and i think too often when conservatives in america reach for intellectual history or for philosophy we reached the most radical version of the story of the american founders, a jeffersonian tale of what america is, and we then squeeze lincoln into the story and ourselves into that story and it aims other being too radical a story about ourselves. what burke offers is a different way to understand the liberal society including our liberal society. and achievement, not a break from the past but an achievement of western civilization. i think american greatest achievement of western civilization and was not achieved by throwing away what came before but by making the most of the best of it. and, therefore, as a society that improves and grows by gradual refinement of itself, becoming more like its best self. that is not a radical process and it's not a process that requires revolution. it's a process that requires

conservatism. i think one of the lessons we could take from burke is that in part the process involves an engagement with governing, with policy. burke was reform. he thought you had to fix public problems before they get so big that they invite radical solutions. so he was interested in the details, the reflection of the revolution in france is full of statistics. you don't expect them but that's a we thought. that's how they work. i think consumers today should do more of that. i'd -- that's what i get my day job and this is why. i think it's important for conservatives to be in job -- to be involved in governing. i think it's also important for consumers to approach our society from a disposition of gratitude and care rather than to begin from a place of anger at what's being lost. i'm angry about what's being lost. i think the left today is destructive for the american ideal and has too much power and

is destroying the african ideal. i really do. but i think the solution of that, the way to persuade. >> and people to a different path is to offer that different path in a concrete way. and to make a case for it is that is friendly to the present and future, that does not seem like because it is not like a kind of simple nostalgia. the ideal that i have is not in the past. it's in a better future for america that looks more like the best of what we have and have had in this country. so yeah, i think conservatism talent to do with its own improvement and maybe in a way the book is suggested as a corrective to that. at the very least it's just my own to so it's the only thing i could you. >> host: daniel has spoke out about british exceptionalism and have basically i think de tocqueville says the american is the british man left alone, or something like that. and one of the things that comes through of us try to get at

earlier is, that so much of what accounts for american principles, an american way, individual rights, is really a cultural product of the english, right? and so the question i have, fairly unfair to bring this up with two minutes left, but if that's true, they say that our liberties are more contextual and it cultural product than are necessary from abstract rights on a piece of parchment, what does that say about immigration? where would burke come down on immigration? and can you have the protection of these rights and the culture product if you lost sort of cultural cohesion of consensus that once took them for granted? >> guest: i think america, what it means america is an actual living thing and not just a set of ideas on paper, is one

what you think about that is that it means we need of cultural continuity and so it's hard to come into the society. but i think actually what it can mean is america is something that can transmit itself to a future generation. i was born initial. i came in as a child, and i'm an ultra- patriotic american because the idea of this country and around of this country which are won, appeals to me in a powerful way. that's been the case for generations and generations of immigrants to america. i think america is able to be opened to immigrants because it isn't simply britain. and our way of life it doesn't require that your family can trace itself continuously to william the conqueror. but that's not because our way of life is defined by abstract vegetables but it's because our way of life is defined by the actual living existence of an incredibly free and open society that allows people to experiment with different ideas, that allows itself to be influenced and changed and improved,

provided that these ideas and these changes are grounded in an american idea of free society. i think what conservatives want to conserve is that hole, that really. not just the abstract principle, not just what we've made of them in the present but the combination that makes possible the freest society in history of the world and the most open. and so i think we can still integrate immigrants if only we tried to get the problem is we don't really try to. we don't try to teach ourselves and so to teach outsiders about what american life is all about. i think we have a terrible failure of assimilation in our country. if we can address that, and we don't have to be any less of a nation of immigrants than we've ever been but i don't know if that's what burke would've thought but that's what i think. >> host: thanks for doing this but i hope everyone goes out and gets trained in.

>> guest: thanks much. -- and gets "the great debate." [inaudible conversations] >> we will continue the conversation on books tonight on c-span2's in depth it will talk to author and professor bonnie morris. she's the author of "women's history for beginners." that starts at 8 p.m. eastern. >> the beauty of america is that in this country we have the ability to write the script of her own life. we are in a sense in the driving seat of her own future. and our biggest decisions in life are made by us. america creates the sense of possibility and out of that you can become an activist, a tenured organizer. innocents what are you doing? you are living off the great

explosion of wealth that you didn't even create. spent so many strongmen set up comments hard to know where to begin. nobody said america is the most terrible place. but there are a couple of assertions a ship to take on things that are astonishing but one is that america's great invention was wealth creation. not based on stuff at all. that doesn't mean 90% of the residents who live here were murdered, and that was a part of it, you. >> what's so great about america, friday night at eight eastern on c-span. >> author and mit professor noam chomsky examines the political ideology of anarchism and its history to its current use. from mit in cambridge, massachusetts, this is an hour and 10 minutes.

>> it's hardly a sacred, the terms of political discourse are not exactly models of precisiont and considering the way terms eg are used, it's next to impossible to try to give ae meaningful answer to such questions as what is socialism or what is capitalism or what our markets, free markets. and many others in common uses. that's even more true of the term anarchism for reasons that were pointed out. it's not only subject of their use would also quite extreme abuse. sometimes by bitter enemies, sometimes by unfortunately by

people who hold its manner hi. so much so, so much as the variation of abuse that it resists any simple atio characterization. in fact, the only way i can see to address the question that his post this evening, what is anarchism, is to try to identifo some leading ideas that animate at least major currents of theaa rich and complex and often contradictory traditions of anarchists thought and action. t and virtually anarchist action. i think the sensible approach can start with remarks by the perceptive important anarchist intellectual and also activist rudolf rucker. he saw anarchism not as a fixed

and closed social system with a fixed answer to all the multifarious questions and problems of human life but rather as a definite trend in the historic development of mankind, which strives for the free unhindered unfolding of all the individual and social forces in life. it's from the 1930s. these concepts are not really original. big derive from the enlightenment and the early romantic period and rather similar words. wilhelm then humbled one of the founders of classical liberalism among many other achievements described the leading principle of his thought as the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity. that is a phrase that jon stewart melt is the epigraph to

his liberty. it follows from that than institutions that constrain such human development are illegitimate unless of course they can somehow justify themselves. you find a similar conception widely in enlightenment thought so for example and adam smith, everyone has read the opening paragraphs of wealth of nations where he extols the wonders of division of labor that not many people have gotten farther inside to read his bitter condemnation of division of labor and his insistence that in any civilized society the government will have to intervene to prevent it because it will destroy personal integrity and essential human rights. it will turn people he said into creatures as stupid and ignorant as a human can be. it's not too easy to find that passage, whatever the reason may

be. if you look in the scholarly edition the university of chicago bicentennial, it's not even in the index but it's one of the most important passages in the book. look at in these terms anarchism as a tendency in human development that seeks to identify structures of hierarchy and others that constrain human development. and then it seeks to subject them to very reasonable challenge. justify yourself. demonstrate that you are legitimate and maybe in some special circumstances or conceivably in principle, and if you can't meet that challenge which is the usual case, the structure should be dismantled and as nathan rightly as not just dismantled but to

reconstruct it from below. the ideals that found expression during the enlightenment and the romantic era, they floundered on the shoals of rising industrial capitalism which is completely antithetical to them but rucker argues quite plausibly that they remain alive in libertarian socialist traditions that these range pretty wisely -- widely. they range from aunty bolshevik marxism, people like carl koresh paul maddock and others including the anarchists syndicalism that reaches peak of achievement in the revolutionary period and in spain in 1936 it's well to remember that despite substantial achievements and successes it was crushed by the combined force of fascism,

communism and western democracy. they have differences but they agreed that this had to be crushed the effort of free people to control their own lives. that had to be crushed before they turned to their petty differences which we call the spanish civil war. the same tendencies reached further to worker controlled enterprises. they are springing up in large parts of the old rust belt of the united states and northern mexico. they have reached the greatest development in the vast country of spain, monitor gone partly a reflection of the achievements of the long complex rich spanish tradition and partly it comes up with christian anarchist sources. there is also included in this

general tendency but quite substantial and corporative movements that exist in many parts of the world. i think it also encompasses at least a good part of the feminist and human rights activism. impart all of this sounds like tourism so why should anyone defend illegitimate structures? no reason of course. i think it is correct. it really is a truism, anarchism is what we call a truism that truisms have -- anarchism has merits. this particular truism belongs to an interesting category of principles, principles that are not only universal but doubly universal. they are universal in that they are almost universally accept it and universal in that they are

almost universally rejected and practice. this is one of many of these. for example the general principle that we should apply to ourselves the same standards we do to others if not harsher ones, few would object that few would practice it or a more specific policy proposal like democracy promotion or the humanitarian intervention professors generally, rejected and practice almost universally. all doubly universal in this truism is the same. the truism that we should challenge and coercive institutions of all kinds, demand that they justify themselves, dismantle in reconstruction if they do not. easy to say but not so easy to act done in practice.

while proceeding with similar thoughts rocker iggy and trade anarchism seems to free labor from economic exploitation and to free society from ecclesiastical or political guardianship. and by doing that opening the way to an alliance of free groups of men and women they start corporative labor and a planned administration at of things in the interest of the community. now he was in anarchist activist as well as a political thinker and he goes on to call on the workers and organizations and the popular organizations to create and i'm quoting not only the ideas but also the fact that the feature itself within current society. it's an injunction that goes back to conan. one traditional anarchist slogan

is no god, no master. it's a phrase that -- took as his value old title of anarchist classics. i think it's fair to understand the phrase no god in the terms that i just quoted from rocker. positions as the ecclesiastical guardianship. individual beliefs are a different matter. it's no matter of concern to a person concerned with free development of thought and action and that leaves the door open to the lively and impressive tradition of religious anarchism for example. but the phrase no master is different. that refers not to individual belief but to a social relation, a relation of subordination and dominance, a relation that

anarchism if taken seriously seeks to dismantle and rebuild from below unless i can somehow meet the harsh burden of establishing its legitimacy. by now we have departed from truism. in fact to ample controversy. in particular right at this point the rather peculiar american brand of what is called libertarianism departs very sharply from the libertarian provision. it accepts and indeed strongly advocates the subordination of working people to the masters of the economy and furthermore the subjection of everyone to the restrictive discipline and destructive features of markets. these are topics worth pursuing and i will pick them up later if you would like but i will put them aside here. i am also recommending to you nathan's comment, his suggestion

about bringing together in some way the energies of the young libertarian left and right. as indeed it has sometimes done. for example it's done in the quite important work of valuable theoretical and practical work of economists david ellerman. anarchism of courses famously of posts to the state while at the same time advocating planned administration of things in the interest of the community rockers phrase again and beyond that broader self-governing communities and workplaces. in the real world of today the same dedicated anarchists who were opposed to the state often support state power to protect people and society and the earth

itself from the ravages of concentrated private capital so it takes a venerable anarchist general like freedom. it goes back to 1886 formed journalist anarchism by supporters of her pod can. if you open the pages you will find much of it is devoted to defending the rights of people, the environment, society often by state power. like regulation of the environments or safety and health regulations in the workplace. there is no contradiction here is sometimes his thought. people live and suffer and endure in this world and not some world that we imagine and

all the means available should he used to safeguard and benefit them even if the long-term goal is to displace these devices and construct preferable alternatives. in discussing this i have sometimes used an image that comes from the brazilian workers movement that is discussed in interesting work by avery lewis. they speak of the image of widening the floors of the cage. the cages existing course of institutions that can be widened by committed popular struggle. it happened effectively over many years and if you could extend the image beyond think of the cage of coercive state institutions is the kind of protection from the savage beasts that are roaming outside and with a predatory state supported capitalist

institutions that are dedicated to the principle of private gain, power, domination that was the interest of the community and may be revered in rhetoric but practice and even in anglo-american law. while it's also worth remembering that anarchists condemned really existing states, not visions of unrealized democratic dreams such as government of, by and for the people. they bitterly opposed the rule of what looks and had called the bureaucracy which he predicted 50 years in advance would be among the most savage of human creations and they also opposed the parliamentary systems that are instruments of class rule. the contemporary united states for example which is not a

democracy. it's a plutocracplutocrac y and very easy to demonstrate. the majority of the population has no influence over policy. as you move up in commonwealth's fail you get more influence in the very top people get what they want well established by academic science as a measure to everyone who looks at the way work. it surely democratic system would be quite different. it would have the character of an alliance of free groups of men and women based on cooperative labor and a planned administration of things in the interest of the community. in fact that's not too remote from one version of the mainstream democratic ideal. that's one version and i stress that and will return to others.

take for example the leading american social loss of her of the 20th century john dewey. his major concerns for democracy and education. but no one took julie to be an anarchist. but pay attention to his ideas. in his conception of democracy illegitimate structures of coercion must be dismantled and that includes makem domination by business for private profit through private control of ranking, land, industry reinforced by press agents and other publicity and propaganda. he recognized still quoting, that power today resides in the control of the means of production, exchange publicity transportation and communication whoever owns them rules the life of the country even if democratic forms remain and

until these institutions are in the hands of the public politics will remain the shadow cast by big business on society, very much what we see around us in fact. but it's important that duly went eons calling for some form of public control. it could take many forms. he went beyond in a free and democratic society he wrote workers should read the masters of their own industrial fate not tools rendered via employers, not directed by state authorities. now that position goes right back to the leading ideas of classical liberalism articulated by smith and others and extended in the anarchist tradition. turning to education, and duly held that it is illiberal and immoral to train children to

work not freely and intelligently but for the sake of the worker earned and to achieve test scores for example. in which case their activity is not free because it's not freely participated in and it's quickly forgotten as all of us know from our experience. so he proceeded to conclude that industry must be changed from a feudalistic to a democratic social order and educational practice should be designed to encourage creativity, exploration, independence, cooperative work, exactly the opposite of what is happening today. while these ideas lead to a vision of society based on workers control of productive institutions linked to community control within the framework of free association and federal organization.

in the general style of thought that includes of course along with many anarchists others to max agd h. kohl's, the left anti-vulture that marxism, the current developments such as for example the civitas rate economics of policies of michael albert robert hamill and others along with important work in theory and practice by the late seymour mehlman, his associates and many others and notably a very recent contribution on worker owned enterprise and cooperatives, not just talk but actual taking place. going back to dewey, he was as american as apple pie to borrow the old clicé and, in fact, all these ideas and developments are very deeply

rooted in the american tradition. and in american history. a fact which is kind of suppressed but is very obvious when you look into it. and when you pursue these questions you enter into an important terrain of inspiring, often bitter struggle, ever since the dawn of the industrial revolution which was right around here. mid-19th century. the first serious scholarly works, study of the industrial worker in those years was 90 years ago, still very much worth reading. he reviews the hideous working conditions that were imposed on formerly independent craftsman and immigrants and farmers, as well as the so-called factory girls, women brought from the

farms to work in the textile mills around boston. he mentions that can review the, but he focuses attention on something else, what he calls a degradation suffered by the industrial worker, the loss of status and independence which could not be canceled even where there occasionally was some material improvement, and he focuses on the radical capitalist social revolution in which sovereignty and economic affairs passed from the kennedy as a whole into the keeping of a special class of masters often remote from production, a group alien to the producers here. .. to the producers and where it shows pretty convincingly that for every protest against machine industry and predation there can be 100 protests against the new power of capitalist production and its

discipline. in other words workers were struggling and striking not just for bread but for roses in the traditional slogan of the workers communities and organizations. they were struggling for dignity and independence and for their rights as free men and women. their journals are very interesting. there's a rich lively labor press for -- written by working people artisans from boston and factory girls from the farms and in these journals they condemned what they called the blasting influence of monarchical influences on democratic soil which will not be overcome until they who work in the mills will own them, the slogan of the massive knights of labor and sovereignty will return to free and independent reducers. then they will no longer be the humble subjects of a foreign debts but the absentee owner,

slaves in the strictest sense of the word who toil for their masters. rather they will regain their status as free american citizens the capitalist revolution instituted crucial change from price to wage. it's very important. when a producer sold this product for a price he retained his curse but when he came to sell his labor he sold himself read he quoted from the press. that's a big difference. he lost his dignity as a person as he became a slave, a wage slave to use the common term of the period. 160 years ago a group of skilled workers repeated the common view that a daily wage was equivalent to slavery and they weren't warned perceptively that a day might come when wage slaves will

so forget what is due to manhood as the glory in a system forced on them by their necessity and in opposition to their feelings of independence and self-respecy hoped would be far in the distance. these were very popular notions in the mid-19th century. in fact so popular that they were a slogan of the republican party. you can read them in editorials in the new york times. they may come back, let's hope. labor activists at the time warned bitterly often of what they called the new spirit of the age, and gained gain wealth forgetting all that self. that was 150 years ago and in sharp reaction to this demeaning spirit there were quite enormous

and active rising movements of working people and radical farmers. radical farmers began in texas and spread to the midwest and much of the country. of course it was an agricultural country then but these were the most significant democratic popular movements in american history. they were dedicated to solidarity, mutual aid. they were crushed by force. they have a very violent labor history compared to other countries but it's a battle that's not over, far from over. despite set backs often violent repression. there are apologists, familiar apologists from the radical revolution of wage slavery and they argue that a worker should indeed glory in a system of free contracts voluntarily

undertaken. there was an answer to that 200 years ago by shelley in his great poem mask of anarchy. this was written right after the massacre in england manchester the calvary that brutally attacked a peaceful gathering of tens of thousands of people, the first major example of the huge nonviolent protests and the reaction of the state authorities to it. they were calling for parliamentary reform. shelley wrote that we know what slavery is. it is to work and have such pay is just keeps life from day-to-day. sna self for its entire used to dwell. it is to be slaved and sold them to hold no strong control over your own wills but y'all that others make of you. that is slavery and that is what working people and independent

farmers were struggling against. the artisans and factory girls who struggle for dignity and independence and freedom might very well have known shelley's words. observers at the time noted that they were highly literate. they had good libraries than they were appointed with the standard works of english literature. this was before mechanism and wage slavery, the wage system and it the days and curtailed the days of independence, high culture and security. before that he points at a workshop might've been called the lyceum turning out the higher boys to read with the mall they worked. these were social businesses with many opportunities for reading and discussion and

mutual improvement. along with the factory girls and the journeyman and the artisans that bitterly condemned the attack on their culture. the same as chairman and when incidentally where conditions were much harsher. there's actually a great book about this by jonathan rhodes called the intellectual life of the british working class. it's a monumental study of reading habits of the working class in kinsey in england and he contrasts what he calls the passionate pursuit of knowledge by proletarian -- with the pervasive philistinism of the british aristocracy. actually i'm old enough to remember the residents that remained among working people right here in new york in the 1930s who were deeply immersed in the high culture of the day. it's another battle that may

have receded but i don't think it's lost. i mentioned that duly and american workers and farmers held one version of democracy. it was very strong libertarian elements of the dominant version has been radically different. it's most instructive expression is that the regressive end of the mainstream spectrum so that is among people who are good woodrow wilson fdr kind of liberals. there are a few representative quotes from the icons of the liberal intellectual establishment on democratic theory. the public are ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. they will have to be put in their place. decisions must be in the hands of an intelligent minority of responsible men, namely us. we have to be protected from the trampling and roar of the bewildered herd out there.

the herd does have a function in democratic society. they are supposed to lend their waves every few years to a choice among the responsible men but apart from that, their function is to be spectators, not participants in action. all of this is for their own good. we should not succumb to democratic dogmatism's about them being the best judges of their own interests. they are not. they are like children. we have to take care of them. we are the best judges of their own interests of their attitudes and opinions have to be controlled for their own benefit we have to regiment their minds the way in army regiments soldiers and we had to discipline the institutions responsible for what they called the indoctrination of the young, schools, universities and churches. if we can do this we can get back to the good old days.

we get out of to the good old days when truman have been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of wall street employers and bankers through democracy. these are quotes from icons of liberal establishment. walter lippman edward bernays harrell blass well founder of modern political science, samuel huntington trilateral commission and staff the carter administration. the conflict between these conceptions of democracy goes far back. it goes back to the earliest modern democratic revolution in 17th century england. at that time as you know there was a war raging between supporters of the king and supporters of parliaments. that's a civil war that we read about. but there was more.

the gentry, the men who call themselves of best quality, they were appalled by the dash you didn't want to be ruled by either king or parliaments and mike the spanish workers in 1936 they wanted to be ruled. they had their own pamphlet literature and they said they wanted to be ruled like a country that no one wants. it will never be a good world while knights and gentlemen make make -- and do not know the people's swords. that 17th century england. the central nature of this conflict which as far from ended was captured nicely by thomas jefferson in his later years when he had serious concerns about both the quality and the fate of the democratic

experiment. he made a distinction between what he called aristocrats and democrats. the aristocrats and i'm quoting him, are those who fear and distrust the people and wish to draw all powers into the hands of the higher classes and the democrats in contrast identify with the people have confidence on them, cherish and consider them as the honest and safe although not the most wise depository of the public interest. the modern progressive intellectuals, the wilson, roosevelt, kennedy intellectual left are those who seek to put the public in their place and are free from democratic dogmatism's about the capacity of the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders to enter the political arena. there -- they are jefferson aristocrats. these basic views are very

widely held. there are some disputes mainly who should play the guiding role. should it be what the liberal intellectuals called a the technocratic and policy oriented intellectuals, the ones we celebrate as intellectuals who run the progressive knowledge society or should it be bankers and corporate executives and other versions. should it be the central committee or the guardian council of clerics? all have pretty similar ideas and they are all examples of the ecclesiastical and political guardianship that the genuine libertarian tradition seeks to dismantle and reconstruct from below. while also changing industry from feudalistic to a democratic social order, one that is based on workers control, community

control, respects the dignity of the producer as a genuine person not a tool in the hands of others in accordance with the libertarian tradition that has deep roots and like marx's old mole is always burrowing quite close to the surface and ready to spring forth. thanks. [applause] [applause] >> for the discussion i would like to invite anybody who has a question to line up behind the microphones on either side and please try to keep it concise and as you do that i would like to start if you don't mind. i wonder if you could say something about the images that represent some of your first encounters with anarchism. i think for people who have

gotten excited about these ideas to the occupy movement it was important to see them practice somehow. i wonder what those images have been for you? >> i grew up in the 1930s as a kid in a deep depression and plenty of suffering. there were images that kind of stick in my mind of people. my parents were teachers so we had some money. we weren't rich but we got along and in fact a whole family of unemployed working-class kind of converged around our house, at least something. there were images of people coming to the door and trying to sell rags to try to get a piece of bread to survive. i remember riding with my mother on the trolley cars and watchine

plants in philadelphia and watching women on strike being literally beaten by security forces and my own family, extended family was mostly unemployed working-class nsi mentioned very high culture. as the new deal began to have an impact they were able to enjoy the string quartet. my unemployed seamstress and swear members of the ladies garment workers union and would get a couple of weeks in the countryside of solidarity camp. that was life and a lot of that was communist party. we were not allowed to say anything nice about the communist party as a rule and there were a lot of things wrong and i mentioned some of them but there were things that were right about it. one was that it overcame the amnesia that nathan talked

about. it was always there. people remembered. somebody remembered how to turn the mimeograph machine or organize a demonstration and he went from a civil rights demonstration to a labor organizing to something else. they had crazy international ideas but it was kind of in the back of their minds. it wasn't what was really going on. the destruction of the communist party was quite important. he killed off the radical continuing elements that kept a lot of the left traditions going you know the reasons. it was the cold war framework. as far as the anarchists were concerned the place i learned about that was by reading. when i was a kid i would go to visit my relatives and as soon as i got old enough to get on the train at 11 or 12 years old i would take the train to new york and stay with my relatives

but spent most of my time, for those of you who know new york, union square is to be the place where the anarchists offices were. lots of pamphlets and lots of interesting people that were quite eager to talk to a young kid so it's not hard to have discussions. down below union square on fourth avenue, not today but then there were rows of small bookstores a lot of them run by european emigrates a lot of them spanish anarchist refugees who were also quite eager to talk and had lots of pamphlets and a real original documentary material. actually when i wrote about this 20 years later i used documentary material that i had picked up as a young teenager. a lot of buzz is available now but that was a pretty inspiring

picture i felt of the spanish revolution. it was a really inspiring moment which is why i think it elicited such a vicious response from every corner of power. that's quite important to remember. communists, fascists, liberal democracies all combined on this. this was something they couldn't tolerate. then they could have a fight later about who puts up the spoils. actually there were anarchist proposals that i felt were not unreasonable. for how to win the civil war. anarchists thinkers like camile burn area that was murdered by the communists in may 1937, one of the leading anarchist thinkers. he proposed -- he pointed out

and turned out quite correctly that they would never win a conventional war. for one reason because the commitment to the war on the part of the population had seriously declined after the revolution was crushed. they have lost what they had fought for and didn't care very much who is going to pick up the spoils. he pointed out, and of course the fascists were being directly supported by hitler and mussolini and the west was not opposed to that. we forget now but fascism had a pretty good energy and the west in the late 30s. mussolini was that admirable italian general and hitler was regarded by the state department in the late 30s as a moderate who was holding off the forces of left and right so we

shouldn't be too critical of him. the united states had a console in berlin up until pearl harbor who was sending back dispatches saying you shouldn't be too hard on >> i couldn't stop it by force, but he bitterly condemned it. on the other hand, the state department couldn't notice what i was reading in the left-wig press at the -- left-wing press

at the time and was later conceded 20 years later that the united states had authorized the texaco oil company which was run by an outright nazi, open nazi, had authorized them to -- they had contracts to ship oil to the republic. they switched it to shipping oil to the fascist forces which is the one thing that hitler and mussolini couldn't provide. they couldn't find that. the left press could find it, but the state department couldn't.t well, going back to banary, what he proposed was that in spain itself the popular forces should fight a guerrilla war. that's an old spanish tradition. in fact, that's where guerrilla wars were initiated, under napoleon. fight a guerrilla war in spain itself and in morocco call for -- support the moroccan liberation forces that wereorc trying to free themselves from

french and british and spanish imperial control. that was the base of the army, moorish troops coming from northern africa. so his idea was fight a revolutionary war and support them in their effort toss overthrow imperialist control thatre he thought would erode te spanish, the fascist armies just as in spain itself the popular forces were fighting. but -- until they were crushed. well, that's, if you read the scholarship on the matter up til today, that's kind of dismissed as a sort of a romantic joke aso the whole anarchist movement is, but i don't think it was. that's where, that was myn't initial exposure. m [laughter] it. [laughter] >> hi. thank you so much for doing this. i just wanted, you touched briefly, you have this

wonderful -- and you touched on your family's engagement with high culture and i was going to ask you briefly on the contemporary state of high culture and serious art and how important you think engagements with that serious contemporary literature and music cinema whatever it is how important it is in exploring the vanguard of political thought and you know whether or not contemporary artists and contemporary audiences are rising to that challenge? >> i think it's very important and i'm not the only one who thinks so. i think people with power think so. that is why the famous mural wasn't allowed to be put in the rockefeller center and that is why if you go back to cinema, say go back 60 years in the early 50s. some of you will remember. in 1953, and it shersinger for cinema. there were two major films that came out. two films that came out on the

labor movement. one which was a huge box office success with pr advertising and so on featured marlon brando was about a corrupt union leader and how the heroic joe with his lunchbox finally overcame the corrupt union leader at the end of this element throws them into the water and everybody cheers. that was one. there was another film, a marvelous film called salted the earth earth, a low-budget film which was about a victorious strike led by a hispanic woman. it was really at rate film. if you can find it somewhere you should look at it. you can find it maybe in a small art theater in downtown new york somewhere but that wasn't the kind of film that was going to get publicity.

and that runs through consistently. i think when people in power believe something firmly it's worth paying attention to them and i think they believe firmly that it should not have revolutionary popular art in which people participate. actually that is one of the reasons i think for destroying the beauty in the new york subways. that is considered a great achievement of bloomberg. popular art all over the subways because that's just too dangerous. it's part of the drug war, the grotesque drug war and race war and murder. a large part of the came from the fact that the harlem renaissance black artists in harlem were playing jazz and smoking marijuana so that had to be destroyed. the mexicans were doing it too.

this was pretty constant so yeah i think it's really important. >> noam what is preventinpreventin g people of anything from organizing themselves into worker controlled collaboratives? you alluded to co-ops and if not much is preventing them from doing so to what do you attribute their relative lack of popularity and the related question would be what could union control pensions for example be doing if the problem is capital for example? why aren't more entities like punitively worker controlled pensions invested in the capital they have control over in supporting these kinds of worker controlled alternatives? >> first of all pensions are not in the hands of the working people. the unions are not popular democracies.

pensions are in the hands of the bureaucrats and money managers and they are not about to hand over power to popular organizations. actually that's not entirely true. there are some interesting initiatives. i don't know if they're going to get anywhere but they are interesting. the united steelworkers which is one of the more progressive unions has recently made some tentative arrangements in the vast country this huge worker owned industrial banking housing school educational cooperative. that could get somewhere and i mentioned pair away its work and is discussed in participates in the spread of worker owned enterprises in mostly northern ohio. they have kind of an interesting history. back in 1977 at the beginning of

the concerted efforts to destroy industrial production in the united states so the beginning of the neoliberal assault on the population, u.s. steel decided to close its main steel plants in youngstown ohio. it was a steel town like other towns like detroit which had actually been built by the working classes. they didn't get the profits that they built it and they wanted to keep it. u.s. steel wanted to sell it, to close it down and the union offered to buy it. they had community support. they even had some support of i think a republican governor. just let the workers by the planting keep running it or you u.s. steel did not want that and in fact this is pretty

consistent. i mentioned david who is one that is worked on a number not create very common around here too. he's from massachusetts. when the workers decide to try to take over an enterprise, an enterprise which may be perfectly profitable but not profitable enough for the multinational who runs it. maybe they don't want to keep the books. when they try to buy it, which would be a good deal for the multinationals they refuse to sell it for class reasons. they have class interests. they do not want to see the spread of popular democratic organizations for perfectly obvious reasons. this just happened, and i'll come back to youngstown in a minute but it happened a couple of years ago right here. it was a small but quite successful manufacturing plant made specialized parts for aircraf

so they were going to close it down. the union, uae in this case, tried to buy it. multi-nationals usually refuse to sell it, and there wasn't enough support, popular support, to push it true. if there had been an occupy movement at that time, i think that's something they might have pushed through. actually, on a much larger scale a couple of years ago obama virtually nationalized the auto industry. not entirely, but virtually. there were a couple of options. one option was to restructure it, use taxpayer funding, hand it back to the original owners or other people just like them, maybe a different face but, you know, bankers, ceos and is on. and then have it continue to do what it had done before, building cars. that's what they chose. there was another option, hand

it over to the work force, have them build what's needed in the country which is not more cars for traffic jams, but high-speed mass transportation. the united states is very backward in the the world in this respect. you can take a high-speed train from beijing to kazahkstan, but try to take a train from boston to new york. it's about as slow as it was 60 years ago. this is a really backward country, it needs it. the former auto industry could have been handed over to the work force and maybe give them some support but probably rest than the auto -- less than the auto industry got tad this. but that wasn't an option. suppose there had been a large scale occupy movement, you know? significant, it was significant, but broader, expanded. well, i think that could have been pushed true. takes popular consciousness. going back to youngstown, the case went to court in 1977.

the union laws, work's lost, and the steel mills were destroyed. but they didn't give up. they didn't just say, okay, we'll starve to death or go somewhere else. they began to organize small, worker-owned enterprises, and they've been spreading around the cleveland area, youngstown, good bit of northern ohio into other areas. so it is taking place. but, you know, it's happening elsewhere, too, in northern mexico there are quite successful worker-owned plants. it's not easy because, you know, the banks don't like to give them capital, and the government doesn't like them and won't support them, again, for class reasons. but if the sufficient popular support, these things can develop. and it's not easy, you know? it's hard work, and the people who organize usually suffer for it. but that's typical of almost

everything; the civil rights movement, the, you know, practically any movement that has ever gotten anywhere. the people up front usually take it on the chin, you know? it's hard. and people have to be willing to endure and for a longer-term gain, and that's not easy. but it can happen, and it does. >> hi. i'm just curious if you could address the role of surveillance technologies and ine creasingly the militarization of police as far as moving forward in radical thought today and in the future, kind of what you see that, where that is now. >> well, i think there are two things to bear in mind about that. the first thing is that the phenomenon itself shouldn't be at all surprising. the second is that the scale, at least to me, is kind of surprising. i hadn't really expected that scale. but the phenomenon is normal. and it's, again, as american as

apple pie. l you can go back a century. take, say, the philippine war early in the 19th century. 20th century. it was a vicious war. the u.s. conquered the philippines, killed a couple hundred thousand people. it was major popular nationalist movement. after the military victory, it had to be suppressed and controlled. and huge pacification campaign was initiated using the highest technology of the day for surveillance, subversion, breaking up groups, you know, building up hostilities, all kinds of things. very sophisticated. it was very quickly transferred home. it was used by woodrow wilson in the red scare, the worst repression if american history -- in american history, and developed further since. it's had a lethal effect on the

fill peeps. philippines. you know, people mourn the typhoon that killed tens of thousands of people. that doesn't happen in functioning societies. it's very striking in the caribbean that when a tropical storm goes through the caribbean in haiti, one of the major victims of imperial violation, it's vicious. right next door in cuba, three people died. you know, some buildings are knocked over. same storm. depends on the society. well, the philippines is a society that we created, have main taped -- maintained. it's the one part of southeast asia that hasn't taken part in the so-of called asian miracle, you know, the -- it's not one of the asian tigers. there's a reason for that. good reason. but these techniques you can be confident that any state or commercial enterprise, any system of power is going to use whatever technology is available

to try to control and dominate its announced major enemy, namely the population. that's what power systems are going to do. the scale of what was revealed, i think, was a little surprising. but it actually shouldn't be. and there's more to come. those of you who realize technical journals like, say, the mit technology review should know what's coming. so, for example, just in the tech review recently there's been articles on things like there and elsewhere on the hardware in computers which is now being designed -- they blame china, but, of course, it means it's being done ten times as much here -- [laughter] to put in components in the hardware that will enable the manufacturer to record every key stroke, everything that's happening on your computer. american businesses are worried

because if they have chinese computers, they'll be picking it up at the people's liberation army. but they don't point out that the american systems are doubtless much more advanced and doing the same thing. robotics is a field that's been worked on pretty hard for many years here too, and one of the goals -- quite explicit, nothing secret -- is to develop fly-sized drones, tiny robots which can, you know, get on your, on the ceiling of your living room and carry out constant surveillance. and drones tend to go from surveillance to lethal capacities very quickly. so we can expect that pretty soon. and these are things that in development. any system of power is going use them. and pretty strikingly, jihadis are going to use them. one of the things we're doing right now is creating perfect

technology for terrorist attacks. it's not a secret. take a look at drone technology. today already it's claimed that for $300 you can purchase a small drone online. now, that's improving very fast. and for terrorist activities, it's just perfect. if you want to get a picture of it, there's an article in this month's leading journal of foreign affairs in britain, the royal institute journal of international affairs, describing how we are rapidly creating the technology to permit massive terrorist attacks on ourselves. that's also typical. power systems seek short-term power and domination. they are not concerned with security.

that's contrary to academic dogma. they're interested in power, domination. the wealthy -- the welfare of their primary domestic con sitwent says which are -- constituencies which are concentrated wealth, and if there's a disaster in the long term, it's not their business. it's obvious with environmental issues, it's the same with nuclear weapons, the same right now with drone technology. so, sure, this stuff is going to go on unless we stop it. you can stop it too. it doesn't have to go on. >> you offer a critique of start-up culture and entrepreneurship? [laughter] which offers many of the characteristics, seeming characteristics of autonomy but isn't so? >> seeming characteristics. start-up culture, you know, it's okay. people like their apps and so on. [laughter] it's based very heavily on state subsidy.

it's not, it's kind of a narrow form of entrepreneurship. so take, for example, silicon valley culture. what are they using? well, they're using computers, the internet, microelectronics, so on and so forth. almost all developed in the state sector for decades before it's handed over to private power to, for commercialization and application. so, yeah, there is initiative there, and people are having fun doing maybe interesting things, but relying very heavily on the background state subsidy which takes many forms. actually, everyone at mit ought to know it. it's paid our salaries for year withs. [laughter] you know, for decades computers and the internet and, you know, the whole base of the i.t. culture were being developed right here, similar places and

so on. and finally, after decades it was handed over to bill gates and steve jobs to market and commercialize, make profit of and make little things that a you carry around with you. so it's a kind of -- it has entrepreneurial aspects, but it's a parasitic, but it's parasitic on a much more fundamental development. the really hard work, the hard research and development, the creative work is quite substantially in the state sector. incidentally, it's not just subsidy. there are many other devices of taxpayer support for private enterprise. one of the main ones is procurement. so, for example, in the early '60s ibm through the '50s had learned mostly in government laboratories and places like this, had learned to switch from

punchcards to digital computers, and they built the world's biggest computer in the early '60s. vetch computer -- stretch computer, fastest computer. but it was much too expensive for business. so the government bought it. that's the purchaser of last resort. and i think it went to loss alamos. and -- las alamos. and that goes on all the time. procurement's a major form of public subsidy to private enterprise. and there are many other ways. that's one of the reasons why private capital does not want markets. they want markets for other people but not for themselves. for themselves, they want a nanny state, powerful nanny state that will support them. what the significance of the entrepreneurial culture is, you can judge. i'm not overwhelmed by the fact that there's thousands of new apps coming -- [laughter] i think there are more important things. [laughter] yeah. >> last question.

>> oh. um, so i had a question about how you reconcile the emancipatory tradition of anarchism to the kind of abstractness of the ideology itself around authority and power and coercion. because it could be argued, for example, that the federal government intervened in the south during the civil war was coercive to the confederate states. we know that, like, it was, the civil war was a revolution of slaves against slavery, and the federal government ended up intervening much later. but that could be argued that was a form of authority. because, yeah, so how do you actually navigate that with, say, for example, the marxist kind of definition which should be between labor and capital, for example? do you see that as something that is maybe different from or offers a sort of a different perspective from anarchism? because i think that could account for the reason why, for

example, there are such things as anarchist capitalism. it could be argued, you know, several different ways that the state is intervening on my ability to pay my workers a low wage or what not. >> i'm not sure -- i didn't understand, exactly. >> the question, so my question is authority itself is a really abstract term. authority of whom -- >> i don't think there's anything abstract about authority. we all live with it all the time. i mean, that's true if you're a worker, family a -- namely a wage slave as work is understood. it's true if you're -- until very recently -- for most women it's been obvious, nothing abstract about it. women didn't, women didn't even have legal rights in the ideas until pretty recently. .. like two workers have the authority for example to take over? >> do they have the authority? yeah why not?

they built the plant and they made the products and they did the work. why should they be tools rented by some bank or somewhere else? that is the way our institutional structure happens to be as formulated but it doesn't mean it's legitimate. when you talk about authority you're asking questions about legitimacy do people have the right to run their own lives or do they have to be sort of the tools in the hands of foreign master's? will you now that is a question of legitimacy not authority. you mentioned the civil war and there is ample evidence by now that there were dairy significant slave initiatives in the civil war and there is more to say about that a lot more so take the american revolution. to a large extent that was a revolution carried out in order

to maintain slavery. if you look back at the history around 1770 in britain the legal system was he getting to undertake strong condemnations of slavery. that was the somerset case in 1772 were slave owners from united states brought their slaves with them to angle and. one of them escaped and his owner wanted him back. it's my property and it went to court and went to lord mansfield famous jurist who ruled slavery so odious that was a term he used that it can't be tolerated on english soil. it could be tolerated in the colonies but that's another story but not on english soil. the united states, the founders

of the country were almost all slaveowners and they could see the handwriting on the wall. if the colonies remained under british rule, probably these laws would apply here and they would lose their property. that was surely a significant element of the revolution and it runs right to the present. i mean right to this moment the civil war is still being fought. simply take a look at the electoral maps. save the map of the election of 2012 red states and blue states. it's almost identical to the civil war. it's a confederacy which now call themselves republicans. they shifted names and the rest which was the north. it's a large part of the motivation behind the effort to shut down the government is just revenge. we want to shut down washington and win this war finally. the united states never developed class parties like

labor parties. they didn't amount to much but elise they were something. the u.s. never have been. it alwa it also hasn't ended in the prisons and elsewhere. it's a very deeply rooted thing in society and our two extricate. >> well, i hope you all join me in thanking noam chomsky once more. [applause] >> thank you all so much for coming. there's books for sale in the back. >> millions of syrians have fled the country's civil war creating a refugee crisis. causing tensions with its neighbors jordan, turkey and iraq. this morning at the brookings

institution a discussion on syrian refugees. live coverage at 10 a.m. eastern on c-span. in venezuela thousands of recently been protesting the government in the streets of caracas. the heritage foundation will examine those protests and the venezuelan government's response. that is live at 3 p.m. eastern. >> he wanted me in that spot for two reasons. one, he thought i could handle it. and secondly, he won people, young people of both races to come into the supreme court room as they altered by the hundreds and thousands, and somebody say, who is that man up there, and somebody said he is the solicitor general of the mainstays. well, he's a negro. he wanted that image. >> thurgood marshall served as solicitor general to the johnson

administration from 1965-1967. hear more from the justice as c-span reader concludes its series of oral history interviews with former supreme court justices later today at 4:00 eastern in washington at 90.1 fm, online at c-span.org, and nationwide on xm satellite radio channel 120. >> the ringing of the bell announces the opening on thanksgiving day of the 22nd annual sale of christmas seals spent this declaration of human rights may well become the international magna carta of all men everywhere. >> the equal rights amendment when ratified will not be an instant solution to women's problems. >> i'm trying to find my way through it and try to figure out how best to be true to myself and how to fulfill my responsibilities to my husband

and my daughter, and the country. >> what they may not have imagined looking at the white house from the outside is that it's actually a very normal life upstairs. i tried to bring the low bit of michelle obama into it but at the same time respecting and valuing the traditions that is america's. >> watch our final to our program redoing our original series "first ladies: influence and image" at our website, c-span.org/firstladies. you can see a saturday at 7 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> next, fred siegel talks about his book, "the revolt against the masses: how liberalism has undermined the middle class." he is a history professor at the cooper union for the enhancement of science and arts in new york city. this is one hour.

[appla >> thankus you. if you don't mind i'm going to sit rather than go to the podium. i've had a few health problems and i would just as soon not test myself. thank you for coming tonight. in thinking about the problem of liberalism, i have to start off with a simple problem. most people, including those people who think they havee to s studied the subject, have a very weak idea of the history of liberalism. whether it be on the left orth e right. there's an idea left or the righ. there is an idea that you started with progressivism, you move done to -- no, i'm teasing. [laughter] you started with progressivism. he proceeded to the new deal and then you went into the great society as a continuous flow.

the trouble is it's simply not true. most progressives did not become new dealers. very few republican progressives you have to remember progressivism was a bipartisan movement. very few republican progressives became new dealers and not surprisingly enough i'm on the democratic regresses the group most likely to become new dealers were social workers, lowly social workers and they saw what they wanted and what they hoped for in the new deal. part of the reason for this is their is a kusair him around world war i and has to do with personality. personality of woodrow wilson. a great deal has been written about the personality of woodrow wilson but in my opinion not enough. he had an extraordinary effect. but before i get to woodrow

wilson i just want to lay out the broad argument and then i will come back to wilson. when we think of liberalism today top and bottom coalition we associate with barack obama. this began not with progressivism and the new deal but whether the wake of the post-world war i disillusioned with american society. most americans were happy to get back to the harding years the subject of braun alice's new book but that was not true of intellectuals. and it was not true of writers of fiction. those people, let me people that i'm referring to. h.g. wells, h. l. mencken sinclair lewis and randolph bruin. my suspicion is most of the people in the room don't know

who randolph warren is. after you read a book i hope you will have a better idea because he has an enormous and i mean enormous impact on the 1960s. many of the ideas of the 1960s are his ideas. h.g. wells as you all know you think of him as the writer of great science fiction. wells was an enormous political influence on both sides of the atlantic. he met with teddy roosevelt. they talked about his fictions. he met with president taft. he met with fdr repeatedly. he was the worst to be reckoned with. sinclair lewis if you are over 50 you are ready know who he is from the novels main street and it can't happen here. which is still, are still part of the political landscape of

america. and mencken. many of you know or expect all of you know who mencken is that you probably don't know that rankin was the most influential liberal of the 1920s. you don't know this because in the 30s he was enormously hostile to fdr and he was cast into perfidy. but in the 1920s no one and i say no one was more influential among liberal thinkers. young advanced thinkers on the campus today's equivalent of the creative class god help us. no one was more influential than mencken. like communism fabianism and fascism modern liberalism was a vanguard movement born of a new class of politically

self-conscious intellectuals. let me repeat that because it may sound odd. like communism atheism and fascism was a vanguard movement born of a new class of politically self-conscious and righteous. i'm not suggesting that liberals are fascists communists or fabians. none of the love. i'm saying there are great similarities end there created by the vanguard of intellectuals. critical of mass democracy middle class capitalism liberals despise the individual assessments pursuit of profit as well as the conventional individual self-interested or suit of success. both of which thrives in the 19th century in new york. snobbery is not new to liberalism but the actual history of liberalism will be new to most readers. liberalism like his rivals including communism fascism and fabianism emerged as part of the

20th century response the newly emergent worlds mass politics and mass culture. like fascism and communism and i should add here fabianism liberalism strongly influenced by their writings of nietzsche. the first book in america written about nietzsche was written a h.l. mencken. the first book on george bernard shaw and american was written by the same man, mencken. mencken made shah famous in america before shot was famous in england. i won't go into shock today just suffice to say he plays an important role in the book. what people found appealing in nietzsche was the sense of his call for new aristocracy. old aristocracy --

aristocracy crumbled under the impact of modernization. he wanted a new aristocracy and h.g. wells' writing if you remember was full of this. remember he is calling for the new samurai. he is calling for this new elite to run their world. he never really stops and he has picked up, when you're reading al gore and i hesitate to mention his name here but when you are reading al gore on climate change you are reading h.g. wells. core solutions to climate change are well solutions creating a global governing body. the set of liberal and emotional attachments that political libido and we emphasize that phrase the political libido of liberalism coalesced in the wake of world war i and its anger and repudiation of progressivism and

woodrow wilson. the very term liberal in its modern usage was coined by writers intellectuals who define themselves by their hostility to the middle class and were listed progressives. and you hated prohibition. i suspect many of you are aware of that prohibition was not the product of right-wing cranks. prohibition was the product of repressiveism. it was a way of preserving people's paychecks. and progressivism was a movement of social uplifting. it wasn't just about dollars and cents and reducing bosses him. it was about uplifting america. the new deal breaks with all of that area and the new deal begins when roosevelt's first act is to appeal prohibition. which briefly sets roosevelt and mencken off on the right foot.

[laughter] mencken was a great drinker of german beer. the best short summary of what liberalism is came from the once canonical literary. just for my knowledge how many people today know who burn in perinton is? very few. he was once a very widely known a year and i suspect those of you raising your hand are historians. anyone who is not a historian raising your hand? one person. michael you are an historian. you cannot escape that. harrington said the following in the late 20s.

rid society of the dictatorship of the middle class and yes he used that term. he insisted and the artists and scientists will erect a civilization and become what civilization was in earlier days the thing to be respected. this alienation from american life, the sense that america was the worst of all places was essential to liberalism and its inception. in the 1950s in a brief moment when liberals reconciled with america lionel trilling noted that quote for the first time in history of modern american on flecha life american is not to be conceived of as a party the stupidest nation in the world. this novelty soon pass. [laughter] just a brief word to break up the narrative.

crowley was the founder of the new republic. sometimes you have heard this phrase i'm sure in college from some dimwitted professor. he wanted to achieve hamiltonian ends. excuse me wanted to achieve jeffersonian ends by hamiltonian means. he had no use for hamilton or jefferson. he was a francophile of the first order. his parents were part of the quasi-catholic quasi-scientist religion of comps the french thinker, and he was one of the first to be baptized in kantian faith, whatever that was. it's not entirely clear. his mother by the name of jennie june was an early feminist and his father in this unhappy marriage was a futurist. he saw kantian future and

crowley himself had always admitted he was basically a francophile. he wanted to make america more like france. depending on what's going on whether a lot of you agree or disagree with that. .. who wrote about the idea of highbrow and lowbrow. those terms that we use come from and with brooks. brooks wrote the first biography of america of h.g. wells. here's what he wrote about wells. this is 1917. without doubt, wrote brooks, wells was all through the air we

breathe. and make the conscious fact many excellence that resides in certain kinds of men and modes of living. and odiousness that resides in others. wells located in the rockefeller institute, the carnegie and russell sage foundation, the endowed universities and bureaus of research, the future church, he hoped, that would govern all of america. in other words, what he was hoping for with brooks saw in wells, hope for clarity. a semi-secular, but in some deep sense of religious group in the kantian says, religious group whose underlying values would define the country. and i'm not going to get into today but if you think about the members of lbj's cabinet, how many of them are ph.d is, how many came out of universities, there's a famous moment when

john gartner, supposedly totally begin a cabinet meeting with welcome, faculty. because that's what it was. literally, not just metaphorically. now, the book by wells, let me try with the same two people again. the book by wells had the most influence was not a time machine which is what he talked to teddy roosevelt about, or we all destined to become, was a small book called anticipation. anyone familiar with that about? not even our -- this was a fascinating book. let me read a little bit about it. the book explains wells, was designed to undermine and destroy not knock me, faith in god and respectability, all

under the guise of speculation about motorcars and electrical heating. that's exactly right. for many young american intellectuals wells' writings or passport out of provincialism. what all these people wanted was a secular present. is secular priesthood come this is boards words, to satisfy slovenly americans. born and making it in particular were german, and world war i. make it right, atlantaic calling for german victory, and he writes an article, which is never published to his every lasting luck calling for the german conquest of america. the proof exists somewhere in the making connection letters

wrote to oath people. i'll come back to it in a bit. let me turn here to 1919. we fought a war. prohibition has been imposed. during the war, there's a good deal of repression. worlds war i is egg ugly. american leftist, people like sister crystal, who are part of the pass vies groups who visit the washington were enamored at woodrow wilson, and you'll see others enamored of woodrow wilson. we'll get to that. they see him as one of them, and he sounds like one of them. he's opposed to the war, many of

the same grounds they are. he doesn't want to see european imperialism triumph. he studied socialism. he's not a socialist. he studied socialism. he sees in american progress vism and american form of socialism. but in the years of 1918 and 1920 were traumatic. in 1916, many left and embraced wilson as a form of a leader. by 1919, heavers seen as one whose rhetoric despised as mere mum ri. the 14 points, message of good luck to the republic of labor unions, the ussr, and warning to the allies their treatment of russia would be the acid test of their good will, intention, and unselfish sympathy, and mentally impressive to us explains matt

eastman. speaking for many leftists and progressives. this was the extraordinary moment, extraordinary moment when russia's war connoisseur, referring to the now famous con cement of the fellow travel. it's wilson who is the model for coining the term "fellow traveler," and using that term later, it's not true, but for a time, this appears to be the case. the metaphor based on the belief that the american president shared a critique of imperialism and hope for reform in less capitalist u.s.. this could sound like the 1980s who still thought russia was going to catch up and we'd converge, but there's no reason to did over old garbage.

liberals with those progressives would renamed themselves so to repudiate wilson. i'll repeat it. liberals, progressives who renamed themselves so as to repudiate wilson. the word "liberalism" who wrote whitman in 1919, was introduced to the american politics by a group in 1912, and wilson democrats from 1916-1918. the new liberalism was a decisive cultural break with wilson and progressivism while the progressives inspired by faith and democratic reforms as the wounds of industrial civilization and power politics. the newly self-defined liberals saw the american democratic ethos as danger to freedom at home and abroad.

sound familiar? a society at large, not just the bible belters, blaming for their sub geek gages. although writers prospers as never before, they feel oppressed as never beforement you all met people like this. not here in washington. if you come a few hours north, and you attend a dinner party, i guarantee youssef mejri bump into those people. they always refer to most americans as the herd.

this very -- my mentor, had the good sense to repudiate this. here's brooks talking about coney island. the new popular culture broadway shows, movies k baseball, he said, were all makeshifts of dispair, proof that america was a joyless land. this takes a leap to think coney island and baseball represents joylessness. maybe if you spend time with alex rodriguez, but that would be a long time in the future.

brooks compared the united states to a, quote, prime evil monster concentrating on the appetite of the moment, knowing nothing of its own vast body, encrusted with pair sites, half indistinguishable from the slime in which it moves. half indistinguishable from the slime of which it moves. it's not a positive picture. [laughter] these writers wrote the chronicle, and united in one crew saiding army by the revolt as they understood it, and in the exciting years, 1919 and 1920, they seize power in the literary world like russia. they seize power. that's exactly right. let's go back if we can to woodrow wilson, the seizure of

power. wilson understands an attempt to impose uniformity in the midst of war, the antigerman hostility, you know, banning sauerkraut, you know all the specifics of this. this could be avoided, and empowers people to impose just that, a frightening uniformity on the country. if there's anything good about liberalism, and i think there is. i don't want to push it too hard, there's two things. concern with conformity, although very most often liberals are the most conformist people imaginable, but in principle, concern with conformity, and liberals creating the aclu, had good moment, and even most are bad, and civil rights.

many supporters, including the american protective league, are cracking down on german institutions and cracking down on all sorts of disacceptability, and so african-americans criticizing lynchings were denounced -- excuse me -- prussian sympathizers, much as denounce ing 20 years later. now, i mentioned the love affair with prussian germany, love

affair, and the love affair was not a a nice man. he was very -- sorry, george bernard shaw liked each other. one was a meeting -- shaw was a very strange man. they understood they worked the same side of the street. they both hate the anglo-american culture, and for making this led to a p reason -- prussian shaw led towards stalin. here's talking about the aftermath of the war. i, too, like the leaders of germany, had grave doubts about democracy. it certainly dawned on me, somewhat to my surprise, that the whole body of my doctrine i preach is fundamentally

antianglo-saxoing n, as if i had a spiritual home at all, it's in the land of the ancestors. when world war i started, i was whooping for the kyeser, and kept it up so long there was not any freech speech left. unfortunatelily, he suffered a price. columns repressed and presented himself as a martyr. most of what's written about him today ignores all of this. let me jump ahead. anyone want to talk about the scopes trial later? if so, i'll stop and talk later. interested in the scopes trial? >> [inaudible] >> i'm the boss, okay. i'll pick up the trial now. most of what you read about the trial is not true. it was not written on a town, not persecuted, and the town put imup to the case as a way of

promoting the town. it seemed like a good idea. bring tourists. this was classic promotional promotionallism. ryan, william jennings brian, that's not a pompous ass or a fool. william jennings brian debated george os bourn, the president of the notch rail museum in new york, and he read. brian had failings, especially with evolution. brian was, race aside, not particular, but a decent man. when henry ford had anti-semitism, brian repudiated it. he was a methodist who went to a presbyterian service, generally open and decent man.

he created a cartoon which has lasted till the present. let me just jump way ahead now. is there any historian that you know of that you would think of as the second mencken? any historian you know of you would think of as a second mencken? very famous historian. think about the kennedy assassination. [inaudible] >> no, but not a bad, a good guess. [inaudible] >> no, no. another good guess. richard hofstetter was the second mencken. remember maintenance supporters -- yet no evidence of this at all. excuse me, bryants supporters were all -- with no support for this at all. you think you're reading maintain all over again. but as a historian.

let me stop there. i will pick up with hofstetter indicated assassination and liberalism a little later. -- and the kennedy assassination. as was the sinking of the lusitania with the death of 124 american civilians. they can never be any compromise in the future between the men of german blood and the common blood of quote good right thinking americans. we must stand against them forever and do it in which we can to them and their democracy. if you come across this in your writings, your readings on mencken, let me know because i rarely find it. in the 1920s the leading calmness cultural figure, mike gold, ma the famous fellow for jews without money come declared a mencken nations greatest

political influence. as i said he faded in the '30s because he attacked fdr head on and that wasn't going to fly. in the '30s intense acolytes, former acolytes still hated but many have become communist and he was cold again. you couldn't throw a stone in the commonest party mass meeting -- excuse because you couldn't throw a stone in a commerce mass meeting, without hitting someone who sometime in the past hourly agreed with mr. lincoln's better assault on everything that was typically bush while. there's a continuity between mencken's appeal in the '20s and communism in the '30s. the bush while is what he was responsible for all societies today. let me now turn to the writer want anyone else encapsulates liberalism and that's sinclair lewis. i suspect many of you have read main street, if you read --

can't happen here. shaped, lewis was the great literary critic. he was a mentor to arthur schlesinger. lewis was randolph bourne's writing turned into novels. his midwest, said arthur schlesinger, was stocked with unforgettable symbols of business domination. sausage or goes on, they fixed the image of america not just with intellectuals of his own generation but for the world in the next half century. i think that's exactly right. it was the first american to receive the pulitzer prize, although i suggest if you read sinclair lewis today you'll find his writings not all that

appealing. is not a good writer and he knew it. it drove him crazy that he got the pulitzer prize. now, main street caught the world of postwar literary disillusionment with america. it's about a young woman who's married to a dull, but faithful husband, and as she suffers because her fellow citizens of gopher falls i just -- excuse me, gopher prairie. gopher prairie. just too dull beyond words. they don't have parties in pajamas. they don't read the best new writings. they are just provincials, and she's tortured by this. the book is an enormous success.

market sure who is one of sinclair lewis' biographers, i think one of his best biographers, described the book as an event in history, not just a novel but an event in american history. and he's right. it marked, it was a demarcation point in american culture. 12 years, he would go on to write babbitt who, too, was oppressed by being successful. 12 years later in 1934, after his wife dorothy thompson had been in europe look at the rise of fascism, mencken -- excuse me, sorry.

sinclair lewis writes a novel about the rise of fascism in america. it can't happen here. i'm sure most of you have read it. if you haven't it's really worth reading. not because it's written well, it's not, just because it's so interesting. becausbecause so many other this that are still alive today. and it can't happen here, it's marvelous because it turns out that the equivalent of the blackshirts and the brownshirts are the rotary club meetings. sound ludicrous? read sinclair lewis. is the conformity he thinks he sees at rotary meetings and moose, elk's, all the institutions that de tocqueville said were essential for making democracy. that in the present-day we mourn the passing because we go alone. all of that was for sinclair

lewis -- sinclair lewis didn't have this idea what he was talking about. he couldn't think politically, and he didn't really think very well socially but he was very good at capturing the political mood. lewis said he was repulsed by the intolerance of world war i, and like most liberals he paid little attention to the kaiser. paid no attention whatsoever depression is him. wasn't their concern. -- prussian is a. when hitler came along, eugenics popular among american liberals, lewis stepped in by suggesting that the lows he felt for main street was being recapitulated

in europe. it can't happen here was agreed by extraordinary praise. "the new yorker" reviewer described it as one of the most important books ever produced in america. published at a time when the american population was but 127, it quickly sold 320,000 copies. opening just prior to 1936 presidential elections, the play of it can't happen here ran in 18 cities drawing nearly 400,000 euros in just four months. it was a sensation. it became part of every young intellectuals required reading. i know i read it when i was about 14. it became a part of every young intellectuals required reading that persisted to the present to readers of the 2004 novel the plot against america written in the midst of the bush years will

recognize the plot of it can't happen here. i loved reading philip for the most part. this was one of his worst novels. it just doesn't work. .. second term of yornlg w. bush, new american law brought out a new printing, and newspaper columnists and bloggers and pundits draw on the books authority take over, bush saw as yet another down home strong man, never specified the first one. some of you know, an unchallengeable revelation for as bush was a fascist as you know was an unchallengeable revelation for some people even today. pointle t