embodiments of that. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> well if there are no further questions, yes, talk about -- >> we were speaking earlier and i think it is worth commenting on. >> i am pretty sure i'm looking at samantha over there that i think i would give credits to do a wonderful editor at "the washington post" named autumn burlington who was among other things richard's editor when he was writing columns for the washington post. and i will just do something in parenthesis which is to watch or experience him writing a column was itself dizzying and

terrifying in some ways. i can remember once he was i think in bangkok rushing between planes and dictating to ashley who was with him on that trip and autumn burlington gets deutsch marks for helping shepherd those and to print. in any event i did a piece when richard died, and i used the phrase something to the effect he was not an ugly american. he wasn't a quiet american. and she said ah-ha and took that and made it into the unquiet american. >> i would credit strobe with the unquiet american, and with ab bow to bob green because we did flat the green title on its head.

yes? >> elliott jones. will you tell the trampoline story? [laughter] also, do you think that mr. holbrooke could in any way have had an interest in turning his perspective to the economic problem that is going on on diplomacy or would he be totally uninterested in the whole business? >> he wouldn't be an interested but he would be glad there are other people more interested than he. [laughter] there was nothing that he was not interested in me and that covers economics. but i think that strobe is correct. richard is a humanist. his brand of diplomacy was unique because he believed that diplomacy had to be based one human being at that time. he was not a bureaucrat. and therefore economics was

really beyond his range of passion but i think that even since richard passed away, the world has changed so much that, you know, the unraveling of the world financial sector has happened so quickly and richard was such a quick study that i think that he would have immediately seen the intersection between economics and diplomacy as he salles for example the connection between a health problem and international security. he's the one who took aides to the united nations security council because he did see that intersection. and as always with richard he

was told this isn't happening. we don't deal with health issues. this is a security council, and for richard that just meant to have to keep going, and ultimately he prevailed. i think that henry kissinger pays him a very backhanded compliment a line kissinger uses on every occasion when he has the opportunity which is that if holbrook calls you and asks you to do something, say yes the first time, spare yourself the agony of the repeated calls. take that any way you like, but richard was never calling to ask for anything from himself. it was always for some other purpose, some other cause. but i think that was actually a good quality. >> melissa is not going to invite me back here on the site

of a trampoline story. i will do it very, very quickly. it was in one of the periods when he was in no wilderness as it were and for him being in the wilderness and he was drawing a huge salary working in the financial sector and bored stiff by a really eager to get back in. this was in the year and he invited my wife and i have to spend a weekend with him at a house that he had near jose, connecticut and we were invited over jose never met a and invitation he turned down. it was for a brunch at the goodall's in fact. we drove over to this nice country house and as we were heading in, and it was a very crowded affair, he noticed over the corner of the lawn there was a trampoline for the kids. so he sort of did a sharp right turn, even though the host and

hostess had come out to welcome him she may have shaken hands with them or something and just made a b-line for the trampoline. ..

do you have a question? >> okay. my name is barbara, and i have read or heard someplace that -- oops -- that president karzai and richard holbrooke did not get along at all and to the point that president karzai refused to meet with him personally. is that correct and. >> no. that is an exaggeration. it is true that president karzai is not an easy man to have as an ally. richard used to say that it was easier with the serbs because the serves, you could threaten to bomb into good behavior but karzai is supposed to be our ally. and with allies like that, frankly, -- anyway, i'm speaking here for myself.

but there isn't a long list of american diplomats or -- or other officials who have had an easy time with president karzai. put it that way. richard delivered some pretty tough messages to karzai, who was not -- who had a much easier time with the prior administration. put it that way. okay? david? >> hi. i'm david, and my tie with richard -- i have several of them but the most recent one was that he hired me. so obviously i have a very warm place in my heart for him. he hired me, however to send me to kabul. so i have mixed feelings in that sense, but it was the most exciting job i ever had, and i will always be grateful to richard for recruiting me for

it. i was director of communications at u.s. embassy in kabul. richard felt the struggle there was as much as perceptions as it was about bullets, and he was certainly right about that and i was trying use the money he obtained by various means for us to try and create hope, a sense of hope among as many of the afghan people as possible. i have one comment on the remarks i heard. i think if he were here he might argue you about the hopelessness of the task in afghanistan/pakistan. difficult, yes. i guess what the question is, is really, what are we trying to achieve there? if we think it's hopeless, our standards may be too high what we're trying to achieve. i think what he was trying

achieve was what we used to call in the embassy good enough afghan. the standard of which was not terribly high to be honest. it's a country that wants to survive as a nation, but it's going to be a pretty rough and ready place no matter what happens. what i think he recognized was the deep importance to the united states of the outcome in afghanistan, and really in pakistan. the war in afghanistan is about pakistan. it's about the policies of some of the entities in pakistan. as much as anything else in my point. i think he felt that way, too. >> absolutely if said of the two, pakistan was the much more serious issue, and in the two years that he was on this beat, i don't remember a single walk through central park without richard either making a call to

someone in pakistan or a call coming in from pakistan. he was all over pakistan, and on first-name terms with all the usual suspects. he had cultivated relationships with almost every one of consequence in pakistan, not because for a minute he had any illusions about our national interests and theirs meshing, but he just felt that they had to be given a sense that this wasn't as he once put it, one-night stand. that we were in this relationship for the long game. >> i think it's significant that the president of pakistan, unlike the president of a neighboring country, came to his memorial service. so, that speaks volumes, and i would completely agree with you, david. the word hopeless -- richard has

good vocabulary but hopeless was not in it. i think it says something about the subject that we're talking about tonight as well as the spirit you created by having this group that half of the contribution from the floor and from the audience has been in the form of testimonials to the guy. [applause] >> up next, author and sinned indicate it columnist mark steyn. discusses free speech, america's debt, and the growth of muslim populations in the west. mr. steyn's best-selling works include: >> host: in mark citizen in your 2006 book, "america alone," where did that title come from? >> guest: i have to confess the title came from the publisher,

from my editor, a gentleman called harry crocker. i had a more useful tight he thought was for losers and would guarantee we sold 2,800 copies. he thought that "america alone" was a hit title, and he proved right on that. >> host: what was your original title? i'm keeping that to when i'm a multibillionaire and can afford to indulge myself by writing books with oblique elusive titles that sell 2,400 companies. >> host: what is that book about? >> guest: the book -- by my original title was on the same theme as "america alone." eventually turned into. which is civilizational collapse, my shtick, my niche. what a good editor does, which

is what harry did for me, he identifies what your unique selling point is and gets you to focus on it. he says all this tap-dancing around the issue in the first 50 pages is a waste of time. get rid of that. and that's the book, and he was right on that. >> host: you write in "america alone," the end of the world as we know it, it's hard to deliver a wakeup call for civilization so determined to smother the alarm clock in the soft fluffy pillow of multi culturallism and sleep in for another ten years. the folks who call my book alarmist, accept that the western world is growing more muslim. but they deny that this population trend has any significant societal consequences. >> guest: yes, that's true. my book when it came out in 2006, the economists called it alarmist. my own magazine in canada, mcclain's magazine, called it alarmist. i think in fact it was

insufficiently alarmist. if you look at, for example in the netherlandses, you have explicitly muslim parties, organizing in local legislatures now. if you look at the city of brussels, majority of people in the city council, the governing socialist caucus, are muslim. i was sent a picture yesterday of the city of london, the square mile, the biggest financial center on earth, and the nearest muslim mosque for city workers is too small, so they all take their prayer mats in the street, and look towards mecca, and so on friday prayers, the streets of central london is filled with muslims looking toward mecca and praying. now, you can argue that that just adds to the general gait of life in a multicultural society or you can argue it's going to

be a huge blessing, or you can do as i do, and argue that in fact it puts a big questionmark of those societies. it's ridiculous to pretend nothing is going change. there's a difference between -- if you look at austria, for example, by mid-century, it's predicted that a majority of austrians under the age of 30 will be muslim. that's what the vienna demographic institute predicted. this is a country, the most americans don't think about. they think about -- if you say austria, they think of julie andrews and the nuns singing, how do you solve a probable legal like maria." that was 1938. 2038 is holiday to you do you solve a problem like sharia." that's a complete inversion from head to toe in three generations. >> host: you note in "america alone" that the birth -- one of the most popular boys names in europe in several areas of europe is mohammed.

>> yeah. that one where people say, it doesn't -- that's just bus it has a perk significance in the muslim world. and they go, you can only get by eding mow mad me with an o and a u and a mm and one m. but in point of fact it is a significant marker. cultural demographic transformation is always the most interesting because who human capital is the best indicator of where that society is headed, and generally speaking, while we tell ourselves certain fluffy and reassuring stories about demographic transformation, it doesn't always work out well. sometimes it works out to messily in relatively benign way. if you take northern ireland, which is a place i know well.

that's the -- the fact that the fractiousness between what catholics regard as a native population and an imposed protestant population linger hundred office years after. you look at fiji where the british brought in indians, an indian population to be the civil service and mercantile class. fiji has decayed in a bicultural ruin. so demographic transformation is the most fascinating element of society. >> host: why should we care, though? so what? >> guest: if you put it in those terms, then we shouldn't care. it's just that something that happens. but it never happens entirely naturally. for example, if you look in the southwest united states, where cities that were -- if you take certain cities on the edge of

california, on the edge of los angeles, for example, that were -- had a congestional post war demographic and are enough 90-5% hispanic, this is a demographic that wasn't even in the 1960 u.s. census. that's actually a big transformation in a fairly short space of time, and it has consequences. now, when you put the why do you care question, that's the benign view that people think it's like -- we were talking about broadway just before we went on air. that's leak the david merrick production of hello dolly which he had carol chapping in and ginger rommers and then he ran out of brassy middle aged blonde broads and sew he put pearl bailey in the lead and it's still hello dolly, the songs are the same, the scripts are the same, except it's pearl bailey and an all-black camps people

think that's what happens. if you have a muslim netherlandss or muslim britain, there will be fewer pubs, the pubs will have to close, but essentially it will basically be the same, and no serious person would argue that, i think. >> host: on the cover of the relatively new paper bark version of lone -- "america alone," there's a new sticker, "soon to be banned in canada." >> guest: i right for mclean's magazine in canada which is the combination of "time" and "newsweek"" combined. it's the dentist waiting room magazine. no offense to dentists or my friends at mclean's. the canadian islamic conference filed three human rights complaints bat story in the province of ontario and the

province of british columbia and at the federal human rights commission, and as a result of that i have the bizarre 'experience of finding my writing on trial in a courtroom in vancouver, in which they flew in expert witnesses to discourse on the tone -- the so-called tone of my jokes. were my jokes merely in poor taste or were they actually criminal? they flew in one of the -- an expert witness from philadelphia and a so-called expert witness from toronto, and it was fascinating. i was -- i'm flattered to be on this show and to be discussing -- for three hours, but no disrespect, peter, when it actually becomes the subject of a criminal trial in a vancouver courtroom, i thought that was the -- i thought the kind of literary criticism elements of the case were as absurdity as anything else. >> host: what's the cii and the human rights commission in

canada? iflue the cii this canadian islamic con congress. one of the other interesting features of the demographic transformation -- that's a rome name. there's something called the supreme islamic council of canada or the islamic supreme council which sounds slightly less friendly to me. i may do them an injustice. i used to be on the mails list of the supreme islamic council of ireland who were rather agreeable in fact. i don't know what -- won't see the point of fighting to throw off the hated english opresser if a couple of decade later the supreme islam yuck council sets up shop in dublin. the supreme islamic council in new south wales. a lot of these groups are concerned to but islam beyond discussion. it's not a question whether you

say good things or bad things in essence in muslim countries, islam is beyond discussion and i think it's a fascinating subject to discuss and you should be allowed to discuss it. so these fellows filed human rights complaints in canada. canada does not have a first amendment, so speech is police build state bureaucrats, which i think is obnoxious, and since my case came along we have managed to get section 13, the relevant part of the code, put on hold. they're not kind of -- a judge ruled that the supreme court should take some view of whether this was even constitutional or not. but in the meantime he wasn't going apply it and he essentially made the law uneven forcible, and i think that's a good thing. i'm interested in free speech. i don't begrudge -- i runt into all kinds of crazy opinions every day of the week, including right here on c-span.

i don't agree with them but i don't want to criminalize them. that's all i ask for my opinions, too. >> host: arure books, mark steyn, allowed to be sold in canada. >> guest: i'm glad to say they're still available in canada. that soon to be banned in canada is actually not merely a book tease. the statutory penalty had the canadian islamic congress won their case in british columbia, would have been a lifetime publication ban for me on anything that -- on writing on anything to do with islam, europe, demograph, terrorism. i could have been the ballet critic of the winnipeg free press, but had someone been offering islam the ballet at the royal winnipeg ballet for the christmas san i would have had to recuse myself. so it was lifetime publication

ban, which is no small thing. >> host: oh well do your books sell there. >> guest: i'm glad to say "america alone" was number one best seller. in fact i think a lady -- i hope i'm not giving anywhere away. the publishers books are focused on american policies and one of the ladys there said you're basically on entire canadian shop. it was very successful up there. >> host: how did you get from "america alone" to your recent book, "after america: get ready for armageddon." >> guest: it was argued that the other half of the world, western europe, was putting itself out of business due to the demographic weakness and the social democratic state. it had an upside-down family

tree, unstablable entitlements. for example, in countries like greece and spain, where you have a fertility rate of 1.3, people say what does it mean? it means basically that four grandparents have two children, and one grandchild, and once you do that for a few years it becomes very difficult for you to continue to pay lavish pensions and benefits in a country where people retire at 52 or 53. the whole thing -- you're basically on any reasonable measure those countries are insolvent. and i argue my case so effectively in "america alone" that basically in 2008, the great people of the united states voted to sign up for the same program supersized, and under obama and the democrats, and i think the great clarifying thing in the last two years is that more and more people understand the stakes. america is spending itself off the cliff on a scale that few

nations have ever attempted. >> host: you write in "after america" you cannot wage a sustained ideological assault on your own civilization without grave consequence. we're approaching the end of the anglo-american moment and the eclipse of the powers that built the modern world. even as america's government outspend america's ability too pay for it but by some measure the world's, even as it followed britain into the dank pit of transgenerational detendency, unstable ale entitlements, even as it makes less and less and mortgages its future to its rivals. most persons assume that simply because they're americans they're insulated from the consequences. >> guest: yes. i talk about the anglo-american moment there because i'm trying to frame it the way the rest of the world sees it.

the french intellectual class thinks that a two-century anglo-american dom north carolina coming to an end. a particular view of the world that began not to intrude on person grief with the french but began at the battle of trafalgar and has continuedded for two centuries since has come to an end. the chinese think that half a millennium of european dominance is coming to an end and the world is reverting back to a natural asiaatic view of things. and i think that's not a view, whether on the american left or the american right -- that's not really how americans look at what happened. i think the 1950 american moment, which we're at the tail end of. the 1950 american moment -- america from the second world war was the only developed

nation whose manufacturing hadn't been bombed to smither evens and so it had unique dominance, and as other countries got in the capitalism game, america still thinks of itself in the sense of that 1950 moment. but it was just a moment and it was also the -- as i say in the book, leak the smoothest transfer of global dominance in history. roosevelt distracted a -- extracted aer e very tough deal in return for propping up france. britain mortgaged its global networks to the united states. that it why there was a u.s. base inber mood dark why you have norad in cheyenne mountains where canadian officers sit next to american officers,

australian, new zealand z new zealand, and the united states, that countries -- britain's lion cubs, what matter was getting a good hearing in london, what mattered every the second world war was getting a good hearing in washington. this was the smoothest transition from britain ya to her somewhat prodigal son, and it was so smooth people don't think of it. it wasn't a narl phenomenon. it's a rare moment in human history and the idea it's going to go that way around in, say, 2016 when the imf predicts that china will be the dominant global economy, is absolutely absurd. who is gage -- going to play america these time around. britain and europe's decline was cushioned by the united states as the global ordermaker, who is out there to cushion america's

decline. there's no good answer to that question. >> host: you have a time traveler. how do you put that together? >> guest: yes. i use h.g. wells' the time machine which, as i'm sure many of your viewers know, if only from the rather cheesy, cheap movie versions that they make from time to time -- this is a guy who basically is in victorian london, and he creates a time machine, and he goes 800,000 years into the future, where -- to discover a world where humanity is divided into two different speak seize, and it's actually a very pressents book in a way that most futuristic fiction is and the only thing that wells got wrong is instead of being 8 on thousand years later, it was 100 years later, so he was off by 799,900 years, other than that he was pretty spot on. i use a victorian time traveler,

and i pitch him forward to 19501890 to 19 50. and i don't think i made it explicit, but i was think of someone in my small town in new hampshire. the great grandparents of some of my neighbors. and if you propelled someone forward from one of those houses in 1890 to 1950, they'd be astonishes. the transformation. the automobile had conquered distance. it no longer took you the best part of a day to go to the neighboring town and back. that had conquered distance. the electric light bulb conquered night. now you could determine the length and duration of your own days. you go in those a wireless on the countertop and a full orchestra playing from it.

you don't need the iceman anymore. there's washers and dryers, telephone that rings rings and n speak someone on the other side of the don't innocent. a big metal bird in the sky that will fly you to -- across the ocean to london or to paris. you pitch -- and he'd be amazed. a fundamental contures of his world, time and distance, have been entirely reconfigured. how to, you pitch him forward another 60 years, and he would be excited. he would be saying, if this was 19 50, what would it be like in 2011 and 2012. and when he gets to 2012, the kitchen looks the same. the car looks the same. got a jacked up to plug your mp3 player into and more cup holders. the fridge has an icemaker in it and it's got 15 stupid stickers telling you when to recycle

which stupid stuff down at the dump. put out for recycling days or whatever. but basically the telephone has buttons instead of a dial. basically nothing much has changed except, except, for the personal computer, which most people use in a kind of adolph huxley sense for entertainment purposes. i find it very odd when steve jobs started saying, -- just before he died people talking about the new iphone and they're great. they're terrific, but there has to be more to a society than just inventing a slightly smaller device on which to download justin bieber or lady gaga or whatever, and i don't think we're making progress on that front. actually takes longer to fly from new york to london than it

did in the late 1950s by the time you add in the shoeless shuffle. so we're not making progress. >> host: this is book tv on c-span 2. every weekend 48 hours of nonfiction book coverage and once a month the first sunday of every month, we have our in depth program, and this month, the featured authors mark steyn. one author on to talk about his or her body of work, and mark citizen is the author of an echeck collection: >> mr. steyn will be here to

take your calls, e-mail and tweets. the numbers are on the screen. >> host: mr. steyn, when did your start writeing? >> guest: i started writing in scamp it's very difficult to be a writer if you don't because it's actually physically unpleasant work, and certainly if you started in at the days of manual typewriters and carbon ribbons and things, it's physically unpleasant work to do, and it's antisocial work to do as well. a lot of writers lead very dull lives, and when i was a boy, and

i -- i liked writing and i liked finding out about writers, and the writers i liked mostly had incredibly tedious lives. p.y. wood house, a prolific writer and a splendid writer and had an utterly boring life. he spend his time, get up in the morning and type and then watch daytime soap operas which he became fascinate bid and then he would go to sleep and do the same the following day. the ones i always liked and the ones i always hoped to be like, ian fleming, the creator of james bond. he had a fascinate -- he was like p.j. woodhouse, he lived in jamaica. got up in the morning and would rite for a few hours and write a certain number of words and then go scuba diving with ursula

handdress and had lunch with noel coward. wouldn't that be great. type for a couple hours, go scuba diving with ursula andres and lunch with noel coward. so for # 9% of writers it doesn't work out like that. >> host: how did you begin by writing about broadway musicals and music? >> guest: i always loved music. i started as a disc jockey. i was in radio when i was a teenager. and i was a difficult jockey. i wasn't a terribly disk jockey, and i got fired, and if you have no other skills, writing is one of the few things you can dive you have no other qualifieses that would commend you to an employer. you should write. and i wrote a piece mailed it

off and it got published, and i got a check for three figure sum. i don't believe i ever got a check for that much. i thought i could live off that for three months. i spent it within 48 hours so i had to write something else and that became a habit. and i started writing about -- because i had been a disc jockey and i loved music, i started writing about that area, and i always like -- talking about favorite writers, one of hi favorite writers were songwriters if you're a foreigner, one way to learn about the american language and the muscularity of the american vernacular is through popular song, so i was interested in that and started writing nat and it was in an undernourished area at the time i was doing it and i managed to find a way to niche -- that's good advice for any writer.

find -- you write about certain topics that are competitive, in my generation a lot of peep wanted to be like rock critics because 99 out of 100 guys wouldn't be rock critics. if you decide to write about show tunes and tin pan alley, that's far less competitive and you can clean up there while all the third rate rock critics are working very over tilled soil. >> host: how do you transition from broadway to current events and politics and demographic changes? >> guest: well, i wouldn't have, really, if all was going well. i started writing about show business type topics, and i moved -- i started then doing tv and movie criticism, and after a while, certain editors start to see that you've got like a kind of -- you write about the political subtext of a movie or

something like that and they -- and you start to make an interesting political point somewhere when you're reviewing shined her's list or something like that, and you get moved into that sphere. but i don't -- in my heart of hearts, i think almost -- and particularly since the internet came along, i do think in a way almost anybody can comment on that kind of stuff. you don't really need to -- i've always -- i think there's a difference in journalism between -- you can't wing it as a ballet critic. you can't say, well, at this point a woman in a kind of pink fluffy sort of dress that isn't terribly long came out and wore funny looking shoes and twirled around for a bit and then she went up on one toe and sort of held it for a while. it was kind of impressive. you can't do that, and if you're

a ballet critic you have to know about ballet. if you write -- if you're a general politics -- anybody can -- anybody with any wit should be able to do it. so it's a slightly less elevated -- it's hard to do well, but anybody can do it to a sort of acceptable level, i think. >> host: where did you grow up? >> guest: i was born in toronto. i had a little bit of a childhood. i was in high school in the united kingdom at tolkens old high school. i wasn't there at the same time. i had his greek dictionary and i got briefly -- like anybody who lives in smalltown new hampshire, i take an interest in schoolboard politics and i'm always amused when teachers come and say, oh, you know, we're using some of the same textbooks

we were using in the late 1980s, as if the laws of physics have changed in the last 20 years. well, i had j.r.r.tolkens old greek dictionary and it was still going strong. so tolken did better than me. he got into the movie business and cleaned up. i'm somewhere in the lower ranks of impressive alumni from that institution. >> host: how didout get from canada to school in england to new hampshire and conservative politics? >> guest: well, to answer the conservative politics and the new hampshire, that's an interesting -- i was on an overnight train, amtrak, from montreal to new york, and it broke down halfway, and they threw us off the train, and after a while they sent a van to collect news the cold and took us to anskin i drew the kurt

cans in the inn and thought, it's quite nice around here. i went to -- i thought -- new hampshire i hadn't thought about. and i certainly hadn't thought about it in political terms. and i went into a realtor's intending to buy a little ski condo for a couple of weekend and a week over christmas, and in the classic disastrous real estate story i came out 20 minutes later with a 200 year old farmhouse that needed 200 years worth of work on it and i love it. i still love that farmhouse and i love the land. and that's what i fell in love with. but what was interesting is that as i got into the rhythms of my town, i came to appreciate what tolken appreciated which is the knew. system of town government is the betts system of government nope to man. so i came there for the beautiful white mountains and the beautiful lakes and streams and the quaint houses, but what i really loved was the system of

town government. and the first time i went to town meeting, and i sat there, and there's like some -- there was proposal to build $500 fence around the town dump. and some old coot in plaid stands up and says he didn't think we need $500 fence, we could get by with just a $300 fence, and everyone talks about it for an hour and compromise and vote for like a $360 fence, and i thought that was fantastic system of government. writ breaks down is when you get obviously to the $16 trillion of debt nationally. people tend to say, whoa -- their the same old plaid clad coot who would argue about beating the 500 decide fence down to $340, somehow accepts the 16 trillion is above his pay grade and doesn't matter if you

add three, six, nine, zeros to the end of thought because it's all cuckoo land to him. so i wish we could find a way to apply a level of scrutiny of new hampshire town government the national budget. that's what it is. i came for the hills and lakes and stayed for the politics. >> host: mark steyn is our guest. the first call is from new ton, massachusetts. >> caller: mark, i would like you to talk a little bit about -- a little more about american decline, and do you think that means that the united states has now must share the wealth it has had a dominance over for the last 50 years -- has to share that wealth more with the rest of the world? >> guest: it doesn't really have that much wealth left to share. when you're $16 trillion in

debt, when you're a -- maybe ten times that in unfunded liabilities, in terms of the entitlements, you're mortgaging initially wealth but also power to your rivals around the world. i think, for example, in -- you're in massachusetts. every single dam on the connecticut river is now owned by a canadian company. certain ports in the united states are dominated by the chinese. the chinese are buying up resources all over the world. simply put, if you outspend, if you live beyond your means you wind up without any wealth. and that is the situation that the united states is in. the united states has joined the rest of the western world in voting itself a lifestyle it has not earned. and we have looted the future to bribe the present. you can do that for a little while but eventually it catches

up with you and that's the situation we're in today. these are extraordinary sums of money. when you're talking about a -- the federal deficit just in 2011 of $1.6 trillion -- i think it's $1.58 trillion, the official number -- that is a scale of overspending that is unprecedented. we make these comparisons with greece but in the end greece is just talking bat few rinky dink little billions. here it's the hard dollar sums and it's not a question of sharing it with the rest of the world. the post american world is already being built before our eyes. the question is whether we're going to get serious about this colassal and i argue moral overspending before it's too late. >> host: mark steyn writes, when

something goes wrong, european demands to know what the government is going to do about it. an american does it himself or he used to. if we can't do it ourselves when it comes to painting school rooms or building bridges, we should certainly confine it to the least remote level of government. mr. steyn, rock tweets, come on, steyn, talk about the heathens who live across the river in vermont. >> guest: well to go back to that little story i told you about the amtrak service breaking down, the overnight between montreal and new york, actually threw us off on the vermont side of the river. i was so innocent in those days, i didn't really appreciate the difference between vermont and new hampshire. the difference the connecticut river makes. vermont is a beautiful state. but vermont, for example -- i used to joke that vermont was america's leading canadian province. in fact it's worse than that.

vermont is a candidate for membership in the european union, its demographics -- i invite anyone to travel up route 5 or 100 in vermont, stop in the schoolhouses. they're emptying out because young families can't live in vermont. there's nothing for them to do. people like all the -- people think the difference between vermont -- some somebody said years ago, -- journalists in particular hate coming to my state, they hate coming to new hampshire. some guy in the was h washington post said, new hampshire primary season again. what a hellish state. the only meal you can get after 6:30 p.m. is breakfast. the most vicious newspaper in america, its contribution to culture is motorcycle week, it's a hideous state. vermont has all the fluffy stuff. ben and jerry's ice cream, but then and jerry's is part of the

anglo dutch unilever, so they're saying we're the 99%. they a wholly owned subsidiary of an anglo dutch multiman. they're uniband or jerry leave leaver, you'd understand the point. i ordered a stove from vermont castings wood stoves because i thought -- i'd just done an event with howard dean and weed been very vermonty together, and i was thinking, getting a vermont cattings wood stove. the sort of thing -- has the whole -- the very name has the small-town green mountain folksiness where me and howard would sit around the wood stove shooting the breeze about -- imcame from ontario, the vermont castings wood stove. from a canadian corporation. none of vermont's boutique

business are vermonty at all. i love the way that -- when you meet a young person in vermont. my daughter, bless her, is actually just started high school on the -- my town doesn't have a high school so she goes over the river to high school in vermont, and. >> host: -- high school. >> guest: it is, i'm happy to si -- well north that happy. it's a public school. and you talk to any young person in vermont, their whole amibition is to work for a nonprofit. any particular kind of nonprofit? no. they don't -- community organizing in southern vermont or saving people from the antelope virus in the congress go, as long as it's work fargo -- working for a nonprofit. the entire state of vermont is a

nonprofit and the tragedy of the united states of america is it's becoming the world's largest nonprofit and that kind of civilizational that we think virtue is doing some feel-good activity rather than creating primary wealth is very destructive to society. >> host: next call from california. you're on the air. >> caller: hello there, mark, it's nice to talk to you. i just feel like you're -- a lot of things you say are caricature of the conservative movement. i don't see much department in that. i wanted to ask you how you felt about the arts programs. there's a sound bite put out by the conservatives caught entitlements but when i think about really there's a lot of untapped talent in america and a lot of beauty, and inside of the

dignity of many human beings, and as you are very knowledgeable about the arts and things like that, it takes nuturing, it takes money, and i wondered what you thought about where the money is going in america and why there is this -- it seems to be the primary concern of the conservatives is the money aspect versus the development of human dignity and the progression of civilization. >> guest: well, dignity is a very interesting word, shirley. and i think it's worth sticking with that. i'm not objecting -- this is where i have differences with in so-called fellow conservatives. i don't think this a is a green eye shade issue. the debt is not green eye shade issue. it's not an accounting problem. not a bookkeeping problem. not something you give to h & r block to solve.

the brokeness of america, the fiscal brokeness of america, is a -- is merely a symptom. the underlying problem, i think, is that we were woo not -- we would not be in this situation, nor would other well-countries, if it weren't for the kind of people we are. that's far more -- that's a fairly obvious point but one worth make can, angela merckle, the chancellor of germany, everytime the greeks spend their latest bailout and say to her, we spent that, we need more of your money, please, angela merckle understands that at a basic level the problem in greece is not the greek finances but the greek people, and that is the problem with the united states and most other western countries, too. you saw it, for example, in the riots in london last summer, which actually prefigure net "after america." my chapter on britain called the

deapproved city which is a appreciatent portrait of what happened a few weeks later when the riots broke out in london, which people claimed to be attacking the rich, and by the rich they meant the guy -- often an immigrant guy, often a hindu or muslim who gets up in the morning and goes to work and opens the corner store, and stands there at 6:00 in the morning and works that store until 9:00 in the evening -- these guys trashed those stores. they set them alite and ramaged threw them and they didn't mean -- when they said they were, quote, the rich, they didn't mean they were rich. they're not rich in any kind of warren buffet sense or even a tenth or a hundredth of that. they meant they got up and went to work in a way these people rioting in the streets had no need to these are the children

of dependency who has been marinated in dependency. dignity is impress sitly connected with somebody's supporting themselves, doing a job, finding self-worth in that job, building a home, supporting their families. that is where dignity arises. and what is horrible about big government is not that it debachs a nation's financeses but that ultimately it corrodes the soul of the people, and that's why, whatever other conservatives may say, i'm not all about the money. i wouldn't want those programs if bill gates wrote a check to cover them every month. it's what they do to the people that's the problem. >> host: in "after america" mark steyn writes: there are many nonpolitical members,

comfortable, educated beneficiary of the american dream who just want to get on with their lives. for these people and many others liberalism is the soft option, the one with all the nice words, diversity, tolerance, peace, social justice, sustainability, and the position that requires least defending if you happen to be at a dinner party and the conversation trends toward current events. if you have to have opinions, these are the safe ones. they're not really opinions, are they? just the default settings of contemporary sensibility. mr. steyn, you talk about the bumper strip, co-exist. what is it about that bugs you? >> guest: well, i think the laziness of multiculturalism is that it as absolves you from having to think about the differences between people. if you think about it, saying we're all the same is insolvent because it's not true.

a muslim out in yemen does not think he is the same as some secular gay couple in san francisco just on their honeymoon in a nice vermont bed and breakfast. he doesn't think they're the same. and so it's nice to think that the nice gay couple can live at 17 elm street next to the big bearded imam with four child brides at 19 elm street but it's more complicated than that. i think multiculturalism absolves you from having to know anything. i was taught by multiculturallists. i'm the last generation. teachers who taught me had taught all kinds of cultures all over the planet and knew all kinds of fascinating things about other cultures, and if you are interested in other cultures, nepalis fascinating because it's not like

connecticut. the jungles of new again knee are interesting because they're not like massachusetts. and there's something incredibly lazy about the co-exist sticker which starts with the muslim scents and has -- i forget what the o -- >> host: the peace sign. >> guest: and then the star of david and one of them is the male and female symbols which has to do with traps -- transgendered bathrooms. it's very complying indicate. -- complicate. the point is that's an attitude and i find attitude, whether the kind of -- the -- attitude alone, whether it's just that, wow, i think i mentioned in the book a guy i was driving behind. everybody in vermont drives at 50-miles-an-hour so you have a lot of time to look at bumper stickers. this guy has a peace through music bumper sticker, and i

thought what is that about? ... e weed and strum his guitar and think he is making a great contribution to humanity. he is not. his bumper sticker absolves him from having to think about humanity, and i'm increasingly irritated be attitude. i was at the airport and i saw one of my kind of guys, conservative guy, in a don't tread on me t-shirt, and the transportation security administration were treading all over him. they had heir hands in his underwear. so attitude isn't enough, whether it's attitude on the right or on the left. >> host: next call for the guest comes from des moines. is it syria? >> caller: yes. >> host: go ahead with your question. >> caller: thank you. hello, mark. you spoke about h.g. wells and

steve jobs. was wondering what you see in our future as far as right to privacy? so even though commuters -- out and computers are getting smaller, we're living in an orwellian, big brother is watching us, a supercomputer and all the surveillance cameras and employers check through the computers and know more about you than you may know yourself. >> guest: yeah. i'm inclined to agree with that. i regret to say even the c-span building asked for picture as i attempted access the building and it's common in our world. i think we're actually bifurcating into two different societies. we are -- i'm always astonished at the number of government numbers and picture i.d. you have to give for even routine

transactions in society today. the i.d. that -- always amuses me when you'red a radio shack and somebody is buying a $70 radio and the guy asks for the social security snub they give them the knuckleball. it's astonishing to me. i think we're thankfully dividing into two different kinds of society. there's one group, one part of the planet, everything is known about them. you mention the security cameras. they're big on this, this closed circuit television in the united kingdom. they're all over london. by some measures, britons are more photographed than any other people on the planet, except their north koreans. an astonishing thing for lan that was once the crucible of liberty. and at the same time, there's another world, if you go to somalia or sudan, where nobody

knows anything. there's no records. the pentagon will send an unmanned drone over there and drop a bomb on some village and if they're lucky they'll get the right people or get a couple guys with a similar name. those people are entirely off the grid, as my new hampshire neighbors would say. so you have these highly surveilled people in the united kingdom and people entirely off the grid. and i find it very interesting, if you apply that model to california, in california, if you're in the lawful legal part of the community, you're basically living as they are in london under the close circuit television. you need permits for everything in california. it's a disgusting regime in california that criminalizing almost every activity. if you own a hardware store and you want to give free coffee to your customers you can't do it without getting a billion

dollars worth of permits from the health and safety board. they're regulated, inspected, watched, constantly, 24/7. at the same time in california, there's this huge illegal population that does what it likes. you drive through the illegal part of town, and on a small lot there will be six different dwellings, electrical wires snaking from the house to a rusting rv, to a trailer, to a large pickup truck, and all kind of people living in there. they're not in compliance with anything. so this -- they're like overlapping area codes in an american city. you have the half of the population that has to submit to total control by the bureau of compliance, and then you have the other half of the population that gets on with its life in the noncompliant undocumented world. i thinks a america gets poorer you'll see a lot of people actually deciding that at a certain point it's more viable to move into the noncompliant

undocumented sort of californian version and live over there relatively unmolested with the state. >> host: you write about permit-istan? >> guest: i think the tragedy of big government is that is turns children into -- turns citizens into children who are wards of the state. i think lbj's great society did nat a way that actually strikes at the heart of the american idea. what would attractive to america in the 19 -- if you were a peasant in the 14th century poland, you were a peasant in 19th century poland, and the you would be a peasant in 4th 4th century poland so instead you got on a boat and came to ellis island and you lived in a tenement on the lower east side but your kid moved uptown, and your grandkid went to college and got a nice place in westchester county and then your

great-grandchild got mixed up with robert f. kennedy, jr. and tried to destroy the great industrial strength of the united states that enabled your family to move up. that kind of mobility is destroyed by big -- i think by big government. we're becoming -- there is declining social mobile in the united states, which in a way i think strikes at the vary heart of the american ideas. >> host: next call from martha in south carolina. >> caller: hi, peter, thank you for another three hours of learning and c-span. >> host: thanks for watching good to hear from you. last time we talked to you is when david mccullough was here. >> all these great authors. isn't this a great country? every state is so different and to hear mark talk about the

differences between new hampshire and vermont, we always summer in maine, and i think maine is a very independent state, former governor king of maine, who was independent, got me to start reading tom freedman's books and columns, and of course maine that two women senators, and the girls in maine wonder if you can be a man and a senator. it's completely different from new hampshire and vermont. i must say, when we traveled to new hampshire this summer, when the flooding was just terrible, both vermont and new hampshire, everybody came together to help. i mean, they truly came together, even the vermont and new hampshire are quite different. in the parking lot there at white river junction, all the people were helping with the flood victims, and i wondered if mark could comment about the

wonderful national park. >> guest: that's a little ways south of me in new hampshire, and was an artist colony and is actually a beautiful part of the world. it's not far from where j.d. salinger used to live. i doubt very much that j.d. salinger ever did three hours with peter in depth because he was a recluse, what i found so odd about that was that he was -- everybody knew where -- he was a reclues in new hampshire and everybody knew where he lived. they might as well have had a sign on the interstate exit, recluesland, exit 9 or whatever it is. but you were talking about the community thing, in new hampshire and vermont, and i would like to believe that. i was caught in quebec in the 1998 ice storm that hit in

january 1998. the total -- the city of montreal eventually all the lights went out except for the hydroquebec building, and at that point i thought, we're going to be stuck here for weeks if we don't get out. and we all climbed into the car and snaked our way south to the vermont border, a tiny little vermont border post, where the lights were on. god doesn't know -- well, i guess he does know -- god does not inflict different weather patterns on the province of quebec and the state of vermont according to where the borderline happens to be. the lights were on in vermont because they were better at dealing with the emergency than the province of quebec had been. and what was fascinating to me, as i said i live in new hampshire so i think of vermont as generally a squishy deck can't state but i had been

listening throw radio in montreal and people saying why hasn't the government done there is or that, and the vermont stations were full of all this practical advice on how you could take steps to get -- if you had no running water, things you could do to clear ice blockage off the roof and all this kind of thing, and i think the expansion under bill clinton of the federal emergency management agency has actually been deeply harmful to the united states. it's not a big thing in the scheme of the general brokeness. but for example. insure... ...

these are people who return from the french and indian war returning from the surrender of montreal when the continent changed hands in the early 70's 60's they hacked their way through the connecticut river and back to their homes in connecticut and on the way they decided this was great land and applied for tallman grants by the colonial government and they clearly land and built homes and the tough grueling winters. one of my neighbors, great,her a great whatever was the first anh miller in town and he dragged his metal wheels of the frozen come niquette river from in connecticut to his new home in d hampshire and then built a mille in new hampshire in 1765, i thik

it was. the idea that these people now, the descendents of these people think when you get a bad storm, get and i stormed or whatever you should apply for federal emergency management agency, they would be no america. there will be no america. the first bad winter in the new england colonies, they would send a complaint back to london saying why hasn't king george, and the old federal emergency management agency done anything for us? they would be no america. it's not healthy, this stuff. >> host: market also mentioned tom friedman. not sure you shared her opinion of tom friedman. is want to read a little from "after america." talking about globalization. globalization is some kind of mysterious metaphysical force. that's not the remaking our assumptions about the planet. may the force be with you. because if it's not your just squares bill patio in the

rearview mirror of history. hardly a week goes by without the times most frequent flyer finding from a state of the our departure lounge on the other side of the planet marveling at its complementary wi-fi, flight railing, and the way his luggage was brought in by cheery native bears in traditional dress playing some raucous hybrid of gangsta rap on an affordable new expired i box you can wear under your sarong made at a state-of-the-art plant by a small weaker start up back to bite a hedge fund. all of which makes forlorn contrast with a scene that greets him when he glanced back at newark. >> guest: this is like journalism 101. here you are never right. whether you are a global trauma

when you graduate never supposed about right with the taxi driver says. they fly you in, if you're a preflight you in two southern sudan, angel and and you get an cab, you are not supposed to write about the cab drivers says he. that's what they paid for. you're not supposed to write about the departure. thomathomas l. friedman is in ay position in his highly successful post at the new your times. by jetting around the world he proposed a peace plan to king abdul a few years back. and the king said by coincidence that's like the biggest one i've got in my desk. so he goes to see king abdullah, then he goes to the airport applies up to see the sultan of brunei, and then he flies on and goes to see putin in moscow. he spent most of his time in

airport culture line. and actually there are some fairly spectacular airports around the world. tom friedman's point is when you're in singapore, or hong kong, you fly back to lax or newer, as thomas l. friedman always said, it's like flying from the jetsons to the flintstones. this is his preferred pop-culture analogy. this is riding 101 by the way. it's often a good way when you're getting with complex issues to find a pop-culture analogy that will make you giddy way -- the trick is not to use the same over and over which is what thomas l. friedman does with his jets in an flintstones. he said before 2001 after afghanistan, he said in america, in afghanistan the taliban were the flintstones and america were the jetsons. and the jetsons always beat the flintstones but actually that's not true. you know what the flintstones and the jetsons are.

but in the flintstones are the classic. the jetsons are sort of cheesy knockoff with a bit of space-age with a bit of a space age getting attached to it. and where the limitation, the metaphor taken very early is in afghanistan, right now america, the jetsons, are desperate to get out and the taliban, the flintstones, all the have to do is hide their time and all will be theirs. in afghanistan, the flintstones are beating the jetsons. it's not as simple as that all-purpose pop-culture analogy. >> host: live conversation with mark steyn, continues. we have about two hours left in the program. we will be right back. t: w bach

>> host: and we are back livept. with market sign on in depth and we are going to put the numbers on you'screen if you would likeo call and talk with our guest author of mine books,02 (202)737-0001 for those of you onnes. (202) the east mountain and pacific. e-mail booktv@c-span.org and twitter -- cycle and twitter.com/booktv and we will start with san jose, california. mary, you're on with all the mark steyn. >> caller: thank you. i'm a first time caller and this will be about islam. many years ago an artist put a crucifixion -- there was no reprisal. synagogues were vandalized throughout the united states and other places and yet there's no riots in israel. and if you talk about burning

the koran, halfway around the world they start chanting death to america and burning effigies. there's televised beheadings. and so, i guess, you know, since they declared jihad, if a cartoonist write some kind of cartoon of a islam or mohammed, and so i guess my question is, what are we allowed ourselves to be so they are -- so terrorized and why is this type of religion given preferential treatment around the world? thanks. >> guest: just to make something you said, it was actually serrano he did the crucifix. robert mapplethorpe did the homoerotic photographs with pat buchanan. if memory serves, pat buchanan when he ran for president in 1992 against the first president bush put in a spectacularly

inspired attack ad with president bush. it's the first of either saint george h. w. bush edited into a homoerotic video. it was a splendid stuff but it was serrano did the crucifix. as you know, when you do something like that, somebody did a play in which jesus was gay and having an affair with judith iscariot. corpus christi it's called by terence mckellen on broadway a few years ago. and catholics held a placard on the sidewalk. if you have done that play about mohammad you would have had an entirely more motivated crowd waiting for you outside the stage door when you look any evening and that is why people don't do that kind of point about mohammed. i was at a conference in copenhagen a year and a half or so back with a fellow called -- he's not a right wing baca only thing. is a conventional year old

lefty. and like many your left these of his generation, he has the right to insult everyone. every tradition in sweden where he lives of what they call roundabout dog. people put up this art at traffic rotaries of various odd kinds of dogs. it done one of mohammed. had just done a drawing of mohammed at around about dog. and since he has lived on a death threat, people shouting death to him on the streets of pakistan but he came home one night and found a couple of people have firebombed his kitchen. unfortunately, they were rather incompetent fighter-bombers, and in setting his kitchen a light they also happened to set their pants on lead. shuffling across the field with their flaming treasures, eventually it got too hot for them and they've removed their waning treasures and abandoned them in the snow and pranced off across the snow in their dvds. unfortunately making mistake of

leaving their drivers licenses and all kinds of other picture id in their smoldering fans. enabling the police to go arrest them. everyone had a very good laugh about it. because like a lot of these fellows they are incompetent. like we would've laughed at the 9/11 guys, had they been arrested on september 10 because they were incompetent. we all would've had a laugh about that. these fellows always jokes until they pull that off. the tragedy is, he learned the hard way that the left -- the left would simply, all kinds of people, all kinds of people have said this. it's easier in the into knock jesus, to knock catholicism, to mock christianity, to do all those tedious jokes like the crucifix, because no one is going to come at you. if you going to be provocative it's best to do with people who can't be provoked.

in that sense of episcopalians and congregationalists are the easiest target in the world. >> host: susan freiberg e-mails in, talk about the role religious faith has played in your life and do you believe civilizations can recover without a religious increment? >> guest: i was baptized a catholic, and confirmed an anglican, and i currently am a member of a small american baptist church. and i may very, i'm the kind of unassimilated immigrant as far as the american baptist church is concerned. because when all said and done i have a preference for the old anglican hymns of my childhood. i regret what the anglican church has become. in fact, i think it's kind of sad and pitiful, but i still, the anglican hymns still stir me in a way that how great thou art

doesn't quite do it for me in the same way. as far as the broader point, i think religious, i think it's very hard for any society to endure without some kind of transcendent purpose. all functions of societies are a compact between the past, the present and future. i don't think i'm the first to say that. tom this, and all kinds of people have understood it. it's not a particularly religious, it's simply the fact in human history when it comes to that compact between the past, present and future, religious societies are the best foundation for that. just go back to what we're talking about in afghanistan. a line in "after america," it's an old talibans thing, not an old, a recent taliban saying. they say the americans have all the watches but we have all the

time. i don't know if it is a genuine taliban saying it. sounds to me like a rather lame country's olympic but it might be. they have a point, in other words, they're taking the long view. and i think it is very hard to take the long view without religion. post-christian europe for example, it's fascinating to me. post-christian europe, and to use that phrase not provocatively. i use that phrase because the european commission or use it to me once, when we talk about the state of the european union and called it post-christian europe and, in other words, we refer to all that mumbo-jumbo and we do not have a perfect society. and in the way they did but just one generation. because it has no transcendent purpose and it's very difficult, even atheists, even atheists, if they think about it, honest, will understand that their life

will be more agreeable in certain kinds of society than it would, if you ask the average atheist he would rather live in a judeo-christian society than in the soviet union, for example, you have to have some kind of transcendent power. it's very difficult for that. >> host: mark steyn, rf field tweets into you, if you would talk about about george macdonald fraser and why he wasn't influenced. >> guest: i think this was on my favorite authors. what i love about him, george macdonald fraser, people don't know come he's the author of the flashman books, about 40 years ago. the late '60s. he got the inspired idea to take a minor character in the 19th century novel, tom brown's

school boys, the boy. and make them come and making the central figure in what was essentially a history of the british empire up to the early 20th century. in other words, george macdonald fraser inserted flashman into the first afghan war that i think actually in one in the u.s. civil war and into madagascar where he winds up having sex with the most the tories queen of madagascar. so he did, he did against a forrest gump type of thing, that he inserted his character of his into all these real-life situations. woodhouse blunder that secret he read the first book, and he said something like the great sigh of contentment when you know that series is being born and you will love everyone of them. but what i learned about them, and the reason i like him is because when i come after the

afghan invasion when everyone was suddenly an expert on afghan, graveyard of empire, posh turn, use backs, they are all, the dancing boys of kandahar, everyone isn't expert on kandahar -- afghanistan. i love reading george macdonald fraser phrases. and almost as i think of it, particularly after 10 long years, 10 think this years, reading george macdonald fraser flashman on the afghans and the afghan society makes more sense in reading "three cups of tea." as a writer because the reason i mentioned this, he's beautifully specific. is there for 19th century vernacular english is marvelous. and his eye for detail is brilliant. i'm just going to go back to my little red west talking about

ballet in the previous hour. unit, the terrible thing, peter, and i don't, i'm not a great one for teaching writing. i think it's very hard to teach but i do believe that the deeper you can dig, you know, you don't say a guy climbed into a car and drove away. it's better to identify what kind of car it is. and what i love about george macdonald fraser is he is dealing with something several generations removed from his own time, and get the detail in the books is absolutely beautiful. >> host: in your book "lights out: islam, free speech and the twilight of the west" you have a column in there about a speech you make where you say that muslim is the new gay. what does that mean? >> guest: i was -- i was getting a's each at the heritage foundation, and somebody asked question about what was a venue canadian sitcom called little

mosque on the prairie, which to go back to where we came in, i think it's a hit that i sorely think that is a great title. and i said, i said, believe i said i haven't seen the show, but my bet would be, i then said muslim is the new gay. that's to say, i would bet muslims get all the best lines, like the way that gay characters do, a gay best friend does in an american sitcom, or an american movie. now, i said that because we were like in the room at the heritage foundation in washington, and i said jokingly, oh by the way, muslim is the new gay year that's off the record. i had to realize the way it works these days is the thing was being strived -- the thing was being streamed live on the internet. i had no idea. so it then turns up in the human rights complaint against the. the canadians, that among their

complaints was that steyn had said muslim is the new gay. i then explained the point you're missing here, guys can is i make it as a comput which only, which only made things worse. but i do believe that. i think little mosque on the prairie is, one of the sad, one of the sad aspects of our time is the effect of political correctness on comedy. i think little mosque on a per is exit a great idea. if you're honest about it. but if you do in the way the canadian broadcasting corporation does where by the moslems or the hip, cool characters, and the wives just knuckle dragging, in breads, prairie hicks, you are loading the dice and are making real comedy impossible. one of the depressing features about all the free speech wars that i've been involved in in

the last few years is actually people who congratulate themselves on their edginess and transgressive this all the time, which is stand up comedians, comics in general. actually, the biggest wimps of the lot and i think that's a kind of tragedy. one of the most hilarious, i'm not a great internet surfer, but one of the most letters types of sites is where some guy has made an allegedly homophobic prank in a comedy club and then you go to a so-called comedy website where comedians discuss whether he should actually back down and apologized and agreed to attend reeducation camp or whatever. these comedians, these comedians are ridiculous. they might as well be court jesters to change him tell him to assorted transgressions news and edginess of comedy. it illustrates the point i made that it's very hard, once the

sort of counterculture becomes the establishment, it's very hard to have a genuine counterculture. but the ability correct cravenness of stand up comic is actually very depressing i think. >> host: chad ginn missoula, montana, thanks for holding. you're on with mark steyn. >> caller: thank you. it's been an honor and a pleasure listening to you, mark. i've been enjoying your views on liberty, fiscal responsible governments and such. and i've been wondering where do you stand on the iran phenomenon? and also why is he reviled so much in circles of conservative commentary? >> guest: well, i'm glad to have ron paul there on the stage, and ron paul there in the debates. and i think he makes a contribution. i certainly think, i enjoyed marvelously the night of in

hampshire primary, mitt romney gave his usual stump speech, generalities, i believe in an america where all americans can be as american league american as americans has ever been, or whatever and ron paul comes at a star-studded told by the federal reserve and the gold standard and it's kind of an impressive in a way. and the crowd is cheering. i like, i'm all in favor of ron paul wendy's they are talking about small constitutional government, when he is hammering the federal reserve. everyone thought he was a metaphor years ago going on about the federal reserve. in 2011, the federal reserve bought something like 70% of the debt issued by united states treasury. suddenly ron paul is looking a lot less like a nut on that and there's a lot more people who share his views on the federal reserve. where i part company with ron paul is the idea of an america

that can live aloof from the rest of the world. as a 19th century isolationist republic. there is no fortress america. this country can't even maintain its fortress against to relatively benign neighbors. basically half the population of mexico has moved to north, and 100% of every single disasters canadian idea from multiculturalism to government health care has moved south of the board. so there is no fortress america. and even as a 19th century isolationist republic, america was only able to enjoy that role because the water may be maintained global order. the royal navy expunged slavery from pretty much most of the planet in the 19th century. royal navy cap the britannica on the seas. the idea that america can't retreat from the world and to be no consequences to that i think is a diluted.

that doesn't mean, i happen to agree with him we're wasting an awful lot of blood and treasure in afghanistan to no particular purpose. i happened to agree with him that i think the pentagon would be able to operate with rather less resources than it does at the moment. but it's important that you have not just a leaner military, but they need a military and you have some sense of global strategy. the problem in afghanistan is not that we haven't spent enough money but that we have wasted so much money. the reason we have is the lack of strategic clarity. and strategic clarity doesn't take a big budget it takes half a dozen guys sitting around a table bought at some staples office furniture discount somewhere in the basement of the pentagon. so it's the lack of strategic clarity, and ron paul's vision of a retreat from america i

think it will not make the world safer and in the end will not make america safer because in the end as british learned in a real retreat you are still the biggest target, and in part of resentments linger long after the past. >> host: mark steyn is our guest this month on booktv's "in depth" program. and the next call for him comes from david in hampton falls new hampshire. >> caller: hi, mark. >> guest: hey, greetings to fellow granite state or. >> caller: not i that what i had like to attend a one rule -- a one-room schoolhouse tragedy that's good. there's a lot more teaching going on in those one room school houses than the lavish facilities they're putting up these days. >> caller: not only that but i'm much more firmly attached to a one-room schoolhouse than -- >> guest: leave your worldly goods to your one-room schoolhouse. yale law school designated.

>> caller: absolute right. the question i have for you is how closely do you identify with james burnsville, the suicide of the west, and which identify liberalism as the cause of the decline of america? >> tried to i think that's a book that stands out extremely well, that i think, and i would put it in the same category as top phils pathetic remarks in democracy in america, that it's much easier to lose liberty incrementally. people i think have a deluded idea about how tierney shows a. is not always good steps and jackboots. it's often in subtler ways. and i think both burnham and tocqueville, and other writers share a sense of the innovation that comes with the incremental loss of liberty.

i would nudge because i think one of the big problems, i talked about in america alone, and also in "after america" is the demographic weakness which is liberalism so corrodes even the basic survival instinct, for example, that in europe it's led to collapse. in america we are not in the same situation but we have a basic problem that the baby boomers would not have enough children to pay for the mid-20th century entitlement programs. so in other words, we have had, we have very generous in time a program set up on the assumption of certain family sizes. and as those family sizes shrivel, they're simply not enough young people working around to pay for them. that goes back to what i was talking about in greece earlier. so i think, i think burnham is right on the, what he didn't

foresee is 40 years later, half a century later, is we're in a situation now where even if you're trying to rebuild a society, you are starting off with far fewer young people and far more old people than you would wish to in a healthy demographic situation. >> host: this e-mail for you, mr. steyn, although i disagreed with mr. steyn's political views with little exception, i admire his wit and even his writing but in a similar vein, are there any current riders of the left that he admires? is a certain rather famous editorialist that i can't help notice similarities. >> guest: well, you know, one of the things i do enjoy, i started reading when i worked street sweeping, is when i began

as a journalist but i always enjoyed reading left hand, left wing critiques of me. and i think, i think that's actually very pleasurable to say, in fact i believe when i applied for my green card, i was obliged to send in some information about me. and just as a joke, i'm not sure, i don't know whether my immigration lawyer wound up submitting it in the end, i wound up putting in a rather devastating left wing critique of my writing that i thought was actually fabulously written. and i always, i always look to find someone like that. and the problem, i have a problem with certain, certain liberal writers. i mean, i hate it if you can see for not come and i think any good writer does. i have a problem with, say, i

really shouldn't be talking about this, but have a problem with maureen dowd at the new times. i'm sure some people would say that about me and there's times when, you know, i'm having to slough off a column in the 20 minutes at the airport after i'm rushing to catch a plane after a big three-hour special on c-span and i'm not putting the full juice into the. so i write in the car on the way to the airport and could probably see the formula in the. my problem with a lot of left wing columnists is, where you can see the formula. having said that, one of the things i miss about one of things i miss about fleet street is i think it's nice to always mix it up a bit. i remember when i was in august guiding the national post in canada and john o'sullivan who was the editor of the op-ed

editor up there, i remember him calling me before the paper started and he said, what left wing columnists can we get? this was 1998, and i think i suggested christopher hitchens because christopher hitchens was regarded as a man of the left been. and i loved, i loved reading christopher dasher he was a man of the left at the end really i think. but he was a well read man. he was illiterate men. he did not have his talking points that he regurgitates. and had a kind of historical -- but john o'sullivan's point even if you're a writer at a newspaper you should have some left wing voices in there. i think he's right. i think likewise, if you're a left -- i mean, i think it's sad, you've got to have, i wrote for the spectator in britain for many years. the spectator always, you know, it was a broadly conservative paper but the use to get lefties

in the i think that makes much more sense that what. >> host: this is probably a very unique e-mail here at c-span that we never gotten one that says what it says. dear mark, why do you think leftists hate western civilization so much? do you have a favorite american composer? [laughter] >> guest: that -- i'm not sure what those two things, if he intends to connect them up. that's great. i love, if i was to name a composer, i love, i think i named on my list of favorite authors in their says dorothy fields wrote the words to the way you look tonight, and to pick yourself up, and the fine romance. the guy who wrote the music for

that was jerome. and i love that music of richard rodgers said, jerome come one of the greatest american songs of all time, old man river from one of the greatest american shows of all time, show boat. richard rodgers said of him he had one foot in the old well and one for a new. is kind of the first great new york composer but that is quite an astute observation by richard rodgers because it's kind of, he was influenced by a lot of london composer's but he's nudging, he's moving on before the. if you go back and you listen to they didn't believe me, that song is making 14. what you are we now? 2012. that song is 98 years old. they didn't believe me. and i was in a club not so long ago and someone sang that song and it sounded as fresh and timeless, and if you'd said this

is something from 98 years ago, from a show no one remembers, it's beautiful. that's jerome kern. why leftists hate western civilization, which is a far less agreeable topic to me, look, here's the problem. you know, leftists are the beneficiaries of western civilization, and you can't make a living as a multiculturalist anywhere except, it's a unique cultural phenomena. you're gonna make a living as a multiculturalist in western societies. you can't be a multiculturalist in rehab. it can't be done. and i think, and so celebrating diversity is, is a phenomenon that is only confined to a very narrow type of society. and i think these people, these people are the beneficiaries in

a unique period of peace and prosperity which is so bored under -- boring. and i think, i think civilizational self-loathing gives you the free some without the consequences. we are not yet in this state of the french terror, or the october revolution when there's blood running in the streets or whatever. so it's five years. what could be better than being a tenured, a tenured anti-western professor at a western university? you get four years living high off of without for a moment fearing that that society and what's holding it up is ever going to crumble away. there's not a lot holding it up. so these guys are going, these guys, and less their 106 years old, and the late stages of avian flu, are actually going to live to see the consequences of

what they have advocated. but i think that's what it is, a kind of civilizational. >> host: man will come you've been very patient from cincinnati. please go ahead with your question for author mark steyn. >> caller: thank you. let's see, i'm a little nervous year, mark. hey, it's good to see on tv, market i look forward to when you substitute for rush. >> caller: i enjoy doing that because that is one of the jobs americans will do. it's a great honor to get to host some of those kind of things. >> caller: yeah, hey, look, man, you're a patriot as far as i'm concerned. i'm a veteran, and i was brought up in rhode island, the liberal state transient that's certainly true of. >> caller: but here's the issues i have on a political

platform. hypocrisy first of all in regards to transparency and the rule of law, and i'm just totally disgusted. i love this country, but, you know, i just i'm just about ready, you know, let them all have their way. you know. >> guest: here's the problem. and actually it's the democrats who puts it bluntly. i mean, pat caddell he worked for jimmy carter many years ago, pat caddell thinks we are setting in motion prerevolutionary conditions. if you tell people, if you basically send people the message that elections and the action, and even the elections of their elected officials make no difference, you're giving people some very unpleasant

options. in 2010, for example, there was a big, the tea party rallied their forces and achieved a result in the house of representatives. it was an unprecedented, at least for the last whatever it is, a decades. but then nothing happened. the data just goes on rising, no changes are made. the people of arizona through their elected representatives passed a law on immigration, but a federal court strikes that down and says no, it can't be enforced. at a certain point if you keep telling people that no matter how the vote goes on the tuesday evening, on the wednesday morning afterwards, life just goes on, we go on with his multi-trillion dollar debt, the bureaucracy imposes a gazillion more regulation but you're telling people that serious

course correction is impossible and that's actually a very dangerous message to send. and don't take it from me. taken from pat caddell. his analysis of that is sobering to say the least. >> host: mark steyn is the author of nine books, "broadway babies say goodnight" came out in 1997. "the face of the tiger" in 2002. "from head to toe," 2004. "america alone" in 2006. "mark steyn's passing parade" in '06. mark steyn tobacco songbook in 2008. a song for the season 2008 as well. "lights out" into the house nine and afte "after america" is mosy someone came out in 2011. 2002 "the face of the tiger," where did that title come from? >> guest: it comes from a run. there was an old lady from niger they went for a ride on the

tiger, she -- how does ago? she returned from the ride something inside, and a smile on the face of the tiger. i think that's how it goes but it doesn't really work because niger doesn't rhyme with tiger. but at any rate that, and i had called the title peace in that on the essay of the death of daniel pearl. the smile on the face of the tiger, which i thought was, so people like daniel pearl, as you know, was a "wall street journal" writer who was headed, wound up beheaded in pakistan by khalid sheikh mohammed who is now in u.s. custody in conjunction with omar shaikh, a student of the london school of economics, a middle-class british subject. and it is, and daniel pearl again without any one idea of a right-winger, he loves muslim

culture. he got a look and. he thought they trusted him. and he trusted them. and in the end they beheaded him. and the last words he said was my father is a jew, my mother is a jew, and i am a jew. indian, who he was, who he was out road his basic identities as an american jew. that was it. that overrode every other consideration for the man that kidnapped him. they looked at him as a trophy but it was pathetic i think to read the pleadings of liberal columnists in a couple of weeks he was kidnapped before the video emerged saying release daniel, and he can help get you out, your message out to the world. it's horrible to be so stupid and misunderstanding to be beheaded, the decapitation is the message. and i use that, that image, the

beguiling smile on the face of the tiger for a collection of my columns are basically from the year after 9/11, the year in which i think things, things look rather bad for us than this stage. but that is sensibly, you know, islam, ayatollah khamenei we think of as a joke but is not actually a joke. when he called america the great satan, the idea there is that america is a seducer, like satan is a seducer. that's quite a sophisticated understanding of america's appeal to people around the world. but in the same way that coexist, and multiculturalism reduces to. and sometimes the delusions reduce people to the death. and the smile on "the face of the tiger" is a good look at that. >> host: mark steyn rights even after september 11, we can't revoke the central fiction of multiculturalism.

>> guest: and i think his line is actually very good. we see that in the willingness to concede core western believes, such as freedom of speech, rather than risk allowing someone to publish a cartoon that provokes people in the streets the edges to go back to what we were talking about on that, i get i think it's in every different message. if people threaten to kill you, and that threat is taken serious the, you don't actually have to

kill anybody. you don't have to kill in the cartoon is because the publishers and the government ministers and the police will all instinctively preemptively surrender on these core western values like freedom, such as freedom of speech but is quite disgraceful what's happened in europe particularly in the last decade. in the face of explicit threats of violence, and that's not something i, as contemptuous as i am of institutional leftism, i hadn't expected them to cave quite so naked on things like that. >> host: wesley roth from sturgis, south dakota, e-mail trying to listen to on tv when you are on rush. your last book "after america" was terrifying and informative, and one that every american should read. my question to you is, on any given day, where do you get your news from? what are your favorite news

sites? >> guest: we were talking about daniel pearl just now. i love reading, i like to scan the pakistani newspapers just before i go to bed. one of the great things on the internet. because they are written in that slightly heightened indian english that i enjoy, i enjoy reading. for the same reason i love listening to general the sheriff. even if i disagree with what he says but i love the way he phrases it but i think it's one of the great things of the internet. what surprised me was when hollywood lefties like tim robbins used to reveal that before 10 turns in each night in beverly hills he likes to check out "the guardian" and independent in london because he thinks "the boston globe" or the new times are just government mouthpieces. he wants to get his real news from genuine left wing social.

and i like that. i like reading a story and paper to i like reading the pakistani papers and then i've got a select few internet sites i like to go to. but that's one of the great gifts of the internet is being able to read tomorrow's papers before we go to bed. >> host: judith and alaska, we've asked mr. steyn when he speaks with a distinctly un-canadian accent. >> guest: that's from, as i said, from being in high school in britain. and i then returned to canada when i was 18 and i worked as a disc jockey for the. i remember, i had gone, done a little course in how to talk with whatever they call, a standard north american broadcast ask if it show i did was like five hours long and i couldn't keep the action of for more than 25 minutes to i ended up lapsing into more or less how it presently talk. and it's unfortunate because

wherever i am, when i set like i'm from somewhere else, and i worked briefly for the bbc and they were always, they were never happy with the way i pronounce certain words. some people think i'm australian. some people think, they can hear a bit of zimbabwe and south africa. but the net result at this point in my life, i've been in new hampshire for a long time now, and my north country yankee accent is coming along so great that it now takes about, you know, 1.3 seconds before people can figure out i'm not from the white mountains. i mean, to take that point seriously for a bit, i think one of the things it does to come and i think it sometimes helps to look at a society, slightly outside it, so if as in my situation one is condemned by one's crippling vocal in furman

v. for ever passing for native, it does also offer the advantage that you can see a society slightly different perspective. and i think that can sometimes be helpful for a writer. >> host: is a little over an hour left with a guest mark steyn this month on "in depth." date in grantsburg wisconsin please go ahead with your question. >> caller: hi, mark. my question is this. what are your views in the future relations between the u.s., russia and china? >> guest: well, i think china as i mentioned earlier is any position come agreed to the imf to be the world's dominant economy by the year 2016. this is the world we made, and you can imagine, if you were somebody, say, in 1918, reading that news story that china is on

course to become the worlds number one economy, you'd be like charlton heston in the plant of the apes. he would not recognize your own world. you think you would have landed in some alternative is our future scenario. but that is the world we made. and for 35 years, all the clever guys at the think tanks have been telling us that the economic liberalization would bring political liberalization to china. in fact, the opposite has happened with help them come up with the only economically viable form of communism, and the idea if it's true they will become the dominant economy, that will impose severe changes on the world. now, and china is demographically week. they're great issue is under their one child policy they have tens of millions of young men, and generally speaking millions of young men who can't get any action is not a recipe for social stability. i think in "america alone" that

unless there's a disaster stretch from alice to becoming the first day superpower since sparta. and become it's basically going to cause huge problems for them. they have an aging population. so people think that's good news and china will not be the next united states. in fact, it's actually bad is because it means china has to use its moment. china has compelling reasons to act in what it perceives to be its own interest very fast. those interests are unlikely to align with those in the united states. russia is also demographically week, but russia, russia in a sense has stabilized and is actually making some significant mischief for the united states around the world. i mean for example, russia is quietly reestablishing part of the eastern europeans at least

us energy independent on russia, on moscow, and actually taking come here, taking the view that, at some point it's going to be able to reconstruct the old soviet style empire. i don't know if to get to that but that's their long-term strategic goal. and again, we existence were happy face about this chick we approach these issues in still think it's 1919 and we're in a polar were. we're in a multi-polder work for the united states faces a very tough strategic challenges. >> host: in the "america alone" mark steyn writes nothing makes a citizen more selfish and socially equitable

>> host: gw burkhart dean mills thank you, mr. steyn, wouldn't the 1890s vermonter the most astounded by the scientific advances beyond 1950, such as the ability to treat illnesses that could be diagnosed in 1990? guess that i don't think that's true. if you compare the 1920s, for example, with the 1990s, there were far more actual advances in medicine in the 1920s than there are in the 1990s which we are very low to show for it except viagra. if you go back to frederick panting from for example, in london, ontario, when he developed the treatment for insulin and diabetes, i mentioned in "after america," it

was basically a year and a half from him in painting it in london, ontario, to it being on the counter in pharmacies in new york city, you can do things like that now. to enter, to enter the fda approval process is to pass through the gates of hell. everything takes -- that's why we are not -- that's why we have this little fracas between susan g. komen foundation and planned parenthood. susan g. komen foundation is the breast cancer people who have the race for the cure, the pink ribbon. i was on something a while ago, the stewardess, flight attendant i should say, the flight attendant comes out and says it's breast cancer awareness month, so for your dreams come if you chip in an extra $5 on this little commuter flight, taking off for hours late from laguardia as usual, we will give it to raising awareness for

breast cancer who isn't aware of breast cancer? americans need to be aware, of actually how little we're doing to cure all these diseases. the whole disease curing process has ground to a halt. mapping the human genome, for example, was supposed to cure all these diseases and, in fact, it didn't. they stumbled on things by accident. it's like disease curing now is like when you put a target on the side of a barn, and you throw an arrow at it and it misses the target but it lands three feet away from the target and it happens to skew some bug. look at this bug. all the beneficiaries of human genome project are entirely accidental because systematic, there's a reason why we have ground to a halt on the approval process. we need fewer pink ribbons, fewer of these awareness raising

and actually get down to doing more of what frederick did in london, ontario, at the end of the first world war. >> host: steve in springfield e-mails, as post posterity amec approach for the essentials for stocking the steyn bunker? anything besides great american songbook recordings? how is new zealand looking? >> guest: you don't want to be thinking about new zealand. seriously, i understand where people simulator slight echo and it's very sweet, but honestly this is the hill to die on. it's all very well. and i think actually you will start seeing this. it's interesting, i think you'll see the rich fling for bunkers around the planet, bermuda might be agreeable for a while, and new zealand might be okay. but in the end it's not going to be a pleasant place to be. it's america grows into the post

posterity ruins. this really is the hill to die out and the hill to take a stand up and i get very worthy. a friend of mine told me after the collapse of lehman brothers in 2008, he goes have lunch with his broker. .. >> guest: you know something is going seriously wrong. and we should have been thinking, you know, charles krauthammer said a couple years

ago decline is a choice, and he's right. in a sense, it's a psychological condition. but it's not an option for the united states. for pote-alms burg vienna, decline is a choice because it's cushioned by the united states. when the united states slides off the cliff, most to have funking parts of the planet -- most of the functioning parts of the planet are going to fall off with them. so this is no time to be making like a rat and getting on the ship to new zealand. stay on -- even if this ship appears to be sinking, the rats should stay on and try to save it here. >> host: don in corona, california, you're on with author mark steyn. >> caller: thank you, and good afternoon. peter, thanks to you and the staff for a quality program. and, mark, thank you for your body of work. clearly, you are a student and passionate about history. your book chronicles the current impact of the advance of

political islam. i have a two-part question. >> guest: right. >> caller: how relevant and instructive is the history of islamic imperialism in informing us about its actions today, and the second part, if history can be a teacher and a predicter, how do we go about changing the way with islamic history is presented in the world history text books used throughout our country in the seventh and eith grade which appear to be filled with inaccuracies, biases and misrepresentations of that history? >> guest: yeah. i would agree on that last part. we don't really have history in the american public system in a coherent sense anymore. it's mostly subassumed within -- subsumed within so-called social studies, and history is shot, history merits respect sufficient that it should have its own place on the curriculum and be taught this a coherent -- taught in a coherent way. i think as regards islamic

imperialism, it's fascinating that in a sense everything that has happened in our time is foretold by the early year t of muslim -- years of muslim expansionism. you know, we accept -- the muslim world, essentially, operates to the brezhnev doctrine but with an efficiency that late period soviet union could only admire. the ones that take that land, they hold that land. when president obama went to cairo in 2009 to give his speech to the muslim world, what was fascinating to me as much as anything else was that he actually said "the new york times" says president obama goes to give speech to the muslim world. they would never speak of the christian world in that sense. nobody uses the term christiandom except as a periodic term. and the muslim world, it's worth asking how did it get to be the muslim world? we talk about mess poe tama --

mesopotamia, iraq, the cradle of civilization, but, in fact, the civilization it was the cradle of died, and it is now a muslim country. we talk about, um, in our own time egypt when the kingdom of egypt was founded in 1922. i believe its second finance minister was a jew. it is inconceivable. all the jews have left egypt now. 90 years later, it would be inconceiven for a jew to be finance minister in egypt. and when you study the history of either muslim expansionism in its first centuries from spain to india, what's now spain to india, or in more recent times, um, you understand that this is a religion, but it is also an imperialist project in a way that christianity was not. um, and you, if you look at the

differences between christ's final message to his disciples and mohamed's, mohamed's, basically, says go around the world and make them submit to islam by conquest, christ says go and take it round the world and preach to them by, and convert them to it which is what happened. and there's a fundamental difference. they're both universalist, they're both universalist religions, but islam takes an entirely different view of its sphere in the temporal world. and that's something we should study honestly and reach our own conclusions about. >> host: "the washington post" says that mark steyn may be the world's wittiest obit writer. this is mark steyn's passing parade, obituaries and appreciations. and when strom thurmond died, you wrote about a close encounter with him, and you say

that you were on the elevator with him and senator barbara boxer, and you were shoved into the middle of the two of them. ms. boxer gave an involuntary shudder. i'd been squashed between the two for about five seconds when i became aware of a strange tickling sensation on my elbow. glancing down, i was horrified to see an unusually large lizard slithering up and down my arm. what happened? [laughter] >> guest: poor old strom thurmond who was a whippersnapper. i forget how old he was when he died, 103. he was a whippersnapper of 101 or whatever it was, and he got confused and thought he was hitting on, hitting on barbara boxer rather than hitting on -- he was actually fondling my hand. and i felt like he managed a few

miss south carolinas, 1911, and the last one was 1993 or whatever. but i felt like one of those miss south carolinas in the middle. i mean writing. i mean, strom, you know, strom thurmond is a gift to an o bitch wis. i think you have to have an affection for the character. and if i'm honest, that is -- i would say that is the book, that is the book of mine that i most enjoy reading. it's, it's a miniature art, the obituary, and i love being able to write about characters like strom. >> host: we have about 50 minutes left with this month's "in depth" guest, mark steyn in our live program, and your calls continue in just a moment. ♪

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♪ >> here are the bestselling hardcover nonfiction books as of january 29th according to "the new york times." topping the list is talk show host mark he evin's new book, "the unmaking of america." second is "american sniper," the autobiography of the most lethal sniper in american military history. third on the list is walter isaacson's biography of steve jobs. bill o'reilly and martin dugard are fourth followed by nfl

quarterback tim tebow's memoir, "through my eyes." number six is "unbroken" by laura hillen brand. then the influence of human thought processes in "thinking fast and slow." followed by jodi kantor's intimate look at the first family in "the obamas." sally smith is ninth with her in-depth look of the queen of england in "elizabeth the queen." and then catherine the great: portrait of a woman, by robert massey is tenth. for more, go to nytimes.com. [inaudible conversations] >> each yearbook tv wrings you several -- brings you several events from across the country. here's a look at some of the upcoming fairs and festivals we plan on covering this year. booktv's first stop will be the fifth annual savannah book festival over presidents day weekend. our live, all-day coverage on saturday, february 18th, will

feature several author presentations including pulitzer prize finalist s.c. quinn. on march 10th and 11th, booktv will be live from the tucson festival of books on the campus of the university of arizona. our festival coverage includes numerous author talks and poets ranging from the great depression to forensic science. then in late march booktv visits charlottesville, virginia, for the virginia festival of the book. for a complete list of upcoming book fairs and festivals, visit booktv.org and click on the book fairs tab at the top of the page. also, please, let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area, and we'll add them to our list. e-mail us at booktv at c-span.org. [inaudible conversations] >> host: we have 45 minutes left in "in depth" this month on super bowl sunday with mark steyn as our guest.

the numbers are up on the screen. if you can, dial in if you have a question for him, and we're going to continue with our calls. scott in tucson, arizona, hi. >> caller: hello, mark. this is a great honor to speak to you. i have sort of a two-part question, some of it has been previously answered. with the enormity of the u.s. military and especially its legacy weapons, ie our nuclear triad of defense, how will that come into factor in the declining of america and its, and the decline of the west? will that act as a backstop or a brake? and second of all, if america is to decline or fall off the cliff and potentially break up, how do you see that -- is it going to break up regionally, or how? and i'll take my answer on the tv, okay? thank you. >> guest: very interesting questions, scott. it's, the idea of america's vast nuclear assets, scott essentially posed a question about the nuclear arsenal, the

way washington looks at the pakistani nuclear arsenal. what if whole place goes belly up, and the nukes fall into the wrong hands? which is kind of fascinating. um, i think the problem with being a nuclear superpower is if you, if you look at, say, mullah omar on september 10, 2011, he had osama bin laden and the guys living in his country plotting what if it had gone right would have not just taken out not just the world trade center, but if fourth plane had made its target, taken out either the capitol or the white house. that was where the plane that came down in pennsylvania was supposed to be heading, to the white house or the capitol. in other words, he would have decapitated the united states of america. and he had no fear whatsoever that the united states would

respond by nuking his country. he had no fear whatsoever. and nor do any of the people running around causing america such headaches and bleeding america for ten years in the hindu kush, nor do they have any worries america's going to nuke them. in a sense, having all those nuclear weapons does not act as a deterrent. people assume you will always fight with one hand tied behind your back. i don't think the united states would nuke, would nuke hiroshima and nagasaki these days. i think they would say, well, it's probably not going to play well, we'd be better off to slog our way through a filthy and inconclusive land war for how however long it takes. and i think that becomes a great problem when you're perceived as having this huge advantage in weaponry, but lacking the will and the strategic clarity. when scott makes his point about what things are like when the

united states in a post-prosperity united states, we were talking about overlapping zip codes, people retreating into the shadows in a way so-called undocumented americans do these days. i'm, i happen to be a legal immigrant, so i'm documented to the hilt. i think i'm overdocumented. and i would greatly enjoy -- [laughter] living in the shadows as opposed to living in the klieg-like glare of the irs and all the rest of it. so i'm not, i think we're going to see a great increase in that, and i think you will start to see day -- if you go, scott was calling from phoenix or tucson? >> host: tucson. >> guest: tucson. if you go south of tucson, it's fascinating. on the highways there you see signs not that far south of tucson that say proceed farther at your own risk on united states interstates. they're basically saying the

writ of the united states no longer runs. and i think you will see that kind of bleeding sovereignty moving further and further up the country in the edge of the southwest. i think if you were, if the scenario of after america were to come to pass, you would actually, you would start to see de facto secession, fiscally-prudent states like wyoming. why would they wish to be bankrupted to bail out california or new york or new jersey? so the question then becomes will they simply refuse certain federal fiats and federal dictates, and what then would l the government of the united states do about it? i can't, to be honest, see these guys willing to be able -- willing to wage a war to keep 50 stars in the flag. and i think you would start to see, in effect, a kind of green zone scenario, that there would be a nominal sovereignty exercised over the 50 states.

but de facto it would bleed away pretty quickly. so i don't think it's going to be -- i hope the after-america scenario doesn't come to pass, but i think, i think the idea that a large country can't, you know, iceland can collapse and rebuild itself. and even someone like greece can collapse and rebuild itself. but a nation of 300 million from maine to hawaii cannot collapse and reconstitute itself in the same form. >> host: from pat, an e-mail. your statistics concerning the islamification of europe and the hypermulticulturallism of america are very impressive, yet your warnings are toothless without a call for the cessation of all further third world immigration to western nations. why invade and/or drone strike afghanistan and pakistan while at the same time accepting faisal shahzad, the times square bomber, as a new immigrant and u.s. citizen? >> guest: yes. i wouldn't disagree with that.

i'm opposed, i'm in, you know, i'm an immigrant, and i tend to feel uncomfortable talking about immigration issues. for that reason. because i'm not sure it's certainly having been admit today this country, it's not my business to tell you, okay, now pull up the drawbridge and keep everybody else out. but i think there's a difference between individual immigration and mass immigration. and i think mass immigration is a very difficult, very difficult to justify in a rational sense. the way that western nations have found to justify it is as a sign of moral virtue, that we concoct, we concoct various reasons nobody's quite persuaded by, for example, president bush's line we need, we need immigrants to come here to do the jobs americans won't do. the question then, i think, is, well, why won't americans do those jobs?

in part because it becomes very difficult for people to stay in college longer, nobody wants to go and do casual agricultural labor for a couple of summers or whatever. but a dependence on mass immigration is always a weakness. it's always a structural weakness. and you should address it as a structural weakness rather than using it as an opportunity to flaunt your multicultural bona fides. and i think the it's the tragedy of postwar europe that rather than address those structural weaknesses honestly, it chose to transform itself demographically. and there will be consequences for that. but, yes, until 19 -- until the mid 1960s, every western nation took it as entirely normal that it had the right to determine who it gave access to its society to. faisal shahzad, the times square

bomber, is not an american. he never pretended to be an american. he gamed the system as all manner of other people game the system year in, year out in the united states, in canada, in britain, in europe, in australia. and at some point western immigration authorities have to say what is the cost benefit analysis here. 40% of french imams along the dole, so the economic rationale makes no sense. we look at a suburb of stockholm, an extraordinary proportion of middle-aged immigrant women are claiming welfare. this idea that somehow everyone outside the western world are sort of hard working, honest, virtuous people who want to come here and work from dawn til dusk in a way that decadent western nations no longer do. even if that were true, the they land at the airport, they figure out within six weeks that they're living in very generous welfare states, and they figure

out how to game the system. there's no rational basis for mass immigration other than the fact that it enables guilt-ridden white liberals to flaunt their multicultural bona fides. and it's fascinating to me that, for example, japan has severe demographic crises. but in an odd way i would bet on japan being able to, being the first western nation to figure out some way through it precisely because it doesn't have the competing problems of mass immigration. >> host: in "after america: get ready for armageddon," mr. stein writes an election is one tuesday every november. the culture is every day, every month, every day. politicians are, for the most part, a crane, figure in the wind bunch. like milton friedman says, don't wait for the right people to get elected; create the conditions whereby the wrong people are forced to do the right thing."

this e-mail from tim long: enjoy reading -- i'm sorry, this tweet, enjoy reading mr. steyn's work but can't reconcile for his writing/thinking with posting for a demagogue like rush. [laughter] >> guest: well, rush isn't a demagogue, and many of the people who criticize rush don't listen to him that much. he's actually a very funny guy. he has great wit. you can't do that thing three hours a day for 20 years without being, without great wit and without being able to see the comedy in your own side. what -- to connect that to the passage you read, i think what people resent about rush is that he doesn't, he doesn't subscribe to the niceties of the broader culture. and i think this is the difficulty for the right. i guest host for rush, and i love guest hosting for rush. and every time i guest host for rush, you know, a couple people

say, well, wouldn't you like to do your own, you know, three-hour talk radio show? and i say, no, the right doesn't need it, we've conquered that market. we have a hammer lock on it. it would make more sense if some guy wants to host a three-hour talk radio show instead to decide he wants to, he wants to write a sitcom or make a movie or buy a newspaper or operate in any of those parts of the culture that the writers gradually abandon. and i think that's the, that was what the 2008 election confirmed. barack obama is really a culture figure rather than a conventional political figure in the sense that joe biden or bill clinton are. he's the product of the border -- broader cultural smog. you can't, and if -- the right is still largeler bewilder --

largely bewildered as to how he managed to get elected. if you concede sitcoms, newspapers, the mainline churches, if you concede the motion picture industry, if you concede the universities and the high schools and the middle schools and the kindergartens, why be surprised that there's fewer, it becomes more and more difficult to get people to pull the lever for conservative candidates every other november? the whole kind of social justice climate change, far too much of this has become the sort of air that we breathe. and we have to get back in the game on the fronts where we have ceded that turf. we have to get back in the game on television, in pop music, in the all kinds of other areas. >> host: in "america alone," and even if you're truly a moderate muslim, why should you be expected to take on the most

powerful men in islam when the west's media and political class merely pander to them? what kind of support does the culture give to those who speak out against the islamists? the iranians declared a fatwa on salman rushdie, and he had to go into hiding for more than a decade while his government and others continued fawning on the regime that issued the death sentence. the dutch film maker, van go, spoke out and was murdered, and the dissenters of hollywood were too busy congratulating themselves on their courage and brave ri in standing up to bush even to mention their poor, dead colleague in the weepy oscar montage of the year's deceased. to speak out against the islamists means to live in hiding and under armed security in the heart of the so-called free world. >> guest: yeah. which i think is disgraceful. and i think just to go back to that business of theo van goa who was murdered in the streets of the netherlands and a letter threatening similar death to ion

heresyally was pinned to the poor guy's chest. the oscar ceremony that year, i forget what they were congratulating themselves on. i think george clooney had made a film about mccarthyism because, you know, for hollywood that remains the most significant event of the last five millennia, and they'll be making films about mccarthyism, if there is a hollywood, a thousand years from now and congratulating themselves and giving themselves awards for it. this is a guy who's merited because he's made a film. and why isn't he in the weepty oscar obituary montage? it was very bizarre. i was, you know, i was sent a copy of the forthcoming book, this is a guy who, again, he has a particular view on islam, but ever since the murder of theo he has lived under armed guards. talking about hollywood, he said he has never seen since what

have this van gogh who was murdered in, what was it, 2002, i believe? in the last decade, he has never seen a film, the beginning or end of a film because occasionally his body guards, he and his wife would like to go out and see a movie. so they'll be taken out, and they'll go and see harry potter, whatever it is, but they'll miss the first ten minutes and the last ten minutes because to get them into the theater with the bodyguards requires that kind of thing. and it is absolutely despicable, it is absolutely despicable for hollywood not to show solidarity with these people. there's so much fake courage in the world, and in my own profession writers congratulate themselves on showing courage and all the rest of it. the people who, the solidarity that was shown with salman rushdie mostly by his north london dinner party, fellow dinner party novelists back in the late '80s would not be

shown now. as the south park incident illustrated, everyone just goes very quiet about it these days. and i think, i think rushdie himself who had to cancel an appearance at a literary festival in india just a couple of days ago would be the first to s that even the tepid support he received 25, almost 25 years ago he would not get now. >> host: next call for mark steyn, about 30 minutes left with our guest, comes from lyle in marion, ohio. lyle, you're on booktv. >> caller: yeah, hi, mark. >> guest: hi, lyle. >> caller: i want to thank you for the work you've done and the risks you've taken on behalf of free speech. and i'd like to recommend to viewers that if they want to see some really chilling examples of what can happen when political correctness is enacted into law, they ought to nose around

youtube and watch some of the encounters that you and ezra levant have had up there in canada. but what i really wanted to ask you about is ione ali. i just admire her greatly, and i wondered if you'd comment a little bit about her and if you met her, any stories that you might be able to tell about her. thank you. [laughter] >> guest: well, i have met her. i usually run into her at these, you know, conferences and things where we're speaking. and for a long time she was, she's a dutch-somali lady, she was a member of parliament in the netherlands, and she wrote the film that got theo van gogh murdered and has since had to live under armed guard. for a while when i use today run into her, she would be flanked

by -- she's very tall. somali women are very tall. and dutch men, i believe they're also the tallest men in the, in the developed world. so whenever i saw her, she used to come into the room, this beautiful, tall, black somali woman with these, with these tall dutch, blond, very aryan white men flanking her. they looked like a sort of vegas act. they looked like -- [laughter] she looked like some kind of singer with backing singers. i always found that very sort of oddly memorable when she did that. but here's what i, why i put her on that list. it's because she had a choice. she could have -- when her director, theo van gogh, was murdered, she could have done the easy thing. she could have hopped on a plane, gone to live in new zealand, changed her name, had a quiet life -- or at least

attempted to have a quiet life -- far away and retreated from the world. and she didn't. she said, no, i'm not going to put up with this. she wanted, she believes -- i don't agree with her on everything, but i think she's absolutely clear-sighted on the importance of not, of not surrendering ask not handing -- and not handing people who try to shut you up a victory by going away to the other side of the world and just, and just leading a quiet life. and every time i get stupid death threats and islam and i think i've had enough of this, i just would like it to go away, i wish it was 20 years ago, you know, when you never had to hear about this, and i'd like to go back to writing about well-loved songs and favorite singers, i think of ayaan, and i think if she can put up with this stuff, the least i can do is put up with it too. i congratulate her on her

courage, i'm slightly in awe of her courage, and i think the least of us who operate in this sphere can do as well is say i'm with ayaan. if you want to kill one of us, you'll have to kill us all. you better have a lot of rusty semitars for your beheading videos because you're going to have to chop all of our heads off. >> host: stephen wynn e-mails in to you, mr. stein, are you still in the noncompliance with the new york state bureau of compliance? [laughter] >> guest: yes, i would -- i walked into the office -- you know, one of the things, i love this country, but i had no idea what a bureaucratic hell it is. i made the mistake of hiring somebody from new york state which i'll never do again. i would, i mean, no disrespect, but i have never had more paperwork to deal with. i would hire somebody, i would hire somebody from the solomon islands or the cook islands rather than someone from new york state, and i can't be the only employer who thinks like

that. but, you know, after changing our workman's comp insurance and all the other things we had to do for the privilege of hiring someone in new york and playing the new york commuter mobility tax and all this other stuff, i then wander into the office one morning, and my assistant is looking rather ashen-faced at an official looking envelope. and it's a letter from the new york state bureau of compliance informing us that we're in noncompliance with the new york state bureau of compliance, and the fine for that is $14,000 which sounds to me, you know, like a suspiciously-round number. [laughter] i would have found it more plausible if it'd been $14,073.82. and i was a bit shocked by this at first. but i now put it on my business card, you know? i put, you know, mark steyn: author, columnist in full noncliens with the new york state bureau of compliance. i think we should all be. i'm interested as we decay into societal ruin of forming an

alliance of noncompliance. i think it's what's needed to, in the face of this hyperbureaucrattic state. >> host: well, you don't conclude it in your book, but do you pay them the money? >> guest: no, i didn't. >> host: have you gotten another letter? >> guest: no. i forget what the last, what the last letter said, but they're going to have to claw that 14 grand out of me from my cold, dead hands. i gave a speech in albany shortly after that, and i said to the people there i'm very glad you turned up, but if you do hear the doors being kicked down, it's just the s.w.a.t. team here to collect their 14 grand. [laughter] i'm not giving 14 grand -- they wasted all the money i've paid them on the new york state commuter mobility tax and all the other stuff. they don't need another 14 grand from me. >> host: gene e-mails in: i am starting a charter school in utah using the hillsdale curriculum guide, although they have great classroom book lists, i still need to stock our library. do you have any books or lists of books thuld recommend for

children kindergarten through eighth grade? >> guest: i was actually, i'm actually thinking of doing, doing an anthology of children's literature because i'm -- one of the things that's -- [laughter] that's a, as steven frye, i was on a show where the host with steven frye who plays jeeves in the pbs series jeeves and worcester, he's in the new scherr hock holmes film. the question tellbe fell out of his hand, and stephen picked it up very cooley and said, i'll take questions from the floor. [laughter] i'm actually thinking of doing an anthology of children's literature because i'm horrified at the sort of soul-sapping quality of a lot of books that grade schoolers read. and one of the things i like about classic children's

literature is they're unsparing about the realities of life. there's a blogging come raid of mine up in canada -- comrade of mine up in if canada who blames sesame street for what he calls the demonsterrization of childhood, that he thinks things like cookie monster are harmful. you teach children that monsters are just, you know, monsters are just cuddly friends. we haven't, we haven't offered enough cookies to them yet. and i prefer classic children's literature in terms of just you'll get far greater sense of the realities of life from the brothers grimm than you will from the cookie monster. so i may yet do a children's anthology. >> host: stephanie e-mails in: i just finished broadway babies, and i was wondering if you could say some words about the state of broadway in the years since your book, especially i am interest inside what you thought

of the morer irreverent shows le the book of mormon and avenue q and, further, what's it like to be a conservative who enjoys broadway? [laughter] >> guest: well, you -- what's it -- just to answer that last one quickly, i'm always very grateful to my show biz friends because there always comes a point where they'll be at a dinner party in london or new york or beverly hills where the rest of the crowd will reel back and say, wow, you're not a -- you're a friend of that mark steyn guy? [laughter] and i'm grateful for their support. um, i, i love, i love the heydey of the broadway theater, and i think when you see "the book of mormon" or even "the producers," mel brooks' highly-skilled broadway version of his film, in a sense you're running on fumes. what you've got there is, in a sense, a skilled mimicry of the

form. but it's not actually, to me, it's not as satisfying as if you were at the first night of "show boat" in 1927. december 26, 1927. and you're sitting there in the front row, and you're hearing old man river for the first time, and you're hearing make believe for the first time, and you're hearing this amazing music for the first time. and i wonder, all the time i was, i was a theater critic, i always wanted to have, i always wanted to feel the way you'd feel at a rogers and hart show in the 1930s. you were hearing "lady is a tramp" for the first time, you were hearing bewitched, boored and -- bothered and bewildered for the first time, my funny valentine for the first time. to be in on the ground floor of something that's going to be forever. and you've done -- i'm sorry, but, you know, going to the book of mormon, going to the drowsy

chaperone, going to avenue x is not the same -- avenue x is not the same, and it's not necessarily the fault of the creators of those stows shows. it's just that broadway's relationship to the sort of central cultural thruway of american life has changed. i don't know how you get back to that. i don't know how different places have different responses. if you go the west end in london, it's full of all these really lousy third rate -- there's a rod stewart musical. i've got nothing against, you know, rod stewart -- well, actually, i have. his terrible albums, you know, rod stewart slays the great american songbook and everything, but rod's like a delightful, darling fellow. but with the best will in the world, the idea of taking all rod's hits, you know, and putting them in a show and calling it a musical, it's not a musical. i mean, these are responses to the fact that musical theater is no longer the great central

thruway of popular culture, and i don't know what you do about that. but a rod stewart musical is -- except, i'd be in favor, by the way, in kandahar when they raided mullah omar's compound, as you recall, he had banned music throughout afghanistan, and they found when they raided his compound he had all these illicit, illegal cassettes of rod stewart singing "if you want my body and you think i'm sexy," which is, apparently, mullah omar's favorite song. [laughter] by the way, i like to say that because i'm hoping, i'm hoping to stir the imams in whichever cave he's holed up in waziristan now. they'll understand he's not quite onboard with the strictures on music, and when they catch up with him, his rod stewart taste will count against him. >> host: who are some of your broadway friends, and what kind of politics have you discussed with them? [laughter] >> guest: well, i won't -- i love the way -- when america

alone came out, i used to get a lot of e-mails from, actually, some pretty a-list celebrities in hollywood. it was interesting, they all ended with, you know, it was all i loved your book, terrific book, but, please, don't mention my name. and the idea was like being a big above-the-title star and not being able to say you like "america alone" is bewildering to me. but i have, you know, i've been around -- and i love that, this, to me personally there's still nothing like sitting at the back of the theater which i do occasionally for friends who are producers at a show that's in trying out or is just doing a run through, just sitting at the back and looking at, you know, what -- maybe this number in act ii would be better if it was moved from here to here, and that stuff is fascinating to me. and i love doing that. and i still get a -- i love the

sort of, there's something, the sort of show bizzy side is fun, and you have to accept that, you know, tony bennett the other day made some idiotic -- i think it was the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and he did one of these who are the real terrorist things, and you just have to accept it. i think you just have to accept that some guys are like what orchid growers call sports, that they are so sort of unique and special, they're in a world of their own. and the idea, you know, tony bennett sings. why would you expect him to have a coherent view of geostrategic threats? it's not his bag, man, you know? >> host: mark steyn, before we got started, you talked about a political conversation you had with elaine stritch. >> guest: can i say that word? >> host: sure, we are cable. we will warn you ahead of time. [laughter] >> guest: elaine stritch who

sings the song, "i'm still here" and has a very funny one-woman show that she tours around at the moment. she's getting up there in years, but she head made her debut back in the '40s in which the first song she sang was bongo, bongo, bongo, i don't want to leave the congo. [laughter] i happened to be on a show with her, and she was talking about this and saying, bongo, bongo, bongo, i don't want to leave the congo, and the host said to her, oh, who wrote that song? and she said, ooh, i'm ashamed to say, i've o forgotten the name. and i just happened to be sitting there, so i chipped in and said bob hillyard and carl cig monday wrote that song. and elaine's stretch, the conversation then moved on to politics, and she and i did not agree on anything in that sphere. and at the end of the show she turned to me. she goes, you know, you may be full of shit, but you know who

wrote bongo, bongo, bongo, and i think that would be a fine epitaph to have on my tombstone. >> host: joe, you were on washington journal this morning, but we'll let you make a comment about mitt romney. >> caller: he said that wouldn't count, because he invited me. >> host: all right, joe. [laughter] >> caller: i just wanted to say, yeah, i wanted to ask you, mark, great -- i enjoy when you substitute for rush. a bunch of us down here really fired up about mitt romney. what do you think about his odds of receiving the nomination and being elected president, and i hope you say he will be elected president. thank you so much, peter. >> guest: well, i think there's no doubt that mitt is on course to the nomination, that's just the way it is. he's, he had a great, he had a blowout in nevada last night, and i thought newt did himself huge damage by scheduling this wacky press conference -- [laughter] and complaining bitterly about the unfairness of it all.

yes, it's unfair, it's what it is. there's no -- i doubt whether you could construct an entirely rational system to devise a mom three for the presidency of the united states. it's what it is, and you just have to roll with it. and newt whining about the unfairness of it, i thought, made him look pathetic. so i thought regardless of what one feels about mitt romney's performance in nevada and newt's reaction to it, actually, told its own story. so i think he is going to be the nominee. i hope he means what he says because if obamacare is not killed stone dead in the next year, it will never be killed. and government health care fundamentally transforms the relationship between the citizen and the state. i don't want to see that. i hope mitt romney honors the three or four key pillars of his platform, and we will be in way better shape. but to go back to that line i