got fdr excited, we join the war and we won the award and defeated one of the greatest tyrants the world will ever know, one of the most tremendous tyrants the world will ever know who killed 6 million of my relatives and that was adolf hitler because winston churchill was excitable, had high-energy, believed it himself despite failure and failure and overcame them learn lessons from them and that is what everyone's got to do. that's a notch burner become successful. you fail, learn, get back up and fight again. don't ask for bailouts and that is one is wrong with american economy. you can't award people. you don't reward the failing companies on wall street. i always tell people when you are mad at sco that makes $20 million a year, 50 million a year, you have no right to be mad. you have a right to demand that

government employees to get pensions for not working for the rest of their lives. that comes from us the taxpayer. the day comes we bail out the company and keep paying the wall street say $50 million. you've broken every principle of capitalism. that's the only overall be occupied by. the occupied movement called the socialist, wrong and everything except you don't fill out capitalism cover. let them fail. that is the answer. that's libertarian answer. >> host: you use god in your subtitle and talk about got quite a bit in your book. >> guest: i do. libertarianism is an often associated with religion or god, correct? >> guest: is not associated with god. i believe we live in a nation filled with people. we live in a nation founded on principles of god and a nation is majority christian. i believe very strongly in god.

truly we can use god in our schools and got in our prisons. but on the other hand is a libertarian i don't force it down anyone's throat. i do not believe god should have a part or rural in the state. it's a clear one between religion and state. but america is the nation. never kid yourselves to believe strongly in god and have a deep, abiding faith in god and the libertarian candidate comes along with those beliefs. we can win major office. i give up the opportunity in my plan is for president of the united states for 2016 and my plan is to be the first third-party candidate to win the presidency. >> guest: >> host: this is booktv on c-span two. where freedom fest held annually in las vegas, talking to several authors. we've been talking with wayne allyn root. "the conscience of a libertarian" as the name of the

book. >> and booktv is on location in las vegas at the annual freedom fest conference and we are interviewing several authors here and were pleased to be joined now by the vice presidential nominee for the libertarian party for vice president for vice president of the united states, judge james gray, who is also an author and his book is called "why our drug laws have failed and what we can do about it." judge gray, if we could does start with your background. tell us your background. >> guest: sure, i was at ucla, go bruins, not sort of thing. and i was in the peace corps two years in costa rica. and on the vice presidential nominee for the party. i'm the first peace corps volunteer to be elected to national office and that's kind

of pleasing. after that i went to usc law school, was being drafted so i joined the naval rotc and was a navy attorney, jack attorney for four years. that's why it was being drafted within a week from getting back from the peace corps and the state may notice for a physical. just that my future had in store for me. after i got out of the navy as a federal prosecutor in los angeles, u.s. attorney's office prosecuted standard cases, bank robberies, drug cases. ended up having a unit prosecuting across the government fha, va, that sort of thing. after that was in the private practice of litigation for five years and appointed to the bench. i was on the bench for 25 years as a judge and now i'm retired and running, as you say, for office. >> host: what court really judge? >> guest: orange county, california for the state court over 25 years pretty much did everything. as a part of that, churning

low-level drug offenders for no good purpose and eventually didn't take too long. i saw what were doing simply isn't working here the tougher weekend on drug crime, the softer weekend with regard to prosecution and everything else. robbers, reapers, murderous brutal to escape and get less accountability because we spend all the on prosecution of nonviolent drug offenses. just as a word. >> host: what was your attitude towards drug lawbreakers i guess? >> guest: you have to uphold the laws and i raised my hand to protect and defend constitutions as well as the state laws. that doesn't mean i have to do it privately or quietly. so i would do that, but she can't escape your cases. during juvenile court while drugs involved and you can't escape them. but nevertheless, i can't see myself myself as a bearded agitator because what we're

doing this to work in we simply have to put our heads together and change it. we couldn't do worse if we tried. ask mexico, for example. 60,000 people died a violent death as the president calderon's war on drugs and has nothing to do with drugs. it has everything to do with drug money and it's our drug money causing those deaths and corruption and lack of respect to the law. >> host: judge gray, any particular drug case that kind of crystallized your thinking? >> guest: they're kind of was although his building on. i still remember i was carrying out another judge's sentence and we had a really bad guys who was charged with and pleading to going out, beating them up and stealing their money. and by the time of the dust settled and in some credit for time served, usually serve another two weeks in jail before he be released. when he was taken back to lock up after going through this coming again what a war whoop is that if you want and i remember thinking to myself, he has one

because were so involved with nonviolent drug cases, using resources that really bad guys are escaping. i realize the tougher you get on nonviolent drug offenses, stuff you get with regard to prosecution of everything else i'm going to do something about it and i have. >> host: what have you done? >> guest: i talk about this as publicly as they can. i've been on the o'reilly factor couple times commencement pain in the order of seven or 800 various media events. i've written a book that was on booktv about 10 years ago when it came out in 2001. now it's up dated at the beginning of this year, 2012. so i'm back on booktv talking about this issue among others. >> host: the cover of the second edition. specifically, what are one or two things about the u.s. drug laws or state drug laws that you would change immediately? >> guest: hold people accountable for what they do, not what they put in their bodies.

the criminal justice system is able to if i drive a motor vehicle under the influence, not the crime and should be. why? because by my actions and putting your safety at risk. as far as putting people in jail for what they put into their bodies, number one at the thought turkoman the libertarian and part of that most people are. government has much right to control what you are icicles put into our bodies as it does what i put in my mind. it's none of their business, so it doesn't work and you actually so contributing to problems because 90% of our so-called drug problems today are drug prohibition problems. that's not to minimize drug farms themselves, but huge amount our problems just like with alcohol prohibition. the bathtub gin problem, for example, quality control when awake. i'll capone was no longer involved in selling drugs. today you do not find children selling drugs -- selling alcohol to each other in their high school campuses, but they sell

marijuana, ecstasy or whatever all the time because of drug prohibition. we're corrupting children by perpetuation of the truly failed policy. polska okay, arguments against include children shouldn't be taking ecstasy. >> guest: i agree with that. heroin addiction, marijuana use. should marijuana be treated as alcohol? >> guest: there is an addition in colorado that governor johnson and i haven't worse. same thing in the state of washington. thank you for this other book as well, but sure. you know again, the drugs are here to stay, so i agree children should not be doing this. ask our children today, what is easier to get, marijuana or alcohol? asked the first 10 teenagers define, they will also use easier to get marijuana. why? the illegal dealers don't ask for i.d.

so today, think about it. the biggest oxymoron of our lives is the term controlled substances. why? as it is to prohibit something can you give up control with regard to place an sale, quantity or quality or price or age restrictions. all of that is abandoned to the bad guys, thugs, mexican drug cartels. most juvenile gains have the biggest source of revenue from the sale of illegal drugs. let's cripple juvenile gangs by repealing drug prohibition. regulate marijuana like wine is the place to start. >> host: judge gray, would you have marijuana, et cetera, sold in retail sales? >> guest: yes, treat it like wine. that's the answer for most questions. >> guest: you can grow your own grapes and wine. wouldn't it be better to have these huge amounts of money go to pay our firefighters and

teachers can i fix our rows instead of funding juvenile gangs and mexican drug cartels? it's an easy question to answer. >> guest: two of the people you dedicate this book to our george saltz and william f. buckley. >> guest: that's right and i'm proud to be. in fact you can go on to say this was endorsed by milt friedman a hero of mine. also of course walter cronkite was a real hero in a lot of other ways and george shultz, like you say, former secretary of state for ronald reagan. you get those folks together agreeing on anything, it's pretty impressive. >> host: you have another book out. what is this one? >> guest: voters handbook. effectors solutions to america's problems and/or resolutions to problems anonymously about this without having any intention or thought of being involved in another political campaign, but he talks about health care, education, fill policy in death

of capital punishment, which regardless of your philosophy is overcame. getting into criminal justice issues in replication. even recommend econometric system, which is certainly something else. i'm running for vice president with governor gary johnson. it's amazing because from a totally different perspective has come out to pretty much the same analysis i have on all of these important issues like education. today, the tiger wearing and i like it, by the way. you choose how much is spent, where to go, what to buy. that is how we get reasonable goods for reasonable prices. education is different from that. education is spent from the top of the compass of the federal government spends all this money, keeps a bunch and give it to the state to their administrative costs and then give it to school districts. they use a lot of administrative cost and then it finally gets to the teacher. well, it is a working. today's schools are failing

children. if you allow to be funded from the bottom-up, like your tie your shoes or anything else, that gives the parents the ability to decide where and how children should be educated and they will then be up to take their child to the school that best meets the child's needs and that will result in excellence, innovation because your school doesn't work. they'll take their children to someone else's school. but we do? to fit my goodness, where these people live in my school? i do something to keep them here or go go out of business and someone else will come and do it. competition works such that governor johnson and i both say we will bring back excellent story schools within four years of installing this program. we mean it, too. >> host: judge james gray, here is a voters handbook and why our drug laws "why our drug laws have failed and what we can do about it." this is booktv on c-span 2.

>> host: and you're watching booktv on c-span 2. prime location in las vegas at freedom fest and we are joined now by author tom woods, his most recent book is "rollback" repealing big government before the upcoming fiscal collapse. how would you describe the premise behind your book and what are your main points that you try to get across? >> guest: only 5% deals with fiscal issues and i'd rather jump out of windows and read or read a book on this. but you set the stage i'm explaining we are on a trajectory that letter writer democrat or republican, we'll have to admit cannot be sustained. obviously some very wrenching changes are coming. the rest of the book is sort of geared towards kind of revisiting some of the arguments by