>> host: let's talk about a couple of definitions right of the top. what would you say is a liberal and what would you say is a conservative? >> guest: just to be clear my book isn't a liberal versus conservative book that when i use those terms liberal is somebody was left of center and a conservative is someone who is right of center and every conservatives does not believe the same thing in every liberal does not believe the same things that they will share basic ideas about the role of government and liberals tend to see the role of government as a positive force for good and republican seat is more of a problem. >> host: your book talks about what you call that a liberal left and i will read it. part of one paragraph he said with no sense of irony or shame feet to liberal left will engage in attacks and in an effort to delegitimize people

who dissent from the arctic decided worldview. that seems to be kind of the basic theme behind the book. if you can elaborate on that a little bit? >> guest: i call them the illiberal left to distinguish them come, and i consider myself a liberal. i think most liberals are very principled and stew them still value the idea of free speech and dissent and debate and aren't seeking to silence people and the illiberal left and i probably share a lot if not most of their policy goals and policy positions when it comes to tap tics and tolerance for different ideas. that's where we part ways. what they do is very illiberal in the sense that they try to shut down debate and try to silence people. that is the point of the book that they use different tactics

to silence people. one of them is what you just talked about which is while at the same time they will be complaining about misogyny and calling people who they disagree with misogynist it's not that they care for the unborn but at the same time they will launch a misogynist attack against a conservative woman because they want to delegitimize her. they don't want her to be seen as someone who should be listened to in the public square. >> host: when did this realization as you describe yourself as a lifelong liberal when did this realization of what you do is a separation between the true traditional left in the illiberal left, but in your mind or was it a gradual thing? >> guest: i think it was gradual and then all of a sudden sudden. it was one of those things that was happening and then something happened in the last couple of years where he think a lot of people have started to notice

that there is this level of intolerance that is pretty unprecedented and i started to notice it. the first time that i noticed it actually i would have been able to put it in the paradigm that i have been now with the silencing idea was this so called war on "fox news" and i have a whole chapter in the book. the obama administration came out pretty quick after president obama was elected and announced that "fox news" was not a legitimate news organization. you had white house chief of staff and the communications person the white house and all the various really senior white house administration officials going on new shows and telling reporters and anchors at "fox news" was the not legitimate. that really struck me as a very unusual thing to be happening for white house to be doing for the government to be doing to be deciding what is a legitimate

news outlet and not a legitimate news outlet. i think was obvious if george bush had done this it would have been seen as a -- and when obama did it there were people in the media to push back against it but for the most part they got away with it. >> it's interesting to hear you describe the silencing of what you kept saying in the last couple of years because as a journalist who worked for cbsi used almost the same language in trying to describe to colleagues in rensin emily's, what i saw was a trend away from wanting both sides in many sides of the story to be discussed which is understandable to this increasing idea that certain story should be censored or silenced entirely. you talk about it in the beginning of the book. i think you start within anecdote very telling about smith college. can you sum up sites that and say what explains the bigger picture? >> guest: it's a very telling story.

windy kamman or who is a liberal feminist free-speech advocate was making a case of the smith alumni event. they were having a panel i think it was called a ideological chamber on how to combat academia and she was tackling the idea of trying to ban certain books from colleges that use words that are offensive so mark twain using the n word and she was trying to make the point that in this context of great literature but this is something we should be able to tolerate. it's not the same thing as using as a racial epitaph against another person and in doing so she said to the audience we say the n word but would he think that when you heard the n word and they say the full word and she said the full word and she said we are all okay. if is that something i would have done? i don't think so but i understand what she was doing. she was trying to make a point

there that was about having an ability to hear things that are are upsetting it is actually important as part of education to do that. that was reported by the student newspaper is being racialized violence and people were shocked that the smith alumni had used racist comments and completely cast what she had said. i'm not going to say they misinterpreted it. they know what she said and they turned it into an act of violence and created this firestorm and smeared somebody is probably aligned with them on most issues and compared her to basically having committed a hate crime. these are the kinds of stories that are throughout my book. it's easy to roll your eyes and go crazy students but we have to take these seriously. it's absolutely stifling free speech and silencing people if

they are not going to be able to make a clear argument without having their reputation completely destroyed. >> host: you introduce me to something on your book talking about the smith incident. when the campus paper ran a story order a transcript it was a headline backlash with the use of racial slur and at the top that says trigger content warnings, racism, racial slurs anti-semitic language islamaphobia could language anti-immigration references and references to anti-semitic violence all they say were contained in this transcript. tell people who don't know about at what these trigger content warnings on campus are all about. >> this is a move to basically warn warned students that they are going to encounter something that could possibly trigger them and triggering is a word associated with people who have

ptsd so somebody who might say we are at war and they come back and they hear aloud noise and it triggers their ptsd. they are literally comparing encountering a reference to something in literature or a conversation to that. they are being so triggered by it and they have been demanding that they are put on the syllabus to say that students can opt out of going to certain classes. they should be able -- the professor shouldn't hold that against them and they shouldn't be required to read things that trigger them related to colonialism or sexism or suicide and they believe they shouldn't have to encounter that. one of the worst examples of this, talk about a professor at yale who teaches criminal law about how when she teaches rape law in that section of the course that the women's groups

have told the students that they basically have a right to demand trigger warnings before and not attend class and it's gotten so bad that she says she is heard from criminal law professors across the country have decided to stop teaching rape law because it has become so controversial and of course it is that harm? harms women who are raped. >> host: what happens to the little darlings when they graduate from college and life doesn't come with trigger warnings? >> guest: i think we are going to find out. honestly i think they have got to the point where they believe that they shouldn't have to hear things or confront things that upset them and this is a one-way street. this is not the way applied to conserve his students and it doesn't apply to a pro-life student who would be perhaps triggered by seeing a pro-choice demonstration on not saying they should but it's a one-way street. the professor the university of

california is triggered by a pro-life demonstration but i would like to see how that would work out if it was a pro-life professor who is triggered by a student at bigger plans differently. >> host: we might discuss that further in the moment i wonder few cents and i didn't get to the whole book before this was scheduled, only about half of the sum may be adjusted but do you sense this is an organized effort, for example the trigger warnings on campus because they are spreading from campus to campus? or is there some money effort or national advocacy forces behind this going campus to campus or to the professors are making this happen? do you know? >> i haven't seen anything like that. i don't think it's orchestrated from somebody up above orchestrating it that there is a

systematic way that it's done in every situation. the systematic way the silencing is done is they delegitimize the people who are expressing ideas that they don't like and delegitimizing certain ideas that are not worthy of debate or debate is over and certain things. they demonize people and dehumanize them and that is consistent across-the-board in every instance. that is how it goes down. it is never about the idea. it's never a debate about an idea. it's never treated as there could potentially be two sides to come together and debate it. it is treated as an illegitimate and we will silence anybody who tries to talk about it. >> host: some people listening right now are probably at the point where they are probably saying what makes you not a conservative if you describe yourself as a liberal but maybe

the way you are speaking about criticism against the liberal practices are what you see is illiberal practices makes you sound like conservative but you still identify with liberalism. >> guest: people do ask my dad and i don't really understand the question because to me being a liberal is about my ideological or political views. if you go down the line and if you were to ask me where i fall on him ration or raising taxes on the rich or opposing the iraq war and those issues, i supported obamacare i'm not going to change my position on those things because there are people like this on the left that are behaving this way. it's not ideological what they are doing. it's tactical. not that they believe something radically different than i do about the policies that the government should be adopting. and i support same-sex marriage. i'm on their side on that so it's not about that. it's about the fact that i don't believe i have a right to

silence people and delegitimize them for having different views. i think we live in a culture or we used to live in a culture where we were able to disagree with people and debate things and have dissent and allow for this very rich diversity in our country and it frightens me frankly that i feel we are headed towards a place where we are no longer debating things. >> host: made the ideas born of the things of which you speech and -- speak up in the book. if you criticize the liberals you can't yourself a liberal and thus we talk about in the book. >> guest: absolutely. >> host: what has been the response it gotten so far? i notes still early but are you surprised and i don't know what the response is so tell us what the response of the book has been in were you prepared for a? >> obviously writing a book like

this you see what's happening. i expected to blowback and unexpected characters estimations and i've seen them do it to you in fact. you do expect it that i still think what happens to you for some reason it still surprises me especially since one of the attacks i have gotten is that i'm actually a homophobe and i don't support same-sex marriage or because i'm defending people like i talk in the book about someone who was forced out of his job as ceo because he had been giving money to the anti-same-sex marriage initiative and the fact that i defend his right to make that private donation to something i don't support. i don't support proposition 8 at the fact that i do that makes me a homophobe. it's so beyond the pale that i guess i'm still surprised by it even though like i said i've wrote a book about it and another thing that's really

important to point out is that this is not a book about conservatives being victimized. it's about all kinds of people being victimized. you don't have to be a conservative to be silenced. what do you have to be a someone who is questioning one of the issues are criticizing somebody if they don't want to be criticized. they don't care if you are a liberal or a moderate democrat. it makes no difference to them. what makes the difference is you are saying something that they don't want said and you don't want debate about it. >> host: in that context people do like the size of switch because a long time ago that suppression of thought was associated with conservatives or republicans and now many people associate that instead with liberals and i don't think that's a partisan thing. i think the minds of people have switched inexplicably and you talk about mccarthyism in

essence, think he said the mccarthyite impulses common full circle. what do you mean by that? >> guest: yeah and i talk a lot in the book about the rich history of liberalism and free speech in this country and one thing people say to me is the main classical liberalism and i say no it is classical liberalism but it is american liberalism and art understanding of free speech in this country comes indisputably directly from the very hard work of liberals and leftists at the university of california, at her cle the free speech movement the liberal supreme court justices who are now being cited by conservative supreme court justices who really helped shape our perception of free speech, i think eight -- the aclu did important work opposed by conservatives. they were attacked to conservatives when they were defending nazis being able to

walk through a neighborhood of holocaust survivors and then of course i do talk about joe mccarthy which frankly a lot of it the attacks that i am getting right now are my knee of joe mccarthy. it's guilt by association the fact that i am speaking to conservative outlets and the fact that i have excerpts that were run and conservative outlets is somehow proof of something. they are not engaging me on the issue. it's more trying to say -- i've been accused of being paid by the heritage foundation. i have never taken a dime from the heritage foundation but even if i had i'm not sure that has anything to do with anything. these tactics they use to try to silence any kind of debate that they don't want to hear. >> host: what is your affiliation with "fox news"? do you a contributor? >> guest: i'm a contributor and i've been a country reader at fox for 10 years. >> host: do you feel that that

made you an outlier in some respects even though you are providing a think at this time liberal counterpoint to things that were using in some respects as a traitor by the liberal left? >> guest: of course and the book is not about me. there were a couple of places where i do count some of the things that happened these misogynist attacks by -- when he was at the height of his power and as nbc's working at "fox news" and i think for people who watch "fox news" it seems very strange because it's quite clear that my views are liberal and isn't the idea that i'm not supposed to be there because i have a different view? its kind of nonsensical but it fits very much in the silencing idea which is we don't need to engage with people. we need to delegitimize them so we need to shun them. this is a word that they used.

we need to shun them and make them not accessible to the rest of society and i disagree with that. i think we should be debating topics in talking to people who disagree with us. >> host: you mentioned a moment ago they attacked by a professor at the university of california upon i think a 16-year-old who is carrying a pro-life sign that the professor found offensive. can you recount that incident and what that tells us about the trends today? >> yeah. this was a demonstration at the university of california santa barbara. the students didn't go to that school. they went to a nearby school and the 16-year-old was his sister of one of the college students that was there. they had a big sign of a bloody fetus. it was quite graphic and they said they have that sign is a way to try to start conversations when they want to

have conversations with people. the professor came over and started reading them. i interviewed the girl that was attacked and another one of the demonstrators then it's all in the book. it's very alarming the story that they tell of being bullied by this professor who ultimately stole the sign from them and when the 16-year-old went after her to get the sign back she attacked her and they ended up calling the police. the professor was arrested and in the police report she portrayed herself as a victim. the police officer keeps saying to her i don't understand. what do you think they did that would justify you attacking them and she said i was harmed by them and setting it up as though she is unsafe because they're something that she didn't want to see that she was triggered by seeing this and she was setting a good example for the students that were with her and she has

never been publicly censored. she has in fact been defended. i quote a lot of professors who came to her defense and she still works there. >> host: to hear you description that people stood up for her and said she was actually a wonderful professor and a varied from -- kind person some of her actions had been captured on video things that they otherwise in this incident and you said there was no doubt she functioned well as well as she is surrounded by like-minded like-minded -- like-minded people that didn't disagree with her worldview. >> guest: if you look at the story and you didn't read the whole book in you solve the examples you would save this woman is unstable but i don't think this is right. this is a person who is highly functioning and a very successful professor in the

people i quote defending her are successful professor says well. the problem is they now are construing disagreement is violence in this happened recently. it happened after my book rent to print christina hoff sommers at aei went to speak at oberlin in georgetown in april. she was treated almost like a terrorist for coming to talk about her views on feminism that are different than the views of the campus feminists and the fact that she questioned campus rape statistics issue is called a rape denier. save space but you can go to if you can't handle the fact that she is talking about a sexual assault and at oberlin they had an open letter saying we can't stop this speech but let's stand together against this violence. again this idea that somebody coming in and giving a lecture

to a republican group who has invited her somehow violence against people who disagree with her. this mentality is extremely pervasive. >> host: you seem like a very independent-minded person and i don't know if you grew up that way. can you give us a thumbnail sketch to the extent you're comfortable into your up ringing and a little bit of your personalized? >> guest: i was raised in fairbanks alaska and my parents were professors at the university of alaska both archaeological -- both archaeologists. i ended up going away to college and when i was living out of college in washington d.c. i started volunteering for bill clinton. this was before -- he wasn't supposed to win the election he was going to lose to paul

tsongas. i really liked him and the next thing you know i won and i got an appointment in the white house and that was my life for a long time. my friends were all democrats and was very much in the liberal bubble. as i got older i watched contributor to "fox news" and that put me in contact with conservatives and i became a christian later in life and that put me in contact with a lot of evangelicals. i had contact with a lot of people who i knew nothing about it was hard to sustain a lot of the prejudices that i had. it was hard for me to say what i've believed which was conservatives are anti-intellectual or all these other things. so i've had this development and i still have the same political beliefs that i have but i have learned a lot about other people who think differently than i do.

c you describe the moment someone a book we talk about having a realization of arguments you have made in the past that you suddenly discovered to your own disbelief was maybe not logical or at lease rooted in the liberal that you wanted to be. can you describe back? >> guest: after he started making friends with people who were evangelicals and a lot of them were pro-life and i have these conversations. i just remembered stopping and thinking and i thought they don't seem like they hate me. they c said to really care about this issue and there were moments of thinking this is not quite what i've been told about these people and in the same way i recount embarrassingly and ashamed of the fact that i had a debate with somebody who is a

conservative when harriet miers was chosen by george bush and i said, they were saying she was a woman and i said she doesn't really count as a woman because she's a conservative and an evangelical. that's an argument of the liberal left and threw the book. i'm familiar with where they're coming from. if you don't have relationships with people it's very easy to stereotype them it is very easy to -- and i am pretty sure that the liberal idea. i think it's an argument for diversity. >> host: you having as you say become a christian later in life what is evangelical versus non-evangelical christian? >> i call myself an orthodox christian because i think the evangelical becomes a loaded term. i think it means a right-wing question -- christian and i don't consider myself a right wing christian.

orthodox christian is somebody who i think the bible is true. it's the guiding force in my life. god is the guiding force of my life and it's not just that i decide what i want and study things theologically and understand from a theological perspective and so the church i go to right now is nondenominational but it's an orthodox christian church. >> host: that's a way to have a brief discussion and you talk about in the book what you see and i think what i see and what any neutral viewpoint with cs disparate treatment by the media and critics and pundits and so on often when it comes to christians versus members of other religions or no religion. >> guest: i have a lot of examples in the book of stories about our new christians have been targeted and one of the

worst stories is i interview a woman named tish warren. she was the head of something called inner varsity christian fellowship. this is a christian fellowship group that dannatt on campus for about 10 years and the campus administrators basically said they couldn't be a campus group because they were not allowed to have full doctrinal beliefs or their leaders. that's a difficult thing when your christian group especially because they run bible studies. i had a long interview with her for the book and she said she was told by the administrators that she couldn't require her bible study teachers to believe in the trinity so how can you how can you have a bible study teacher that doesn't believe what you believe the bible says? for her it was a hard experience because she's a democrat. she's progressive than g.i.s felt like she kind of fit in but

she's an orthodox christian. what she discovered was there was this absolute intolerance towards christians and she made a good point which is they can do this if they want to do it but they need to be honest about who they are and they need to be the liberty university of the left and what she means by that is you go to a liberty university they give you a list of things you have to believe to be there and you sign onto that. that is not what vanderbilt does and that is not what these other campuses do. they say we are a bostian of free thought. we believe in diversity and she saying just be honest. don't tell people. put in a brochure. don't tell people you are welcome here because it's not true. >> host: i don't think you will see a campus there requires for example a muslim student group to accept among its

leadership a christian. i think it's often a one-way street. >> guest: exactly or what happens if you are a group and one of your leaders goes home for the summer and becomes a born-again christian and comes back and says i know longer believe i think homosexuality is a sin that i still want to be in the organization. i would defend the grouping leadership. but what the university will say is this is an all comers policy. we'll i think we all know that's ridiculous because there's no way on earth anyone would defend what i just said that somebody could be on an ultimate leadership role. ..

about making things right and making things fair. i think many of the supreme court justices would be horrified by the things that are sad said today. and particularly by this happening and what is being taught in our law schools which i interviewed floyd abrams who is an iconic person and a scholar lawyer and liberal who

talks about the concept of the first amendment as being able to work against the government has now been viewed as a legal policy implemented to implementing progressive policy. so it is a radical transformation of the view and so the people that are coming up for law school that's what they are being taught now. they are no longer being taught about the idea of the free speech and that you have to protect into that instead it's supposed to be used to protect marginalized groups. >> host: the tactics that you describe involving being censored from certain types of thoughts and opinions. why did you think that is so often expressed in the past couple of years in a country

like america, how can it work? >> people for the most part won't be left alone. they want to work and raise their kids and spend time with their families and live a peaceful life. they are not interesting interested in being part of a controversy and in particular they are not interested in having their reputation smeared and possibly losing their job. and so i interviewed so many people and they are afraid to say what they believe because of what is happening to other people. and you can't -- one thing some people have been saying to me who don't like the book is free speech is about the first amendment and if you are not infringing on somebody's first amendment right you are not harming free speech and this is completely wrong and i don't even know why people think the sand where they got this idea. it's true that only the

government can infringe on your first amendment rights although i have to say throughout the book i do talk about the government infringing like the universities who are engaging in the unconstitutional sort of speech policing, and if it is a big concern. but we have to have -- we always have to air on the side of letting people say what they think because if they don't, then we are never going to have knowledge. and i interviewed or i quoted stephen pinckard, he's a harvard psychologist who talks at length about the free-speech supporter and he is alarmed about what is happening on the campus. he uses the word authoritarian for what is happening on the campus and he talks about to have knowledge and conjecture and reputation that is completely predicated on free speech. by free speech about not free-speech about the government but that people can say what

they think, no matter how crazy it is how offensive it is, how wrong it may be and we go back and forth and that's how we get knowledge if you take that out of the equation, we have no knowledge. if what we have is a bunch of propaganda and groupthink. if anybody says the debate is over, the debate is not over and people have to be able to persuade and convince people. and if they can't handle they can come up with with his name-calling i would suggest they probably don't have a very good argument. >> that is the price for me if someone has to tell you the debate is over that means you are debating it and they are trying to stop you before it's over. perhaps people are treated as harsh in the context of the book as african-american conservative minority conservatives and those who are in some terms expected to be on the other side and you described many instances and i will just say this isn't necessarily a harsh treatment at

the republican presidential field so far when i was seeing pictures on the screen of who have declared it was looking up to hispanics were the minority candidates women and i think if the tables were turned into that were a democratic feel and the republican feel was all white males, we would be talking about that in the sense of the democratic side i haven't really heard anybody talking about the republican field being so diverse. and part of that is i think that many view that diverse field is into isn't that favors because hispanics don't really count because he's conservative. >> i give a lot of examples in my book about how they are -- women conservatives come african-american conservatives laughing, they are all treated routinely as not being any of

those things. they are not a real woman real latino, real african-american or they are self hating, they are traitors. michael steele tells stories of how he had oreos thrown at him by liberals, black on the outside, white on the inside. and to also send a message of the reason this is a silencing technique is because if you are in african-american conservative and you are watching this you are paying attention. you want to be the person ostracized that way? a lot of people don't. it's very effective when you treat people that way and of course they are always talking about how horrible it is to be racist. and then on the other hand always calling people who disagree with them.

but then they have no problem turning around and doing this all in the name of a don't know justice or something. >> host: you talk about in the book an interesting case group most americans probably have never heard of and have no -- they don't cross paths with it at all and get it has a certain amount of influence among people to give the impression that i think it has more influence. it's called media matters. it's a left-wing etiologic or tonight is that they put out a lot of propaganda sometimes as i think you've discovered us while .-full-stop her mission command you say in the book i first launched, you were supportive and found some of the research hopeful but over time it became a vicious left-wing propaganda machine masquerading as a media operation, and i think it's pretty clear what they do and

what their purpose is. it is sometimes treated them as you pointed out as if it is some sort of a legitimate watchdog or news organization without even mentioning this tight type and hillary clinton and its advocacy but it's done for obama and certain very specific partisan groups. >> is and it's definitely -- i quote from the internal memo that he wrote about where they talk about how they are obsessed with fox news and that's where the original idea came from as far as i can tell. that's how they were actually considering plans of gathering information on fox news employees they talked about how perhaps they should start shaming democrats who go on fox news putting their names on the

internet, and what's interesting about this is on the one hand, they say fox news is too conservative and it's not legitimate and on the other hand if a democrat goes on we will shame them so what is it. do you want more democrats on their backs no, of course not because the whole point is they want to delegitimize anybody they can't control where that isn't going to be intimidated by a fan and cover things the way they want it covered. and as you know, they don't only harass fox news. they harass many reporters and it would be edge of honor if you are one of the reporters that recently finds themselves in the crosshairs you can be pretty sure that you are doing a good job because their main problem is that somebody is actually being balanced and perhaps reporting on republicans and democrats is to just criticizing republicans. >> apparently they consider you more of a threat if you are getting something that hurts

their agenda into the more credible you are you threatened them so yes i agree the lover, the closer to an important story i call it one of the anecdotes in the book the belmar incident. he has had a couple of run-ins. he is a very noted comedian. he has a program on hbo, and you described him as a good example of someone who is extremely far left and devoted to many liberal causes and makes the case in point out the causes very well and yet has crossed paths on certain key issues with his side and suffered or felt the wrath of the liberal left as you call it. >> he is a good example of how important this group is a

because he is a liberal icon and someone who very is just no way they can claim that he is in advocate for their worldview and when he got into the debate was ben affleck about islam and specifically what belmar was talking about is that he was criticizing the countries for what he thought was liberal behavior. so it was a liberal argument in for this team is called a racist and a bigot and a whole liberal left machine came against him and then he was -- there was an attempt to disinvite him to come to berkeley to that birthplace of the free speech movement and they wanted to in and invite him because he was and is on the front end of the students had a vote that the administration said we believe in free speech and we are going to have him

come and speaks of it as an example of how it doesn't matter how good of a liberals you are if you cross on something. i have another example of a reporter that started a school reform organization and was absolutely classic textbook attack not picking on her ideas, but going after her and treating the teachers unions making tax against her that she was just a pretty face and she didn't know if she was talking about and they claimed she was a closet republican even though she's an independent and everything is public she has given, she is voted in republican praising the democratic based on the issue in school reform saying she was a purpose for her husband and again she isn't a person that is conservative and she has a

bunch of democrats working for her. people in the obama administration are working for her. but basically they try to silence the person that is making the argument that they don't want to have in the public domain area to >> you also talk about media love who is a congresswoman haitian-american and so she has the pleasure of being a black woman but a republican answer for that she has suffered you talk about she was per trade in the huffington post as window dressing and a useful idiot for playing into the pattern of using blacks to further white interests as if she couldn't possibly disturbing her own feelings. you said the following come august 2012 appearance at the republican national convention by a page vandalized with racist and sexist slurs. by the very people that i think of spent decades reviling that

sort of behavior if they felt that they have been victim to it rightfully so and they are keeping up on it upon her for being on the wrong side of politically. and to them i guess the ends justify the means. they don't want her to be representing views they don't like and so they have to silence her and the way they think they can is to make attacks against her and to make her seem to be in a legitimate person and as i said before it sends a clear message to people who are watching this who do not meet that same fate. and with good reason. people just want to be left alone, live their lives peacefully and be able to have open debates without fear of having their lives ruined.

>> can you tell us about the story come everybody is familiar probably with the fact president in an interview had said that he supported traditional family and apparently not supporting marriage into so they launched a campaign against the restaurant and i don't think you are suggesting that you are suggesting people don't have a right not to patronize that restaurant if they disagree with the ownership but to point out the restaurant itself is doing nothing other than welcoming people of all kinds of people to matter who they are and what he we believe that she tells the story about is if chick-fil-a but the ceo or the accountant spinnaker there was a man that was going through the drive-through and he was recording himself as he goes through and he was just getting

himself irked up when he gets there and he's a going have to protest. look at all these people in line to get their hateful chicken sandwich in all this stuff and then he gets up to the drive-through and he proceeds to be berate the staff workers by talking the work. how can you sleep at night and just treats her horribly. she says i'm here to serve you and he traced to engage her on the topic and she says they don't want to discuss my personal views, please stop recording. and he ends up posting this video online very probably by going and harassing somebody that works at a fast food restaurant because he's upset about the position that the owner of the restaurant holds.

to me it was classic in the sense that he thinks he's tolerant and that she is intolerant and rather than being able to say that we have a disagreement on a view, like i said i support same-sex marriage but this isn't how you treat people. and also, in writing the book i used to say boycott. if you don't like something coming up i've gotten to the point now i think that they are getting out of control and its people can do it but everybody just needs to take a step back. i grew up in a world i don't know where you grew up that we don't care what the person making our coffee belief. you know what i mean. what i went into a store to buy something, i wasn't demanding that the person i buy things from beneath all the same things i believe. and something is wrong that we

now are supposed to have this expectation that i'm not going to go into a restaurant or i am not going to go into any place unless this person is going to line up with all of my ideas. it's just divisive and it doesn't foster a country where we can talk about things that persuade people. i debate people all the time about same-sex marriage. i'm still friends with them if they don't agree with me. i don't thought this idea that have this idea that you have to have people in lockstep with you or you won't associate with them. >> what you describe is of course irritating, aggravating, but i think you also make the argument that it can be word is a dangerous trend. can you explain or verbalize the ucs dangers of this in the big picture where things could have if the trend continues? >> i think it is very dangerous because what i was saying

earlier is that you can't have any kind of knowledge in a society where people are afraid to say what they think and i think that the authoritarian aspect is very scary to me especially when i hear people talking like in the wake of the pamela dollar incident coming out and saying maybe there is some speech and we shouldn't allow this kind of speech and having just written a book where i watched the last call basically disagreement hate speech, that's frightening to me because who decides what is hate speech? and it can turn into something where it starts out as being you can't do something that offends muslim but then according to the professor at the university of california santa barbara it's just sort of goes from there and then you get to the point it's hate speech. certainly there's a lot of people that think when you criticize barack obama even if

you're not saying anything racial that you are racist and that's hate speech and his attorney we are moving into a place i consider very dangerous and i don't think it's the right way to be thinking about things. we should always err on the side of free speech and be willing to target things that are endemic us us a little on comfortable. i don't like what pamela taylor did. i don't support that but i do support her right to do it and i do believe in that situation if she was the victim and she didn't cause people to come and shoot at her and so i think that the fact that i see so many people come and on the right and left saying that basically it was her fault and she provoked it is alarming to me. >> as a journalist i come from a certain viewpoint about free press and free speech but i'm just not sure how precious free speech is especially in this country it is being taught and passed along the way that it could be whether it's by parents or schools or colleges.

and that's where the problem is today they are told it's not explained to them that which history when people start of this country started this country and the foundations and defend you can see why they would think that this country is about making everybody think the right way versus free speech. it's not your job obviously to come up with the answer that i would be arrested by didn't ask you if you see some solutions or anything people can and should be doing to address these issues >> a lot of people would say that's a one-off case. it is a systematic campaign to silence people. i am not saying it is a conspiracy but i'm saying it is throughout our society particularly in the media

there's a lot of self-censorship that goes on because people are too afraid of what's going on into the recognition that they are going to get and that if i wanted to put it in one place to establish establish there's a problem that's the first step is to establish that this is happening and that i think people have to push back against it. on the university campus is it's actually not that difficult. there's a reason they do not advertise themselves as being a authoritarian groupthink it's because of the supports that. that's the only way to really

stem this tide. >> how long did it take you to write the book approximately? guest co. i wrote it in about four months. it was me locked in a room. i wanted to write it to get it off because i thought it was an important topic and i thought that it was timely so i felt like i had to move quickly and get it out so this is something that we could start engaging in the culture to talk about because i just don't think people really realize what is going on and i think people will be surprised and shocked and probably upset by what they read. >> host: how did you get the idea from it did you know that it would make great fodder for the buck or did somebody approach you with the idea? >> guest: i got the idea for my columns i write a column for usa today and the dalia beast and i started writing regularly about this topic and i realized

i could write about this every single week so i started looking into it and talking to different people and i started to realize that there was something going on here and they say you should write about something that are passionate about and i -- for a long time people have said you should read a book and i said there's nothing i feel really passionate about i would want to walk my self into a room for four months and this was it because i care so much about free speech and about debate and being able to talk about ideas and so to me this was something that was personal and that i thought was important so that's pretty much how i landed on it. >> host: thank you so much. i enjoyed talking with you. >> you are watching the book tv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend.

>> this is a fundamental issue in terms of how you view the chances to prevail in this struggle and the genesis is in the 70s they were estimating that the soviets were spending about 6% of the gdp on the sense and they affair at the staff at the time and schlessinger is calling them over and says it is 6% of the ged. and they are producing a couple hundred tanks a year and we are producing a few hundred.

so they are working on saturdays this can't be right so they start to work with the problem of how much are they spending on defense and they are spending a lot more than the cia thinks they are. the economy economy isn't that efficient. they can't produce things as they can and so on and so forth and then he starts going up how big is their economy? is that half the size of our economy and he starts talking to the economics and says you've

got all these issues in terms of productivity production and so they say it's not 6% to 12%. it's more like 25 or 30%. so they are spending a lot more. there is one who would go for in the soviet union but the fundamental point was the cia was right and they were spending 6% and out of producing at the way they were timeless on their site over the longer they would just keep widening the gap.

if we played smart we could when i fundamental strategic question and marshall got it right and the cia got it wrong. >> you can watch this and others on linux booktv.org. >> janice is next on booktv. she recounts the stories of five women tend to the united states by the japanese government in 1871 to learn learn and export western culture. she reports three of the five remained in the u.s. for ten years and returned to japan in bold and reform women's education. it's next on booktv.

>> hi everyone. thanks for waiting. welcome to the bookstore and thanks for coming tonight. we are pleased to have with us to present &-and-sign the buck doctors of the samurai a dream from east to west and back. also here tonight we will be having a conversation about the book. before we get started i just wanted to tell you a little bit about the two ladies. she graduated in the yale where for three weeks she worked as an editor for the english link which newspapers and became professional in japanese. after moving back to new york she earned a a masters degree master's degree in east asian studies at columbia with a focus on 19th century japanese history. she has worked as an editor writer and reviewer for the newspapers such as the los angeles times, "the chicago tribune" and newsday. the authors of the samurai is her first and has been described