the internet and social networking provides a real opportunities to subvert the dominant messages we receive from the mainstream media and to circulate videos and articles and materials online to as many people as possible but there's also no substitute for coming together in person, posting to facebook is great, but coming together in person to have steady circles, to have film screenings, to have forms where these issues are discussed and debated are essentials to raising the level of awareness and consciousness and building a common commitment to taking constructive action. i hope you will be among those who think creatively about new forms of media that can reach people. it is my hope and prayer that we will see out of hollywood one

day, and movies that depict the struggle of a young man or young woman coming out of prison for the challenges they face or heroic efforts to survive on the outside, that tells a different story than the one we have been fed for so long about criminals and what ought to be done with them. in the meantime we have to take responsibility for educating ourselves in our own communities using the means we have at our disposal. ..

>> we begin a special look with a look at the library of one of the nation's most famous. >> it is to d the boys, my friends so long. my regret of the war is that i was not with them for the companionship. the two years of death and misery is a spouse that tolerates no divorce. companionship is part of one's soul and not obliterated. the experience was about youth. he wanted to have that story and tell a well and honestly so that you could connect with people you had never seen. his early career, before he started as a war correspondent, he was a journalist, wound up as the managing editor for the washington daily times.

he was teared -- tired of being stuck as the author, and got on the idea of being a roofing reporter. they pack up the car, and for a thousand words a column, they traveled the country. he was always committed to telling the story of ordinary people living ordinary lives, and it really gave him a chance to exercise this telling a story beautifully and simply all over the beautiful country. as the war was started, they decided to have a home base. they decided here and built the house. if you look at the house, respectfully, the context of the neighboring houses, it's a little mid western house with a white picket fence that's in the southwestern city. it was home with indiana roots, which were very important.

they moved in in 1940, moved in by the end of april, and jerry died that year. it was the decision to give the house to the city of new mexico. >> my favorite writing turns up at the end, they wrapped up the campaign successfully, but they didn't know what was next, and they didn't know where to go and left so many behind. he ends with a passage about all

you can do as you walk past the crosses is stop and murmur, "thanks, pal." he understood the hardship and the loneliness. he had a strong sense of fairness. i wonder, looking at it from the 21st century perspective what it meant to the people at home. you were in tennessee, and your brother in the infantry after d day, and there was a column a journalist written and he named your brother and told a story about the family that always made you laugh, and, you know, the distance in world war ii is different than the distance in our contemporary wars, and they closed that distance, but part of closing the distance was making sure that people understood exactly what that war was like. he was connected to what human beings need. one of the famous work that appears in the famous collection is on the desk of the captain, quoted on the monument in the

back of the library. it's a a told story of a man that people cared about who died doing his duty. the passage, itself, is one of those enduring powerful what is the cost of war? he shot from being a republicked columnist during peacetime with a good book or two under his belt, and a lot of name recognition to being an beer national celebrity. he won a pulitzer and people listened to him. he was able to level that. he got the sold qer raise, and that was an amazing piece of advocacy. one of the things growing up in new mexico, the navajo talkers are a great story of the washings and there's a column, again, published, and i don't know if it was redacted or not, but the type script that we have, he said, i ran into

sergeant joe gatewood, his brother, and in europe, the navajos gave coded transitions because when they speak their own language, only one navajo understand each other. they did the same here. that was classifieded. whether that was in print or not, i have to check. that was the access he had. he had a connection with the sergeant he talked to who went to the indian school in new mexico, and so they knew the same city. there's a piece where they talk about the b tf 29 pilots in the pacific theater. they would fly, come back to the ship or island or wherever they were based, and it was all fact time. the flying took so much out of them that between missions, it was down time and all recovery, and he talks about how, you know, what the pilots need is a quo that, a hope of when they will be done, and some came from the european front to do this in the pacific, and just that sense of, you know, they needed to have an end in site, and

washington was not putting those numbers up. it was another powerful pieces of advocacies that this is what these guys need that they are not getting. his death was tragic, but a soldier's death. he was killed by sniper fire in japan, the 17th of april, 1945. it was very, very risky to recover his body. a soldier got permission to go under heavy fire to attempt recovery, and he was able to bring him back. they found the last column he workedded on, you know, in pencil, in his handwriting. he's been buried twice, you know, sharing the grave with the other casualties from hiroshima and reburied at the national cemetery, and the soldiers, themselves, had a living memorial, which is this house is

ailing -- ailing cerk ky. it's fitting. he was about living an ordinary life, and his death and purple heart signal solidarity with the soldiers because not many civilians earn purple hearts. they sent sympathies to his wife, and roosevelt died shortly before pyle's death, and trueman assumed the presidency. there was a touching thing from the lady that i loved the president, but i really loved your husband. i'm sorry he's gone. the neighbors came by, and people who were passing through who knew he lived there came by, and during the time, you know, between his death and jerry's, there was a nurse taking care of jerry, and they came and asked for autographs, and she kept a toffee box with the signatures cut off of canceled checks and gave those to people who wanted that, that little memory.

it looked easy. he made it look natural, and, i think, you know, he worked hard, and it took a lot of courage to do what he did, and he would never had said that about himself. don't think we have any contemporary comparisons to ernie pyle, and i don't know if we don't report as much or he had the combination of the human touch and extraordinary writing skills. he had the kind of credibility that the generals had to acknowledge. they couldn't ignore the common soldier. that story was out there. it totally unglamourized the war. it was a do or die time, and it was an important war to win, that lasting legacy of telling the story in a way people connected with and could

remember humanized the people fighting the war, forced the politicians who might have wanted to move quickly on to other things. they had it in black and white from somebody people trusted in ways that they didn't trust generals, and they didn't trust the politicians. he remained a force to be reckoned with. these are the things you need not try to understand. to you at home, they call him the figures or the near one who went away and just didn't come back. you didn't see him lying so grotesque and pasty in the road in france. we saw him, by the multiple thousands, that's the difference.

we are here in new mexico, a few miles north of old town, and just off the 40, just off of rio grand. the store opened in 1984, nap sigh rutland opened it, and it was one-third the size and expanded it over the 28 years she owned it, and i started working for her in 2006, and in 2010, me and my partner purchased it, and in october of 2010, and we've owned it for a little over two years, and it's been quite a ride. we're heavy in bringing authors from out of -- you know,

national, world renown authors, heavy event schedules, and we have it in store as well as out of the store, and there's, you know, authors we can't fit everybody thatments to -- that wants to see them, we use offsite places, a thousand people who came and spoke, and we had a great event for that, and it's just, you know, it's on the part of all the people who work here, and we have to work together to support each other, you know, to get -- make events happen. i think there's so many small groups interested in so many different things so if you're interested in something, and this is such a town where there's enough sky for everybody to have an idea, have an interest, have a curiosity. the interest is vast. it's also particular. it's -- there's a grand -- it's

like you get to -- everything that you're interested -- that i might be interested in or think somebody would be interested in, it's nice because there's going to be someone that, you know, might also find that interesting as well or interesting enough to take a look at it or just take it home with them. i feel fortunate that i can, you know, it's -- you don't know what anybody's going to buy at any one point in time, what they want, just don't know. you get an idea, and the scene here is i just, it's just nice having a place where people come and share ideas, and to -- to come together and either around a topic or an author or from the events we provide or just, you know, talking with other customers so not before, but having a safe place, you know, people that don't sit in the same pews on other days of the week and can share different ideas, and it's nice to have a place like that.

owning a bookstore in these times is a wild ride. it's, you know, pushing a one-wheeled wagon uphill, and it's difficult, but with a team and love of books and having the community support us, it's -- i couldn't do it without the community support. we'd be gone too fast. it's, you know, they chose it. everybody wanted to read digital and only support in a big conglomerate, you know, and it could happen. it -- you know, who knows what could happen, and it's so iffy, but it's kind of just kind of going for it. it's just sharing a story, sharing a book, being able to hand that book to somebody to hand that book to somebody else and hand that book to somebody else. when i try to do digital or anything like that, i lose it. i lose interest or my battery dies or there's other factors that i don't get from a

bookstore. i just love this place. i just wanted to keep it going, and without my partner and my staff and the community, i wouldn't be able to, and it's crazy, but maybe i'm silly enough to do it. this area had a strong native american population, and acquired by mexico. because of this, the area has a colorful history. one of the founders is on booktv next, and his book "bless me" is required reading in new mexico public schools.

this was banned in class rooms because, i think, simply because the parent doesn't understand the novel, and the parents asked to ban the novel, and they just have not read it. it takes words or phrase or hear or there of paragraphs, but i'm glad to say that in every instance where censorship of the novel happened, every instance that i know of, the community, parents, families, have gone to the schools and said, look, this is our literature. this is an important literature, and you can't ban because you pick a word or two or paragraph. in every case i know of, the banning has been overturnedded.

in the 60s, i started writing, and i would write -- i was teaching school, and i'd write at night. i remember one night i felt a presence in the room, and i turned, and i saw this woman, this old woman standing by the door, and she asked me, what are you doing? i said i'm writing a story, and she said, you'll never get it right until you put me in it. i said, who are you? she said, ultima, and that's how that vision of the healer that came to me, and it filled a novel with her soul, with a presence, with a history, our history of hispanics in new

mexico, the belief system, the religion, the story our grandparents told, the folk tales, and there was -- i said, i put her in the novel, and her relationship to antonio becomes crucial. she becomes the mentor, the guide that can take on antonio into new ways of thinking into the natural world. she teaches him that the river speaks, the river has a soul. she teaches him about herbs, about how to be careful when you gather the herbs for the healing. this relationship, she becomes antonio's mentor, his guide, and people, i think, are yearning for that. they want to see that. we have too many books and too

many movies where it just all -- i call it explosions and truck wrecks, and these fantastic fires and what have you, but people yearn for a more basic story, and "bless me, ultima," it's the relationship of the boy and ultima. in the story, there's a very important part of the novel that one of the uncles sees three witches doing a ceremony at night at the river, and then they put a curse on him, put a curse on the uncle, and the family goes to the priest, can't help. the family goes to the doctor at another town, and the doctor can't help.

they come to ultima, who they know is willing to help and has some knowledge to lift a curse. that becomes a crucial part of the novel, and some people object to that. i don't know why. with harry potter and everything else, you wonder why they still pick on it. it was banned in schools because it was being used by teachers who loved it, and they thought it was good for their students, and, number two, usually, it's just one family, one family read parts of the book and say, oh, this is outrageous.

i don't like the language or i don't like the fact that it's about witchcraft, and then the community and students rise up and say, no, this is a valuable novel. it's about a lot of things, not just about language and witchcraft. the problem with banning any book is that once you ban one, you don't know where it will stop, and that road takes us back to totalitarian states, and i don't think we want that. there are ways of schools to prepare students for what they read and discussion, and even bringing parents in so that it's

open and students can be challenged by reading all sorts of books because it is good, never ends, and we know what that leads to. >> next, we hear from dave dewit, the author of "growing medical marijuana" discusses current efforts in the country to legalize marijuana. >> well, i've been a marijuana grower back in the day early 70s, mostly in the basement under just grow lights that were, you know, fluorescent lights, not the fancy ones they have now, and i did pretty good at it. i bought a book called "marijuana botany" that i used as my guide because there was no grow guide for marijuana that day, but the weed is not particularly hard to grow.

when i came here and found out that new mexico was legalizing medical marijuana, i was -- i was cureout about it. i was interested in it because it's part of a national movement that's happening, and so i knew a grower who is older than i am, if you believe that, and he was licensed, and tracked the first year of growing anything. it was his first plant he's ever grown. never grown house plants or garden or anything like that, and he did a good job in the first year. i helped him out a little bit, and then we tracked his successes, his failures, his triumphs, his disappointments, the whole thing. there's 20 states now in the district of columbia with some form of medical marijuana, and two states were recreational, oregon and colorado, our northern neighbor. in addition to making money from medical marijuana, but making money from recreational marijuana because they legalized it, and they want to control it, so here's what happened in the state of washington. originally, there were state

liquor stores, but they privatized the liquor industry, some say pressure through costco, which is based in washington, and so all of these state liquor stores sat vacant, and then they legalized marijuana. what do you think goes into the veigh captain stores? you're right. medical marijuana stores or marijuana stores in general, but, of course, they all going to be taxed and regulated, and the state is expecting to make tens of millions of dollars to start with this, and i think that this is my opinion, i think that once other states see the kind of money generated from marijuana, when it's either legal or legalized for medical use is going to persuade these states to legalize it in some form or another. the reason governments get involved in more and more and more is because they make money on it by taxing it at a certain rate, but they have to be careful that the taxation

doesn't put the marijuana into a price range that somebody's going to buy it on the street rather than buying from a dispensary. of course, alcohol is so well regulated that you don't really have the opportunity -- should i buy my beer from walgreen's or fred, a home brewer down the street, should i buy from him? that doesn't happen all that much, in my opinion, but i think the states are smart. they have to fill holes in the revenue. we have to educate the children. the money in bad years is just not there, and so they have to have some other substance to bring in the money. it's just not alcohol and cigarettes. they got to have marijuana, and, yes, there are organized groups who oppose legalization of marijuana, but there's not many of them, and more importantly, though, is the national organization for the reform of marijuana laws, normal failed miserably to legalize recreational marijuana, but

seized on medical marijuana with enormous success with that, thinking that is the -- just like they say, the -- you smoke a little marijuana, and next you're on to heroin. in this case, you smoke a little marijuana that's legal medical marijuana, and you're on to full legalization. sort of a steppingstone, and the ones that have legalized it, already had legal medical marijuana, so, you know, it's a development thing as people get more accustoms, not so shocking and all of that. the next state to legalize marijuana could possibly be new york. that is my opinion. the northern more liberal instigates and western states in particular are going to be the states most likely to legalize marijuana at this point in time. i'm not sure any states will legalize marijuana if it was south of the mason dixon line. those are basically republican dominated conservative states, and i think it's unlikely for them to legalize it any time in

the near future with the possible exception of texas. there's a liberal element in texas. mostly based in austin and dollars that, you know, is growing fast, and it may not be all conservatives in texas, isn't now, and that could change, and, especially, when they see the amount of money made doing this. it's very tempting for state legislatures. the marijuana cat is out of the bag, folks, and the federal government cannot stuff it back in the bag because now think what would happen if there are marijuana stores in washington, bringing in washington, a lot of tax incomes, and all of the sudden, the federal government fries to shut them down, it would be a state's rights issue that you would not believe what's going to happen here. the feds are not going to go there i don't think. i don't think they can. i just don't think how they could take on 20 states. we'd have another civil war, something like that. it wouldn't be about slavery,

but freedom to smoke marijuana. >> about 44,000 navajo indians, volunteers and draftees were in world war ii. we sit down with the coauthor to talk about "code talkers," the first and only memoir of the one of the first code talkers in world war ii. he's the only surviving code talker at 92 years old. >> this is chester and my's book, "code talker: the first and only memoir by an original navajo code talker of world war ii," and tester is the code talker. he is actually the last of the 29 code talker and turned 92 last week. a code talker for people who don't know what it is was someone who helped the marines in the pacific war in world war

ii to be actually to transmit messages without the japanese being able to intercept and decipher messages. before we had navajo code talkers, the japanese were intercepting and desafing all messages, and it was a huge problem. we were actually losing in the pacific. a man named philip johnston suggested to them they use navajo. he grew up on the reservation. his parents were missionary, and he knew a little navajo, kind of what they call trader navajo, and he knew enough to know how complicated it was, and he went to the marines and said, look, this is what i think you need to do, and they said, well, how coyou prove it? can you give us a demonstration? he found four navajo men who worked in california and brought them to san diego and had them say a few things using a quick

little code that he and they devised, and the marines were so impressed with how indecipherable it was and how foreign it all sounded to their ears that they said, yeah, we're going to give this a chance. the marines recruited 30 young navajo men to become code talkers and to actually design a code that other navajos couldn't break. >> one of the reasons was that the navajo language was one of the hardest things to learn. >> there were a couple other reasons they chose to use navajo. one, it was not at the time a written language so no one could buy a book on navajo and learn it, and, two, the sounds were very unfamiliar to anyone who had not grown up with navajos so it was almost impossible for anyone to learn, and, three, navajo people have always been

very willing to participate in the military and defend their country because they were raised as warriors, and there was a lot of young navajo men. it was the largest reservation at the time. >> this code came into me when we hit the canal. the code says, justice japanese machine guns on your right flank," and then the code said, that was the code i sent out. >> the men that were assigned to send out the code at first were shocked because in boarding school, they were severely punished if they spoke navajo, kicked, hit, had teeth brushed with with the brown soap, and

they soon realized it was a clever idea because they realized no one outside the navajo reservation spoke navajo. there were maybe 30 people who could kind of speak navajo who were not -- hasn't grown up on the reservation. what they did first was develop and alphabet, and it was clever because it was a doubly encrypted alphabet. they chose an english word for every letter of the alphabet, and they chose words that would be ease see to remember, things from their every day life, for instance, a was ant, and b was bear, and so on. they translated the english words to a navajo word so the navajo word really had nothing at all to do with the letter in the english alphabet. when they wanted to say the

letter "a," they said a bunch of military ranks and military words and things they adopt want to spell out so they chose, again, items from the everyday lives that made them think of what they were talking about, and a fighter plane was a humming bird. you know, very quick and small and maneuverable, but vicious if you have seen humming imirdz. these are, you know, they'll attack each other to try to get to the food, and hand grenades were a potato, and so on. i mean, words made sense, but not even our government understood the code. there was no one other than the navajo code talkers who actually

could understand the code so the marines put great trust in the young men, and it was also recommended by the same man who recommendedded to the marines they develop a code in using navajo, wernt to the army and suggested to do the same thing, but the army decided that navajo young men would not be smart enough to handle that. these navajo men actually developed a code. they didn't just speak in navajo, but they developed a strategy and a code that other navajos count never break, and i think it's important people know that because i think that's the big e.g. misconception about the code talkers. people said, well, they spoke navajo, big deem, but it was a big deal. they just didn't speak navajo. the dowed is not used today, but

from the outside, it was complex. to the other men, they thought it was easy, but it's 30 or 35 pages of code words. i don't know how the heck they did it, but they did. the developing in the code took the young men 13 weeks, and they were locked in a classroom. they were let out for dinner and lunch was brought to them in the classroom, and every night when they left the classroom, all the working papers were lockedded in a safe. they were given the congressional gold medals, the original code talkers in 2001. there were only five still alive at the time, but the other code talkers who followed were given the congressional silver medal so they were recognized as someone really important to the war effort. it was a long time after the war, unfortunately, but it's nice that the government did

recognize them. >> the war was very important to our tribe and the rest of the people. to come home alive. >> new mexico teams with legends, and next there's a rare first edition of the life of billy the kid published in 189 # # and signed by mr. garret who is known as become responsible for the death of the well-known teenage outlaw. >> today you're in the historic zimmerman library built in 1935, and we're in the conference room of one the long time roosms built for rare materials, which

is appropriate because in front of us here the is 3 millionth volume to the library which we'll celebrate on april 1st, and that 3 millionth volume is the awe ten tick life of billy the kid, one of the single most, probably most important book of western america, but also for the west and new mexico and most rarest as well. we only know of just six copies of this particular ed ligs all the graphed in the country, and are we know are in private lands mple one is here and the oir two were not exactly sure where they are, but they are not in any other institution so it's really a pleasure for us to have this rare material in the library. it's important because it really sets the stage. it is the fountain head for all billy the kid history or nonhistory as you can imagine. the myth, the intertwining of the myth and legend of billy the

kid with the facts really stemming from this book. pat garret wrote the book in response to a lot of ere -- other books printed in new york city and east coast that really exaggerated the kid almost making him a hue row, and pat was seen as being the guy who ambushed billy, who killed billy, and he wanted to set the record straight by writing this biography of billy the kid and how it all happened, so it becomes the figure account, the only firsthand account we have of what happened that day in july of 1881 in fort sumpner, new mexico, and at least from pat's perspective, but it is -- it is what everybody else takes the facts from is this book. since this really is the first edition, the first printing, and

an autographed or compliment ri copy by the author, makes it extremely rare and one that is unhear of an so unavailable. when they were published, a thousand copies were made, but pat kept a small number of books in this special red leather binding that makes it unique because, like i said, it is just the presentation copy that pat made he gave to important people and dignitaries that had his complimentsment the other copies were not bound, but loose, and they just -- the pirn who had the actually book would either have it bound themselves, perhaps, or leave it unbound. again, here's the title page

with the picture, the only known picture of billy that recently sold for over $2 million. really the image is ware, but for folks given this lose and bound it themselves, and that didn't help the sales, and what the near ri goes is these were on sale in santa fe, and there was a basket of them for a quarter a piece, and they couldn't sell them for a quarter a piece, and somebody came by and bought the whole bag, a whole bushel basket and took off. we want e know who it was, you we don't know. it was not the moneymaker they thought it would be, and, of course, because of thatst

terrorist rare to have that. the most interesting point is the book where pat is pretty sure that billy is in the house, and he starks out the house like a television show knowing the bad guy is in the house, and how do they go about getting him? just the idea when he creeps into the house and goes into the bedroom and -- he do you doesn'w if he's even in the house. could you imagine, there were no lights. it's noel -- not like electricity. there was not much light. you really have pat venturing into a place where he does not know where a murder might be and goes into the bedroom of the owner of the house and confronts

the ordinary person and says, is he here, have you seen him? that's where pete maxwell says, "he's been around." he doesn't say he's here now, but he's been armed. you -- he's been around. you can imagine pat's level of anxiety because you don't know who the murdering fellow is. when billy comes out into the hall and into the bedroom and says to peat, you know, who are you talking to, who are the people, and he knows the people on the porch, and pat backs into the dark corner, and that's the moment in time that a decision is made. do i take him aim live, overpower him, shoot him? what happens? that's the time that only pat can tell us. he's the only one there, and

when he drew the gun, apparently, he didn't have a gun and knife. when he drew his gun and then pat shot him, it was -- in pat's mind, it was self-defense that billy was going to shoot him. again, that becomes the real crux of the entire story, did that really happen that way? did billy raise the gun or pat shoot him -- it's a series of things you wait for the big climax so when pat talks about that, those few minutes of time that really bring this all together, it really is exciting. it's an exciting story. i think pat did a good job with that. for awhile, pat garret was the darling of new mexico. he had captured, killed the outlaw, billy the kid, and, but, for a short time, people asked

the question, was billy -- was it a fair fight? did he have the gun pulled? did he really shot in the back? all the questions started to be asked about pat garret. what did you really do? all of the sudden, pat was feeling like he was -- he was becoming the villain instead of hero so he, then, talks to a friend of his named marshall upson who was a journalist from back east, and asked him to write this book with him. the true account once and for all what happened. i think pat, more than anybody else, wanted people in new mexico to read it because he was in new mexico, and heft feeling, i think, the sting of being the tie -- tyrant or the bad guy. when he saw himself as the hero to the people of new mexico,

about capturing the fellow taking him off the streets, and even when this first happened, when he first killed billy, the officer offered a $500 reward for the capture or death of billy, and when president went to get -- his 500, the governor didn't want to get it to him, and the citizens in neaxz raised a thousand dollars to give it to him because he was pleased with what he did, and, again, i think that for pat, that was important, and i think when that was quod as to what happened and was billy unarmed #, shot in the back, and rumors floated around, that pat thed the people of new mexico to know. that's why, i think, that he did not go to an east cogs publisher to publish this. he wanted to publish in santa fe so it was available to people of new mexico to get and read and learn, and, again, that was

probably one of the reasons it was not sketch because it was -- the distribution was bad, and it didn't get to where he wanted it to get out. even though he wrote this, the short term did not benefit from getting the story out with the fountained head because there's the first hand account. over the years, people were interviewed who were there, either on the porch or came in afterwords or from even pete maxwell saying what really happened, and there's all these accounts of what really happened, and some folks said that billy never was shot anyway, but he escaped, and the guy there was not billy the kid, and so even as late as just three years ago, there were trying to exhume billy's body to make sure he was in the grave. there is a lot of questions

unanswered about billy the kid that makes it so interesting as a his cor call phenomena that intertwines facts, fiction, legend, and myth into the one book. it's great to have it for the stories and faculty to use and see that original piece.

>> imagine that we are in frons with a group of 20 years old,

and we asked them, you know, i am launching a nongovernmental organization that is going to try to save butterfly in i understand knee sha that is endanger of extings. raise hands who want to help me in saving that butterfly, and you'll find that among the 20-year-olds and others, you'll find people are interested in doing that, which is great, and they ask the who wants to join the republican or democrat party? you see that, you know, far fewer would be willing to volunteer their time and efforts and the passion in joining a political party, and that's very bad. i think political parties need to mod earnize, need to become more attractive to young people and young professionals because political parties are the essence of what, you know, the year and you can have democracy

without strong political parties which is a bad idea. >> the changing nature the governmental and changing power afterwords tonight at 10 eastern, part of booktv this weekend op c-span2, look for more booktv on online. "like" us on facebook. >> you have understand all l founders' primary concern, number one, numero uno, was with national security. what would they say, for example, about a company such as lockheed? i'm of the opinion that based on thousand -- how they acted in other decisions they would have favored a becameout of lockheed because it supplied the united states at the time with the top fighter jets and top reconnaissance airplanesment i think you can argue that they would have supported, for example, the bailout of chrysler back in the 1980s, but not the bailout of the chrysler today.

what's the difference? chrysler then made tanks, the m1, a1 tanks the only tank manufacturers. when chrysler comes out of debt and repays the government loan and come back to health, they semioff the tank division and plow that money back into the company. >> author and university of dayton professor takes calls, e maims, facebook posts, and tweets on the founding fathers and other key events in american history, "in-depth," live sunday on booktv on c-span2. >> then in 2002, iran, which had been working with us secret le to quiet the afghan situation, woke up one morning to see they were part of the axis of evil. well, they were puzzled,

reasonably, having fought a war with iraq for ten years and had nothing really to do with north korea, why were they part of the axis of evil? a chance we had really to do something to improve the u.s.-iranian relationship was really undermind with that speech, and we've been going over this for ten years, and 2003, you get the iraq war, one of the two unwinnable american wars, the united states felt it had to engage in over the past decade. obama, unfortunately, comes in with very little [background sounds] in foreign policy, never paid much attention to it, served in washington for only two years, and i was a very end thursday yays tick supporter of obama and remain, but i think those of us who had looked at him knew national security could be a problem, and when he appointed the secretary of state for domestic reasons and

appointed a secretary of defense for domestic reasons and appointed a retired marine general to be the national security adviser, he left in about a year, and put leon panetta, and i know he's one of your neighbors in california, but he was captured by the operational mentality and the cia before he was in the building more than a month. this was an extremely weak national security team. obama also was controlled by the military. that's how you got the surge of forces. i think he realize he was had by the military, and i think that is very important, and it's one of the reasons why i'm a little more optimistic about the seg term is i think this is a wiser man in terms of foreign policy, and if you look at the fact, he wanted to end the war in

afghanistan. he's allowing the pentagon, and you got to remember when you look at the pentagon, and it's institution with the fine motor skills of a dinosaur. it takes the pentagon a long time to put something together such as a timetable for withdrawal. all obama has to do, and i know it's not this simple, but i would look at the experience where he came in in 1985, gave a secret speech in 1986 denouncing afghanistan to his bureau colleagues as a bleeding wound, he had nazis secretly tell we were getting out and the military had a year to turn it around and wouldn't be able to, 88, the timetable, 89, they were gone. we need to do something similar, militaries had its chances. we had 11 commanders in afghanistan in 11 years. take a look at thomas rick's book, the generals, which

devotes a lot of attention to this. that's not a war where we can be successful. that's not the kind of military we have. there's no military that's ever been successful in a counter insurgency or the sur gents have a sanctuary, but an ally in pakistan who we provide with billions of dollars much military and economic aid that makes the picture confusing to, you know, how do you disengage from the situation where you are supporting vertically integrated criminal enterprise called the karzai government? i think we are finding our way to some resolution of that crisis, but, again, i don't know how many years this is going to take. my optimism, just to jump into that for a minute is the team

kerry and hagel, i think, are two appointments, and i wonder why susan rice qualified, when you have someone like john kier rei, his career devoted to becoming an secretary of state, and chuck hagel is a wonderful nomination, and the criticism of him, frankly, is silly. i mean, it's anti-semitism, and people are really throwing that around so loosely. ..

i was very disappointed when obama made general david petraeus the cia director but he took care of that himself and took himself out of the game by giving a very bad name in the process, what was obama thinking when he took an active duty four star general who had strong policy positions on some of the key issues intelligence officers were going to have to grapple with? i can't think of a better scenario for limiting intelligence than having general david petraeus at the cia. that is not what harry truman had in mind when he created the cia, didn't want to put it in and of policymakers and certainly not in the hand of military policymakers. what the cia was created for was

to challenge military intelligence and when the cia had done its job correctly that is what they have done on things such as arms control or vietnam. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> "living with the u.n.: american responsibilities and international order," kenneth anderson is the author. prof. anderson what parts of the un work? >> this is going to sound a little heretical. probably the best part of the u.n. in terms of what is working is the security council and that has got to seem a little strange. it has got to seem a little strange for two reasons. one is all of us are watching the news and we see things like

syria unfolding and obstruction in the security council, the inability of its come together in order to resolve these major humanitarian disasters that involved dictators slaughtering their own people, so you look at that and think this has got to be the worst part of the un, the reality is the security council is operating as its framers intended meaning that they had a pretty good idea when they created this in 1945 they knew what they were trying to fix and was there were trying to fix was the pre-world war ii league of nations in which everyone got the same vote, everyone got the same voice, everyone had the same impact, big countries, little countries, powerful countries, the good stuff, all those things and it was a

disaster so they saw it falling apart in the lead of nations and they were resolved that they were not going to let that happen again in 1945 and the way to do that was to deliberately create a body called the security council in which the great powers, good ones, bad ones would be fair and if they deadlocked they deadlocked, couldn't go against the will of any single permanent member but it enabled them at least to try to keep the alliance with in the tent rather than having them go outside attacking from the outside. soo despite these immense problems the security council has, this is actually fairly successful. it is working on as a place where the great powers come together to debate not necessarily resolve things, resolve some things and not

others, but in many respects it is a success story rather than a failure. >> which nations make of the security council? >> the security council has five permanent members and these are the victors of world war ii and the other criticism of the security council which is very well taken is these members no longer represent the population of the world, they no longer represent the geographical distribution. increasingly they don't even represent the power of the world. a permanent five members who include the united states, china, and russia, and >> than we have france and

britain. and two very much median powers, and a great deal of force in world affairs. and a large part of that is leveraged on the security council. but we have new india, no brazil, no party from outside of this frozen grouper. this is an enormous problem for the security council, and one that there is no structural way to overcome and the reason why is pretty simple. if you say to any of the current members, why don't you step on down, france and britain, really ought to combine a single european union's seat and then there's a lot of having and hawing and germany pops up and

says heck, we are one of the world's great economic superpowers, no military to speak of and we can't do anything from a marshall standpoint but we pay for everything. so we actually deserve a seat. and we don't have a military there, not entirely true but we should have a seat because we are an economic superpower and anybody who says they want in has some very powerful country. india makes an enormous amount of sense, pakistan and china would say no, japan doesn't make a lot of sense. in any case china would say no. germany, everybody says not another siege from europe. so the security council has an enormous structural long-term problem, increasingly not representative of lower-level hole and that is one of its

biggest problems. in fights rising new powers that feel like they don't have a seat at the table. to wind up trying to make other arrangements and contract around the security council and find other ways to do things, not all of which are great ideas from the standpoint of western democracy. >> are there revolving members in the security council as well? >> often times we neglect them. i just did in my statement, we have 15 members and they are rotating and as with other things that the un, these rotations generally speaking are not contentious because we just rotate on a completely fixed geographic basis. sort of an order and not as much fighting as you think there might be over membership and it is important to understand you

do actually require a vote not just to the p 5 but you have got to get a supermajority of the 15 members at that moment to agree in order for security council action to go forward. so it is not just a case of what they want, they have the ability to block anything but they don't have the ability to make anything happen. >> host: what does the peace and for? >> guest: permanence. the un is the most organized, makes the department of defense look nuclear by comparison. >> host: what is the general assembly, is it effective? >> the general assembly is the meeting place of all the nations and so everybody has one vote, everybody has a voice, you see this every year when world leaders lineup at the opening of

you in years so to speak, general assembly session in september. they each make their speech can and the good part of it is it is a place where everybody has some voice, the bad part is it is a place where for buddy has some voice. it is generally the biggest single source of problems for the united nations and it is because there is no tempering of what goes on. members of the general assembly both have no capacity to pass truly binding law. in other words with the general assembly passes are resolutions thad to not carry the force of command and at the same time they bear no responsibility for anything so it is the ultimate kibitzer club and from the u.s.

standpoint much of what they want to do is not just wasteful, not just waste, there's an awful lot of things the general assembly would like to see go forward or important sectors of the un general assembly would like to see go forward that are really quite maddening and quite willing to cover for the worst members from human-rights standpoint from many standpoints in this way and the nature of such a body and subsidiary organs that depend on it with the u.s. institutions tend to be the worst you are the more you have an incentive to be in the leadership organization that might say things about you, so there's a sensitive for the worst actors to actually want to have the most voice at the u.n. because it protects them and

they create a little protection racket for them. >> host: in your book "living with the u.n." you write a buyout of the un network and containment, that does it. >> the general assembly and its appendages are hostile to the united states, wasteful, will basically seek any resources and attempt to use them in ways that are wasteful. there are numbers of particular institutions and the u.n. clause i independent bodies. sort of branded by the u.n.. they generally speaking have budgets which receive a little bit of funding from the main u.n. budget that by and large is voluntarily funded by governments that look at what they are doing.

and a long pattern of trying to look for the ones that work best and in effect i am encouraging the u.s. to do that, to look to the ones that are most effective. when i say buyout, it is a little mischievous, he essentially saying fund them and don't fund these other things. this is all voluntarily, it doesn't arouse the same kind of controversy as refusing to pay does in large part because it is voluntary funding in any case and this is what our european allies do all the time, try to identify the development agencies that they think have the best leadership institutions, put money into those things and let the other ones flitter on by. that is a very good strategy and one that the u.s. ought to be pursuing as much as possible. >> host: what does the u.n. costs the u.s. every year? >> not more than a few million

dollars. it is a lot of $1 billion. let me break that down a little bit. it pays 22% at this point of the total budget. and the budget is sent by the general assembly and in past periods, the general assembly consisted largely of very poor states that didn't pay the bills would essentially increase the budget evermore and essentials the as a majority stick it to the wealthy minority to pay at, it was not so much the u.s. in the 1970s, west germany, and evolve a system in which there is a consensus basis at this point where countries have to agree to a budget and those budgets have been going up but there is a lot of pressure from the u.s. through one of the finest u.n. officials we have,

and a power point guy in dealing with budget administration management, these kinds of issues which are enormously serious. this is an institution that pays fantastically well to get permanent positions. and it is on the basis of nationality and geography. and an international service job that would make any controversies over municipal unions kind of controversies in this country at the state and local level pale by comparison to the kinds of issues that go on, something in which the official documents of the u.n. say that civil servants of the un should be paid according to the highest standards of what the highest civil servants make in the world. if you are coming from a very

poor country, i certainly don't begrudge one that salary as one comes to the u.n. the incentives of creating to hold on to that job no matter what happens and you are going to go back to your country to something which is completely different standard, creates enormously difficult incentives. in terms of total amount that cost the united states, we are talking a few billion dollars. most of which the vast majority of which at this point is not actually tied up in a required u.n. dues and a mistake to focus as many conservatives do on these required u.n. dues, money is not that much, where the u.s. mostly pays is in the form of at this point peacekeeping operations in which we put in $5 billion may be at this point,

that is money we voluntarily put in and it is assessed in one sense that everybody is trying to contribute, wants to know that its partners are all agreeing to do the same thing in any budget cycle. you don't want to put in the money and nobody else does and says you don't want to do anything and i'm stuck and can't do that. so the u.s. puts in this money, other countries put in this money and one of a bright spots, i am surprisingly ended the command of the security council, the u.s. i believe recognizes and is recognized from the bush administration and the obama administration that peacekeeping operations at the un, for all the problems and scandals and sexual predation and determined scandals, ripping off the organization, all of that aside, there's a value that is being

provided that keeps the operational that is irreplaceable in the united states. we will see this would comes to molly and other places where we are looking at them to perform jobs we can't do. >> host: what is the u.s. influence in the un? >> guest: it is very large and in another sense it is not. the key factor, this is a key point about this book, i have been talking exclusively about the un and the u.s.'s relation to it as a sort of player with in the un system, the biggest player, the superpower, all of those things are true but the most important relationships that u.s. has to the un is not actually the biggest player within the u.s. system. it is rather that the united states operates in effect as a parallel system of international

order, security and economic in which the u.s. provides the vast amounts of public goods to the world that are completely outside the un system and we run a risk in deciding, as the obama administration, to say we don't want to be the hegemonic provider of security in these public goods to the world. a big player at the un and another belly up to the bar kind of player to the un and turtle bay, and that the collective worry about it. the collective will worry about it where damaging does. the u.s. doesn't understand it guarantees the system as an actor from the outside, the consequence is going to be a scramble among scared and worried rising great powers

which we all should hear should come to blows in the south china sea. >> guest: >> host: evaluate the last few ambassadors to the u.n.. >> guest: the last few ambassadors. here is the thing. john bolton was excoriated, to despise the un, and however many stories -- >> host: you agree with that statement. as somebody said about it. it sounded quite silly and, american liberals need to understand that the un is not going to grow into this wonderful thing which is going to govern the world in some kind of way. american conservatives also need

to understand the un is not going anywhere. they need to understand it is not going anywhere but in two different ways. liberals need to understand it is that, it is what it is, it is not going to grow or change or evolve into anything better and conservatives need to understand it is not going anywhere, it is a permanent institution. john bolton actually recognizes that. hostility he had toward the un meant that he showed up, was there constantly, engage in every aspect of it. i sort of watched him in action in the last spasm of un reform efforts in 2005, last gasp of kofi annan as secretary general. team marched in not with orders to blow up the place but with orders to take this process seriously. he sharpened his pencil and was

as though they hired a new york law firm, lawyers to walk in and negotiate every point as if it mattered and they hated him for it. the reason they hated him is because the dynamic at the un is supposed to be we are supposed to take it seriously but not too seriously. none of this is quite that serious. ambassador rice started out doing much of her period at the u.n. has been an ambassador to the un and disliked by the u.n. bureaucracy by the other ambassadors, but there has been a very strong sense that the capital of the world is not turtle bay but washington d.c. and she has spent much of her time during the first term in washington and i think there is a sort of weird sense that

bolton hated the institution but engage with it at a granular level in which the attitude from the obama administration has been we love the institution but actually got another thing going on. is actually a very open question at this point which of these two ambassadors, which of these two administrations is actually size up and sort of price the un more accurately, the ones that engage with it in order to sort of really make sure that it doesn't do anything the u.s. doesn't like, or one which apparently on the surface has much more love for but is much more disengaged. is not fair to ambassador raise at this point where her engagement is exactly where it should be, she is living day and night in the security council which is exactly where she should be. and they were unfair criticisms in the first two or three years

of the first obama term. >> host: when has the un sought legitimacy? >> guest: most of the time as a parallel to action that it was planning on taking any way. in iraq, we sought legitimacy for something the entire world knew we were going to do now matter what. the u.s. seeks the jealousy when we do things like support and keep operation. places in the world where we can't operate ourselves and wouldn't operate ourselves or put our people at risk and yet both for regions of our interest and values and ideals we think it would be a good idea if someone were on the ground to obtain some order and they think they seek you and legitimacy for purposes that run to where our values and interests come from.

>> host: and you write if there's a remarkable disconnect between behavior of countries in the general assembly to lost voting by region and ideological groups, and those countries for relations with the u.s. in the real world. >> yes. how countries behave in the un and the security council most often and indicator of true interests, tends to reflect pretty accurately on the security council where the real interest was. in the general assembly un's internal dynamic is a close circle of its own universe takes over so we have many u.s. allies across the second and third world and many other places who are close allies on many many many things and in the un they routinely vote with those sort of a large third-world blocks against us on all sorts of

things. that is partly because they perceive a value, a stance which puts pressure on the united states to take account of them and sort of take them seriously as the naysayer that can only talk, but talk has not a lot but some influence and second, because for our part, the united states does not feel that it is worth extracting through pressure in their real place, in the capital city, in diplomacy with them, concessions for how they behave at the u.n. because frankly we don't think the u.n. is that important and so we don't wind up forcing them to take account of our position on things many of which do matter, at least in the general assembly because we don't think it is worth the price they have to pay

and were world's relationships in their own country and we don't so it means there's a disconnect between how we and our allies the cave at the u.n. versus what our relationships are directly in the capital. >> host: who are the real world realists? >> guest: the obama administration was split between two camps in foreign policy. on the one hand you had a wave of people i would describe typically described as a liberal internationals, people who do believe in the mission of the u.n. not to be this kind of diplomatic table where everybody negotiates and argues and debates but something which is actually supposed to take on aspects of global governance and aspects of sovereignty from sovereign states, and the united

states traditionally has been very suspicious, liberal/conservative doesn't matter and the reason we are the world's hegemon and we are not going to wind up seeing that authority to the united nations but there was a very significant chunk of the incoming foreign policy establishment to the obama administration who really do believe this and thought this was the way forward. at the same time they were counterbalanced by a wing of the democratic party and the obama administration and led by secretary clinton, new liberal realists who have looked at the bush idealism, we call it neoconservatism in foreign policy but it is actually the conservative form of idealism about democracy, transforming countries, making things better by doing lots and lots of things, and more or less included that that was not going

to work and that we needed to retrench and become much more realistic in our approach to foreign policy so i described in the new liberal realist because they saw themselves as rejecting new conservative but at the same time involved essentially rejecting a lot of this kind of liberal international stuff that they regarded as kind of soft and squishy and regarded in much the same way conservative realists would be guarded, hopelessly soft and not dangerous to american power and sovereignty and that tendency is very special in one particular way. the bush realists, conservative realist's tend to take words very seriously. they think that words bind, that words have ways to come back and bite you, and one of the features about the george bush

realists was they are very careful, if you are the liberal international idealist, you want lots of words to talk about cooperation and all sorts of things and commit the united states to an endless number of things you can't come through on. if it were the bush administration and had that kind of wind, it tends to flatten out because they believe those words matter. what characterizes the new liberal international thinkers of the democratic party and the obama administration is they are not bothered by the words especially at all because they think basically they can just ignore them. we can do like any other country does and find any document in front of us because when push comes to shove we're the biggest player on the planet and we will just i