? >> the parts of the world and about the message of thinking of different people. so they can anticipate what is coming and predict it. we have great diplomats and military men and journalists who have predicted, but it never

sort of gets to the upper regions of the white house and the state department. >> so if you were to travel today, where, where do do you sa future problem or a future situation that we should be aware of, thinking about now? >> well, certainly syria. i think the rest of the middle east is going to come out of this quite well. but syria is such a violent place and such a that that is -h a nasty place. it will have to be an all-out revolution to overthrow. right now we're in acquiescence, not doing much of anything. going full speed ahead, but they depend upon us, our borrowing. and so almost everywhere you look including our own country has problems to look into. >> now, we're here at the national press club. it is authors night here at the

national press club, and we're talking with georgie ann geyer whose newest book is on your screen. regular viewers of news shoes from cnn, c-span, fox, all of them have seen georgie ann geyer on the program commentating, but, ms. geyer, it sounds like you have a bit of a speech impediment, what's happened to you? >> i do. four years ago i had towpg cancer -- tongue cancer which i didn't even know existed, and i never smoked, never drank too much, never smoked at all. and so they -- [inaudible] so now i'm trying -- i survived, but now i'm trying to go beyond surviving. >> has it impeded your travel plans? >> oh, yes. oh, yes. because, you know, i can talk to you, and you understand it, but in germany or france or egypt

they won't understand it. so i'm rearranging my life. >> georgie ann geyer's newest book is "predicting the unthinkable." thank you for being on booktv. >> thank you. >> edwin edwards was actually investigated some two dozen times. he had never been investigated before, never, in all his life n public life start anything 1954 all the way up until about 1972. and by the time, by the time he was taking the oath of office, there was a grand jury already investigating him. i mean, on the first day. edwin edwards is louisiana's only four-term governor. he was governor for 16 years. not consecutively. the state constitution only allows you to serve two consecutive terms, so he served in the 1970s and then again from '48-'88 -- '84-'88, and his

last term was '92-'96. he was a record setter just in years alone, and i think that the way the political system is set up now, we'll probably never see that again. >> what kind of a governor was he? >> well, it depends on who you talk to, and i've talked to a lot of people on that. but i think on balance he was probably one of the best, if not the best administrator that louisiana ever had as far as administer tating -- administrating state government. he had a very quick mind, and he knew what all 144 legislators were thinking, how they were voting, what their political persuasion was. he kept all that in his head. so consequently, he knew before they got to his office what it is they wanted, so he would have a ready answer for almost all of them. so he always knew, yes, what was politically expedient, but at the same time he did move the state forward in that he was a fiscal conservative. so he forced the legislature

every year especially in the '70s to balance the budget at the end of 'em year -- each year, not let it get out of control x. to that extent he was able to also change the severance tax on oil and gas. and when he did that, he changed it from 25 cents a barrel on oil, for instance, to 12.5% of value at the time when opec really was beginning to take over the production and pricing of oil, and oil began to shoot up. so when he did that, tens of millions of dollars suddenly flowed into the state coffers. in fact, by the end of the 1970s the headlines read we were suffering from an embarrassment of riches. even the politicians couldn't figure out where to throw all the money. so by the late 1970s, we were the most cash-rich state in the nation. louisiana was leading the nation as far as programs, highway construction, everything at a time when new york city was on the brink of bankruptcy. so, um, it, i mean, it got the eye of a lot of people.

got the eye of ted kennedy, for instance, when he was, basically, trying to overthrow jimmy carter for the democratic nomination for president. and kennedy contacted through some friends, contacted edwin edwards to see if he would be interested on going on the ticket as vp in the hopes that maybe he could make some sense out of the federal budget and try to get america back on a position of balancing the budget year the year. so, um, he became quite well known for that. edwin edwards was first indicted in 1985 in a federal indictment, and then he had the first trial in 1985, then there was a roadway trial in 1986. and he was acquitted in the second time. charges back then were he was supposed to be bid-rigging hospital certificates. at that time the federal government had a program to where in order to serve rural

counties, rural parishes, rural areas the federal government would, according to the states, how the states saw they needed medical care out in the countryside, they would issue these certificates of need. and those certificates would wind up being very valuable because health care, health care corporations would take those certificates and then, um, they would get federal money to help build these facilities. so it became very lucrative. anyway, so he was charged with helping his friends out when he did that kind of thing. but the problem with that was that the jury, the final jury that acquitted him said, you know, these guys didn't do anything different than what any other business person would do. and the first trial what happened with john bolts, who was appointed by jimmy carter, by the way, john bolts got to edwards on the witness stand, and he said didn't you do this to enrich your family and

friends? and edwards says, well, no, it's, you know, that's -- you know, you really help out your friends, that's true, but you help out everybody because that's what you're there to do. he said, as a matter of fact, i remember, mr. bolts, you called me up for some help. and john bolts stopped that line of questioning, took a whole other turn. but there were other reporters who were in the gallery who followed up, and they found out john bolts had actually called edwin edwards to try to get him to put pressure on the two ranking senates of louisiana to get him a federal judgeship. [laughter] and, of course, it didn't work. but it's funny that he was being accused of that. so the dynamic in the bolts trial was the federal judge overseeing the trial was the guy who had gotten the job overseeing the guy who had wanted his job, prosecuting the guy that he had, that he had tried to use to get that job. so anyway, bolts went down in flames.

and i was convinced that at that point especially in 1986 when edwards was acquitted, he came out on the courthouse steps, and he railed against the federal government. he called them just about everything else in the book you could think of. the fbi, the federal prosecutor, the agents that were on the case , and he said far more than he should have. there's a famous picture of his wife putting her hand over his mouth. so that was the beginning of the end for him. he had always been a smart aleck, and people in power don't like that. and so he always was very quick with a quip, very, you know, quick with a joke. i mean, you know, he told in the '83 election that dave train, his republican opponent, is so slow that it takes him an hour and a half to watch "60 minutes." i mean, things like that. he just, he should have been, he could have been a stand-up

comedian, could have been better than seinfeld, this guy. but then, you know, he gets to the david duke race in 991, and he says david duke, a reporter said is there any place where you two, possibly, could be alike because you're ultraliberal, he's ultra conservative, is there any place you could be alike, and without even thinking he said, yes, there is. we're both wizards under the sheets. i mean, not very many politicians get away with lines like that, but it made very good theater here for those of us in louisiana. this guy's been profiled three times by "60 minutes." so he always had something on the ball upstairs, but there was always that little sinister flow in there somewhere where people just as time went on didn't really trust him. and there was a lot of times when he probably could have defended himself, but he insisted that defending himself always made it worse. he saw people in other politicians and powerful people

who were always trying to defend themselves against charges. and the reality was that the more they defended themselves, the worse off they came, so he would just pass it off with a joke and move on. he never was bothered by that. the second most major indictments were extortion, 26 counts, and he wound up being convicted on 17. and it was a where he was supposed to be rigging riverboat licenses. and the story is, the truth of the story is that there was only one license left by the time he became governor for the fourth term, and that was the 15th riverboat license. louisiana had mandated that only 15 riverboats could be in louisiana, so the 15th license was still up for grabs. all the others had been distributed under buddy roamer. so he was investigated and indicted for allegedly extorting

money out of eddie debart low jr., the owner of the san francisco 49ers, to get that 15th license. then, let's see, there was robert did ri who already owned a riverboat, and to keep his license he allegedly was extorted. and then there was ricky shedler who worked for a players' casino in lake charles who said that he was extorted, um, for keeping the edwards' meaning edwards and his son steven, from, i don't know, harming them in lake charles. anyway, they never really believed it, and their testimony proved that to begin with. so the real charge came down to debartolo. they had gotten together years before. debartolo's father built most of the malls in america. well, eddie jr. for his 30th

birthday, his father gave him the san francisco 49ers. so he spent, lavished all kinds of money on the 49ers. in fact, eddie is the reason for the salary cap that we have today in the nfl. but the nfl also had bylaws that said you're not supposed to be associated with a gambling operation. well, debartolo just ignored all that. so he comes to louisiana and decides he wants to be, have a casino. so he begins to use edwin edwards to do all the legal work, the paperwork for what it's going to take to get a casino. the only spot left open was in bossier parish up near shreveport. so they get together, but edwards continues to send him retainer agreements. debartolo never signs them, returns them, pays them, and yet edwards continues to fill out everything he needs to fill out, in fact, he puts him together

with hollywood casinos out of dallas. and so they do a proposal that's far and away the best proposal of any of them that are on the table, so he knows he's going to win. well, he goes to debartolo, and he says, look, getting the license is the easy part. the hard part's going to be trying to sell it to the voters, so we need money, a quarter of a million dollars, to begin a tv blitz of campaign up in northwest louisiana so the people will vote for it, because it has to be passed by referendum. so debartolo says, you know, we'll give you a half million dollars, just do it right. i don't need a half million dollars, so he says, here, take 400,000, well, he never would deliver the check. and it's because he had a guy in his office who said you need to stay away from the edwardss because they're bad news. i don't want you associating with them. so he forces, debartolo forces edwards to fly to san francisco

and pick up cash. so edwards goes in, and he picks up the cash. well, of course, that instantly looks wrong, and edwards knows that. and he's, you know, he was, he was dumb for making that move. but the reality was is that debartolo stayed on the defense team after the charges were filed, he todayed on the defense team right up until -- he stayed on the defense team right up until until. and eddie jordan, the prosecutor out of new orleans, and the assistant prosecutor go to the owner of the san francisco 49ers and says if we beat you in court, you're going to lose the team and you're going to go to prison. are you sure your story's straight? so debartolo flipped. and he comes back and says, okay, now that 400,000 was

extortion. so he flies here to baton rouge, and he says, he says i was a victim. now, the fbi had recorded some hundred, 200 conversations where debartolo had continually called edwards say, what do can you hear? we'll do whatever we need to do. edwards had only initiated three of those calls, so it's really hard to balance out who was the real victim here based on that. when he was convicted of 17 counts in may of 2000, he goes to prison in october of 2002 and stays there for eight years and three months. he got a ten-year sentence which was double the prescription. at that time they had prescriptions on sentences, and the federal judge because he has that discretion just doubled the sentence. so, um, he could have gotten out in less than fife years under the prescription, but he gave him a ten-year sentence, so he got out in eight years and three months.

but he came out and he said, you know, they gave me life, and i came back with a wife. i mean, he's just unsink bl. this guy is unsink bl, he's one of the greatest politicians of all times because he actually did do something as far as administering state business, and at the same time he was great theater, and everybody likes their great theater, you know? they can only take facts and figures to a point. they just have to have a gut feeling of whether or not they actually like the leader. and edwards is a master at that. >> what made you decide to write this book, and how long did it take you to put together? >> well, actually, edwards came to me through a friend, and he said do you, you know, would you want to write this, write my biography? and i told the friend, i said, you know something? i really don't want to write the biography because there's a lot about him i don't like. i covered him for the better part of 25 years, and i just -- he was always too much of a smart aleck for me, and i just

didn't really like his politics. back room deals, i mean, all the stuff that you hear about, you think about, and, um, and so the friend said, well, it's nice to know that, you know, you're still an objective reporter, that you can see both sides of a story. and, you know, i said, well, you know what? i'll go over and talk to him just out of morbid curiosity. i'd love to just see what he's thinking. so i went over and talked to him, and we sort of struck an agreement that, you know, he would tell me what he thinks is the truth, and then i will go back and follow up by doing an incredible amount of research and tracking back down these leads and these stories, and, indeed, at the end of five years i had 2,000 pages and 3,000 footnotes. and so it took me two years just to cut it down to 621 pages. but, i mean, that was -- i loved it. it was a lot of work, it was very tedious. i loved it, though, because it really showed me the greater picture. not just the man's life in the picture, but it showed what

created that life and what he created as a result of being part of that picture. i wish that everybody if they really wanted to have an understanding of american politics could go back and look at the players right now and tell who they are, where they came from. because that'll give you an idea about sort of where we're headed. if you're a student of history, you can sometimes figure out the direction of where things are going to, how everything's going to finish. and right now it doesn't look too good. >> did your perception of him change after writing this book? >> it did to an extent. it didn't completely change. i still like to believe that i held my objectivity, you know, as far as possible. yes, i did like him as a person. i mean, when you're spending five years with somebody every week or so, um, then you do develop a sympathy. but that's, you know, that's the temptation of all boiger ifs -- biographers, is to develop the sympathy for the person that you're writing about.

and he did have good reasons for doing some of the things that he did. but the other part of that is, is what every person whoever aspires to and grabs a high office, and 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 they project that power onto you. and the ego begins to feed into that, and before long, um, a person at the extreme end of that feels like they're above the law such as a president richard nixon. when you start to look at it in that perspective, i don't care how -- i don't care how strong you are, how strong of a moral fiber you think you are. when there's enough money and power heaped on you, it will change you unless you quit while you're ahead. and most politicians cannot do that. they cannot walk away from it. >> what's edwin edwards doing now? >> edwin edwards is 84 years old, enjoying his life.

he has a wife who is 51 years his junior. he says that he's as incorrigible as ever, and he says that a man is only as old as the woman he feels. i mean, he just, you know, he just keeps going. i mean, he is -- this guy is unsinkable. he knows he's going to die one day, and, you know, he says i've had more good luck than most people have had, and i've had more good luck than i deserve, so spending eight years in prison for me was really a very small price to pay. and, you know, did he finish out being a multimillionaire? not what i've seen. [laughter] so i can't really say he stole the bank or stole the treasury. and he says that is one of the few things he was never accused of is he never took any money from the taxpayer. but, and the, the -- his trial back in 2000 was questionable. i mean, it