lobbyists in washington, d.c. as we speak. each of them gets a tremendous salary to do exactly the opposite of what is to protect your health and the environment. and they are paid very beautifully because they got, they got their new job with the knowledge. they have all these contacts. i mean, i could have found a job with a big company, but i was not willing to do that, and i'm not going to ever. because they buy you because of what you know. they buy your knowledge of washington, d.c., they buy your knowledge of the intimate connections of the government within you worked, and they take advantage of that. and i think we should put an end to this kind of malpractice, because that that's exactly what it is. be put out of business all these lobbyists. [laughter] >> any more questions? well, thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause]

>> and don't forget be, there's an offer today to have a personally-signed copy of his book, "poison spring," just outside the door. >> thank you. >> and if any of you would like to get further information about what's going on in sustainable claremont, get on our mailing list. there's a place where you can sign in up here. [inaudible conversations] >> is there a nonfiction be author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv to the c-span.org or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. he's our prime time lineup for tonight. up next, her from freedom fest in las vegas, an annual libertarian conference held last week. then at 9, "after words" with veteran space correspondent jay barbary.

he talks about the life and career of neil armstrong with michael neufeld. historian and political strategist chris derose examines the civil war through five presidents. and we wrap up tonight's prime time programming at 11 p.m. eastern with michael waldman examining the history of the second amendment, the right to keep and bear arms. that all happens next on c-span2's booktv. >> booktv recently covered this year's freedom, an annual libertarian conference held in las vegas. today we bring you panels on minimum wage law, government and foreign policy. but we kick off today with a panel on ukraine. [applause] >> you're probably wondering what i've done wrong to have been dragged up before congress

75 times to testify. [laughter] never been indicted. ladies and gentlemen, it's a great pleasure to be here with you today. our topic of today is hot spots around the world. at the bahamas version, the smaller version of freedomfest last january, i gave a talk on ukraine, and that's before the thing had heated up. and mark thought it'd be a good idea if we looked at the places around the world and what's likely to happen. and we have no better panelists than the group we have today, because we've got gentlemen who have immense experience working in many areas of the world, and i think you will enjoy what they have to say. to my far, far right -- [laughter] is david keene, and david is now the opinion editor of the

washington times which means he oversees all the editorials and all the commentary, and the washington times is in the process of really expanding. they're doing a national digital edition. i suggest that you all subscribe, because that makes it easy for you to get my weekly column also, plus all the others, and it's a great newspaper, and it's growing unlike most other newspapers in the world. and david is a good part of this change. you may remember david for many years was the chairman of the american conservative union. he was also president of the national rifle association. i know a lot of you would be opposed to that, but, but he's done great things all his life and has been in and out of government and had positions advising presidents. then to my just far, far right

is herman pirchner. herman has been the longtime president of the american foreign policy council. and they do great work looking at all the time the hot spots around the world and trying to anticipate what's going to happen long before it does. you could sort of say they're different than the obama administration, because they actually look ahead. and be herman doesn't have to -- and herman doesn't have to pick up the newspaper as being surprised at what's going to happen next in the world because he and his staff have been there, know what's going on and do great jobs anticipating it. and most recently, he was this front of the ukraine/russia difficulties. it's a great publication. i suggest those of you who have a few hundred dollars, you may want to join the american

foreign policy council. i expect all of you here are interested in foreign policy, and it's a way of keeping up-to-date. very low overhead operation, but they do great work on foreign policy and intelligence. and then to my immediate right is my old friend doug bandow who i knew first back in the reagan administration when he was an assistant to the president, and he is a senior fellow at the the cato institute, and doug has turned out i don't know how many books and endless articles on -- one of the world's most prolific authors dealing a lot with foreign policy. we're going to do this a little bit of a general session today rather than each of us specializing narrowly because we all have an experience in various parts of the world, and a lot of the things overlap. and as we were speaking earlier, one characteristic now is, as we laugh, the world has gotten smaller which is really true because the planes that, the

plane ride from tehran to north korea is pretty short. and so the question is, is that the mideast, or is it asia or wherever? and we're going to start off with david keene because he's my boss at the washington times. [laughter] >> well, i'd like to -- >> just, i've got one more line before that. >> oh, sorry. >> david's going to set the stage of it's really a great global struggle that's going on among the political forces. then we'll get into more of the specifics. david? >> thank you, richard. i'd like to begin by this great self-promotion that we're doing to suggest that you need to subscribe to the washington times also because bandow writes for the time. >> not as often as i'd like. [laughter] >> that's the problem with being the editor, is you're always being lobbied by these people. >> exactly. [laughter] >> and the pages are open to

pirchner as well. [laughter] so it seems to be a no-brainer for the audience. actually, it's, i think, important that we're meeting on these subjects today because the american people are confused as to what the stance of the united states ought to be in terms of foreign policy and our place in the world. they've gone through a period in which our foreign policy has been dominated by folks who think that perhaps the world could be remade in the american image without much relationship or understanding of different cultures and the like. one can argue that in the middle east we're still, we're still struggling with the shadow of the great war which we're celebrating the hundred years of its beginning. i guess "celebration" is the wrong word. and i remember from the intimate papers of colonel house who was

the adviser to woodrow wilson, he said at one point that he'd had a busy day because they had spent that morning redrawing the map of the world. but fortunately, they'd managed to finish by noon and enjoyed a good lunch. [laughter] that's the kind of attitude that dominates some of the folks who involve themselves in the foreign policy debate even today, and we pay the costs for that in terms of blood and treasure and wars and struggles that we don't need to be involved in. on the other hand, there are those in reaction to that who are saying that the united states cannot be involved at all and that the best policy for the united states is the policy we pursued in the early days of the republic which was to trade but stay away. although even then early presidents dealt with barbary pirates and the rest when they interfered with our perceived right to trade in other parts of

the world. so there was never a complete separation of our foreign policy from our economic interests. but the question that the american people are struggling with is what are the interests of the united states, the legitimate interests that ought to be protected? that goes to some ec tent to -- extent to the question of whether you are, for example, in the middle east as perhaps we did in an earlier age with the communist empire, are we facing what amounts to an existential threat to a threat of, from sources that are bent upon our destruction regardless? or is it some other kind of a threat? do we have an obligation, as bill kristol might argue, to export democracy to the world and to try and remake the world in our image? if we could do that, would it work? if we could do that, should we do it? do we have a right to do it? on the other hand, can we afford to withdraw from the world and ignore the kinds of problems that are developing? i like to point out that of

modern presidents, the two presidents who lost fewer americans than any other in foreign wars were ronald reagan and dwight eisenhower. neither one of which could be viewed as an isolationist and fairly, neither one of which could be viewed as a neo-conservative in the modern parlance. but both of whom were known in the world as people you could only push so far, so that the american presence was there, and the basis of the reagan foreign policy was that if you were strong enough, you didn't have to go to war. if you were strong enough, people knew what the limits were and wouldn't go very far. you may remember reagan's comment when the libyans under moammar gadhafi did -- i forget what it was even shortly into his presidency in his diaries, he said he called his people, and he said it's about time we teach those people that there's new management over here. the problem that the american people face is what do we do now with the kind of management we have, and how do we proceed?

and this, as always in the case of foreign policy questions, defense policy questions, that's linked to specific problems, their sources and their meaning for us. and i think that's why these topics, these hot points, hot spots, if you will, are so important to discuss today. >> thank you. maybe i'll stay up here. >> would you? [laughter] >> anything to get away from you. [laughter] >> as you can tell, we're all old friends here. but herman, why don't you pick up from where dave left off -- >> relate it to reality now. [laughter] >> well, thanks for your comments, dave. i want to pick up on one question you raised, and that was the question of islamism versus communism as historical problems for the u.s. like all of us up here on the

stage, i'm a veteran of the cold war. but i have to say that in many ways the problem of islamism is going to prove more difficult than the problem of communism. communism promised utopia on earth, but the time came where you had 20 million dead in the soviet union, 80 million dead in china and no utopia. and when that was seen by the sons and daughters of the elites running those countries, this idea that you could create paradise on earth fell apart. when the idea fell apart, the will and the capability to kill en masse went away. when it went away, the fear went. when the fear went, china evolved, and the soviet union collapsed. but just imagine bin laden goes to allah, and allah says eternal damnation, you heretic. everybody that follows bin laden on earth thinks he's being rewarded. the idea is still alive, and as

long as that idea's still alive, the idea that you may go to paradise by killing innocents, this problem of terrorism and other problems associated with islamism, will exist. we're essentially dealing with an islamic theological question, a multi-cornered theological war within the islamic world, and that's a war in which we have little swayment how -- sway. how can you be involved in theological discussions about islam if you're not a muslim? so it's a problem that's going to be with us a great amount of time. american foreign policy council publishes something called almanac of islamism. it's not a polemic, it's a reference work on islamist movements worldwide. the book itself, hard cover, is 1150 pages, but there's an online edition. and in the course of looking at the great depth of this islamic

problem, you understand what a longstanding struggle it's going to be to deal with islamist, islamism and the many forms that it exists worldwide. i want to switch now briefly to ukraine. it's the title of the panel. ukraine is playing out in the following fashion. you soon will have two cities in the eastern part of ukraine that will be surrounded by forces loyal to the ukrainian government. in these cities will be a couple thousand rebels that are largely taking orders from moscow through russian military intelligence, the gru. maybe there will be a negotiated settlement where they leave and go into russia. maybe there will be a fight.

if there is a fight, the militants from pro-russian forces are likely to try to make it as bloody as possible by positioning themselves in hospitals, in old age homes and so forth. and they will do that with the hope that things will become so disruptive that putin will be moved to move in russian forces. if he chooses to do that, the ukraine army has no capability of standing with them. they probably could be in key yes in -- kiev in two, three days. but if that happens, it'll be the foreshadowing of very tense and longstanding tenseness in relations between russia and the west. and it will be the beginning of what will be a long guerrilla war in ukraine. ukraine has some history of that. anti-communist forces fought for

many years after the close of world war ii against soviet forces, and my sources tell me there are now some tens of thousands of ukrainians with some arms that will harass russian army if it sits there. when you get to this point, the consequences are a little bit unricket bl, and i've -- unpredictable, and i've probably eaten up my opening time. >> we're going to get back to that, herman, in more detail. but, first, doug, can you talk about the mideast aspects? or whatever you want? >> i like that idea of whatever i want. [laughter] we live today, oddly enough, in a world created by a man who was the bosnian-serb terrorist who shot the archduke and his wife a hundred years ago and effectively triggered world war i. and so many questions we have are the final bits and pieces of that war including the mideast, the balkans and many of these countries created out of that

conflict. there is good news in all of this. there are a lot of hot spots, and i'll just briefly mention them, but for the most part they don't directly threaten the united states. this is not world war iii. we came out of world war ii and the cold war with opponents of nuclear weapons. we trained school children to get under desks if missiles fell. we talked about soviet troops pouring through the gap. none of that is with us. colin powell, when he was head of the joint chiefs, commented at the time i'm running out of enemies, i'm down to fidel castro and kim ill sung, neither of whom came close to josef stalin in terms of the horrors they could impose. i think we're looking at a lot of chronic conflicts as opposed to acute ones. islamic threats that will be there, they will threaten us not existentially, but they will be with us in a number of other ways. but if you look around the world, we've got a world full of a lot of messes out there.

missiles falling in israel, bombings in the gaza trip, we see the israeli/palestinian peace process every time they make a go at it, i kind of roll my eyes, you know, the 300th or 400th time they've been trying. you look at egypt which basically has a recreation of the mubarak dictatorship, so we get to choose between that or a muslim brotherhood, it's not much of a choice i think in i of us in this -- i think any of us in this room would like. we look at syria which is rich by a civil war, and the other side includes such wonderful folks that run around crucifying christians and people they don't like and shooting school children if they're thought to blaspheme. those are allies in the syrian civil war. iraq, of course, we all see falling apart, and it turns out one of the main forces existence the government that we supported are the -- against the government that we supported are in the opposition in syria. so we're in this rather odd position of fighting the bad guys, but we're in favor of the government in iraq that's

tighting the same bad guys -- fighting the same bad guys. it assumes a lot of competence that i don't think is really there. we look at iran, i mean, a country which presumably you all think is after nuclear weapons. none of us really want that to happen. there's a negotiating process going on. i think there's at least a little hope that that might turn out in a positive way, but i won't hold my breath. the world would be a much better place if it did. no one wants them to have nuclear weapons, but launching a defense against iran would be catastrophic for all sorts of reasons. my friends, the north koreans, are constantly busy. they are now mad because the new movie, "the interview," is out there in which james franco and seth row began want -- seth rogan want to assassinate kim kim jong un, but they are very, very unhappy and have threatened war over this terrible movie. hollywood has obviously become a

tool of american imperialism. china, you know, has sharp elbows in the south china sea, the filipinos and japanese are worried, the vietnamese kind of want us to come, our old enemies suddenly want us around and would like to have us help them out. then we get to ukraine where, clearly, in a sense the cold war in some sense is being recreated there. you know, it's a difficult situation, but the reality is no one in europe or america, i think, wants to go to war over ukraine which means the russians have the capability to do what they want, though i suspect that putin's ambitions are also probably somewhat bounded. i'm not sure he wants to bring in a lot of ukrainians for reasons that were mentioned. you look back to world war ii, and ukrainians don't like it if they're subjugated. putin grabbed the only area that had population, and that wasn't overwhelming. you bring in those areas, you bring in 60% or more ukrainians, that's not likely to be very stable for you. so i suspect that's going to be a chronic problem for the future. and there are others, there are

moldova, georgia and others that are kind of in the same situation and have the difficulties with the russians. so looking ahead, i'd say the world is going to be a mess. the good news for the u.s. is it can stand back and assess each of these carefully. there's no reason we have to assume we have to jump into all of them or some of them. it'll vary, i think, but the world today gives us more options than we had in a world of the soviet union which ronald reagan correctly termed the evil empire. and the evil empire causes you to have to do things that today, luckily, there is no evil empire. we stand alone in terms of the summit of military power. we have options we didn't have during the cold war. >> well, to pick up on all that, one of our colleagues at the cato institute is andre -- [inaudible] , and andre had been putin's chief economic adviser up to 2004. and putin had been moving toward

denationalization and somewhat towards freer markets. but then he began to reverse course and renationalize the oil companies, and andre and president putin ceased getting along. and so andre moved to the u.s. and joined the cato institute. from the kremlin to the cato institute where he is much happier. but andre also, he has recently returned from ukraine, and he does go back and torte to russia -- forth to russia some, and so far he's been okay. we do worry about him. but his view is that putin wants to recreate the russian empire. not the ussr necessarily, but the russian empire. and many of you probably have forgotten, the russian empire, what year did it actually create, have the greatest land mass? anybody here remember?

1867. then they sold alaska to us. and -- [laughter] and then it slunk after that -- shrunk after that. alaska was a pretty big piece. but, basically, dominated eastern europe and what we look at as the stands and everything today. and -- the stans and everything today. and andre's view is that putin will continue to nibble around the edges like he has in georgia, crimea, now the main part of ukraine. and i would like to get the views of my fellow panelists on andre's view. and we'll just work our way down. david? >> i think that's, essentially, correct. you know, you can't fault the leader of a country for acting in his country's self-interest. you can't really -- you can be upset because it may clash with your interests, but you can't really fault him for doing that. if he's outmaneuvering you, that

means he may be better than your leaders at it, but it doesn't mean he's necessarily evil. i think, frank -- and this is without excusing anything that putin has done -- that part of what happened in ukraine is a result of two things. ..

ukraine to not necessarily absorb ukraine but keep it as part of their orbit above 100 times more than we wanted to get and as a result, we added to the problem earlier and this goes to one of the reasons. you remember the crisis in which the united states decided that self-determination required an independent kosovo which was part of serbia. that was a violation of a lot of different things into the russians who have always considered, if we go back and remember world war i have always considered them to be there. they were outraged in the fact

that we were going to allow part of the nationstate that wasn't a nation to exercise and break off and if you listen to the russians now they are saying we have the right to do in ukraine and maybe in latvia what you did in the balkans because we have russians living there that said those shouldn't live among them and us uanswer from the legal ad historical standpoint, this is in part because of the ambitions whether we regard them as legitimate or not and in part because we help model things and de facto encourage or forced him to act on those ambitions. am i wrong on that? >> i agree with a lot of what you said about the balkans. when they became the russian

foreign minister in the '90s, he had a foreign policy that he and others were discredited when they were used offensively in the balkans because their arguments against the hardliners have always been no need to fear the last strictly defensive organization. but let's go back to ukraine and other parts of the former soviet union that putin has designs on her. russia passed the law in the expansion of the federation. that is the law whose basis was used to annex crimea. this is the line with the thinking of the nationalists about the creation of the great islamic state that would be belarus and ukraine and northern kazakhstan. the idea was put forth many years ago and others have picked it up. you now have a man by the name of dmitri who was russia's

ambassador and now the deputy prime minister. he is russia's nationalist number one. already about 15 years ago he wrote in the book no matter how unrealistic it seems today we must persevere coming out like germany coming united after 40 years. russia has a long-term design on these territories. the problem is with ukraine as an ennui train could love. ukrainians remember if 2 million people that were killed by the force in the 1930s -- to make more then that. two, three, four but it's a lot of people killed and many of them were in the eastern territories under contention now. the empty homes that were filled came from other parts of russia. if you go as far to the pacific island you will find many people with ukrainian names.

the ukrainian intelligentsia were sent to the camps is not forgotten and ukraine so russia covered ukraine but russia is not ready to embrace. >> putin is a nationalist. exactly how ideological it's hard to say. people tell me that his rhetoric has grown more nationalistic including using that i think a lot of political ratings have been down and politicians love to get that kind of approval. i think in many ways it is a pre- 1914 great power. it is ideological contentious this has gone this is not some grand global competition over ideology. what he really cares about is border security and its respect and i think that the balkans is one where you screw with us you don't take this into account and we really get upset. you do it again and ukraine

there is an elected leader you overthrow him and organize a street revolution. he wanted to sign up with you but i think that what he is ambitious and opportunistic and prudent so while perhaps he might like to have a russia that looks like 1860 i guess if he realizes he won't get it. part of it is to a tradition that the rest of it is from hungary after world war i. so the question of what he wants i think a lot of it is opportunistic. there's the moment he thought he could get it and now you play the game and see what comes out of it and if nothing else you cause them trouble and the new leadership recognizes the need for stability so would understand that better pay attention to you because five years from now they can play the game again even if they do not roll into the civil war but they just know that nato is off the table, so i think he's dangerous

but in a very confined way. >> i think i'm a little more skeptic about mr. putin as maybe all of you. i have chaired the transition team back in 90 to 93 and have been an advisor when he was the first non-communist prime minister of russia. besides the beginning of this year, i'm an economics columnist at the time i write about energy and other things and i had done several articles about how europe was captive. most of the exports are illegal and gas and most of it going to western europe and particularly of the western europe countries are almost totally hostage to the gaps coming through ukraine. from my old contacts i had

received a message about how certain members of the bulgarian parliament basically the socialist party, the green party and the turkish party were receiving payments to vote against cracking and bulgaria. northern bulgaria is to take us to romania and bulgaria should be an illegal and gas exporter that shouldn't be totally dependent on the russian gas. this reminded me very much of the old days that i think all of us here have been participants in one way or another the cold war and it became familiar. at the time i got this information, i was first trying to get some of the western european press to run with it and it includes some of the bigger newspapers and i had at the context and people were

somewhat aware that people didn't want to go there. and what you have is sort of willing hostages in western europe. and finally, i did the column for the "the washington times" and since that time in the last two months there've been a lot of columns now. the economist magazine and others have similar stories and it was almost word for word of my story in the "the washington times" that they were all afraid to break it and this fear in western europe about exposing what's really going on and even since that time i've been getting some grief by some old friends who didn't much like the fact that i did this. and to me it's trolls on. this is a little bit personal because -- >> there is no question that you are right about that and in the

anti-cracking effort in europe it is reminiscent of the old soviet propaganda campaigns because it's in their interest not to allow war to prevent in any way they can independence not just of the eastern european countries but the others that are more and more dependent and that has trumped and this goes maybe to the point and some of the others that is the reality of russia versus the soviet union. and maybe the difference is so great that it may end up in the same place and that is putin and his friends have really sort of transformed the post-cold war russia into the cause i'm at least her and trust estate which is totally dependent on its ability to sell energy to the west because that's how they support not only their private but the functioning of their government. i was in a meeting with the russian officials and one of the

american officials said was would have been if the price of oil fell to $80 a barrel and they said that won't happen. if it did happen, they would have to sell because they would be good for about 60 days. they need 100-dollar or you'll just to survive because they don't have much else. they haven't developed to the economy they could have developed if they followed the advice of your friends who fled in the earlier time. >> i'm not supposed to do this as the moderator can interject this much because it is what is in the mind of happening europe is becoming a willing hostage to russia. but the scenario that we have all sort of talked about what happens to the price of oil when it falls, my guess is that some place in the world the tanker will be sunk or the pipeline will be blown up into the price of oil will spike that there

will be no russian fingerprints on it. but to do a quick couple minutes here. let's focus on -- because i want to have time for a q. and a. where do you think the next explosion will be on the globe? we talked quite a bit of russia and ukraine. there is an area dealing with china that gives me great concern even though there's been little publicity. the doctrine of the chinese government that no u.s. surveillance or military ship should come within 200 miles of the coast of china and that of course is contrary to the freedom of the seas. we've already had a number of incidences of programming and have harassment and american ships and chinese ships into the reason that it is of concern is either we give up our

understanding of the freedom of the sea or the surrender or not. and china isn't likely to change its doctrine. this creates an opportunity for something on the unpleasant it may or may not be handled well. >> i think there are a lot of possible ones. one is north korea. the old man who died, kim jong-il seemed to know exactly how far to push and why ... south koreans and when to stop. it's not at all clear that his son who is 31 and seems executed with no family was there. and you could easily see the war i think out of the mistakes as opposed to the attention. the japanese and chinese tensions over the cacophony islands most of them have been pretty tough and the japanese have this as an islan us as an g

them up i don't think they are convinced the potential problems there. i think the collapse of iraq flowing over the border perhaps into jordan they claim the territory and parts of lebanon and israel and jordan in parts of syria and even parts of turkey. if they try to push all of those claims one could see the mess and i think longer term the questions of the monarchy. these are feeds the rulers are each end and they just appointed a deputy crown prince which they'vwe've never done the leadp is very nervous with the terms of brothers into the mothers were and i think that they are potentially unstable as well and that would be very messy if they went down. >> david? >> i think that going back to what all of us have said about this and the point that herman made earlier about the fanaticism of be unleashed

because it's less likely that the blowup is going to come in with the chinese. i once wrote that taiwan has a great in many ways situated like israel the sea of enemies that they are blessed because they have a rational enemy as the chinese do not live in a fantasy world. they live in a world in which they measure very carefully with their opportunities are and what the costs are. and as long -- it is not an accident that these things took place at a time when the world has perceived the united states as being awol. it's an area that as long as they know the world works better if they get along with folks they will always harbored those desires but they won't do anything stupid. that can't be said for the other part of the world. the only other place we are talking about, they've now

unearths to some of the messages into some of the correspondence that crew chef hat in the cuban missile crisis and the height of that of course castro sent a message that he should just go ahead and launch the cost of cuba that was fine and he wrote what is this? he is willing to sacrifice his entire country of the soviet communists were not crazy. they were evil. they were not crazy. the middle eastern earth are evil and crazy. >> a couple of points to follow up. i agree with you on the chinese. they are very thoughtful and deliberate. >> and they are going to be around for a long time. >> they may push this question up to 200 miles simply and that is the danger. >> the one danger that hasn't been mentioned is out of pakistan. we talked a lot about iran and pakistan already has the bomb and who can be 100% sure the

fundamentalists in the country have been country to the army may be even infiltrated the units regarding the nuclear source prospect of an al qaeda type of group getting control of the nuclear weapon is very unsettling. >> on that note that begins the q-and-a. we have just a very few minutes for questions. given the shortage of time of the questions those of you that have a question you can save in 15 seconds or less i will give you your first opportunities and those that have 32nd questions we will work up to those and those that have a four-hour state see if we can get to that. >> [inaudible] i'm not aware of any of the leaders using the weapon against

israel. any debasing about the leadership is in their deputy for power. when they were involved in the war with iraq they said other people out to the leadership and they didn't show up on the battlefield. the israeli security in the leadershileadership they do beld be very hard for the primitives turn off to active because of nuclear weapons. the good news for israel is to invest the triggered nuclear weapons so the question is does iran want to be wiped off the map and that is what the leadership wants. and i haven't seen anything to suggest that there's lots of reasons to not want that leadership to happen. the frightening thing is there is already in pakistan. >> anything to add to that? >> there is the problem of what they can do under the nuclear threat is credible which gives a great deal of freedom and you

can expect the saudi's to have one. we now have them scared they are cooperating with israel because they don't want these other lunatics to the harmed in ways because they dislike us we are a down the road enemy. we are an enemy right now because we are there they've got plenty of other muslims killed before they get around to us. >> right here. >> [inaudible] the question is what it does. the ottoman empire was an incompetent utterly kind of useless creature that world war

i all of the empires that were destroyed were relatively liberal and effective ones that might have involved a more liberal direction. out of this you get the soviet union and joseph stalin and you get to germany and adolf hitler and mussolini out of the entire you get these countries in the middle east that are falling apart and lines are being re- drawn so world war i is a catastrophe. world war ii came out of world war one and there was no cause for america to get involved and it was a different creature tweet that you might not have had world war ii but for world war i and i don't think that there can be any question that the u.s. involvement in world war i and the fact that u.s. first of althe u.s.first of allf the war because we put the force

commander then we got the armistice on the basis of the crazy promises from both robles and that the germans into the middle east and everyone else accepted and the result was nationstates that are not nations the result was that germany that was so upset at the unfairness the way that it ended we got no nazis on anti-communim and all these things as a result of that which was the signal of the foreign-policy mistake of the united states and its entire history because of the consequences from that point on it was the war that made the 20th century the bloodiest century in the history of mankind and that was a result of the well-intentioned progressive president and his allies that went in anywa in a way that we e yet to be able to overcome. >> 2.5% of the entire world guide. we forget how bad it was.

>> if i can talk about that specific question if world war i hadn't taken place at the caliphate existed it's restricted to where it was because the world -- there were in fact the boundaries and whether it was the ottoman empire or whatever it was committed boundaries had been set and respected because there was a problem if they went beyond that, so tha it, so thaty different from what's going on now. that's if the muslim world developed as a ship without little lives that have happened in the different families and the like by the british & french it might have been a very different future to make her want to get one or two more questions than we believe in a rule of law or the rule of the flock to stay on time.

>> [inaudible] >> i want a question. we don't have time for the statement. >> we have a treaty of alliance with japan. >> we got the question. there's a treaty alliance and we have made it known to the leadership in beijing that we would stand behind japan. we've also urged japan not to push the issue. >> other questions the gentleman right down here in france.

>> [inaudible] okay. we got it. how long can the u.s. and europe continue to ignore the militant islam? >> we have ignored it too long already. it's one of the big mistakes we make is assuming it's a single block. there are 1,600,000,000 people in the muslim world formed and half of it in the four countries. bangladesh, india, indonesia and pakistan and life for most muslims is different and each of those countries even in the era of the world of the day-to-day life is so different than saudi arabia but for the fundamentalist there isn't so

much difference and even if you assume that there is one person that has a very stringent interpretation of islam that is 16 million people. that's the whole country and not being engaged in the ideological world with them not dealing with elements that are reconcilable india islamic world is a tragedy that's going to come to bite us and may not be an access control fret about it's a threat where you can see the casualties and the hundreds of thousands of the terrorist activity and something we have to worry about a great deal. >> we are out of time but i have a final question for the panelists that you can answer in one word. if we have one of these crisis blowouts the three of you have outlined as possible, do you

think the obama state department and defense department is up to the task? [laughter] ladies and gentlemen on that note thank you all for coming. next year i will see if mark will allow us to have two hours. >> don't forget to subscribe to the "the washington times." >> you'll have to subscribe to the "the washington times" and you have to support foreign-policy counsel to keep all of us alive. >> next up is a panel on minimum wage law.

>> the >> thank you very much. i appreciate this conference. they formed a long time ago i've been speaking or helping out since 2002. i think this is one of the greatest meetings of the mind ever conceived when you can go from a session of confucius. we are covering the waterfront in this conference. debate before us now one of my belief that seven to ten debates i kind of think of these in the terms of the old william f. buckley's firing. that's how it began. we debate both sides and we don't interact each other. they get sick sonnets for

rebuttal to answer these questions they can. if they are digital presentation is eight minutes they can save eight minutes into each have a summing up at the end and we have at least ten minutes worth of questions on the microphone out front and my judgment here is to take the temperature of the crowd at the end. i'm going to ask you the end to think about this who wonder the day and did you change your mind you have to think my belief minimum wage laws are good or bad and that we have to ask did you change our mind as a result of these debaters? my first payroll troubles 1963 3 at the minimum wage was 90 cents. he said i can't do you any less than that.

that is a night janitor job for you. and i worked up for dollars next year. the $10.10 suspiciously accurate, not $10 but $10.10 a minimum wage bill. the experts would come up one at a time at first up from the university of nevada las vegas was a specialty economics phd in economics teaches at the school here. he was going to present the case for an minimum-wage. [applause] >> it is a pleasure to be here. it is a little opposing to be here among such a libertarian

crowd. i'm going to kind of take you through some ideas about why we shouldn't raise the minimum wage and i'm going to -- there we go. my ideas are the institution structure that generated the equity shared prosperity have collapsed. and reasonably high minimum wages are part of that structu structure. the idea is a modest interventiothat a modestintervee increases in the minimum wage is this part of a sensible strategy as an equitably shared

prosperity. the potential benefits to include on the part of the workers that received. the high rate of the sponsored training and the healthier and happier society. this is an interesting chart. what it shows that there was an era in the united states of equity shared prosperity. the dotted line as for prosperity has grown over time. the blue line represents the median wage, the median family income has grown over time. there was the period up until 1980 when the median family was doing and able to participate in the first of the productivity increases.

it's relative to the productivity. and what ensued after that was escalating inequality. one of the things that has occurred after the stagnation is the record pockets on the part of business so some of that ex- productivity is going to proce process. it's going to the top 1%. so during the period of the shared prosperity, the top 1% of the income distribution, which is roughly $340,000 of income in 350,000 come something to that effect is the top 10%, know the top 1% was earning 10% of the national income.

now we are right about where we were in the 1920s. another thing that has occurred as the median family income is stagnated as the. now connected with this, connected with this period of the equity shared prosperity to the high value of the minimum wage. now, what kind of interesting just to kind of get an indication of how far the minimum wage has fallen if you have indexed the minimum wage to productivity and the economy it would be $18.67 per hour. and there was a period of time

when the minimum wage did follow productivity. it does look like it was indexed up until 1970s. another part of the structure that has -- that used to support the higher wages for middle income workers was the union density although that isn't the topic of the day but the union has fallen quite a bit and that has corresponded with this increased inequality as well. why would a society be healthier and happier or what is the evidence about the happier and healthier society if it is equal? if you look at this index of the health and social problems, it looks like it's fairly well correlated, it looks like income inequality is positively correlated with social problems.

so, the more unequal the society the more social problems exist in society. basically the more unequal the society the more miserable people are. >> okay so now to the proposal, harkin and miller. it is composed of three incremental increases of 95 cents per hour in 2014, 2015 and 2016 so the minimum wage would stand at $10.10 per hour. as far as i can see this as a modest increase in the minimum wage. in fact, we have seen this chart before. if the minimum wage had been indexed to productivity it would be $18 into 67 cents per hour that would take us up to $10.10 per hour which is it even close to where it would be if it had been indexed in the productivity. >> also, if you notice in 1968

full-time work at the minimum wage would barely get a poverty family size three out of poverty and that's where we would be in 2016 as well so it is just kind of a modest increase. harkin never won't just affect part-time teenage workers from affluent families either. many of the effects are over 30, parents in low-income families. and they are well along in their career. so this proposal would affect male and female come a good chunk of male and female workers. it was over half of the affected workers would be over 30. just over a quarter or parents and more than half of the households affected would earn

less than 40,000 per year. and not only that, but more than half of the affected work full-time. finally a significant percentage are still at no more than $2 per hour even ten years into it. so it's not just entry-level workers that it's affecting. what about the potential negative effects. often it's argued that there will be employment effects and it will raise prices. i've got this kind of nasty looking chart here but what it says is that a 10% increase in the minimum wage is associated with no significant impact on employment. okay what about the prices? a minimum-wage worker serving a $7.25 per hour for $4 if his or

her wage would increase to $10.10, the economic models suggest the price would go up 9 cents. so not much impact on inflation. what about the positive impact it could impact? training for example, evidence indicates raising the minimum wage reduces the wage dispersion of the low end of the distribution. the workers are less likely to quit us the turnover encourages them to train which increases the productivity and higher productivity means the higher wage to pay for it so. it also reduces the spending on the safety net programs for example by data expected to fall by about 6% if the proposal is adopted. how much time do i have? so, to summarize the

institutional structure that generated the equity shared prosperity has collapsed. earnings and income inequality has escalated or have escalated into the nhl that h but he is sh levels is pathological. an increase in the minimum wage is part and only part of the reasonable strategy to restore the shared prosperity. the potential costs are very low if not nonexistent and benefits include high wages to the low end. that's reliance on poverty programs. more training by the firms and a healthier and happier society. [applause] >> excellent. nine minutes into 4 and 45 seco. a professional job and well presented. now for the case against the minimum wage law we have mary who is a research scientist very

active in the libertarian party for a long time she is the chair of the international society for individual liberty. she's written two books that i know of, healing our world and one that really applies to this particular debate short answers to tough questions. so please welcome mary. "thank you. i'm here to make the case that minimum wage laws hurt the very people they are supposed to help. and of course as we know as libertarians, the minimum wage is limit the freedom between consenting adults. invariably, limiting freedom backfires and actually create problems and solve them and again i'm going to go to my gigahertz the very people that we are trying to help. let's talk about how the minimum

wage solves jobs. i'm going to use an extreme case. that of puerto rico. when the minimum wages were applied to puerto rico the minimum wage that was applied with equal to the average wage that was in the market at the appointed time and over the next two years of course. of course they were not worthless that rudimentary wage. the minimum wage was raised three times and resulted in a 45% loss of jobs. so it was frozen in 2012. they make an exception and don't

have it for these two countries and of course as you know these are extreme cases. the extreme case is a minimum-wage dude made a difference and do decrease jobs. in less extreme cases for example in 2004 santa fe a the minimum wage was increased to $8.50 per hour. a 65% increase but here it was much closer to what was happening in the market. so the employment dropped a lot less dramatically. it dropped 3.3% which was significant and the hours that were worth talked about one hour for all workers. employment on the other hand for the less skilled workers dropped 8.3%. is it, another word if you look at all of the workers and see the 3.3% drop then you feel like

that's not too big but if you look at the people that are least likely to find another job you see as very dramatic and my belief is in the studies that show no difference in employment it's very possible when that minimum wage is very small you don't see the drop in the employment but if you don't look at the disadvantage or the list skills you miss the effect it has on them. here is a graph from my book healing the world which is available in the bookstores and i'm going to grab my user pointer so that i can if i may -- maybe i can from here. if you load it to look at the

lower access to 1980 and the squares that indicate the wage increased over this time the circles represent the ratio between black and white and if you notice, teenage blacks have about the same employment about 50%. notice that the coverage went up, we saw that the ratio of black to white unemployment went down dramatically and because of this, we have the economist walter williams noting that the minimum wage is one of the major causes of spiraling unemployment among blacks and milton friedman

labeled them as the new jim crow so this is an illustration of how the disadvantaged in the u.s. at that time are penalized by the minimum wage and when i say penalized note they actually are not employees of the go from low wages to know wages. what we like them to have good wages? certainly that it's better to have low wages than no wages. now there is a lot of knowledge about the minimum wage in fact in south africa before the apartheid ended, the minimum wages were used to reserve jobs because it was well known if the wage was high employers didn't have to choose between their prejudice and pocketbooks. if a worker was willing to work for less than whites then he

would get the job but if the minimum wage is high enough that he didn't have to make that choice, then they were penaliz penalized. another thing that happens is that kills on-the-job training. i remember when i was in michigan state i was working the laboratory and being paid about half the minimum wage because at that time the jobs that i had were not covered. halfway through my college years the legal department at michigan state said that the minimum wages are going to start applying to the job and so i was fired. the only way i can get back is to pay the tuition for the independent study course so now i have to pay to train to get back in the lab.

also, the minimum wage stop employers from getting the disabled the chance. i remember in the low income housing in kalamazoo we had the material all over everywhere so of course every one knew we were doing rehab and the gentle man approached me and said i live a block down the street and i live in this home for the mentally disabled. and obviously he wasn't too disabled because we were pretty able to have a good conversation but he was somewhat a little slow and he said i can clean up this mess for you for $2 an ho hour. i said why would he work for $2 an hour and he said here's how i figure it i know i can work hard and well and i know that if i do so you will probably want to give me a raise and keep me or if the project ends first maybe you can write me a reference. i'm a very good writer. i could have written him a good

reference if i hired him i would be considered as someone exploiting the disabled and certainly if i were willing to pay the minimum wage i could get an able-bodied person and project how much they could do so i was discouraged from hiring him and had i been older and wiser maybe i wouldn't have reacted that way but i was young and frightened by the whole minimum-wage thing. sometimes it actually stops people from getting their foot on the first round of the economic ladder. now, this information is known even by people that lobby for minimum wage and even living wage laws. the associations of communities for reform now lobbied very heavily for the minimum wages and yet it's sued california.

the more they must pay each outreach worker is because of the minimum-wage overtime requirements. they know. it's a little -- i don't think that everyone is like this certainly. i mean no disrespect to my colleague that a lot of people know this and they just don't want is to apply to them and the military is also asking for exemptions. there are a bunch of fast food restaurants that are going to close on the navy, army and air force base in addition to minimum-wage hikes they have to. the evidence has been hurt by the minimum wage are the people that can least afford to lose

their jobs and that is what seems to have been. thank you. [applause] >> that was also nine and a half minutes. thank you very much. if you came in late i want to clarify john mackey is listed as being the case against. he had a scheduling conflict and couldn't make it so they filled in on short notice and have done a wonderful job of putting this together for a meaningful debate. now we have six minutes of response to the other person's case. >> thank you for that presentation. but i do have some responses. okay so the first thing that mary engine is the notion of the freedom of adults to contract.

definitely that is a good thing that we are free to contract but one of the things that is true about the labor market is that when the two parties get together to contract, they have very different levels of bargaining power. workers have very little bargaining power relative to employers especially the less skilled workers. so usually when there is a situation that the workers don't have much bargaining power and employers do or when one party doesn't have much power and the other does, that person that doesn't havdoesn'thave the bargs exploited, and that is definitely true in terms of the labor market. i teach stuff like this.

i teach about the collective bargaining and individual bargaining and i have a hard time getting my students to understand what individual bargaining really is. it didn't seem like bargaining at all. buwhat it seemed like today amad they needed a job and the employee or gave them a take it or leave it offer. there was no bargaining involved. so i tell them you have to pretend like there is bargaining. bargaining. anand so, you know, bargaining - the employment relationship is a little bit different i think. let's see. mary mentioned a number of instances where minimum wages were increased and there was less employment and certainly that is the case. certainly there are instances you could find anecdotes where that is the case but the thing is if i can find anecdotes where

when the minimum wage is increased, there is actually an increase in employment. there is a famous study that was conducted back in 1991. the study was by krueger and they looked at the increase of the minimum wage that occurred in new jersey but it didn't occur in to them via. so, here you have camden new jersey and pennsylvania they are kind of investing labor market. in one to minimum-wage increased and in the other there was no minimum-wage increase. and there was absolutely no statistically detectable impact on employment. it seemed like if there was anything it wasn't statistically significant but if anything began playing at increased. so, you know, that in my

previous presentation i showed you that nasty graph with all of the dots. well, what that was a z. was a compilation of dozens and dozens of minimum-wage studies and with the dozens and dozens of the minimum-wage studies show. they say 10%, 20%, something to that effect. it has virtually no impact on employment [inaudible] i think i'm going to leave it at that. >> if i could have the next slide in my powerpoint, this is going to look great and i'm sorry. i could have the next flight in my powerpoint.

let's talk about the study because this study into the series of studies these gentlemen did a triggered this idea that maybe the minimum wages don't decrease employment even though the decades of studies have shown just the opposite. newmark took the same information, the same timeframe that krueger data. they did a card screening and asked how many employees they had before and after the minimum-wage changed in both locations. what they found was a 4% reduction in the hours. and this is important because one way that an employer can react to minimum-wage other than raising prices is simply to cut back on their hours so that the cost stays the same. then there was another study or critique i should say of the

krueger and card study that shows the philadelphia fast food employment was already trending downward robert princeton. you have one group going up and down you cannot make a good comparison. but this is -- i want to talk about all of these studies that show significant or don't i-india employment effects. you know, when we say that it's significant, what we mean is that there's a 95% chance that what we are seeing is reality and a 5% chance that it's not. you kind of expect tight% will show a serious effect and there's been a review of the literature done there's 102 studies published on the minimum wage between 92 to 2006 and 8% show a positive effect on an appointment. that'employment. that's pretty close to the vice% level you would expect.

65% show a negative effect in other words and point it goes down. down. and if you call the studies and to try to look at the ones that you think of the best control, 85% show the negative effects on employment and i'm including the office of the study that said few if any cases had a positive effect. >> but beyond this, it's who loses their job that is important and the conclusion by the authors of the review or are when the researchers focused on the least groups to effect the groups the evidence for that is employment effect seems especially strong. in other words even if you do not see a difference in an employment in the group as a whole, you do see the disadvantage losing their jobs. the office stated assertion of thassertion ofthe authors contiw minimum-wage research failed to

support the traditional view that minimum-wage reduce employment in the low-wage workers is clearly incorrect so this is the state-of-the-art and i'm aware of at this point in time. my colleagues said if we increased the minimum wage we would have less reliance on the poverty programs but that is not what the data showed. it showed that every time there's been a minimum-wage increase there has been an increase in demand fo the demane anti-poverty program which would make sense if the most disadvantage to being thrown out of the marketplace. ..

>> so i think, i think what i would suggest to my esteemed colleague is that minimum wage is not a good way to try to affect this problem, but deregulation might be more effective and more of what you're looking for. thank you. [applause] >> yeah, thank you, mary, for those comments. okay. the krueger study, you know, there was this new marker didn't

come back and critique that, and they had a good point. but also what cardin-krueger then critiqued the critique and found that their results were based on this outlying value that they hadn't controlled for, that they hadn't taken into account. so now i just -- >> [inaudible] >> it was an, it was an outlier that once you took that out, it proved the cardin-krueger result. so anyway, look, the negative, the negative impact on employment according to a preponderance of the evidence is that it's very, very small. and some of the reasons that it's very, very small is that when employers are summited to a high -- subjected to a higher minimum wage, it shocks them into tightening up the

production process. instead of workers taking a 25 minute break -- which should have been 15 minutes -- they make sure the workers only take a 15 minute break. instead of -- and i mentioned this earlier -- it also can create an efficiency wage effect where when workers get a higher minimum wage, what my colleagues have shown is that it reduces turnover among low wage workers. and if firms realize that their workers aren't going to just leave, there isn't going to be as much turnover, there's a higher incentive for them to train. ask so this higher incentive -- and so this higher incentive to train will make the workers more productive, and they'll pay for themselves. so anyway -- am i done?

>> i'm keeping strict track of time, and mary will have a chance to respond. do you want to respond now or later to what he has -- >> i'll respond later. >> she'll respond later. okay. we're going to open it up to questions, you can step up to the mic. i am going to ask you not to comment at too much a length, and i'm going to give the first question as an example. i'm from seattle where they just passed a $15 minimum wage law. my question to you, jeff, is why don't we use the tenth amendment to headache minimum -- to make minimum laws state and local laws rather than a one size fits all given the different costs and standard of living throughout the nation. jeff? >> to me, to me that's a great idea. i don't think it has to be a federal minimum wage. i think, i think that economic conditions are different in various areas, and why don't we take that into account? so i would not be opposed to

that as well. >> okay, next question. we'll move along fast. my question is for jeff. and the statement you made earlier about workers not having equal bargaining with employers, okay? so how can you explain this? i produce products in china, okay? the one place that you'd expect workers would earn the minimum wage. there aren't any unions, they're unskilled, uneducated workers, yet i have to pay over 60% above the minimum wage to find low skilled workers for our, our factories. and every, every factory that i know of over there is in the same situation because workers refuse to work for anywhere close to the minimum wage. there are so how would you -- so

how would you explain the reality of this situation that i'm in right now? >> that's a, that's a very interesting question, and, you know, it really is about bargaining power. and one of the things that gives less skilled workers bargaining power is a prosperous economy. for example, real wages for less skilled workers in the united states have been falling and falling and falling since roughly the mid 1970s. except for one period. and that one period was between 1995 and 1990 when the economy was at full employment. that's -- and that gave less skilled workers bargaining power. and be my idea or my response to you would be that probably in china they've got a really prosperous economy, it's really, it's really going gangbusters, and so they don't -- >> keep in mind, though, the

minimum wage was enacted to keep evil owners from only paying the minimum wage. and so you are even admitting now factory owners don't have to have a minimum wage to pay a market wage. >> look, right -- there that's what you're saying. >> right. if the minimum wage is too low, it's not going to have any impact. if you tripled the minimum wage this china, it would start to look more like maybe it is here, i guess. >> next question. >> okay. suppose the minimum wage is $10.10, and there are students at my university that enjoy getting internships in companies to get the experience, unpaid internships. and there are a lot of other people who want to do volunteer work. maybe they want to volunteer for a politician's campaign. should these two things be illegal because they're below the minimum wage? and if they're illegal, what would you have the police do with them? would you have them put them

this jail instead? in jail instead? >> to him, right? >> yes. >> okay. >> well, they both can answer this. >> okay. [inaudible] >> oh, i wouldn't out them in jail, i mean, the whole idea is to, the whole idea is to let them figure out what they want to work for. volunteer? low wage or high wage. >> okay. now, this kind of hits close to home because i've got a son who's going to school in new york, and he has an unpaid internship. and so i've been thinking a little bit about these unpaid internships. it's like, you know, it wasn't that long ago when it wasn't even considered ethical to have students do unpaid internships. and so that seems to me to be one of those situations where workers without much bargaining power in a really slow economy will do things they wouldn't otherwise do. and so that is like an

illustration of the real, of what happens in a real slow economy with, when workers don't have much bargaining power. but jail? no, i don't think so. that doesn't sound like a good idea. i would like, i would like to see, i would like to see customs and traditions emerge, however, that don't make it so that it seems okay to have, to make it so that it's okay for workers like in vulnerable positions to have to work for free to prove themselves. >> they want to get the experience. >> well, sure right. but they used to get the experience and -- >> and they used to get paid on the job -- >> exactly. >> in order to get the experience. >> right. >> now you're making it illegal for them to get paid on the job for the -- >> it's not illegal. well, it wasn't illegal for my son who's doing an internship. i mean -- >> okay, next up? >> okay.

first of all, i do own a company, and i 'em low about 48 people -- employ about 48 people, so i have a practical reality on having to deal with employees. and i would like to state when i started working, i worked for a lot less than minimum wage. i actually lost money before i started making money, and i worked many, many hours as a result of that. so i have a question for you economic elites that are constantly trying to bug into our business, you use these theories -- so my question is, is why is it that you academic elites or the union who'ses don't go out and create your own businesses, and then you could have your utopia and pay all these high wages instead of bugging the people that actually do the work and do make the wages and actually sacrifice and risk to create prosperity? [applause] why do you want to constantly steal from the very people that you say you're trying to help? >> okay. we got the point. [laughter] i think that's directed to you. >> that's to you, jeff. the academic elite.

by the way, i donate a lot to the university foundation, unlv foundation, so don't tell them that i -- >> okay, we got it. >> yeah. i don't think of myself as an academic elite. >> you have no practical reality, have you ever -- >> got to let him answer now. [laughter] >> i mean, i applaud people who do hard work and employ people, and i think it's wonderful. and i've, i've toyed with the idea of starting my own consulting firm, and it's, and i know how hard it is, and i just applaud you for the work you do and for the employment you create. and if i'm an academic elite that tries to steal from you, i'm very sorry. i don't mean that. i don't mean to do that. so i don't know how -- >> you push those theories with no racket call reality on people. -- practical reality on people. >> you know, the way i think about my theories or the

theories that i use in my labor economics class is i present theories that show that the minimum wage can destroy employment. and then right after that i show that if you tweak the theory a little bit, it doesn't necessarily destroy employment. so what i do for my students is give them a menu of options. i try to give them a way to think about how the labor market works. and i hope that what i do in terms of generating these, this analytical thinking is qualify them to become employed with your firm and help you make a lot of money. that's what i'm hoping. >> does anybody have a question for mary? next up. >> i have a comment or a question for both of you. and that is, it seems that both of you have missed the fact that

when you raise the minimum wage, there are many businesses that will now not be able to be created that their cost now is just too high, their labor structure cost is too high. and i want to point out these businesses would have hired not only people to work at below minimum wage, but they would have hired a whole series of people all the way up the wage ladder. and to me, this is a bigger, this is even a bigger loss than arguing about how many workers lose their jobs or how many workers don't lose their jobs. >> i can tell we're not going to to reach all questions, we have to have some kind of closing statement, but i'm going to reduce it to one minute, and mary has a banked minute the if she wants, but i have time for one more question. >> aren't they going to -- >> take the answer first. >> yes.

all right, so job creation. basically. [inaudible conversations] you make a good point. you make a good point. i mean, but the thing is the minimum wage, it's almost like it sets a standard, and if you can't create jobs where workers do at least there are 10.10 -- $10.10 an hour worth of work, then maybe in a modern economy they aren't jobs that need to be created. i don't know. [laughter] >> well, if i could address, you're exactly right. and that's what we mean when we say jobs are destroyed, we also mean business are destroyed -- businesses are destroyed because if a business can't afford to pay anymore, if they can't raise their prices, and that's true in some markets, they're going to go out of business. so job destruction and company destruction go hand in hand. >> i meant, i meant businesses that never were created because of this. >> oh, yes.

i agree with you. >> yes. >> when there are -- the harder it is to start a business, the fewer are created. and the fulcrum for destroying jobs that are never created, if you want to think of it that way -- it's a little bit of a contradiction in terms, but -- are the regulations. every federal regulator destroys about 150 jobs a year. so if you want prosperity, and i think that's what we're talking about here, prosperity, you get rid of the regulations, and then the private sector can create jobs, and you won't have those businesses that would have been, you will have businesses that will be. >> last question. okay? >> two observations. you could have a legally-mandated minimum wage, but you cannot force the employer to hire. and second, politicians push a higher minimum wage not to help the people, but they get higher withholding taxes, higher fica taxes, higher medicare taxes and so on. and the question i want to ask jeff, why can't two adults sit

down and negotiate a wage that's fair for each other? >> my, well, two adults who have equal bargaining power can do that, be i two adults -- but two adults that don't have equal borrowing power, it's more likely that the one will take advantage of the other. >> unfortunately, we do have the tyranny of the clock. we have another session coming up. we have one minute slated, but we might go three or four minutes over time. mary, do you want a concluding statement? >> how many minutes can i have? >> i agree to two minutes each, and you can go a little over two, and you can go with a little under? >> all right. so, i think that i have shown you that minimum wages do destroy jobs, and the jobs they're most likely to destroy, even a small increase, are those of the disadvantaged workers that can least afford to be without a job.

and i think the solution to this, the solution to uneven borrowing power, income inequality, etc., etc., is to allow the core to work with. that's how the u.s. became the wealthiest country in the world. we were free. we didn't have regulations. and be so instead of squashing businesses and keeping people out of the marketplace like they did in europe, what we did is we let everybody work. ask they negotiated their -- and they negotiated their own wage which in some cases there was very low and there was prejudice, but at least they got their foot in the door and got a chance to show the employer just how good they could be. just like the disabled gentleman wanted to do with me. so i think that if we want to have a better world -- and i think that's really what we're both talking about here -- the solution is not the minimum wage. the solution is deregulation. let everybody have the chance to realize the american dream of their own business. thank you. [applause] >> thank you.

and jim. >> okay. what i think i've shown is that the institutional structure that generated equitably-shared prosperity has collapsed. and be part of that -- and part of that is because the real value of the minimum wage has been allowed to fall by so much. now, a -- >> [inaudible] >> okay, of course. [laughter] >> let's keep the party polite. >> so a modest increase in the minimum wage is an intervention that is a reasonable part of a sensible strategy to restore this equitably-shared prosperity. it's just part of what we can do, and it will have some impact, it'll have some impact in making the prosperity, in

creating a system of equitably-shared prosperity that we used to have. >> and by a show of hands, how many think jeff won the debate today? please, somebody, raise your hand. show your fairness. there's one. i see two, three. okay. how many believe mary won the debate today? marry won the debate. mary won the debate. now, how many of you changed your mind during the course of the last 50 minutes from where you thought before, anybody? one there. two. very good. thank you for participating in this debate. and please welcome back chip wood. [applause] >> gary thank you so much and, panelists, thank you. wonderful program, as we knew it would be. we appreciate it very much. we've got a couple of minutes for folks to wander on in from

other things, and then we're going to have fascinating conversation with p.j. o'rourke and john allison moderated by alexander becoven on the topic, who will save us from big government? i hope between those three people one of them has an answer. anyway, we'll get that started in just a couple of minutes. in the meantime, bear with us. ♪ ♪ >> booktv's coverage of freedomfest 2014 continues with a panel on big government with p.j. o'rourke, author of "don't vote, it just encourages the bastards," charles murray,

author of "in pursuit of happiness and good government," and john allison, author of "the financial crisis and the free market cure." [applause] >> thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for attending this panel. i'm incredibly excited to be joined by some of the leading minds and advocates of liberty today to try to answer the question, what can save us from big government? to begin, i'd like to introduce our panelists and then start prompting them with questions to answer that. we have john allison, president and ceo of the cato institute. mr.alson, prior to joining cato, was chairman and ceo of the bb&t corporation, the tenth largest financial services holding company headquartered in the united states. during his tenure from 1989-2008, bb&t grew from $4.5 billion to $152 billion in assets. he has received the coupling

award for the -- cumming award for business leadership and received the lifetime achievement award from the american banker. [applause] next to mr. allison we have p.j. o'rourke, libertarian commentator and humorist. he was born and raided in toledo, ohio, and attended miami university and johns hopkins. he began writing funny things in 1960s underground newspapers, became editor-in-chief of national lampoon, then spent 20 years reporting for rolling stone and atlantic monthly going to wars, riots, rebellions and other holidays in hell in more than 40 countries. he has written 16 books on subjects as diverse as politics and cars and etiquette in economics. mr. p.j. o'rourke. [applause] last but certainly not least, we have mr. charles murray.

w.h. brady scholar at the american enterprise institute and a noted author of such books as "the bell curve," "what it means to be a libertarian" and "coming apart." please welcome mr. murray. [applause] i want to begin by contextualizing this panel, because it's somewhat interesting that we have to ask the question whether we can stop big government. because it was only 20 years ago that a democratic president, bill clinton, said that the era of big government was over. we have defeated the soviet union, we have protected civil liberties or civil rights in the 1960s, achieved women's suffrage in the early 20th century, and yet we see threats to liberty on all sides today. our national debt in the united states is higher than it's ever been before. people are forced to purchase goods whether they decide they want to or not. the government routinely discriminates against people because of their sexual orientation and imprisons others

for nonviolent drug offenses. and at the same time, we have to fear the american government going to war every where from the ukraine because of the actions of russia's president putin to iraq once again as we've just left the country from a war we initiated over a decade ago. so i want to begin by asking each panelist before what the strategy is for how we can stop big government, can we actually do so given all of the threats we're facing today? let's begin by going right to left with mr. allison. >> thank you, alexander, it's a pleasure to be here. i think we can, or i wouldn't be working for cato. i will go ahead and suggest a strategy, because i don't think you can answer that question without some context. and i think the strategy has four fundamental components. first, i think we have to be very engaged in the philosophical fight, and i think that is the real, underlying fight that's going on in the united states. you've got, you know, one side, the collectivists, the statists.

on the other side, those of us who belief in principles that made america great; individual rights, free markets, limited government. we must be willing to defend those ideas philosophically and particularly defend the concept that each of us has a moral right to our own lives. secondly, we've got to have policies that help us get from where we are to where we want to be. in some cases we can't make that leap. we've got to move incrementally, and that's exactly how the progressives took us to where we are today. that's a lot of what we do at cato, how do we move from where we are to where we ought to be with policies as these government policies fail? the third thing we ought to do, i believe, is we these to prepare for a crises. the interesting fact is that big government doesn't work. it's failed, it's failed, it's failed. we will have some kind of financial crisis. my own personal opinion is it may be 10-15 years down the road, not next week, and i think it will be driven mathematically by the demographics of the

retirement of the baby boom generation. and interestingly enough, that creates an opportunity. if you look at radical change either negatively or positively, it's largely around crises. if you saw back to the revolution in u.k., it was around a crisis. so one of -- crises. so one of the things we need to do today is plant the ideas that when that crises come, moves us in the right direction to a freer and more prosperous society. and finally, and this relates to in a way to alexander's work but on a broader plane, we need to really get involved in the education process. at the university level, but i think even at a deeper level. if you look at why we've gotten to where we are, i think it's primarily because the state has controlled the universities, and through that they control the schoolings was they educate -- schools because they educate the teachers. not only are they indoctrinating students with bad ideas, they're not teaching students how to think critically. and we need critical thinkers.

i'm not talking about iq, people who can make decisions because we have logical arguments. here's where i have a lot of hope. interestingly enough, i think we're on the verge of an educational revolution. it's going to be driven by a combination of technology which can radically cut the costs, and i think, equally important, curriculum improvement. curriculum improvement that helps people learn how to make decisions, and when they can think critically and make decisions, they naturally want control of their lives and assume a higher level of personal responsibility. so the creation of a free market in education, for-profit, unregulated schools which will do to the public school systems what ups and fedex did to the post office. i think it will happen -- [applause] and that's how we ultimately win the game. when our ideas are introduced to people that can think, you don't have to be indoctrinated, but can think for themselves and can judge rationally the fact we

have the ideas that lead to a free and prosperous society which is what everybody wants to have. that's the strategy to insure that we do, in fact, roll back up. [applause] >> thank you, mr. allison. mr. o'rourke? >> let's see, which of these mics? well, i'm, i've got to take a slightly more negative view. [laughter] we've got, one of our worst problems with this is we can't vote our way out of it. and the reason we can't, we can't vote our way out of it, is because of what's called public choice economics. everybody wants to get paid. it's just not everybody wants to get paid in the same medium. sensible people like i would imagine most of the people in this room like to get paid in money. nothing wrong with that. money's perfectly neutral. it can be used for good, it can

be used for evil, it can be used for things that are perfectly neutral. but there are people out there that want to be paid in another way. maybe they want fame, and maybe they want saint hood, maybe they want self-esteem. but most dangerous among them is people who want to be paid in power. and if you draw a venn diagram of politicians and people who want to be paid in power -- [laughter] there ain't no part of the politician circle that in any way gets outside that venn diagram. and so it doesn't matter how good a guy we vote for, he's going to be corrupted by the thing he wants to be paid in. so government won't go away that way. as john was saying, we face a huge demographic problem as our population is aging and as 70 some million of the citizens in

the united states are coming into the dependency years, it's going to be very hard to get rid of government. they're not going to vote to cut their own benefits. nobody votes against free popcorn at the movies. it's just, you know, something that we have to face. then we have a very cynical political establishment that has been for a hundred -- more than a hundred years now, since the time of teddy roosevelt, gradually building public dependence upon government. you could even go so far back as to they free public schooling was maybe the first step in this direction. maybe, you know, building public roads was the first step. but at any rate, it's really -- since fdr particularly, it has really accelerated. and, you know, we're getting close to that tipping point

where we're, you know, more than half of americans if we're not there now. john would probably have the figures on this better than i do. we're very close to having 50% of americans with some degree -- and quite a few of them with total dependence -- upon the federal government. it's very hard, you're kind of cutting your own feet off when you move against this. the third problem is that what we are preaching, what we believe in is not an ideology of faith. it is logic. it is reason. and we -- there's no way even the most grandian of libertarians can really ask to make the libertarian leap of

faith, because it's not. pointedly not an article of faith. it's an argument of logic. and oddly enough, absurd notions of faith are easier to sell than reasonable arguments of logic. you know? i will give no examples in order to give no offense, but think of the nuttiest, you know, religious person that you know, the most faithful person in a religion that you consider personally to be nuts, and you'll see that it's easier to convert people to a leap of faith. you know, what we really have at the core of our values, and i think it's something that should resonate with everyone, is the individual. the dignity of the individual, the liberty of the individual and the responsibility of the individual. two of these things are real easy to sell, and then there's

that responsibility kicker. [laughter] you know? my children have been absolute libertarians since the moment they could squawk and move, you know? except for that third point. [laughter] they come up short. alas, i think our hope lies in the crisis that john was talking about. and, i mean, you don't want to wish for a crisis, but i do think a crisis is coming. and it's perverse to say that, but let us hope that it's not a small series of minor crises, let's hope that it is a large crisis, one that really demands immediate attention. and everything else -- well, i don't think i've said anything contrary to what john said, it's just that we have to be in a position to take advantage of that crisis.

i wish to god, the absurd god that i happen to personally believe in, i wish to god that there were, that i could sit here and say that there is another way for libertarianism to come to the fore, but i think we can make more impact, we can make more inroads, we can make more people more aware of our thinking. but in terms of like really making an impact, i fear we need that crisis. be. [applause] >> well, i will piggyback on what p.j. said about the barriers. the first three chapters of the book that i will be finishing in the next month are entitled respectively "a broken constitution," "a lawless legal system," and "a systemicically corrupt political process."

and at some length -- it's my usual upbeat -- laugh but i'm saying, the kinds of incremental change that cato can work on, that aei can work on, that heritage can work on, i think a lot of good things can be done. but if we're talking about cutting into the power of government i think we have to open new fronts. and specifically, i think there is a potential for a major reclamation of liberty that does not require voting, that does not require a voting majority. and it starts from this proposition. if you think of the regulatory state, there are a whole lot, by a whole lot i mean tens of thousands of regulations that are really stupid. we're not talking about the big things that in some, a few cases are actually legitimate fields of regulation. we're talking about all the anytime-picky -- nit-picky ways the government is looking over

our shoulder. here is the reality. if the government is going after a single business person, the goth is fearsome. the government is fearsome. and they not only can, but they do say to individual business people who are hit with a regulatory citation that if you try to fight this, we will put you out of business. they're fearsome when they're up against one, but the fact is, it's the wizard of oz. the government does not have tens of thousands of lawyers and enforcement agents can compel compliance with all these regulations. you pull back that curtain, and you've got a few balding, wispy-haired old guys who are trying to scare people. so the answer, obviously, is massive civil disobedience. [applause] be suppose that you had -- but it does need to be subsidized this the following sense. it's subsidized by the private sector. it can be done. without passing any new laws or

anything else. start to think of government as an insurable hazard in the same way locusts are. or tornadoes or something like that. so let me take the example of dentists. you know, debittal offices don't -- dental offices don't really strike one as being extremely dangerous places, but if you want to comply with osha regulations as a dentist, you've got a 293-page list of regulations. and if they do come by and look at you, each violation can be fined by something like $7,000. on the other hand, the chances that your particular dental office is going to be looked at is minuscule. so you buy insurance. it can be, if you're a private insurance company, you can also have dentists get together and just as they contribute with their dental association to lobbyists in washington, you have a fund which does a couple of things. one is that if you are inspected and if the violations are found, even though you are technically guilty of those violations --

which you will be because we're talking about massive civil disobedience where you simply set up a safe dental office using your best professional judgment and operate as you see fit. what the dental insurance fund does is not only pay your fines, it litigates those allegations to the max. you take all of the things that are wrong with the legal system which contribute to the incredibly and expensive and elaborate, and you use it against the government. the government cannot possibly enforce the laws if you have a determined litigation of every time they try to enforce something. you could also have a private foundation that helps more generally the little guy who is, who is hit by regulatory violations and doing exactly the same thing. there is a long-term impact that i think this can have. the short-term impact is good in and of itself. the short-term impact is that you can free most people from worrying about a whole lot of

regulations. the long-term impact is -- i don't want to get into the legal technicalities of this, but one of the problems has been that the courts have deferred to the regulatory agencies. but there is language in the law that says regulations that are arbitrary and capricious don't have to be of aid. and if you have a sustained legal assault, sooner or later you're going to get courts starting to use that phrase to describe the regulations that currently are plaguing us all. so, and once that, once you -- i'm sounding strangely optimistic at this point. [laughter] once you actually get this process going, it changes the whole way that people look at government. and it's not going to be just libertarians who change the way. right now we see government as a pest. a lot of people see government as a pest. and they feel kind of guilty or

think, well, you know, there's nothing we can do about it. suppose you could get large numbers of people who currently vote for democrats to openly think of the government as a pest and participate? there is the prospect out there for, eventually, a sea change in american politics. and once the book is published, it'll only be a health of months -- matter of months until this happens. [laughter] [applause] >> i i just want to say one thing coming off of that. i just think this is what we count on him for, his brilliance, and he just exhibited it. and i had a perfect example in my own backyard. i live in a very small town, about 350 people. and the good thinking people of the town, of course, they always attend town meeting and always pass something foolish. well, they did, and they did. and they passed a regulation where you had to get town permit if you were cutting above a

certain altitude, it's kind of like save the ridgelines, you know, save new hampshire's pew i sort of -- beauty sort of sweet thing. and i talked to my forester about this, and the forestry association -- i was doing a big timber, i'm a tree farm, and i was doing a pretty good sized timber cut. and 85-90% of that cut was above the altitude limit of the town. now, i went down to a town, and they said, oh, no problem with this, you know, your cut's not going to -- doesn't go up to a ridgeline, and doesn't, it's not for development and so on. but i'd already talked to my forester in the forest association, and there's a new hampshire state law that only the state controls forestry, whether you cut or can't cut, clear or can't clear land is strictly a state matter. there is no local control over it. so i got rid of this pesky regulation in our town without a

word about libertarianism or freedom or liberty or individuals. i went down and talked to the selectman, and i said we're going to get sued, you know? i mean, obviously, i'm not going to sue you, but you know the forest society, the wood -- it was like the wood lot owners association called me and asked me if i wanted to sue. and i didn't, you know? and i said we're going to get sued. sooner or later, you know, somebody, some rich guy is going to want to do a cut up here, and he's going to sue us. we only have 350 people in the town, i mean, you know, it's going to be a big bill for each of us by the time we get done litigating it. never mentioned libertarianism, you know? [laughter] never mentioned freedom, never mentioned the individual. and that regulation was voted out at the next town meeting. [applause] >> thank you. >> now, mr. allison, the strategy -- mr. o'rourke is suggested that we don't have

many options unless we're going to work outside of the political system, that changing minds and educating people may not be the most effective strategy which you suggested actually would be. what would be your response to that? >> i'm not -- [laughter] i'm not sure exactly where the conflict is there. i think the issue is more how optimistic or pessimistic we should be. i think it's very reasonable to be very, very concerned. but on the other hand, i think that the ideas that we have are far better ideas which is why we have a chance at being successful. [applause] and i have a little, and one reason i think it's important for the libertarian movement given the challenge is to be optimistic and objective at the same time is that i believe in something called rational optimism, and that's the idea that in order to be successful, you have to believe you can do

it. if you don't believe you can do it, it almost guarantees you're going to fail. i built a really small farm bank that everybody said should get merged away into a very large, successful institution. and the odds of us being successful were probably one in a million. now, maybe we got lucky, but it wasn't just luck. it was that vision of we could do it, that we would figure out how to do it, that what we were doing was better than what the competitors were doing. and i think that's how we have to approach that as libertarians. are all these things that people listed issues? absolutely. you just saw charles with an idea, and whether that idea works or not is less important than the fact that we can generate ideas that lead to the outcomes we want because our fundamental idea is better. and i do believe, and it's particularly true in young people. people want freedom. and that's what we're really about. and people get that big

government doesn't work. even people that are in some way or another dependent on government aren't necessarily happy about that. and so i tend to be, yes, you know, the odds are against us, but it's not rational to be too pessimistic, and by being too pessimistic we actually set ourselves up to fail. that's kind of my view of the world. [applause] >> so i'd actually like to pose a question based on what mr. allison just said. the reason foundation recently conducted a survey that they released recently that had some interesting results. some of the highlights include that young people today age 18-29 trust neither political party. they're social liberals and fiscal centrists and are supportive of both business and government. they favor free markets but aren't sure whether markets best

drive income availability. they're politically unclaimed. do you think there's any hope for the millennial generation to help stop the growth of big government? >> well, i'll just say very quickly, short answer is, yes, and i think this is where there's a potential for realignment that the republican party just doesn't want to see. and we'll use the example of the murray kids. there are four of them, and they aren't rebelling against their dad. in many ways they are very pro-business, they're pro-free enterprise, they're pro- a lot of the things i am. they also refuse to vote for republicans because of the social issues. and there is, i hate to use, you know, the idea of silent majorities and all that, there is among the millennials in particular, i think, a yearning for the combination of free markets but to get rid of the social conservative positions that have just become litmus

tests for republican candidates. [applause] there are be. >> yeah. >> i, i think my 10-year-old son is mostly interested in the red sox, but i have a 14-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old daughter. particularly the 16-year-old is just exactly like that. she's very aware of market forces. she's very aware about and practical about money. but she hates that whole, you know, anti-gay thing, you know? i mean, and the whole sort of social conservativism doesn't go down well with her. and the thing of it is, is we have an argument that we can use on the republicans with this. it is that these are private matters. your republican party is supposed to be getting government out of people's private lives. let people decide this stuff privately. you don't have to like it.

you don't have to look at it. [applause] you don't have to approve. people are always going to be doing things you don't approve of, you know? ask a apartment. [laughter] ask a parent. [laughter] but, yeah, they've just got to get themselves out of the social conservative business. it just, it doesn't belong in politics. you know? no matter how strong your feelings are about it, it just doesn't belong in politics. it belongs in private life. [applause] >> so as we're about to run out of time, i will take the opportunity to shamelessly plug students for liberty as a representation of the fact that millennials are more libertarian than any generation before. in just six years, we've grown to include over 1300 student organizations in our network on every inhabited continent across the world, training hundreds of students a year and developing hundreds of thousands of resources to distribute to them. and if anyone here is interested in playing a little poker and

supporting the student liberty movement tonight, we're hosting a tournament in celebrity ballroom a starting at 7:00 coming up next. and i'd like to thank all our panelists for this very interesting discussion and hope we continue the discussion afterwards. thank you. [applause] >> okay, panel, thank you so much. you are all excused. jurors, we need you up here, please. if you've been tapped by mark to be one of our jurors, come on up and fill in the 12 seats we have for you. i have yet to see our judge, so kennedy, i hope you are here and heading to the back where we have your gavel and your robe. let's see, who else do we need? oh -- [laughter] it would be very nice if we had dinesh d'souza and doug casey. i know we have everybody else

already in back. so if we could get those -- >> and we conclude our coverage of the annual libertarian conference freedomfest with a debate on american foreign policy with dineshty soaz saw, author of "america," and dan mccarty, editor of the american conservative magazine. >> we are gathered here in the great sovereign state of nevada to decide the fate of american foreign policy n. this hearing we hope to discover whether it is the business of these united states to defend our liberties and our way of life against enemies, real or imagined, in foreign lands and to spill our blood and treasury going after terrorists, dictators and malefactors in the middle east and other countries outside our borders. should our military engage in preemptive strikes against authoritarian leaders who don't share our cultural or religious values, causing america to be hated in many parts of the

world? should we engage in regime change in nation building in iraq and afghanistan like we did in japan after world war dos? does the 9/11 terrorist attacks by islamic fundamentalists justify the passage of the patriot act? and expanding dramatically the powers of surveillance and spying by the cia, the nsa, the fbi -- the f-b-i -- and other agencies of the federal government that may be in violation of our sacred constitution and bill of rights? we hope that we, attendees in this conference and our 12 unbiased -- [laughter] i'm sorry -- citizens here tonight will determine the right and wrong of these critical questions laid before you this beautiful evening. defending american foreign policy, is the dinesh d'souza. mr. d'souza is a -- oh, yes, let's hear it for the man. [applause] let's hear it for the man. >> thank you. [applause] he is a conservative political

commentator, a best-selling author, a highly-acclaimed, wared-winning film maker who worked in the reagan white house in the 1980s. he has been a university president, a hoover fellow and a rom innocent voice in defense of american interests abroad though he may express differences of opinion regarding the foreign policies of the bush and obama administrations. he's been a regular speaker at freedomfest, and has never -- i say, he has never -- lost a debate in his 10-year history here at the fest. [cheers and applause] and although -- yes, very good record so far. >> thank you. >> although last year's mock trial on the republican party ended in a hung jury, a tie between him and steve moore. our jury, perhaps, will be were the informed and more courageous this year than last. laugh you feel that way -- [laughter] , you feel that way, members of the jury? do you mind if i talk to you? does it make you feel uncomfortable? good in i'm not reading you a bedtime story.

this is the law! [laughter] mr. d'souza, will you please stand. as a longstanding advocate and passionate admirer or of america's use abroad, you have been accused of supporting policies that have wasted thousands of lives, cost trillions of dollars with unnecessary wars in iraq and afghanistan, supporting regime change, nation building and a military industrial complex far beyond the requirements of the u.s. constitution and often in violation of our most sacred bill of rights including our right to be left alone. it's in there somewhere, isn't it? how do you plead, mr. d'souza? >> not guilt. >> feels good to say it, doesn't it? >> it does. [laughter] [applause] it does. >> do you want to say it again? >> i agree. [applause] >> all right. here's what we're going to do, we're going to have a five minute opening statement by each a side. first it's going to be by the prosecuting attorney, mr. daniel

mccarthy. whoo! [applause] he's, indeed, the editor of the american conservative. it is a magazine that has been a longstanding critic of american foreign policy and an opponent of american interventionism abroad. his writing has appeared in a wide variety of other publications including the spectator, reason, modern age and so many publications we just don't have time to list them all. outside of journalism, he has worked as an internet communications coordinator of the ron paul 2008 presidential campaign. you guys like ron paul, don't you? what i thought. and senior editor of -- [inaudible] he is a graduate of washington university in st. louis where he studied the classics. don't you love the odyssey? oh, my gosh, wasn't it sad when odysseus walked in, and he was told no one knew who he was, and his dog died? it breaks my heart every time, i love the classics. [laughter] good luck on your first attempt to win a case against

mr. d'souza. after the opening statements, this is what we're going to do. each of our undefeated attorneys -- both of them, undefeated -- they're going to call two witnesses, possibly cross-dressing, and they say what happens at freedomfest stays at freedomfest, and that's 40 weeks later you're getting an epidural. i think you all know what i'm saying. the jury will rule on the case. if the defendants are found guilty, then i will impose a very harsh judgment. it might be naughty spanking friday, who knows? it's going to get a little wild this here. all right, and let me give a few instructions to the jury, if i might. you guys, ladies and gentlemen, will please listen carefully to the opening statement and to the witnesses. use your listening ears. very good. at the end of the hearing, you will be required to determine whether there is sufficient evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that mr. d'souza and his foreign policy experts are guilty of a ruinous and unnecessary foreign policy.

the decision will be based on a majority vote by the jury, and it does not have to be unanimous. is that understood? be -- very good. all right. mr. mccarthy, are you ready? >> i am. >> let us begin with your five minute opening statement. >> well, your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury and ladies and gentlemen of the audience, what we have here is an open and shut murder trial. and as you might expect, whenever there's a crime, there has to be what's called a corpusty lekty, a body of evidence that proves something terrible has happened otherwise you can't prosecute people just because you imagine something bad has happened. the proof of the crime here, the proof of the murder is something we have all experienced ourselves, something we have seen in the news, something that we all know in our personal lives to be taking place right now. and that is the erosion of the rule of law, it is the assault on our liberties by an overreaching executive power. it is the destruction of our prosperity which has come about in large part because of the terrible spending of the past

decade on foreign policy, on a very aggressive foreign policy. and, in fact, this aggressive foreign policy has fed into a disastrous performance for conservative candidates in political contests. and this in turn has brought about the obama administration which, of course, has personified and brought into focus so many of these terrible dangers. so this is a murder trial, and we might ask who is the suspect? is it dinesh d'souza? our foreign policy in general? james madison, in fact, 200 years ago they had a lineup, and james madison pointed to the suspect. james madison said if all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprised and develops the germ of every other. war is the parent of armies. from these proceed debts and taxes, and armies ask debts and taxes -- and debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the

dominion of the few. so that is the suspect, the continual warfare that that has characterized our foreign policy over the past decade and which i believe the defense's side will be attempting to support. we have seen there is, in fact, a murder weapon. the murder weapon for our liberties has been the patriot act and other legislation that has expanded executive power. it has been the practice of what's called rendition, what has been called by various euphemisms but is, in fact, torture. it has been any number of policies which have violated magna carta and the principles of anglo-saxon law going back centuries such as indefinite detention without trial. that is the murder weapon that has attacked our liberties. our prosperity has been slaughtered by a different murder weapon, and that is by the unchecked spending that has characterized these wars. a study from brown university last year said that the iraq war alone has cost $1.7 trillion, and, in fact, that's not counting the additional outlays necessary to care for our veterans who have come home

broken in body and mind in too many instances. so there's a murder weapon, we know that -- we know who our suspect is, and the final question becomes do we have mens rea, this latin term which means criminal intelligent. can we prove that this was not an accident, this was not what the militarists call collateral damage but, in fact, something they could have predicted, that they knew would cause the death of our liberty and our prosperity. i believe we can prove that and will tonight with our witnesses. you will hear from the defense probably that any number of u.s. foreign policies have been beneficial, certainly u.s. intervention in world war ii is something that everyone or almost everyone will support. you will hear about ronald reagan, another great president, to have used foreign policy in ways that promoted liberty. but notice in both of these cases you did not have the kind of nation building that has characterized the foreign policy that the defense team will have to be supporting tonight. in fact, ronald reagan won the cold war without firing a shot

or with nary firing a shot. he was able to inspire people through trade and moral example, and that's what brought down the berlin wall and finally brought down the soviet union. as for world war ii, that was an outcome of the first world war which was a totally unnecessary intervention, very similar, in fact, to the interventions we've just seen over the past decade. so that is the prosecution case, and we will now proceed. [applause] >> very good. thank you, mr. mccarthy. and just so you know, sometimes right before i have criminal intent, i have pre-mens rea syndrome. [laughter] fortunately, i'm not suffering from that tonight or you'd all be hosed. no, he didn't, right? wherewere you listening to thatd like, what? all right. thank you very much, mr. mccarthy. now we're going to hear from mr. dinesh d'souza, the defending attorney in this case. ..

but no one really cares. [laughter] and america used to be like that