[cheers and applause] .. go. [laughter] >> we don't have a lot of space

here. back in the back, get ready. cal ripken, i see him sometimes. [laughter] >> i see till play. [applause] [laughter] [applause] >> thank you all for joining us today. >> thank you. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> i had no idea about the experiences of many of the people who were essentially my predecessors as correspondents or diplomats in berlin and despite all the time i spent in germany i hadn't spend a lot of

time thinking about what it would have been like to have been a correspondent there in the 20s and 30s and you know how, how would you have operated? what would you have noticed are not noticed, much less how would you have acted? >> this week on q&a our guest is nick gillespie, editor-in-chief of reason tv andreessen.com. c-span: nick gillespie i want to read back to you from your book. senate minority leader tom daschle democrat of south dakota, former senator, precisely the sort of wealth quaffed non-entity who passes for a wise man in washington

d.c.. non-entity? >> guest: yeah. i would say so. let me put it this way. a couple of years ago i wrote a piece called the leak league of and distinguished gentleman and or ordinary gentlemen about the senate and tom daschle had a long record of service. does any rate red really miss him? does he like many senators, in the anti-was just a time passer and he wasn't even a big enough presence for the obama administration to fight for him to be their secretary of health and human services posed -- services. i certainly don't mean it as an insult to him or to the senate but let's face it most of our elected officials in the greatest deliberate if chamber are interchangeable. c-span: you wrote this common world where choices are limited to john boehner and nancy pelosi the survivors envy the dead. >> guest: i think that's true. what the declaration of -- "the declaration of independents"'s about throughout virtually every aspect of our lives we have seen

greater individualization, personalization, the ability to hybridize their lives and their enjoyment and our very identity, the 12 dr. -- and mr. hyde. who is really going to get fired up over nancy pelosi on the one hand or john boehner on the other? they are shorthand for the incredibly narrow range of choice that we actually have in political, and elected officials in this country. c-span: these are all leaders. representative mitch mcconnell has only been in the senate for 26 years. in fairness it feels like a century. did you write that? >> guest: you know i think i'm going to play my co-author matt welch on that one but i would certainly agree with that and i'm not trying to make -- you know we are not trying to make light of politics. politics is absolutely important and there are things worth fighting over but part of the

problem that we have in this country is that people have tribal loyalties to team blue and team red in a way that we don't have these loyalties anymore to any other -- you don't come across chevrolet families or even toyota families anymore and i think with the rise of these kinds of many meet leaders we have also seen an evacuation of little identification as a core value from those people, the people who are still die-hard yellow dog democrats or die-hard republicans still believe that very much. every survey over the past 40 years shows that people have looser identifications and looser affiliations with these parties and i think it's partly because what does john boehner stand for? he is somebody who is now parading around and i might add as my congressman eyelids -- my main residence has been ohio and you know he voted for a t.a.r.p.. he voted for "no child left

behind." he voted for medicare prescription part d. these are all massive government programs without justification. he voted for the patriot act for all the war funding and now he is talking about his time to reduce government spending. he is not the sort of person bluntly who -- he talks the talk but he doesn't walk the walk and i don't think people are like finally, a real leader. c-span: one question everybody wanted to ask you. >> guest: what time in my leaving? c-span: no, do you always wear that black leather jacket? >> guest: i do not. i do have several jackets and sometimes, i almost wear black. it became of choice in a kind of evolved over time because it simplifies my life. as a libertarian i'm a big fan of certain aspects of henry david thoreau's life certainly has disobedience is vastly important and talks about how you should simplify, simplify,

simplify your life and dressing in black certainly does that. c-span: when did you start only wearing black? >> guest: like i said it evolves over time but you know i think the point of no return probably was about 15 years ago, 12 years ago something like that. c-span: how often do people bring it up to you? >> guest: is a little tiresome and if i had more energy i would probably call you out right now. c-span: what is the biggest, most important thing about being a libertarian to you? >> guest: you know i think well gosh, like you said the biggest thing. the biggest thing is to live your life and part of the context of the declaration of independence or the pretext is that life is too important to spend it on politics. we didn't win the cold war and destroy east germany so that finally americans in the 21st century would be free to go to more political rallies or

organize block parties or spying on each other. to fight in the cold war was ultimately between a system that said politics was everything versus politics should be a small portion of your life so you can get on with your family and get on with your religion and you can get on with your business, you can get on with falling in love and having children and things like that. so i think the biggest -- the reason i involved into a libertarian was because it made the most sense to me because it offers a vision of the world in which the things that are most important to us are front and center as opposed to saying do you know what? we have to call another boat where 51% or in the case of a 2000 election where 49% of the vote of the population gets to tell the other 50% how to live, what to wear and where to stand in line and how much to pay. c-span: where we have borne? >> guest: i was born in brooklyn new york.

1963 at methodist hospital. i still must say i was just in brooklyn the past weekend and it is phenomenal. i don't necessarily believe in an afterlife but are glenn certainly has been raised from the dead. it was a horrifying aberration for all of us in the 80's. when i fly over brooklyn and i go to new york anywhere west of that i close my eyes when i go over with brooklyn because it just fills me with fear and loathing. i was raised in new jersey and i'm always looking out the window to check another scene from the garden stage which i think is the greatest state in the union. c-span: you are for and i don't remember exactly had he said this but your mother and you use the word day go. is that something she was called when she was growing up? where was she from? >> guest: my mother was the first generation of her family born in america. heard parents came up in the 19-teens. all four of her --

which is hugely informed by worldview and my libertarianism. and i will get to that in the second of my mother grew up in an industrial town in waterbury connecticut which is a pretty large aberration as well as she grew up in an italian ghetto. she didn't speak english until she went to school and you know, it's amazing that in her lifetime, i mean i have looked at my grandfather who i am named after. you know they noted things that he was from southern italy. he wasn't from northern italy because italians will be quick to tell you africa begins in rome and you know his complexion was noted in the ship's manifest. he was a little bit dusky i guess and he never spoke english. his daughter and his children didn't speak english until they went to grammar school. d lifetime, not only were italians fully part of the american fabric but you know they were

one of the exemplary immigrant that had assimilated and changed american culture. c-span: how big of a slur is calling an italian heritage that? >> guest: it at and it's probably worse now than it was say in the 1930s. joe dimaggio, the baseball player who is one of the first huge italian athletes sports stars certainly in baseball his nickname if you go back to read the newspapers, his officially published name was day go. and it's a reflection of the changing times. a lot of what the book is about is how it's a much better america because would have recognized our individual -- our individuality and the hybridization of things. and you know it's interesting that at the same time we are much more comfortable with someone like when tiger woods made it big a decade or so. he said he was caucasian, black,

indian and asian. people are like yeah that's exactly right and it's kind of curious that as we have become more aware and uncomfortable of the much broader palette of who counts in america, we are also sometimes steadfast babies ethic slurs that were totally in common use 5060 years ago. c-span: we asked you to come talk with us because of your vote, "the declaration of independents" but we also asked you to come talk to us about your reason .tv and your reason magazine. before asking anything about that, let's run just one of your many television clips and explain after this is over what it is. >> guest: i hope this isn't the episode of to catch a predator. c-span: no, it's not. let's run it. >> the present of a designer society of america. she is the extensive portfolio and magazine features.

what she doesn't have is a state license. >> i'm not sure if we did ask ask her she was licensed. >> should she have been forced to go through an expensive licensing process? >> be alabama interior design consumer protection act. they act ensures the health safety and welfare of the consumer in the state of alabama. >> under the alabama of moving a throw pillow can get your time. practicing interior design without a license and you could spend up to year in jail. the public has a right to know when they hire an interior designer that they are hiring a qualified professional. >> by the stiff penalties? is to protect consumers as af idb american society of interior designerscommented mr. group that lobbies the licensing laws. >> interior design is more than meets the eye. >> this video suggests that license interior designers are unique to qualified to undertake important jobs like designing kid friendly library rooms. >> the children's area employs brighter covers and -- callers

so children are naturally attracted to the space irk us be apparently only government certified anterior designers know that kids like kid sized furniture. just imagine what an unlicensed designer might have done. the bigger issue is safety. this was 10 with interior designers save lives compiled by another group that pushes the licensing laws. did you know that painting prison cells pink saves lives because they color temporarily neutralizes anger and aggression. notice you never seen a pink during prison riots. the same applies to the confusing for patterns and other items installed by unlicensed designers causing 11,000 deaths each year. every decision they did -- an interior designer make subjects the health safety and welfare of the public. >> does every decision affects health and safety? will yeah. what happens when an unlicensed person like me attempts interior design.

c-span: what is the genesis of that? >> guest: that was, we work sometimes with the great public interest law firm called the institute for justice and they do a lot of licensing cases and they were looking into licensing laws which i believe are on you know, have changed somewhat in florida about whether or not it is constitutional or legal or preferable to have interior designers licenses and a number of states have these laws which are pretty clear break off of just where states have these kinds of licensing laws because they can and because it's in the interest of certain cartels or politically connected people to push that. c-span: we are talking about recent tv. what is that? >> guest: reason .tv is a video web web site that we laund in october of 2007 with the help and support of drew carey the tv star, sitcom legend, current price is right host and what it

happened is he had been a long-time reader of reason make a scene and he had actually said, which was very flattering and it's exactly what we are trying to do with the print edition of reason which has been around since 1968 but he said he never realized he was a libertarian in telestra did reading recent. that makes sense, that's me, that's me and then he came to us and said you know you guys do a great job with the magazine and with your web site but let's make videos. let's figure out how to turn some of these stories into short documentary that kind of grab at the heartstrings you know and use terms or cutting-edge media technology. c-span: is he still on the board of foundation? >> guest: yes he he is and he appeared last year in a documentary we did about cleveland his hometown which was called cleveland with drew carey, how to fix the mistake and other once great american cities which use cleveland, one of the great kind of rusted out homes of the city like what's

wrong with it and how do you revive its? and so that is reason tv. we put at anywhere from 300 to 400 videos a year. they are on reason .tv and our youtube channel as well as reason.com. c-span: what kind of money to does the foundation support and the magazine spend a year? >> guest: the overall budget for the reason foundation which is a 501(c) nonprofit is about seven or $8 million a year and i would say about one third of that, we have a think-tank like policy shop. the tv and the magazine are kind that kind of the three main operational ranches and the administrative set and i would say they each hold about one third of that. c-span: were you ever a member of the political party? >> guest: no. c-span: did you ever think you would vote always a certain way? >> guest: no, when i vote in an election night vote typically, i always vote on

local bond issues and things like that because that is where i think my vote is less relevant and also both in terms of this is a policy that is going to directly affect me in my hometown, decides to raise taxes to build new in my opinion completely unnecessary high school. that's a hypothetical. i will vote on that exist elections will be decided by a couple hundred votes but then in terms of candidates i don't think in my first presidential election in 84 at voted for walter mondale. he didn't win. i've never voted at any level for a candidate for elective office who has one and i think he was the only major party vote. i often vote for an independent candidate or a libertarian candidate simply because i like the idea of supporting a third-party candidates. while i am not a member they typically come closer to expressing my political attitude. c-span: fill-in the blanks. you grew up in brooklyn -- not

brooklyn. >> guest: actually i grew up and new jersey. c-span: excuse me. your father did what? >> guest: my father was in office manager of a shipping company. c-span: what about your mother? >> guest: my mother worked as a bookkeeper and she had three kids, took some time off and went back to work in the early seventies. c-span: where the other two kids? >> guest: ivan nova brother and an older sister. my brother lives in lawrenceville new jersey and my sister lives in nebraska. buy either one of them political? >> guest: not particularly. by sister when i have conversations with her leans toward the conservative point of view. libertarian conservative. i don't think she is active in any kind of politics really and my brother is a person introduced me to the magazine. it's been around since 1968. he went away to college and found a college bookstore. he went to rutgers university in new jersey as did i. started sending it home to me and i started reading it in high

school and i was like wow this makes a lot of sense to me. and then it was really after i went to grad school and work for a few years and went to grad school and a highly politicized environment and that is when i become much more kind of systematic about my political beliefs. first i went to temple university in philadelphia for a master's degree in english with a concentration in creative writing and it was a great experience, but you know this was the late 80s. i start in 88 and it was the beginning of what became known as political correctness where it was just very difficult to get through any casual conversation without policies being front and center. i knew i was not a conservative in terms of later a cultural crew troll studies and things like that and i knew that i was not a left-winger. this was again in the late 80s after he got my masters. i went to the state university of new york in buffalo to continue for a ph.d. in

english and i can remember having conversations with people in in the -- when the berlin wall fell and i said don't you think that's pretty phenomenal? people were like, it's not really important because they were still embedded in in the idea that castro and the soviet union was the moral equivalent of the united states. c-span: you mentioned earlier about drew carey and cleveland and we have a video that was produced. by the way where you do these? >> guest: it depends. we do a lot on location. we have people -- the reason foundation is located in los angeles and we have a great crew of people out there and we also have a d.c. office and if a bunch of videographers there as well. c-span: you said drew kerry is from cleveland? >> guest: he is from cleveland. c-span: let's watch for this feature in the 1990s cleveland marketed itself as the

complexity and invested hundreds of millions of the tax dollars for the browns and the cavaliers. >> the city of cleveland was expert in building big white elephant's. it doesn't work. if you look at the stadiums, the buildings around it are empty. the politicians to champion these corporate welfare projects promised it would stimulate the local economy and on the face of it that is precisely what they appear to do. >> it baseball game in a football game on the same day, 120,000 some people down there looking for parking and places to eat, tipping the waiters, tipping the valet guys. >> sure there's more action on game night but the economic studies consistently find that these kinds of publicly funded projects fail to increase the overall economic activity. taking the entertainment dollar of the clevelander and saying you are going to spend it here as opposed to there. >> .com practice for team owners

to relocate if they don't receive public funding and cleveland has known all too well what it's like to lose a beloved team. for a cash-strapped city like leave and the price is too steep. you take a city whose roads are crumbling, his bridges are falling apart whose economy is in terrible shape and you are going to subsidize a billionaire team owner? somehow it doesn't make sense. >> city officials have not learned their lesson. the city's next redevelopment silver bullet is the new convention center that will require hundreds of millions of additional tax dollars. i didn't know cleveland was such a hustling convenience center. c-span: what year did you do that? >> guest: we released in 2010. c-span: how many did you do on cleveland and what impact did it have? >> guest: we did several of the hour-long documentary. you can watch the whole thing. it's a signal video.

and the impact that we had that was pretty interesting is that the city council of cleveland, a guy called us up afterwards to say hey why don't you and andrew, you know and i think if they would have had their druthers they would not have invited me but they said why don't you guys come and talk to the city council of cleveland. it was supposed to be a 45 minute conversation had ended up being about two and a half hours and it was run over cleveland's cable access channel. it was pretty heated and pretty interesting. in the end i don't know, we are hoping to kind of develop more of a relationship with cleveland and the hierarchy there to say look there are ways you can turn around cities. there are ways to make schools better for the same amount of money or for even less money. there are ways to develop businesses that don't rely on tax subsidization of white elephant projects which is the way that every city goes. okay you know what, we know this is going to work but let's dump a ton of money into convention

center and let's build another stadium and give a ton of tax breaks to companies that are going to bug out as soon as the tax break in. c-span: you know time and time again that promoters are successful in getting taxpayers to pay for these stadiums. >> guest: you know many times, a lot of times taxpayers in light of the yeah, you have heard this all through d.c.. they can't be a big city. we can't be a low class city until we have a money loosing tax subsidized from a crummy baseball franchise etc. and the kids elected officials to sign off on these projects and it can be a light rail system. it can be a public/private partnership where you use them as a domain to take private property property and turn it over to another private developer to create a poke shopping area or whatever. is very troubling and hopefully this is one of the benefits of the current fiscal crisis, which is that people should start realizing that politicians are not good at development.

they don't know what to do and the market has a better sense of things and the best things that government can do is create rules that are sensible and that are predictable and that don't change all the time. one of the things we found in cleveland, you know they have over it does in doesn't or two dozen zoning areas, types of zones and some of these are artifacts of the industrial past and cleveland. how do you do business and every business in cleveland when you open something up you have got to go to three or four different zoning board meetings. that really strangles economic growth in the -- c-span: let me ask you and gave very quick answers on this. somebody wants to be a libertarian and if they are libertarian, or i will just try you. what is your brief take on the iraq war? >> guest: the iraq war, which one? c-span: the first, in other words the one that started in

2003. >> guest: was a non-sequitur based on 9/11 and the war on terror. it was sold as having something to do with fighting global terrorism and even saddam who was threatening the u.s. with nonexistent -- it was a mistake. a bad idea and incredibly poorly process. c-span: as a libertarian for you against it from the beginning? let's go to afghanistan. >> guest: it made sense after 9/11 to hunt down bin laden and the taliban refused to cough them up. it made sense to invade but it does not make sense to be there now a decade later with no clear plan. not even a clear withdrawal plan. c-span: what is your take on marijuana? >> guest: marijuana should be legal and it should be as legal and acceptable as booze. c-span: apportion los? >> guest: i am in favor of a woman's right to choose and i think that whatever your take on abortion, and i would say maybe

30% of libertarians are very very antiabortion because they believe that the fetus at least at a certain point deserves the rights of everybody else has. government funding should not be involved in abortion but more to the point, we are at the very early stages of actually controlling our bodies, our reproduction. i think abortion has become less and less important to public discourse and will continue to as we develop more control over you know how and under what circumstances we have children. c-span: the department of education. >> guest: the federal department of education which came on line in 79 or 80 has had no clear effect on educational results. this is something that is inarguable if you look at the national assessment of educational process for the seniors leaving high school have exactly the same scores they had in the early seventies when they started tracking this. and i should make everybody at the department of education think about giving up and going home and starting a charter school when they might actually

teach kids. c-span: federal money for politicians to run for office? >> guest: it's quite possibly more deserving to me than federal money for -- you know the idea that you would be forced to pay for a political candidate running for office -- code if that is what comes to pass the american experiment should be considered a complete failure. c-span: social security? >> guest: i think social security is a plan that has run its course and i would be in favor. i think there is a role for an government taxpayer-funded social safety net. i do not expect, i am 47 and i don't expect to collect social security. i would be happy to walk away and keep my money and let me plan for my own retirement without taking 12.5% of my income. ..

i think that shows up again. you still have that shirt. >> i do. >> cure you are in 2004, still editor of "reason magazine." you still have decided are in spirit >> that's two weeks into being born. >> there's the shirt again.

>> were about at the end of all this. you change in the last 12 years. >> am just glad i don't seem to have gained as much weight as i thought i had. i was scared i was becoming the marlon brando. i do want to point out on the 25th anniversary of c-span i was on a think one of the first guess, january 1st and somebody said, e-mailed me and said you are interested in stats, but she were the only person that holds special show they showed up in dress like you were going out to wash their card after the interview. c-span: back to the book. david brooks, "new york times" economist called them a big government conservative. >> guest: he calls himself

that at the weekly standard here to kill a dog with william kristol, bill kristol of the weekly standard the idea that what conservatives need to really get people's energy up and build the winning coalition is to indulge in bakery projects that are of national greatness. with a bit boreas, let's have a coup by moments from a conservative point of view. i'm not a fan of that. matt welch is certainly not a fan of that. i bring back to my grandparents live here because they didn't want to be part of somebody else's national greatness planned. >> host: richard nixon was the colossus. >> guest: that's the aluminum knob is of admiral wilson and robert scheid, were throughout it's a great parody of conspiracy theories that came out in the early to mid 70s and throughout a character is trying to raise money to build a statue in honor of nick sand

called the colossus of yorba linda. >> host: c-span: what did you think? >> guest: nixon is a fascinating psychological type and he was an odious personality. in a lot of ways, too called a tragic figure is to offer too much grandeur to simply a politician. but it's fascinating -- what is most fascinating about richard nixon as he couldn't enjoy his victories because he was coming and no, just tormented by what he perceived as his failures. >> guest: to break or what took writing a curious to triple the federal debt. conservatives to admire reagan think he was very conservatives. >> guest: a lot of libertarians say he was holding back the way it. i don't know, i'm not as

metaphors, but ronald reagan was not a libertarian certainly. he was in 1975 after he had left the governorship of california before he was really reading into the 76 republican nomination, which he almost got. he said libertarianism is the heart and soul of the conservative movement. that was the real fundamental dna. he and the interview set i can go with you on certain things, but not on all of these drug legalization are allowing people to watch dirty movies or read certain books, that type of stuff. reagan was a big government conservative. not only did increase spending, he increased without paying for it. more importantly, he ran his first came pain called the new federalist, a platform to devolve things to the state. he aggregated power into d.c. in a way that was much more than jimmy carter.

carter is the big saint of deregulation. c-span: you often use historical characters to summon the audience might not know about. the latter-day maria, who i did not know who it was, but i looked him up and saw he died in the hands of a woman with a knife in his back to. he still is the bathtub and friends. why did you call the busting of latter-day newt gingrich or the house of representatives? >> guest: newt gingrich styled himself as a revolutionary, along with pa are in a bunch of other people, which aid its own. it is clear in many ways the republican revolution or so-called in the 90s ended that he and its own and is kind of fun to make in people to historical characters. c-span: here's a video using --

at first i didn't know who it was, but i remember this from the old -- i can't think of his name, the director -- this is the former senator. >> william casler from the tinkler, which was a movie. william castle did a bunch of gimmick movies. ♪ >> good evening. i am former united states senator and recidivist presidential candidate, might rebel. out of common decency and a court order, i am obliged to warn you that the 3-d reason.tv videos you are about to view are not only terrifying, but real. members of the audience susceptible to seizures, high blood pressure and politically

induced rage should i exit their browsers now. children, pregnant women and fiscally responsible adult should consult an accountant before watching these videos. if you feel your head is about to explode at any time, you may obtain immediate relief by screaming, don't be embarrassed to open your mouth and let it rip with all you've got. remember, a scream at the right moment just might save your life in your country's future. ♪

>> i am nick gillespie and i want study until more terrifying than rahm emanuel gave deeply if you dare. since world war ii, federal revenue as average ride around 18 gross domestic product despite all attempts to check it out through the roof or cut it down to size. get federal spending has grown more sharply than al gore during a full body massage him arising from 16% of gdp in 1952 almost 26% this year and spending projected to be well over 20% of gdp for the foreseeable future. the tragic result? the federal government balance sheet has been a hole deeper than john bonners.

c-span: where did she do that? >> guest: we have an incredibly talented crew of people. that was the brad brothers who did that and we filmed in 3-d. we didn't sign with the magazine where we went out 3-d specs and you could watch them online. that was last year, last fall. write code you have to go to those great lengths to get peoples attention? >> guest: to joke with that out of a conversation must return figure out why are people kind of getting the fiscal problems of the country and i suggested it is because they can only see them in two dimensions, but when they get the third one, it grabs them and has been in the face, maybe people will be moved to action. we like to have fun. the most important thing about being a libertarian is living your life, having fun while you're doing what you're doing. we figured that was a good way

to call attention or mix things up a little bit. c-span: he wrote in order to secure futures, politicians and enablers must romanticize the past is somehow superior to whatever we witness contemporary moment the other party has gotten us into. >> guest: yeah, sure. reiko explained. >> guest: you know, when you think about now, the contemporary conservatives, republicans always let out to reagan. or whoever the founding fathers, ever since cute nor morris lost his leg, things had been downhill. democrats talk about if we take it back to those great society days come november how good it was under lbj, but there are ways capping back to an imagined paradise before the fall when things happen. it's fascinating when you look at the past, remember used to write about the cultural decline of america.

and bill bennett, who is kind of gone missing from public discourse thankfully, he talks about how great the 50s were. you go back and read contemporaneous accounts of the 50s. it was rebel without a cause, why johnny can't read, commies everywhere. it was the beads. growing up absurd by paul goodman. it was a horrifying decade filled only with, both crave the juvenile delinquents and kind of slutty girls giving it up all over the place. so again and again, the way politicians work is by motivating people with fear and they say zero, we need to return to the golden age by giving us more peril and money and control. c-span: another thing about politicians you rate democrats or republicans stuffing or potatoes come again p. r. red sox, needles or stones, american politics would seem that's inherently manic and into a

police state. what does that mean? >> guest: i'm not exactly sure. i think i might've been channeling edgar casey or somebody at the time. we split things. i mean, we make a huge amount of hay out of kind of the petty or the grandiose elaboration of petty differences. so the republicans and democrats , who among us if you pull the names off of who did what in the 21st century, obama is essentially governing as george bush's third term. he has followed all the bailout economics that george bush got underway. is the federal control, late bush did he kept us into war as an added a third to the mix. you know, in the end, paul ryan is the darling of conservative

budget cutters on the republican side. his budget, heavy spending of $4.7 trillion in 2021. obama said the $5.7 trillion. it's kind of like the difference is that is minimal in the end compared to the vast difference of other people. i mean, we are splitting hairs with republicans and democrats, but we feel a need to vilify the other side. c-span: of all the videos you definitely don't have it, but which has got most reaction? >> guest: of the largest video is probably one way or the videographer has gone on to do a free landscape. dan hayes, an off-duty policeman pulling a gun at a snowball fight in washington d.c. about two winters ago. that went all over the place. but then we've done other things than is probably the did a great video, meredith bragg did attack

ad circa 1800, we took a couple clips of people complaining how the 2008 election looked like he was going to be the dirtiest and the most reprehensible and then the answer cut. we had people do attack ads on thomas jefferson and john adams, using contemporary cs accounts and slurs against these guys. >> host: virginia pastor leaves to see when she was editor before you. but here is a video of the true kerry narrates. it is about the fact that virginia pastor gave her kidney, one of her kidneys to sally's to trail trial whose adopted and this is about that whole episode. let's see what it looks like. >> host: one thing we can try because it's illegal. stay with me. paying people to donate kidneys. i know. it sounds really ghoulish, a

key, but they are your kidneys and it helps people in need. if you want to sell one, why not. >> the most straightforward would be to repeal what is to sell organs. >> that would be a dreadful mistake. >> he says money would take the carrying out of the donor recipient relationship. >> it would take the carrying out of it as it becomes a matter of paying off people. >> but the donors are the only ones in the transplant process who aren't compensated. >> the surgeons are paid, supplies, the people who clean the floors in the hospital are paid. everybody is paid, but not the donors. >> would people be less likely to help others if money were involved? >> unpaid donation process undermines.

>> and the soldiers are firefighters. >> we respect their service, appreciate their heroism, but we also pay them for their work. >> many were the poor would be exploited. >> many people whose life has gone and they are in trouble. >> what if donors use the money to buy the house or the house to pay off debt, should that concern this? >> what if they're paying off a debt for child support quite >> what's wrong with that? question we see poor people aren't allowed to take advantage of being able to be kidney donors? c-span: the dr., how did you get him to do that? >> guest: he's at the ucla medical center and that's his position. if the majority position, the establishment position. it is illegal to trade in tissues and organs that are not replaceable. you can sell blood plasma and things like that and maybe bone marrow, certain things.

c-span: what is the reasoning in this society? >> guest: at dates back in the early 70s a medical convention or an agreement that it would demean human life to have trade and organs in certain types of human products. it's an interesting question because it's true kerry says at the beginning, a lot of people find this repulsive, but it beats being hooked up to a dialysis machine several days a week and not being able to do anything am dying slowly. so that is a video that got a huge response because it really lays out a different way of thinking about things. it's powerful. at this point the only country in the world that has something like a flourishing marketing kidneys is islamic iran of all places. c-span: you know, there were a lot of stories about the coke

brothers win a lot of money to the conservatives and republicans and all that. i noticed it is david coke on the foundation board, what does that say about libertarian? does he give you a lot of money? >> guest: yet come he is on our board of trustees and gives us -- i don't know how much of the top of my head i should because i'm the vice president. i assume i'm in trouble right now in one way or the mother. he's been on a board for a long time, but he ran for vice president on the libertarian ticket, where he ran to the left of both the democrats and republicans in calling for the end of the fbi and cia for god sakes. one of the things about the attacks on the koch brothers and charles as well, but you know, one claim is they are hiding the ball on what they do. first they fund a huge amount of

stuff including things like the new york city ballet and stuff like that and they do find libertarian organizations. charles woodson of the founding of the cato institute. but they're totally open. david's name has been on our board of trustees. there's another dozen people on their fourth long as he's been part. c-span: when did you make the shift from being editor to running? >> guest: i started. virginia pastor hired me in 1983. she moved on to read books full-time and pursue columns at various other places in 2000. i became editor of the magazine in 2000 in late 2007, early 2000 became editor editor in chief. when i brought matt welch, my co-author declaration of independence weren't for the magazine had gone over to "the l.a. times." c-span: why did you do with?

>> guest: i don't mean to be blunt i've been working at the magazine and it was print journalism, but as much as anything when the new john mccain in 2008, when we knew he was in play -- i guess 2007, he would be awesome to edit the magazine and we needed somebody to head up wheezing tv. i said let me take a shot. i have strong interests. c-span: should we assume jack and neal are your sons? >> guest: yeah, my 2 cents. my son jack who is actually john, but we call him jack is 17 and my older son neil is about to turn 10. reiko are you married? >> guest: i am divorced. her mother and i had a long relationship. we were both fans of the beat eggs essentially and so one way or another we named her kids

after jack and neil cassidy. c-span: but is about this living in washington and oxford, ohio. >> guest: i'm in d.c. in a regular basis, but that residences for tax purposes, voting, et cetera and i am there with them basically every other week. c-span: why are they there? >> guest: my ex-wife is an english professor at miami university of ohio. c-span: use it in 2000. interview i read, i do not believe in god. >> guest: yeah, that's right. although, i am a huge admirer of religion as a kind of social force often for good, sometimes for bill. i was raised cat lake. it's on my face but it just a matter of fact. i'm in accra cs. the questions about the existence of god are not particularly pressing for me.

c-span: why? >> guest: i don't have a strong calling to say i suppose. c-span: when did that start? >> guest: sometime when i was in my late grammar school years at st. mary's. let's blame it on st. mary's parochial schools. c-span: i'm sure they'll be glad to hear that. true kerry, but so many things in this country which are banned. >> welcome to the nanny state nation, with the government mainstream business. fireplaces, plastic bags, lightbulbs, poker, it's all been banned somewhere. same with keeping swine, feeding pigeons, owning pit bulls, chop enough oglala or trans fats. say you don't want to stop serving trans fats in your mass trans, go find you. if you want to pay the fine and

serve transplants, both in the police with guns to arrest you. everything the government does is back up by guns and force. dallas, the veterans of foreign wars got raided by the cops for playing low stakes poker. >> what in the world is going on? >> is enough to hiding your data play poker online. >> too bad that his band, too. >> u. should the bandwagon keeps rolling along. nothing is too important to be banned. selling kidneys is against the law, even though i'm doing it might save millions of lives. nothing is too silly to be banned. guess what can be have been? >> it's a thousand dollars or jail. >> this woman was part of the slammer for 45 days for the heinous crime. it's amazing how many log sundance has been around.

trading with cuba has been around for nearly 50 years. even if they're uttered in the middle of the night, some words are still network no nose. c-span: so, when you put this on reason that tv, do i. so how many people are looking? >> guest: is changed. we now put everything on youtube so we have a lot pretty reliable view cal. a couple of interviews i did were pretty awful might be in the low thousands and then we have things that have hit 400,000. c-span: in your book, you use a number of people to make your points. nate silver. >> guest: blogger for "the new york times" exemplifies the ability to create a whole new way of working and even creating a whole new area of expertise. reiko where did he start? >> guest: use that peat marwick or kc mg became a

baseball blogger and then a political blogger for he was better at figuring out what was going on in politics and professional pollsters. c-span: bill james. >> guest: he created what are called safer metrics, but a whole new way of talking about is paul, now the boston red sox is regrettable. c-span: one of your favorite people the book is robert mcnamara. why? >> guest: robert mcnamara exemplifies everything wrong with your conservative or liberal, certainly for libertarian but the hubris, you know, the hubris of thinking you know it all. that is the enemy. c-span: what does it mean that you can do your own videos, but the menu to plan your website. were never going back to what he used to be. what do you think it means on a long-term basis?

>> guest: what it means is i was lucky enough to grow up in a world much, much better than my parents and even my childhood i look forward to my kids enjoyed stuff that i can't even imagine now and we're not talking about watching old reruns on ipods. and the next 20 years or 30 years come in the future will be much better, assuming that we get the parts of the world of politics control squeezed down to where they should be, we are looking at a future that will be fantastic. when it gets delivered, it will be wonderful. c-span: is their a way to wrap up in a nutshell what you think of politicians? >> guest: yeah, i try not to think of them. they are easily pulled in the right direction in one direction and that is why but that i talk about his online swarms. voters -- motivated voters on single issues are tightly knit sets of issues pushing politicians in the right direction.

they are kind of like that thing on a board. you can move them is pretty light tension, a light putsch if you want them are starting to see that. antiwar movement, marijuana legalization, things like that. c-span: first book? >> guest: first full-length book for me. c-span: anything special you'd like to do this with? >> guest: a lot of the book for me, beyond that is a great collaborator, in a baruch ibo to my personal personal life and public life is an economist at murkiness helped out a huge amount on all sorts of levels. but i was a great process working with someone like matt welch, just to bounce ideas and refine things. it also -- it's always great to have a partner in crime. c-span: you can find nick gillespie had reasoned that tv and "reason magazine." you can find them on his blog.

"the declaration of independents: how libertarian politics can fix what's wrong with america" thank you. >> guest: thank you. >> for a dvd copy of the program, call 1-877-662-7726. for free transcripts or to give comments about the program, visit us at q. and at una.org. q&a programs also available at c-span podcasts. >> i had no idea about the experiences of many of the people who were essentially my predecessors, correspondence or diplomats in