there is wine and i will be signing books and there are snacks. you can purchase books here i should say. thank you. this was a tremendous discussion and i hope we will continue it amongst ourselves. [applause] ..

[applause] good evening and happy birthday mrs. bush. [applause] it is a great personal pleasure for me as charles reminded me in the greenroom we have known each other for 32 years. i was his employer. charles krauthammer has written a fantastic book a compilation of his columns

columns, plus a marvelous introduction. i know one thing that compilations never sell. his book is number one on amazon and will debut in number two nonfiction on "the new york times" best-seller list on sunday. [applause] to head a john grisham bill reilly and russia and you name it. born in new york city, raised in montreal. then went to to harvard medical school and as a psychiatrist practiced three years with the chief residents -- resident of massachusetts general. then as a speechwriter for vice president mondale for their presidential campaign

then when he came to the new republic in 1981. that was the golden age. and what was interesting is of group of people with a group of ideas that frequently fought over them but at any rate charles won the national award at coveted prize then when it to go to "the washington post" and since it has continued to write for the "washington post" as it is an inspiring columnist you

write one column per week it you cannot do more than that but it called the most powerful force kahane of american kazoo for to miss them. calling him the most important conservative columnist. you can hear him tonight to hear questions from the floor so save up your questions you are in for a real treat. mr. krauthammer. [applause] >> 84 being here mr. president and mrs. bush. there are nice introductions and there are kind introductions that lists your achievements transcribe and notarize to end said

your mother a copy. to state -- despite your pitch reduction you included things that i now have to explain. [laughter] first there is mondale. [laughter] yes, it is true. people ask me as you can imagine how do you go from walter mondale to fox news? i was young once. the answer is simple. [laughter] then there is that psychiatry parched. it is true i once was a psychiatrist technically speaking i still embed in reality i am a psychiatrist in remission doing very well thank you. [laughter] i have not had a relapse in 25 years. and of course, as a political analyst i tell people it is not that

different from what i do every day. the the only difference is the paranoid have access to nuclear weapons. that makes the stakes higher i am honored and delighted to be here to see the bushes did i am happy to be among you. but i am happy to be anywhere where one williams can i interrupt me. [laughter] [applause] i will be sure to tell him how you feel. [laughter] the one it to say how much i appreciate how your straightforward to rally the

nation against a new barbarism in never afraid to use that word and that idea. recognizing islam as a great religion but see no contradiction one dash contradiction to rally the nation to fight the perverted bridge that attacked us on 9/11. i wrote at the time and i believe to this day in bet with the infrastructure that will carry us through this war. it is a backhanded tribute. to the very people that did criticize but they adopted the very same tools as you decrease to them they your

administration had created just as truman did to provide the infrastructure, the tools and the institutions that carry us through the cold war and will carry us through in this generation and if i could just repeats i spoke to my wife earlier today she asked me to convey her admiration and respect for what you did for our country, this readiness of your voice and your determination to see things through even when you were nearly alone. i am supposed to be selling books but i had to say that first. [applause]

>> especially the white part. otherwise i will sleep on the couch to night. [laughter] the book is called things that matter and it is very good. you should buy a lot of copies especially for your liberal friends if you have any left. i don't. in conclusion. [laughter] that was just a test i wanted to see if i would get the applause that clinton got at the '88 convention went after 50 minutes he used those words in the place erupted not just a pause the celebration. but i digress.

the book is several things. because it stands my career as a journalist from 1981 i started on the day ronald reagan was sworn into presidency, the three decades are historical and time of enormous fascination that it was my privilege to witness. the '80s in the reagan revolution from the age of holy terror and this is the fifth anniversary to the ambitious.

with the '80s one column captures that the bass. so when they look back at that era when a long for it i said gosh i missed the cold war. but you get the joke. the point is there is a myth created after conservatism of the decade of the '80s and utterly destroy what was left of the soviet empire. but it would dissolve after the vietnam-era there was the total breakdown of the

consensus i right about that because jim had mentioned in the introduction because i began to support things that reagan did. precisely the thing that won the cold war. so those that began with the democrats swooning for the nuclear freeze. web like best is it caused the largest number of cancellations in the history of the magazine. jim will remember that but also with the volume of the

letters that come in to attack us then we should choose someone to read all the letters every week the most vitriolic to cancer that person's subscription. [laughter] i wanted to do it without a refund but the business side was not very happy. and every step of the reagan foreign policy agenda but that is the issue to resist the demonstration to counter the soviet missiles they have imposed in eastern europe in the reagan doctrine to help reverse the terms of the cold war. those that have a great

advantage to us today is -- today to give up ahead of the cold war to realize we have no chance of winning that led through the event of our lifetime of biblical proportions the collapse of the soviet union. without a shot fired. that was the core of the '80s and what you will remember it for a and as a write-in the introduction to trace revolution that was the essence of leading the democratic party because in the 1970's there was a very strong conservative element in the democratic party of

our cold war liberals humphrey and scoop jackson my great political hero in fact, with a scoop ran for the nomination in 1976 as part of the massachusetts primary i was a doctor at the time and i handed out leaflets. jackson's one the primary i handed out a lot of leaflets but as you know, he did not win the nomination and that was because despite the fact he was a wonderful human being and very smart i hate to say this but he was exceedingly dull. it was said in a scoop jackson if he ever gave a fireside chat to the fire would go out. [laughter] i knew how to pick winners back then.

also to talk about the '90s here is what is of most remarkable. nothing happened. nothing world historical happened. i was aware of the absence of things happening in a way that almost scared me. what i mean to say that a great existential struggles of the century stop overnight. christmas 1991 there is no soviet union. i never imagined how will live to see but here it happened overnight we have unrivaled prosperity and i was acutely aware this is not normal in history. there is a column called the

golden age i gave a speech to my son's high school in 1997 and i explained we were living in the incredible magnificent time of profound peace and prosperity of no threat at all around the world and i tried to impress upon him how unusual this was. of course, i failed utterly they had not experienced anything but i had a terrible sense that's you go back to all the golden ages, and they are short with this intense feeling we should enjoy it but not expect it because this is not what history normally is. even though i did not tell

the class it would it end. that would be child abuse. [laughter] you are having a good time but i write for adults the only question was how soon? would it end by fire or ice? read no. fire. 9/11. that signaled to us that something had happened. something new. something terrible another column in the book is what i wrote that afternoon in the post the next morning in the problem breaking it to the could i contain it to write a coherent sentences one after the other?

to hear the historic paradigm changing. this was history returning with a vengeance of the exits to instal struggle not from the 1990's that were the exception that we have now turned overnight and the flash simply because we were the great power to return to the time of the great existential struggle. this is the new face of what was once fascism, communism and because of that everything had to change that was the essence of the decade a and as i said earlier we were lucky to have a president who understand that and courageously explained that to us and took us into that

fight. finally the last half of the decade of equal fascination that is the age of barack obama. obama is interesting because she is not just a liberal liberal, as someone who doesn't care what you do as long as it is mandatory. [laughter] until thursday was a joke when jay carney tried to explain why the new health-insurance is taken away from new it is a good thing. [laughter] he actually said you can choose any health plan you want so long as it is the health plan the government is mandating which is the joke in real life so that exceeds irony but obama is

not even a liberal he gave a speech to a joint speech he bid at the elections but then explained there was no need for the male and basically said i am here to change america. and did galactic history then followed with the revolution. and before he enacted all this made him a social democrat on the european model. very unusual. what is a social democrat? the famous in the dough

after he loses the election the labor party leader churchill's leader of the opposition goes to the men's room of the house of commons standing alone in the house of commons. that is as good as it gets. [laughter] >> then he goes to the urinal 15 stalls over and says feeling bit standoffish? churchill says not at all but it seems every time you see something large you want to cut off. [laughter] i kind i'd like that one to. that might not even be true

but i don't care. as we say that is too good to check. [laughter] so it remains unchecked. but it is in the book. thank so i tried to write about obama in that vein is the essence with this kind of aggressive american liberalism and in some way the debate that we had with the democracy -- democracy democracy, a cap-n-trade, a stimulus, at the heart of the politics. that is what is the proper

size and scope and reach an province of government? what is the nature of the american end experiment the we were arguing about the relationship and the one that addresses that directly is a column called does the state make you great? that came right after abominate the famous statement if you have a business and you had success. you did not do that. somebody else made that happen. that was crystallization of left and right if i tried 2.0 obama said that was almost a platitude you don't operate alone, roads and bridges the mistakes that liberalism makes and it came out exactly in his

explanation that this society outside of the individual rather than recognizing is what we call civil society with those economist elements to have the most influence that is of pt a said gloria of america and that is the essence in the pretension of american liberty because these institutions are what stand between the citizen and the state. a totalitarian society is where they deliberately tried to start those institutions so it can be controlled and manipulated.

how the child would tell on the parents because he loved stolid and was a child of the state. liberalism does not attempt to do that deliverly its intentions our honorable and good but it does not understand by increasing the scope of the authority of this state it inevitably squeezes and compress it -- compresses those elements particularly the family look at the effect obama has of the relationship with their churches or welfare. one of the reasons i moved from left to right and i write about this in the introduction i was a liberal and believed in the intentions.

but in the law of the 1980's the empirical evidence, the real facts started to come in as a physician i am open to empirical evidence if i give a patient a drug and it cripples the my stop that but it turns out researchers with very hard science minds that not only did not help the people but would undermine them to destroy the communities and ironically the abolition of welfare in 1996 led to the quickest drop of child poverty in modern history. that is the event with the greatest effect moving left to right but the point of the book and the essays particularly about obama and the state making great they

do not understand how their administrations have these defects on some of on dash several societies to leaving the individual making before the state does not only harm them but diminishes the autonomy. for those in which to attach himself against the state. so i tried to explain how i move from left to right. so i tried but it is so lazy and the easy i use it to a lot but the ideal column that you never use the word i am the argument carries through without interjecting yourself but nevertheless people to have right to change politically. but i also believe if you are in public life the and you do change you do have an

obligation to explain how it happened. so the long answer about walter mondale being young the long answer is in the book but those that had me move from left to right not an a ride -- original path so that is the heart of the book of the politics in the biographical introduction but there is one more thing the book is about that accounts for the title and the spirit of the book. the spirit of the book. that is off the books is spirited to politics itself this is not a good time in history particularly over

the last six weeks that will not go into detail about that but i write about this in the introduction to explain why the book is constructed the way it is because i have been fascinating -- fascinated of the paradox of public life what i believe what really matters are those center alec into beautiful testimony to the flourishing of the human spirit and i've read about this from the beginning of the introduction what matters and what i really believe are important of human development it in our lives between the good in the great the innocents the elegance of nature the wonders of space the perfectly field outfield assist between historical

responsibility architecture, a fashion and fighter uses of the f word. [laughter] which is the call that it wanted to start the book with but for some odd reason my publisher thought it would be a bad idea. i love this column begins like this i am sure there is a special place in heaven for those who have never used the f word. i will never get near the place. [laughter] nor will dick cheney. [laughter] as i say, he liked it to. what matters of the conundrums is a doctor ever permitted to kill a patient willing to die? why do is to use the phrase women and children in the age of feminism? i have a column on that and

i think the only person in the country disturbed by the continued use and i am not even a feminist. how many lives is one allowed to tell to an advance himself? something else i right about that i talk about president bush did to elevate the national debate the way it has never been done in american history for which history will be very grateful as well. what matters that the great man asked why so many planets out there might have for never heard a word from the single ones? a kiss me positive pleasure and wonder.

with the collection of just those essays, indeed about everything but politics beautiful, mysterious, a profound your god. the word in the title is there is more to life and politics. but i couldn't. not for a simple reason for go for this same reason i love psychiatry for journalism. while of poetry and architecture in force, then it number theory purity and elegance and sometimes transcendence. in the event they missed all about to the sovereignty of politics. that crooked element dominates everything because in the end everything lives

or dies with the most efflorescent does civilization of. everything stands to be swept away germany 1933. during five years of the cultural revolution when they set out to get the politics wrong that destroyed 5,000 years one of the most glorious civilization on earth. it is not even ancient history it is north korea today to place of a mad stalinism producing enslaved people and the utter desolation of the entire land in the end everything depends on getting the politics right in daley politics in some way is

quite appalling as climbing the greasy pole not exactly a romantic idea. politics has none of the elements of poetry and science but think of where they get the politics wrong even science says corrupted remember the late 1940's stalin decided that genetics remains the transition of characteristics that was proven 100 years earlier to be not true but stalin insisted on a new soviet genetics and do it and to not of the ultimate expression of the power of

the corrupted and really everything that is hard and beautiful. that is why so many who want to wash their hands of today and understandably so is sovereign and must be. why i like medicine to enter a life of politics because in the end everything depends on getting the politics right. that is why because of what matters most in the end it is politics. and the book about hyper proliferation in the age we are about to enter into that i will not see that my age

-- the age my son will live in it begins with the story of the great physicist. he is the man with the challenger disaster he could explain everything actually one of the young the scientists at lowe's alamos in would amuse himself in the spare hours by breaking into the safe of the other side and leaving little notes behind the. [laughter] you have got to love the guy he actually spent one year later on at cornell took a year off to learn the song goes in brazil. i tell you this not just to a new issue but give you the a.d. at this is a very energetic and rivlin guide not given to melancholy but yet appointed his parker free where he writes when he came back from lowe's alamos after he had witnessed

trinity and the new era of the atomic age he saw people working on a bridge and he thought to himself why are they doing that? don't they understand? they doing that? don't they understand? this is useless. and again he did not dwell on that but that brought home to me the fact everything will hinge in the future on how we deal with the problem among all the great problems of overtime. our species has been around 200,000 years we require knowledge ended with in 17 years the cuban missile crisis we come within a hairsbreadth of self destruction. this does not bode well but tells you how vitally important it is as we enter the age of piper proliferation not just the

one on one game of deterrence but three-dimensional chess to have to develop the politics and diplomacy and all those that have to understand this is the overriding question. the beautiful stuff that i like to right to powell is the first half and then the politics in the end to preserve and protect the beautiful society. and lust i leave you depressed and melancholic. [laughter] let me and by saying two things. two ways to cure you. number one. i am still license. [laughter] i am quite prepared to right for anybody who needs a prescription for anti-depressant. [laughter]

for those of you less inclined, i will leave you with the notion i have always had about the nature of american politics, how it seems as if we always end up finding the right way. little colony on the outskirts of western civilization and produce the greatest generation of political geniuses have ever assembled on earth to produce a constitution giving us a republic that has endured longer than any in the history of mankind. we need day abraham lincoln in the 20th during the depression the second world war we find fdr and in the second half we find reagan. it is not to say we could always find it but there is something about the american spirit, the bedrock decency

and to help us find our way. we do. fat is not enough i will leave you with a comment from a famous pundit. and generally known for invading other countries successfully. [laughter] who once actually said god looks after children children, fools, drunkards children, fools, drunkards, and the united states of america. [laughter] he said that in 1890 and i hope he still does. thank you very much. [applause]

>> any questions? we have microphones i untold? raise your hand. >> who is your very best friend? >> before i give you the answer i will tell you what harry truman once said if you want to a friend did washington end get a job. [laughter] we have improved on that. we have to to dogs in case one turns on us. [laughter] so the correct answer is maggie and really but i am

not sure which ones really is can you explain of those razr? >> the principle of science that when faced with a choice of explanation for any natural phenomenon you space choose this simplest on the assumption thatse this st on the assumption that nature is very concise and parsimonious. if you have the elaborate explanation or a very clean one like door when you would accept the more price -- precise and concise that it is not always true but a rule of thumb that always prevails.

einstein was able to reduce everything. the major achievement of the job of physics to the early 1900's was e e=mc2. of use of that solution, it was 200 pages of cairo defects but only 10 people on earth can understand. they say it is the right solution. fats is a perfect that is what he had accepted parsimonious and concise and said to the opposition of quantum mechanics.

>> thank you. >> sorry i dropped to that in there without explanation now purchase the book. [laughter] and the people from crown books are sitting right there and how many references i make per hour. >> dr. you mentioned earlier how the obama administration has continued or double down on many of the national security policies of the bush to administration and how president obama has not shied away from the aggressive prosecution. but later the former existence of the democratic party being given that would reduce the president obama as a reincarnation of the national security democrats

or if not what is the distinction? >> god no. other reason is he is totally reluctant to engage in all of this is a deeply philosophically opposed and he keeps telling us that. he does all the things that president bush instituted in the reason is that he knows he hasted u.s. commander in chief but then he gives a speech to months ago this war on terror house to end it has gone on and he elaborates how is the democracy and he is running the largest spying operation in our history and talks about our privacy? the commander in

chief, every time he opens his mouth he says i don't really blood to do it. i will declare the pork and unilaterally he thought he did that in iraq and pulled out to undermine successes. there is a problem with sap. there is a guy on the other side and and tell him besides the war is over he gives speeches that morally disarm your own people that how much is harming the core. how would you expect to get popular support? at that point he says paul out of afghanistan. if you don't give a speech in six years then you don't

get popular support. his rhetoric and undermines and leads to philosophical incoherence. he has not even stopped after he has space been for half a decade. isn't that? you denounce it every day it was terrible. i don't agree at tel. if anything the most anti-national security as a democrat as somebody who influences his side of the ideal. the reason there is so much of unrest in the country you need a president to explain why he is doing it than the virtues of the policy rather than undermining as he carries the amount in the

way that he tries to cover up i was shocked to discover the nsc staff after he gave his speech talking about how the national security was undermining us. that is the problem and he will leave the party behind him that is the philosophical element of his foreign policy. >> you talk about the importance of politics and his any candidate you see that could wind 2016 to enact a strong reform agenda? >> yesterday think we will have a good shot and a strong field as opposed to 2012 which if i could say as

an aside romney was an honorable man i voted for him i think he would have been a good president and fortunately he had a slight handicap speaking conservatism as a second language when he was asked whether you doing in the early '90s? he said i was a businessman that is an honorable profession but i came to politics late and it shows because one debate he tries to show how reliable he would be he said in massachusetts i had a severely conservative administration. severe is the word you use in association with head wound. [laughter] tropical storm never associated in government. but now he was the best of

the field it was a weak field we have excellent candidates now and governors who will be helped that there outside of washington and washington is now in their favor and chris christie of new jersey and scott walker of wisconsin who is very strong buy yet in the congress you have people who i think can carry their weight and marco rubio and other sites think we will have a very strong fear brigades that was a catastrophe in the word 9-9-9 repeated 90,000 times did not help us and we will have the wreckage of the obama administration as the backdrop particularly with obamacare which is unraveling as we speak so i

don't think it will be the cakewalk that we imagine that hillary will have in those who have asked in the past thought about my own presidential intentions. [laughter] faq but i am not fishing for compliments scientists headed for a good line that i want to declare right here if nominated i will not run but if elected i will serve. [laughter] [applause] i am just terminally lazy and i don't want to go to the iowa state for -- i was a fair. no disrespect to iowa. [laughter] >> i thought you were born in canada you could.

>> that is a malicious lie spread by the vast left-wing constituency. i am not now or have i ever been a member of the canadian citizenry. [laughter] >> there are international critics who say our drone program is terrorism in itself with a grand scale a lot of innocent people were killed and president obama admits he makes the final call upon who lives and who dies. what do you think of the paradox lee claimed to fight terrorism but we create more animosity in our communities? >> with all due respect it is the opposite of terror.

terrorism is delivered attack what we do with the drone strikes lead not to hurt innocent civilians it is a mirror image and we need it as we try to defend ourselves. from a new kind of barbarism i will give you one example. in the last few weeks we hear about the assassination in pakistan of the taliban to shooting the vaccine to prevent polio to children.

there is no greater depravity than that kind of activity. the killing of people who are risking their lives but yet this is part of the ideology of the barbarians retracing. then we fight as we can with all tools available. if we have a way to use a drone to attack a specific individual and we always try to minimize under any criteria would fit well and has to be continued. [applause] >> thank you for being here as well. could you comment on the era of spurring?

and how long do you think that will bv impact it will have as well as us off than i heard obamacare and romney care compared. he is actually a close friend of the family and from what i understand romney care is not a federalized program it was an option what the people wanted the not federalized is that explained? >> i will take them one at a time. the era of spring, i think what is happening to the arab world is coming to the end of an era. it started off with decolonization for about half a century and when they emerged they fell quickly from the dynastic a series of countries ryan by monarchs and slipped away in the early 1958 s by the arab

nationalism and socialism a mixture of socialism and militarism with a heavy bureaucracy. it was said that where they learn to all these things all of these leaders would decolonize they all became a socialist. "things that matter" us goals of economics have done more to homage -- damage than any imperial power in history. this is through 50 years of the dictatorships and saddam hussein's. that is swept away even though it has come back to some extent in egypt. i am not sure if the arab political culture will get directly to democracy. it looks as if they have swung to the muslim

brotherhood to the military dictatorship van day could have a phase lasting a decade or so but in the end they will be amenable to the democratic outcomes with the pacific rim countries and latin america that has developed. i don't believe there is arab exceptional as some but it will take a long time because the dictators manage to destroy so much of civil society that preserve the liberty of the individual. as i said to the president earlier, it is a pity we had to leave iraq at a time, and the civil war was suppressed because it really did have a chance in the near term to

get to that maybe not the jeffersonian democracy but some approximation that could have been an example to the rest of the arab world. so it will be a long time and a dangerous one. we cannot afford the random zigzag on policy that has been carried out by this administration in the middle east. with on the care there are differences with obamacare but it was not wise for the of republican party to choose as a standard bearer and -- with the election the size and scope and reach of government the liberal overreach that had a crushing defeat a friend of mine said that was not an

election it was a restraining order. [laughter] so the lesson of that was if we make that case as we try to do in the book for a limited government we will win every time but the centerpiece was obamacare but it is hard when you choose your nominee something that is similar and paralleled in tribute to romney he was proud of that achievement as a way to get ahead politically. . .