real democracy and doing it really cheapy. >> after words airs on booktv every saturday at 10 p.m. eastern and on sunday's at 9 p.m. eastern. >> it is 12:00 here on booktv and once a month we spend three hours with our guest. today we had forbes on a train here but his train derailed in boston. he is joining us live on the phone. mr. forbes, thank you for being with us. >> good to be with you. >> what a morning you had. explain what happened? >> outside of philadelphia, between philadelphia and

wilmington, the train was moving along and made a sudden jerk like it was going to make an abrupt stop. this isn't the slowdown during the a curve. it came to a complete stop, there was smoke, smelt like the brakes were smoldering so we sat there wondering what had happened. the electricity was knocked out so there was no pa system. so the rumors started to fly but after about 25 minutes one of the crew came back and started to explain what happened. the first two cars were hit badly but we were lucky to be in the next to last car of the

train so we felt the impact obviously but didn't get to smashup that the first two cars had. they hit, it was explained, a device on the track. they were doing maintenance and of course an investigation will be to be looked into why that was on the tracks while the train was coming. you are taught at an early age in science that when an object like a train is moving 80 miles per hour it takes a long time to come to a halt. >> host: this is around the identify where another amtrak train derailment took place. outside of philadelphia.

>> guest: it was and it leaves the question was this a communication problem? they will try to get to the bottom of the thing. fortunately there are no injuries in our car. but not knowing what happens. in an airplane, some captain comes on saying something happened, don't worry, we will be all right. you don't come to that kind of an abrupt stop without an emergency and not knowing what it was and as time passed and they took care of the injuries to the first two cars they came back and we were let off the train. they admonished us don't leave the train because there are two

live tracks on each side. don't leave the train until we say it is safe to do so. so we made our way off, made our way through a path, and came to a church in pennsylvania with a large gym so there was plenty of room for us. there were about 350 people overall. so that was a good place to make sure way too. but by the morning, as you say, trying not to slip in the mud to the church. >> host: i know you have been in touch with our staff trying to make every effort to make it washington, d.c. for this three hour conversation. this is train 89 from new york to savannah, georgia.

31 injuries, non-life-threatening. what does this tell you about the state of america's infrastructure and what the next president and congress might need to do when it comes to roads, bridges and rail? >> if we are looking at the larger picture one thing is figure out how they get more, whau what they call, public-private partnerships. when you get a government agencies, the problem is maintenance tends to not get the priority it should. with airlines you occasionally have access but on the major commercial airlines they are up to date on maintenance and there is no problem in terms of

variability of aircraft. they are kept up to speed. same for the freight trains. we have the best freight system in the world. but something like this, we have to make sure the unglamorous things, like basic maintenance is giving a high priority. public-p public-p public-private partnerships. governments don't have a lot of money these days especially with their pension and health obligations so we need new ways to get the infrastructure in shape.

it can be done. but when it is done you have to pay attention to the matrix. >> we have been monitoring the coverage of the train derailment you were part of. i want to go back to the fact it took 20 minutes to be notified by amtrak officials at the back of the train what was happening. describe what was going on in your mind and your fellow passenger's mind outside of philadelphia. >> we didn't know what happened but knew it was something bad. a couple passengers who were veterans of amtrak were wondering if the brake system went wrong. there was speculation. luckily there was no panic. when the officials came back they were relieved because there was panic as you got closer to where the real hit took place. it was just waiting and waiting and wondering when they would

get back and tell us what happened. we all knew don't leave the train. we didn't have to be told that. >> one of your recent books and we will show the audience from 2014 event at books and prose. your book call "money." give us the series of what this book is about in the latest books you have written about the economy. >> "money" is about a subject that is not glamorous but critical and that is our monetary system. what the book was designed to do was explain money in a straightforward way. there is a lot of history surrounding it but it is basic. money is like a claim check. it has no intrensic value but it

is based on trust and security. we made a series of catastrophic errors on monday that led to the housing debacle. the recent times now the dollar has gotten stronger but it is like a watch that is too fast or too slow. we argue from the book and our new book, "reviving america" we argue the feds have to go for dollar stability. what we have been doing has been a disaster and stort investment. it is like a watch that measures the number of hours in a day. 68 minutes one day, 98 minutes the next day.

life would be chaotic. imagine trying to bake a cake. is -- we know having instability in the number of minutes per hour would be crazy but that is what we do with money. we know we need 12 inches in a foot but in terms of money since we destroyed the brett woods international monetary system, the gold-based cyst symptoms, we have had nothing but problems. in the last 15 years, it started under the republican administration, the weakening of the dollar, and the volatility continued under the obama administration. this isn't a partisan thing. there is plenty of blame to go around.

we argue in the "money" how to get that stability back and explain simple ways to do it starting with the federal reserve and start reducing it's oversized portfolio and let more mon money in the banking system and explain how the economy was small in new businesses. government no problem getting credit. but the guts of the economy, small and new businesses, very difficult. that has been damaging. we explained it in the new book providing america there is a section on it as well. >> a lot to talk about when we get you back here in washington, d.c. to talk about your books. one question is donald trump in an extensive interviews published on the front page of the "washington post" calling for what he says will be a potential financial collapse and

catastrophic collapse of wall street laying ahead. do you agree with those concerns by donald trump? >> you never rule out anything these days and in these times. but i don't think barring a disaster overseas we will have problems. we are stuck in second year. a good record like we did on friday and followed up by a disappointing report. it is like a patient who has a bad cold and not enough to be in the hospital but you feel punked about it. we are about to begin the baseball season and like a batter we should be hitting .350 but he think not hit .250.

the 2002-2009 panic was a big down turn. a disaster. but since the early 2000s, we should have recovered. but we haven't. when things start to get better they are still not at the pace of the past. that is putting a lot of anxiety, worry, and frustration which is now expressed in both parties but donald trump on the republican sides and bernie sanders on the democrat side. >> steve forbes was on route aboard the amtrak that crashed outside of philadelphia. he is on his way back to washington, d.c. and we will reschedule this event. we look forward to another time

here on c-span. >> we want to continue with our coverage today of an event we covered two years ago at books and prose. the book is called "money: how the destruction of the dollar threatens the global economy - and what we can do about it." >> we are privileged to have a recognizable figure in the media and business world. steve forbes is editor and chief of the nation's biggest economic magazine and head ad company that includes asia and european edition but a number of web properties focused on politics, sports and financial markets. many of you will also remember steve's spirited campaign for the republican presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000

during which he promoted the idea of, among other things, a flat tax and a new social system, medical savings accounts, term limits and strong national defense. steve comes to us as an author this evening which isn't a new role for him. he has cowritten and written five books. his sixth and latest one, "money: how the destruction of the dollar threatens the global economy - and what we can do about it," is every bit as reasoned and clearly written as the earlier works. anyone familiar with his free market libertarian views will not be surprised to read his criticism of existing banks and monetary policies. steve sees an opportunity to

rethink our monter system and insure a better standard returning to the gold model. he writes freeing the united states from gold was supposed to make the country stronger but instead it made the country w k weak weaker. something has to be done. along with steve is elizabeth aims, his co-writer, and here is steve forbes. [applause] >> thank you very much, brad. and i thank all of you for coming out. the book is about money, monetary policy, and money and particulary monetary policy is one of those topics that seems to intimidate a lot of people and as a result the federal

reserve, for example, has less formal oversight from capitol hill and congress than do our intelligence agencies. the thesis of this book is that the topic of money is very straight forward and simple even though it is hidden in jargon and equations. the idea of money is basic. we have gotten away from it. our policymakers today know less about monetary policy than they did a hundred years ago. since the 1970s overall our growth rate since going off the old gold standard system in 1971 the u.s. average growth rates are less than what they were before 1971. if he we maintained the growth

rates on average the u.s. economy would be 50% larger than it. 40 years of reverse compounding ads up to a lot. saver having 50% higher incomes, what it would mean for the deficit, what it would mean for social security, what it would mean for a lot of social divisi divisions today. this over time adds up. it is why it takes two incomes in a family to do what one family could do before this. taxes are a big part but the basement of the dollar since the '70s is a critical part as well. when you don't have a stable curren currency, you end up with people not getting ahead they should, median incomes not growing the way they should, and leading as

my co-author elizabeth will talk about fraying of the social trust and more divisions. as cane said it is a process nat thought one in a million will be able to diagnose. since monetary policy doesn't get the heart beating flutter some way some reality shows do i will begin by giving you an advanced reward and that is to give you a travel tip. if you ever find yourself in an airplane in coach, middle seat, on the runway watching your life pass away, and you want a little bit of elbow room, start talking about monetary policy. they will cut you a wide girth. as a result of the chaos that we have had slow moving for most of the time since the 1970's, the

federal reserve has gotten up in terms of more and more power. the thing is the more power it gets the worse we are. you take quanatative easing, which i will discuss in the moment, even though they are tapering it, which is good, it ended up contracting the economy rather than stimulating the economy. the thing i understand about money is it is basic. it makes transactions, buying and selling, which is how we prove our standard of living which is how we exist, makes buying and selling much easier. in the old days, we had barter which was very inefficient. let's say i sold an ad in forbes and how would and i get paid? perhaps with a herd of goats. let's say i went to the apple store 3,000 years ago with my

herd of goats and the apple store owner says i don't want goats i want sheep so i have to figure out how to swap for sheep and maybe hire a sheep herder because you don't want the wolves to eat the sheep. imagine trying to deposit a cow in an atm nowadays. money doesn't have intr intrins value. money measures value. that is all it does. the ways clock measures time. scales measure weight. rulers measure length. money measures value. so because it represents value it makes transactions easier and in that sense it is a form of

communications. it let's you know information to do all of the billions of transactions we do around the world each day. money is not health but it represents a claim on products and services. think of it as you would a coat check. a coat check has no intrinsic value but in a restaurant you put your coat in the closet and get a coat check to represent it claim on the coat. money represents products and services that have been produced already. so the idea of stimulating the economy would be like a restaurant saying if we create more coat checks it will stimulate the production of more coats. it does not. it is a claim. it represents a claim on a product or service; money does. money works best when it has a

fixed value just like a clock has 60 minutes in one hour. imagine what your daily life was like if the federal reserve did what it did to the dollar. 60 minutes in hour one day, 22 the next, 80 the next. you would have to hedgers to figure out how how many hours you are working each day. let's say you are baking a cake and it says bake the batter 45 minutes and you would have figure out is that inflation of real minutes? or adjusted minutes? imagine what happens if they changed the number of inches in a foot? you learn it is now ten instead of 12. money works best when it has a fixed value. then the question becomes what is the best way to do it? even though it is absolutely out

of fashion still in the economics profession the way it worked for the first 180 years of existence in this country is you fix it to gold. why gold? because more than anything else in the world gold keeps its intrinsic value and has for 4,000 years. every ounce in the world that has been mound is still in the world today. you cannot destroy it. it is hard to make but not too hard. so you don't get too much of it at a time and because you cannot destroy it if you find a big gold mine you don't get a glut of cold. even the california gold rush only increased the annual supply about 3-4 percent and taperer down to the average 1.5-1

percent. you don't have to worry about storage and mice eating the gold. whether you freeze it, eat it, beat it up, you cannot destroy it. it has very unique properties and stood the test of time for 4,000 years. people think if you mention gold does that mean gold coins? think of gold like you would the ruler. it is just a mixed measure of value. we fix the dollar to gold at 1200 an ounce. all that means if it goes above 1200 an ounce the fed is creating too much and making less because below 1200 means you need to create more. it let's the marketplace determine the need of what is needed in termdz s of money.

if you have a vibrant any you will create a good economy. you don't need very much gold. you just need to know what you are doing and respond to signals in the marketplace and it worked up until world war that blasted that and other things. gold is like a ruler. the fact a mile hads 5,280 feet doesn't restrict the number of highways you build. just one fact you can use at a cocktail party to show you brilliant you are. go back to the evolution war when we were a small agricultural nation up to 1900 when your population increased 25 fold going from the small agriculture nation to biggest industrial nation in the world and during that time the amount of mine golding only went up three and a half fold but the

money supply went up 60 fold. gold just makes sure the value stays strict. it doesn't restrict the supply. vibrant economy meets the needs of the marketplace, stagnent economy you don't create t. people lose sight of that and go from one price to another. we had a terrible decades in the '70s and got it semi right in the '80s and '90s and we moved ahead. but in the last decade we went backwards and starting, and this is not a partisan thing, started in the bush administration. treasurey department and federal reserve started weakening the daughter thinking that would stimulate exports and that is how he got the housing crisis. any time you undermine the

integrity of the dollar people hood assets. it was a little over $21 a barrel for oil now is up to $90 a barrel. back in the '70s, none of you are old enough to remember the '70s. it is called pandering. tried it in politics and it didn't work which is why i am pedaling books now. back in the 1970's oil went from $3 a barrel to almost $40. everyone thought we were running out of oil and going to be up to $100. reagan came in and he killed the inflation and oil crashed down to average $20-$25. it is like putting a virus in the computer. if you don't trust the investment, you get less

investments and that is not productive because you get less in the future. you don't know if you will get back hundred cents on the dollar or 80 sent cent dollar and adds more uncertainty which is why we have been stagnant by our histortic standards. money represents value. gold is the best way to fix that value. if we understand that we can move ahead and get back the kind of growth rates we had before 1971. obviously there are a lot of other things we have to do but experience shows us if you don't get the money right in terms of a fixed value you can get other things right; taxes, spend, regulations. but if you don't get the money right it will undermine everything because it is the

bases of transaction, trust, bases of investment. and because when it works, we don't realize what makes it work. it is like air, when it is clean we take it for granted. when we have pollution we say oh, we need to clean it it. we think of focusing on economics and gdp and the like and we have a chapter on social trust and liz is going to discuss this chapter taushg talking about the basic society undermines the social fabric and ways that go beyond gdp and exchange numbers. i am call up elizabeth but one thing to keep in mind is when money is stable and value brain power goes for productive use.

before the currency flucuated very little currency trading and now it is a huge activity all over the world. daily volume $3 trillion. tens of thousands of the best brains in the world focused on activity that would not exist if we had stable money. brain power that could be used for other productive things. so this has consequences going beyond gdp and whatever acronyms they throw out. with that, let me say thank you, and turn it over to my colleague, elizabeth. >> good evening, it is good to be here. i would like to talk a little bit about chapter five which is

money and morality and how debasing money debasis society. people have found this chapter to be thought-provoking. it sarts out with the famous quote from canes and i will read it in its entirety. lenin was certainly right there is no settler or surer mean of overturning the existing bases of society than to debauch the currency. the process the gauges all of the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction and does it in a manner in which not one man in a million is able to diagnose. we say that unstable money is a little like carbon minonoxide a you don't know the damage until is too late. that is because people are not aware of the currency but only the effects.

money prevent strangeers from all nations and society to come together and conduct transactions based on a commonly agreed upon measure of value. money, in this way, promotes cooperation between people, serves as an instrument of communication and tells us what a society values, not just materially what what its priorities are. so when money is corrupted, its about to act as such service is corrupt as well. it underlies to vital relationship between buyer and seller and lender and getter. the philosopher john lock described this fischer produced at society's core, he wrote and you are probably heard this, whether the creditor be forced to receive less or the debtor

forced to pay more to the contract the damage and insqu insquir -- injury is the same when a person is defrauded. and you usually see scapego scapegoating, unrest, and cohersive government and extremism that can rise to the lead of dictators. dillion rice wrote a piece describing this scenario that has occurred throughout history and pointed out monetary debates coinsideed with the persecution of the jews and the french rein of terror, and salem witch trials and other events.

this isn't just a remote historical occurrence but it is taking place in the middle east, europe, and to a certain extent the u.s. analytics from the south african-american investment house issued reports called riot alerts picking the world's most likely trouble spots. the firm has been seeing unrest based on monetary abuse and syria which suffered nearly 200% hyperinflation topped the list in february of 2013 frauloed by argentina, south africa, egypt, and turkey which have been inflaters. there are political causes for this unrest but untable it is c catalyst. the riots in the arab springs started over increasing food

prices. the financial crises was a betrayal of trust. money helped create a housing bubble and the feds pulled the rug out from under the borrows and this led to a wave fore closures which led to the collapse of financial institutions and triggered the stock market meltdown of 20 08 and that set off a worldwide destruction of trust that rick ricocheted from one country to the next. in europe you saw it. and we were those days. i am read a quote from an economist who told "the new york times" a bank spreads around the world not the block. it doesn't matter if you have good or bad loans. people lose confidence in you.

that shows this is about trust obviously. this worldwide loss of trust quickly turned to rage with riots and protest. we say it went from balance sheets to the streets. in 2012 there was a poll by the pew research center saying americans have been more polarized now than at any other time during the past 20 years and most of the increased polarization has taken place not just in the last few years but during the presidency of bush and obama and both administrations were weak doctor administrations. this polarization is coinci dshdcoinciding. it is thought the system is

rigged when you lose money. people on fixed income see their money loosing value and other people are reaping what look like artificial and unfair win fall games. the link between effort and reward is severed and that is why you get more corruption and crime in economies with unstable dollar. inflation was found to have a stronger connection to crime than joblessness. crime rates in fact in the u.s. dropped immediately after the financial crisis when there was a serious deflation but they began to move up in 2010 during quantitative easing which is an interesting thing we say in the book. these are just a few highlights from the chapter and both left and right agree this a period of malaise. we hope this book helps people put aside some of the finger pointing that has been taking place in recent years and helps them recognize the role of the

untable dollar as the catalyst and culprit. thank you. >> we now come to q and a. as brad said, if you can come up to the microphone and feel free to ask away. >> other than rather than trying to debate you on the ideas here of the concept of stable money and so forth i guess i would just ask this: why is it that so many countries, including the united states, have dropped the gold standard?

and why is theory so unpopular? you gave the quote from king who said one and a million will correctly diagnose the problem. so that is kind of a hint that there is basic fundamental reason why it is hard for people to understand this and for economist or whatever to sort of accept the theory. why do you believe there are so relatively few economist that accept your proposal? >> the reason the gold standard lost the dominance it had in terms of intellectual circles was the result of two events. one was the first world war

which destroyed the classical gold standard. after that war, because the standard had worked so well, they didn't really realize what made it work. so britain did not do it right trying to go back to it. that led to the, for example, after the war they tried to ignore the inflation that the first world war created and tried to repeg the gold to its prewar price which is ridiculous if you doubled or tripled your supply and recognize a one-time event and do a reevaluation but they didn't do it. canes came among and others who turned classical economics said the real economy is the production of goods and services. the money economy is the symbol economy. the symbol of products and

servic services. cab cane reversed that and put the cart before the horse. commercial real estate hit through a huge hit, we grew in the '80s but a lot of activities

had to be liquidated in the '80s. you saw that with the housing today and who knows what happens with the other false investments. so world war one and then the depression. the depression was like a bolt out of the blue. the depression was triggered by a hideous trade ward we triggered with a tariff where we blew up the global trading system and everyone retaliated and every country raised taxes. during the depression we raised the tax income tax from 25% to 63% overnight. excise taxes were enacted on numerous items including a stamp tax on checks. if you wrote a check to pay a

bill in the '30s you had to pay a tax to the government for using a check. these massive tax increases came in u.s., britain, germany. and they deepened the down turn. the brits started it by dev devaluing the pound. one bad thing done after another. despite that experience, we still got a gold standard after the war designed in 1944. worked perfectly well but the idea of using monetary policy and government to guide the economy was so prevalent they didn't know how to preserve the system which is why we blew it up in 1971. as i mentioned in the '80s and '90s gold was roughly $350 an

ounce and a c plus for monetary policy. so we got growth from it. but it wasn't what we could have done. and the last part of the decade we went off the rails again and we still haven't dug ourselves out of that one. it is begin to reverse. a growing number of thinkers are saying maybe the money money, tried before adam smith came along, maybe smith had it right and we should reexamine things. this book is getting back it the basics on money and the converation going to get back on track. the federal reserve shouldn't be any more important than the bureau of weights and measures in the commerce department. if you ever run into a federal

reserve official, ask them in terms of assuming powers by the fed, they say they want 2-2.5 inflation because they believe creating extra money stimulates the economy. that translates to an extra $1,000 a year for the typical family. ask who gave you the authority to tax an american family an extra $1,000 a year and why does that stimulate economic activity? i have asked but haven't gotten an answer. yes? >> well it just seems even though, i believe, you are correct that something is wrong with the money. i don't think it is broad enough discussion both to really cover what is happening to us economically. it is so much more sophisticated than it was that your analysis

covers. the value of gold changes and a lot of that value of gold was ars artificially created by legislating it as the center of money. it had the reverse effe effect,. there were times when we didn't have money and we had to expand. isn't there in your thinking, some more broader concept, of distribution of wealth and income? it just seems too simplified in this complicated situation we are in. >> the key thing is to recognize money is a measure of value just like a clock is a measure of time. and if you grasp that, then you see that gold does not influence the money supply.

it just makes sure when the dollar is created it a has a fixed value. take your point on the flucuating of gold that is less about the intrinsic value of the gold than it is the fears of the money about the future. when people thought the world was ending in 2011 gold shot up to 1900. in 1980 it looked like the world was ending and shot up from 300 to 800 an ounce. that is more about the perception of value of currency than the legislative value of gold.

gold rose up out of the marketplace. athens rose from the marketplace. governments went into the minting business and couldn't keep their hands off of it. but money rose out of the need of the marketplace and people doing transactions with one another. what isaac newton did with britain and gold was to codify what people thought needed to be done. holland in the 1500-1600, small county, under constant attack by spain, underwater literally why they have dikes, but the money led to the rise in sophisticated capitols and they become the financial center of the world. britain became the financial

system when it fixed the gold. it was a second tier tower before doing this and had a lot going but having stable money brought it together. the marketplace said for over 4,000 years this is the way to do it. as a result the economy gets more and more complex. jobs rise up, and if you said apps a few years ago is that short for applications for college? if you said ipod you would not know what that is. thinks rise up that yanukovyou imagine. a fixed measure of value make the fixed transactions of more and more training and specialization where we can focus what we do best so we don't have to spend time growing food and hunting.

we can poke focus on what we are best at and that is what you get with fixed money. >> given the dependence of the economy and markets on the fed's monetary policy and their willingness to create money whenever they feel like it billons at a time. what did the return to the gold standard look like for the market and the street? >> i think if we decide to do it and i hope we will and it isn't a result of a crisis but a result of people saying we have been drifting on and off for 40 years and not doing what we did historically and let's start it. by the way, there is a congressman representative kevin brady who has proposed a bipartisan commission to examine monetary policy. i think that is a good start to get the debate going. but going on a gold standard, what it would mean over time is

you would have a much bigger economy. the question is would it crash the market. no, there are myths about gold causing deflation and bad times for farmers and this kind of thing. no, what it does is allow the human kind to surge forward. and the changes you get in the economy it was not gold that led to hard-pressed agriculture but the fact we learned to grow more food and are still learning to grow more. take corn, for example, popped in my mind. typical acre of corn in the '30s produced 27 bushels and today it is about 150. there is a man in iowa who is now about to invent breakthroughs in corn that will lead to 300-400 bushels per

acre. so agriculture today, 2% of your economy, a hundred years ago about 60-70 percent. railroa railroads, after world war ii they employed 1.2 million people and today they employ less than 200,000 and carry about ten times as much freight. economies are always adjusting but you want them to adjust upwards instead of stagnation with people wondering am i getting ahead? is my 50-year-old son going to leave the house? >> thanks for coming out. i am part of the minority who agr agrees with the sound money principles but unfortunately i cannot afford gold at all. i carry silver with me and i am weird like that. but anyway, this is a 1923 dollar, it is worth about $20

today. and two most interesting things i realized after learning over the past two years about gold and silver is you can buy the same amount of gasoline with this dollar as you could have before 1964. i guess before 1964, all quarters, dimes, half dollars and dollars were made out of 90% silver and that was a mind-blowing fact. although this is still one dollar you go to a coin shop it is worth $20 because it is made of silver. you go out with your $20 bill and you can by the same amount of gasoline as you could have in 1964. that tells you the price of gas is constant in relation to gold and silver whereas the price of gas rose not because of the gas price rising but the purchasing power of the dollar has gone down. and the secretary most

interesting mind blowing fact i learned is ten dimes is the same weight as this quarter. i'm sorry, ten times is the weight at this silver dollar and four " quarters is the same weight as this half dollar. so dimes were smaller than quarter for a reason. 2.5 dimes is the same weight as a quarter. you talk a lot about gold so my question is where do you see silver coming into the picture of your ideal society? >> well, in terms of ideal society, society is never ideal with human beings. but in essence going forward and doing what we did for our first 180 years of existence from george washington and alexander hamilton who fixed the dollar to gold until nixon blew it up with the applause of economist and

so-called specialist. go back 13 years, 12 years before going after the rails big time, a gallon of gasoline was like $1. imagine what life would be if you could pay $1 for a gallon of gas. for centuries, gold and silver had the same relationship. 15-16 onces was worth one ounce of silver. people started using more payable money. small coins were convenient. h with the rise of paper you didn't need coins as much, though. so the demand for silver fell so

today is about 60 to 1. so gold has held up better than silver. but your point money has a value and concern certain things stay stagnant. rising cost, like energy, is really the devallation -- devaluation of the dollar. with that silver dollar you have, if you flip it on this table, you will hear a loud sound and that is how we got the phrase "sound money" >> i will do one more for you. >> hi, mr. forbes, what are thought thaunts on the

consolida consolidaco consolida consolidate of the banking industry? >> it is different when it is the cause of regulation and fiat. we had a lot of extra banks in the first part of history because of regulations. politicians wouldn't allow banks to combine. the original bank of america in the 1920s started in california and when he took the bank across state lines using a bank holding company to get around restrictions that if you had a bank in one state you were not allowed to other than another bank. so congress passed an act to stop him from doing this. today, dodd-frank had the implicit purpose of driving small banks out of business.

the rose reason they are doing it, and you talk a small bank today and they will say it isn't the economy killing them but the regulation. big is easy for the government to control. that is why they make it impossible, by the way, for single practitioners in health care. you spend 90% of your time filling out forms instead of practicing medicine. they don't want you to have dolla -- doctors out there. they want you to be part of a big company because it is easy to control and regulate. that consolidation is artificial more than it is the nature of the changing marketplaces. the other danger of the feds grasping of power and putting their claws in the ins insurance

industry and anything that moves they are going after to reduce risks. what it means when you reduce risk the way they want you will get no innovation. they would never allow money funds back in those days. ...

commercial industrial mountainous country, banks lending commercial industrial about 1.5 trillion. in europe when you take your together it's not the same population and when you add up all the economies about 4.8 trillion. they are way over dependent on banks, which is a very fragile, suffocating a dangerous system. you bring up a good point. we don't want to go that way. >> thank you very much. i want to go to the core of your argument that you are forgetting the way people really are. forgive me -- [inaudible] >> we can cure that. maybe, yes, hopefully.

they are bad and of course everybody has to develop in germany in the 1930s and indeed a bigger society. but things don't always work that way. people dream. people do foolish things and go to the history and southern european countries. we see a lot of dreams. the constant economic history. the devaluation to bring them back with people. to some extent, one could have the argument that -- [inaudible]

there has to be some mechanism by which you allow dreams and then you have too trusted some point in time. >> a gold standard is not going to change human nature. that is not going to change. good the utopian societies only try to change human nature by ending up crushing people, killing them. so what doesn't change human nature. you are always going to get back in the early part of last century, everyone realized automobiles were a big thing. we have the creation of 2,003,000 auto manufacturers. how many of them survived? some are fewer old enough to remember the 80s when we had the first pc boom. anybody shake out there. atari, commodore, others in the

business went by the wayside. that is normal. that is how you move ahead if we don't know what's going to work until you try it. in 15 years ago, no one -- google has a number and his two kids challenge to make her soft and beat them at it and now they are the big, bad guys. so this is constant. all told as if to make sure that money has a stable value. it does not prevent people from getting giddy. it does not prevent people from getting depressed. just make sure when you do a transaction and the money is in value, just like when you order a gallon of gasoline, you assume it's a gallon. not two thirds of a gallon or 1.3 gallons. you know what you're getting. in terms of the rest of human nature, what it does do is you get more risk-taking. you get more people investing in the future.

most don't make it, but that's how you find out what works and what does the work is the experimentation in the marketplace. henry ford had two painful bankruptcies on almost a third before he figured out how to make a car that could though. trial and error. that's what you want. if you don't have a stable money, things stay the same. i [inaudible] >> okay. >> two short questions. what was in 71 -- what is he trying to do that he felt he had to resort to the gold standard? number two, gold has had an increasing industrial use that gone up geometrically. we all know about the uses of it in space and more and more uses have been found for how this will affect things -- what

effect will the gold standard have him not? >> what happened in 1971 that forces the gold standard because we weren't and $35 an ounce. nixon was worried about reelection. the economy wasn't responding quickly enough and so the erie was out there that if you devalue the dollar, that will boost exports which will help the economy, boost the economy and everyone will be happy. for a year, 1972 putting wage price controls commit devalue the dollar in for a year for an average like that in the economy crashed. so it was a bad theory that prodded about not any real crisis. any of the economic problems we have in the fifth these and 60s come in small compared to the crises we had in the past.

there is no sensible reason to do it. in terms of industrial uses of old, it is a small fraction out there. in fact, we are probably using my school. you don't is gold anymore for filling. and our teeth, once upon a time we had golden daughter in our teeth. so we don't use that. most gold is for stored value. it has some industrial uses, but nothing that would fit my goodness, we need 5.5 billion ounces for 6 billion ounces for industrial uses. it is too valuable to use. that's why we don't put it in our teeth anymore. we got cheaper and better ways. any other questions? if not, thank you all very much and will go to the signing.

[applause] [inaudible conversations] >> when i tune into it on the weekends come initially at the authors sharing their releases. >> watching nonfiction authors on the tv is the best television for serious readers. >> c-span cannot a longer conversation and delve into their subject. >> booktv weekend bring your author after author after author to work fascinating people. >> i love the tv and i'm a c-span fan.

>> how did you get started and speechwriting? >> that's an amazing story. i was a high school debater and then i debated in college. i went on to double my major from history into communication studies. then i went to graduate school and communications that is, but i never thought of speechwriting. i just taught speech and got interested in various areas in the field. but i was at the university of virginia, i was asked to give a guest lecture at the university of north carolina chapel hill. so i went down to chapel hill and give my lecture at 10:00 in the morning and president ward was speaking on the campus at noon and all of us decided to go

hear him because how often do you get to your president lives. the president gave a speech that was really not very good. it was disorganized. it was rambling. my colleagues kitted me a lot like how could you be a republican and support a man who can even give a speech? i went to charlottesville and romanticized page single spaced critique of the speech and then i mailed it to the white house. the president of the united states, the white house from the 1600 pennsylvania washington d.c. and a week later i was asked to come up in an interview for a speechwriting job that was open. they knew the people that knew me in the debate world because i was a debate coach at the university of virginia. and then i came up and went to the interview and got the job and it was just amazing to me at the first time i was writing a speech for anybody but myself is the president of the united states, may 1st speechwriting

gig. making a match between a speechwriter in the client is something that happens after you are hired. some of the best speechwriters in the world did not get along with their clients. it's when you find a match. you only learn that through the writing process. for example, john kennedy went to renumber speechwriters before ted sorensen, the legislative aide from nebraska became a speechwriter. what happened with me was i was kind of hazing. my first speech that i was assigned was to write the president beach for the southern baptist convention and virginia in 1976. so here you have a conflict writing for an episcopalian to speak in front of the other baptist and about take a very difficult assignment. we're running against jimmy carter who was loved by the southern baptist and he has spoken and brought the house down. so is a very tough assignment.

we went down to nor folk. the president got up with my speech, which had gone through 10 drafts. the art of writing is read write. he was about a minute and 30 seconds into the speech and he was interrupted by applause. it kind of threw them off because it didn't happen very often. he lost his place, got back on script beauty was interrupted 15 more times by applause. the "washington times" wrote at the speech is one of the best he'd ever given. suddenly president ford and i were together a speechwriter and client and it ran unsuccessfully from that point forward. why did that speech resonate with the crowd? i think it's because i understood that i dance analysis is critical to give me beach. aristotle tells us that the strategy is to use in the speech should literally come out of the audience. so i had an advanced work on that audience. you know, a lot of evangelical ministers they are.

had talked to southern baptist preachers and i think adapting to the audience was the first step. the second step amid the president very comfortable with the organization of the speech. he knew where he was going. speeches are visible. people only retain about a third of what they hear. you have to repeat yourself and you have to tell people, here is where we are now in the speech. here is where were going. now i'm moving into my conclusion. it makes the speaker feel comfortable, the audience felt comfortable enough to happen with the speech. after we lost the presidency, i landed a job at the university of alabama, birmingham. while i was teaching, bill harris, the new head of the alabama republican party came to me and said would you help me out. i had to sell republicanism to alabamans pay a 6% say that they are republicans. you can see where alabama has

gone from 1976 to the present to start very red state. so i went to work for bill harris and we needed to raise money, so we asked various republican big names to come in. john connolly said no. ronald reagan said no. then wes george herbert walker bush to come in and he said yes. said he came and spoke in the civic center in birmingham. birmingham was a republican city at that time. so we went to the civic center and i was sitting at a table in near me was this nerdy young man with blond hair and he said why don't you tell them what you think of george bush's speech? i said okay, i'll do that. so i took notes as bush spoke. when the speech was done, the nerdy young man turned to me and said what did you think of it? i said is a nice man and obviously very sensitive and very bright, but it is some organization, he said that

style. it's obvious the speech wasn't rehearsed and he means to rehearse. the young man said my name is carl rove and i work for him. how would you like to get them right now? i can take you upstairs. i went up stairs and shook hands with mr. bush and he invited me to come to houston to meet him, within minutes wife in january of 1978. so i flew to houston at january and came to the house in a three-piece suit in houston. all very formal in the morning. mr. bush came to the door. i'll never forget his teacher was read. he said if he'll get out of the silly fast, i'll cook you breakfast. so we went into the kitchen. he handed me a cup of coffee. i'm standing there with the coffee. he's cooking the eggs. mrs. bush, barbara bush comes in the room and looks at georgia and then looks at me and says

george, that young man is standing there with a cup of coffee with no saucer under appeared with the chinese delegation coming in tonight. i don't know what got into me but i said with all due respect i came to your door in a three-piece suit and i'm not going to spill a drop of this coffee. she laughed and george laughed and we hit it off from that point on. so i became a consulting writer to george bush during his campaign and run up to 1980. we won the iowa caucuses. bradley lost new hampshire. the battle went all the way to jam before george h.w. bush pulled out and then ronald reagan began the nominee and then they put them on the ticket with him. i continue to consult with mr. bush, vice president bush called that time and into his next presidential run in 1988. the biggest challenge for me in writing speeches for george bush senior was a good like rehearsing. he thought it was unmanly to rehearse and i had to convince him that ronald reagan rehearsed, but other people i worked for rehearsed and that he

really needed to rehearse. when he rehearse, he was really good. akamai wednesday night of the 1980 80 convention he gave a terrific speech. regulus lodging and he said i didn't know the guy can beat that well. it was because he rehearse. >> we republicans want a winner to lead our party to victory in the fall. the american people, regardless of party want a winner in the white house after four years of jimmy carter fumbling incompetent leader. [applause] we have such a winner and his name is ronald reagan. [applause] >> every once in a while he would not rehearse in the speech wouldn't go so well. i have to tell you the best beach in the world is delivered

badly is a bad speech. sometimes a bad speech littered very well as a good speech regardless of how badly written it is. delivery is kind of a bottom line for me when i work with client. one of the things i do a site devoted to speech before he let them look at it so they could hear it first and then they could look at it. vacancy the rhythm. they can see the phrasing because that's really important. when you know when his speech doesn't work, it's usually pretty obvious. i'm lucky it rarely happens for me. i don't mean to brag or anything, but my speech is generally went very well because i monitor them. i made sure i rehearsed with the clients. when i was working for president ford, the representatives of boys nation came to the rose garden to give him an award. i had written a speech for him. he was put on cars. he took it out, delivered it beautifully. everything mobile. the next week the mormon scheme to give him a kind of little

statuette reminiscent of the pioneer statue in salt lake city. for now, same thing. i'd given him the speech on the cards any kind of flood, stumbled. i thought what happened? what was wrong? we were walking back from the rose garden and i said mr. president come with all due respect, this speech when terrifically. today not so much. what happened? they had a motion picture camera going and i said i don't understand what the problem is. it makes me nervous when i see a motion picture camera. so here is a man who'd given 530 speeches as minority leader of the house and no one determined he was camera shy. so when we went to kansas city for him to get the acceptance of the nomination at the republican convention in 1976, we rehearsed in front of five cameras live and we kept going through the speech so by the time he got up to deliver, he gotten over his camera shyness and gave a great speech. >> tonight i can tell you straight away, this nation is

sound. this nation is secure. this nation is on the mark to all economic recovery and a better quality of life for all americans. [cheers and applause] >> we adopt the voice. we have traveled fund-raising, but his announcement of candidacy was given in new york harbor in front of the statue of liberty. he talked about law and order, how much he supported police. we talk about illegal immigration, which is one of the things he was trying to shut down. the speech that defendant did -- front page of "the new york times." there he was standing there at the statue of liberty behind them. i must say that the best reaction i've ever had to any speeches i've written. i coordinated all of them and

wrote two of them in seoul and got a lot of attention also been a lot of favorable press and actually put back in the race going into the bicentennial, we were 33 points behind jimmy carter and everybody had written off for it in the campaign. by the time we finished the bicentennial speeches, we were only 10 points behind and at the end of the speech in kansas city, ford was only five points behind after the first debate the race is dead even. the speeches he delivered for her presidential campaign. debates i really tricky and we have so many now, far too many in my opinion that was very difficult for speechwriters to do as much good as they can. i mean, i felt about for some under marco rubio when they had given him a line and he kept repeating the line which wasn't directly responsive to the question. it's the beginning of the

unraveling of the campaign. you also have someone ignoring the speechwriters. some unlike donald trump making fun as if he was in junior high of people, saying women don't look very good, referring to currently space. speechwriters would never write things like that. there has been the deterioration in the rhetoric of the candidates. you don't see the opportunity to write a good speech. now there are exceptions. marco rubio has given very good except in speeches on campaign days. hillary clinton has gone from a wooden strident speaker in 1996. if you look at her victory speech after the south carolina primary, the speech is extremely well, extremely well rehearsed and very well delivered it the best speech i've ever seen. >> instead of building walls, we need to be tearing down

barriers. [cheers and applause] we need to show by everything we do that we really are in this together. >> they are still working. i know that jeb bush called him for people to get help and encourage them in the debate, but it was too late. the debate are really difficult. things can go wrong. when i was coaching president ford as i said we won the first debate and the race is dead even. we were very optimistic that we would win. in the second debate, we knew it was foreign policy. we knew the president is going to be asked about his policy and the soviet union. in answering the question, is a book on yugoslavia has remained independent of the soviet union. romania is moving in that direction. poland is not dominated by the soviet union. and "the new york times" asked a

follow-up. >> i'm sorry. did i understand you to say that the russians are not using eastern europe as their own influence and occupying most of the countries they are and making sure with their troops that if the communist sound whereas on our side of the line, the italians and the french are still flirting. >> i don't believe, mr. franco, that the yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the soviet union. i don't believe the romanians consider themselves dominated by the soviet union. i don't believe that the poles consider themselves dominated by the soviet union. >> immediately after the debate we went to the president with this adviser said mr. president, you're going to have to hold a press conference immediately and explain what you meant. the president said what i say? he said the soviet union doesn't dominate poland or the president

said i didn't say that. stu said what did you say? the president said i set the soviet union does not dominate the polish people in their minds and in their hearts. and the playback with the president said. he said i thought is that in their heart and in their minds. i love that phrase off. we will hold a press conference to clear this up to henry kissinger came up and said what's going on? we explain to kissinger wanted to kissinger would it happen and kissinger said you can't say that. you insult the soviet and i'm trying to get anatole sharansky out of the union. they debated for five days and during those five days, the election slipped away. the people were reminded the president had tripped and fallen. he was made fun of by chevy chase on "saturday night live." all of that came back and he became the mistake prone president because of this mistake. he did correct the record five days later in california, but it was too late. it had all gone away.

debates are really dangerous. they are really scary. speechwriters are very important to current campaigns. start by saying that bottom line. speechwriters are incredibly important in terms of getting the phrasing down so that it means something. heller says we shouldn't be building walls. we should be breaking down barriers. that's a beautiful phrase because he got up, down, breaking a harriers. that's a well turned phrase then it becomes a campaigns look at. she says that all the time now. those are the kinds of things the speechwriters can do for a campaign together cohesiveness. >> catherine ross is next. her book, journal button looks at ways they have limited free

speech. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon and welcome to the cato institute. i am vice president here at cato and publisher and i would heartily like to thank you for coming here today for our viewers online and being broadcast by c-span. you may not know unexpectedly at the washington subway system, the metro was closed today.

so the people that have joined us here have made a great effort to hear something about this book, tran 11 -- tran 11 which is the topic of our book form today. there's another thing that can be said about today. we started shows today for this particular book and i have katherine ross here at cato. the reason is the 265th of a man named james patterson. as it happens, james madison actually wrote the first amendment because he was the first 10 amendments introduced in the congress and was beyond that, more than just the author of the person who wrote them. he was also a strong defender and believe very heartily. i should say also i learned today than in part of that, part

of madison's birth date in the first amendment center, a valuable institute here in washington has designated his birth and national freedom of information day, which we are celebrating here today along with the publication of this book. i can't help however but referred to what i thought was an interesting and useful comment from madison on this very topic, the first amendment freedoms of speech. madison wrote, quote, a popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a tragedy. or perhaps both. knowledge will forever govern a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives, unquote. we will continue in this state

as they go down through the history of the united states that knowledge will govern ignorance and the first amendment is an essential means of katherine roster set in the green room to making the whole system work. madison interestingly, the first amendment center designated head as a person to go in the freedom of information act hall of fame, which is interesting. he is kind of hank aaron i guess the freedom of information. that's sad, i hope we have a person here today, and knocked her down the line will be a candidate for being in the freedom of information hall of fame. catherine jay ross, a law professor at george washington university and during the current academic year are visiting scholar at the harvard graduate school of education. this book, was named the 2015

best book by concurring opinions first amendment news.

to bullying but in a way the the seizure was as clueless the seizure was as clueless because the first amendment protects speech rights of public school students in grades k --dash 12. if schools all over the country regularly censor constitutionally protected media by children and judges often let them get away with it.

but i worked -- i use the word censorship i am talking about stopping speech before it happens and punishing it afterwards. national and local politics, the rights of lg bt persons, guns, abortion, and more. they suspended a six-year-old who called the classmate a pooh-pooh head, stopped one elementary school girl from praying before eating her own lunch and another from distributing a homemade flyer that began high, my name is in be in which she shared her personal experience of finding crisis was like finding a lost art. in the upper grades school suspended two boys who were political t-shirts comeau one praising the marines -- sorry.

okay. wait. mechanical problem here. is this not on? you have to do it up here. all right. we should have practiced. just trying to figure out. i'm so sorry. this is awful. i have a beautiful t-shirt to show you. okay. one was praising the marines and their gun in the other was criticizing president george w. bush as a

substance abusing draft dodging chicken hawk. punishing students for what they say off-campus on their own time the constitution protects all of this expression. the constitution protects worthless as well as worse want -- worthwhile speech. when we talk about students we're talking about adolescent humor that is beyond adult comprehension. students are less likely if someone else's parent pfizer speech controversial which means it's offensive because i disagree with it but that is exactly what the speech clause is designed to protect.

the the heart of the problem is too many principles don't know or don't understand the limits of the constitution on their ability to control was students port -- say is ii work on this book is everyone i talked to informally said i have a censorship story. incredulously told me they had no idea and asked where had come up with such a creative notion. you have to begin by giving your whirlwind tour of first amendment doctrine and then i will turn to some stories

that capture some of the particular contemporary dilemmas. the speech clause of the first amendment is very exciting the government and anyone acting on behalf of may not silent speech because of its content of you point. school districts and everyone who works with them are the government. our research and comes today , the first amendment does not apply to independent schools.

barnett versus west virginia and all elementary school students that were jehovah's witnesses the risk of expulsion makes into a juvenile reformatory because they refused to say the pledge of allegiance on the grounds that offended the religion but it was not litigated are interpreted as a religion case. the consequences today of speaking up and being punished can also be dire. many students enter the pipeline as a result of being suspended, expelled carson to alternative school for troubled students after they engage in protected speech. just like the jehovah's witnesses the consequences are stark. barnett held the people could not be forced to say what was not in their minds, concept we today called liberal against compelled speech.

the court emphasized the constitutional limits on the state's coercive powers whether exercised by those tyrants or the federal government. because schools are educating the young for citizenship they must scrupulously protect individual rights if we are not to strangle of reminded of source and the teach you to discount important principles of government as near -- mere platitudes. decades later they returned and began to carve out a special way that schools have illegally censored student expression. the 1st iconic supreme court case in modern times and here is listing the cases. i don't expect you to retain all the.

the 1st modern case decided in 1969 at the height of the vietnam war the court took into account all the things society expects schools to accomplish especially the importance of educating young for citizenship and crafted a special tent. it announced that schools cannot censor student expression unless authorities have a reason to anticipate the speech can lead to material disruption of the schools function and in short i will refer to this as material disruption test. as the court became more conservative under every new chief justice and gradually carved out an exception and

three later cases. these new schools more more power to censor student speech but did not extinguish student speech rights. two exceptions you may recognize as the bong hits for jesus case. the most important exception stems from his award versus komar.

to be school sponsored speech must appear to bear the schools and premature or to be the school zone speech so that a reasonable person would think the school had approved it which reaches virtually all expression stripping students of the voices. schools try their best to, claim that all cursing his lewd and therefore can be punished even when students read aloud from classical literature or moderate themselves thinking no one can hear them. some have begun to assert that was students saying the classroom and in written homework assignments is school sponsored expression, though no one in their right mind could think the school had a chance to understand it and approve it before the

students submitted or uttered it. this approach severely limits the range of viewpoints and our classrooms, especially since teachers are not allowed to disagree with the text the school board has selected and there are many disputes about what viewpoints should be part of the official curriculum. think about disputes over how to teach such subjects as biology and courses on sex ed and even american history and slavery. let me briefly anticipate common concerns, recognizing students constitutional rights will not undermine education. there are two concerns. it will undermine education or put people at risk of safety. regarding the 1st concern education preserving the

school's educational function is the essence of the material disruption test. disruption does not have to be tolerated. as for the 2nd, schools may always clamp down on speech that is illegal harassment, libel, and more important even speech that is protected that threatens violence or serious disruption but does not rise to the level of the true threat under constitutional law may always be silenced by a school board causes problems while officials contain the speaker and investigate whether there is cause for concern. safety comes 1st. that is the taxonomy. the principal or other official has to 1st figure out what kind of speech this is. the students own that is not

lewd, not prodrug or school sponsored and then within that taxonomy apply the correct test. a slightly different formulation. i understand that it is hard for teachers and principals in the spur of the moment when they are worried to try to understand a complex set of standards, but they are not adequately prepared. so i provided chart in the book, and this is the color version, what do i do now? okay. this is going to remind me. if it is the students on speech i have to slowdown and cannot silence it. but i have to understand something about what that means.

and school sponsored, slowdown, censored, and only if i have a legitimate pedagogical reason andof the fact that someone finds it offensive word might be controversial is not a legitimate reason under the first amendment, but lewd, prodrug, inciting violence are inflammatory, i can censor and punish it at my discretion. so now how does this work? most of the speech at the core of contemporary debate, sexton, texting from online speech,speech, bullying, racist expression kemal falls in the category of what i call your student speech. governed by material disruption. let me begin with creative artists who commonly get in trouble schools fictionally graphic works.

this is a poster a high school senior who had never been in trouble made during her lunch hour and posted in the corridor. about 15 minutes later they were on the cafeteria the gender sought and got upset and took sarah and the poster to the principal's office. it says who killed my dog. he was my best friend. did you kill my dog, did you kill my dog? if you don't tell me i'll kill you. she taken a course that time but conceptual art designed to capture deranged fictional people. the principal's office she explained this and said i have to suspended for five days. subsequently the school board got involved and decided that she should be suspended for 81 .5 days,

the rest of her senior year and that she cannot return to school unless a psychologist examined her and confirmed that she was mentally fit to be in school. she sued and the court easily help better rights have been violated and she was able to return to school they said was the principal interviewed her and understood what was going on it was simply no reason to anticipate disruption, especially because even if other students might of been upset at this in the poster that we saw. so there was no cause for concern at all. a similar case involving a work of fiction and appellate judge rebuked his fellow appellate panelists for allowing the school to punish the writer saying after today students will have to either our work.

if someone finds there are disturbing they can be punished. school officials may now support make students freedom of expression to a policy of making high schools cozy places like day care centers where no one may be made to feel uncomfortable by the knowledge that others and all the hours of heart and smiley faces. so if you're wondering about the connection between my book and some of what has been going on in today's college campuses, students who think that their comfort level is more important than the expressive rights appears, this is part of a connection that i see. it is part of the discussion

and this brings us to disparaging speech addressed to groups or individuals. many schools have speech codes, simply school rules that prohibit students from disparaging people based on categories like race, ethnicity, sexual identity, and some go much further talking about physical appearance lakeshore people or even something much harder to measure, values. students have even been prevented from expressing views that undermine respect for group even though they were not actively aiming her comments at the group or meaning to be disparaging. and i opened my saying that schools center both sides of a lot of debate in many schools have wrongly prevented students from forming chapters of the gay straight alliance or similar groups all wearing t-shirts in which students proclaim

their own sexual identity, but here's the flipside, roman catholic resisted a lesson and tolerance on spirit day, national day of recognition for lg bt teams who committed suicide. he told his teacher i don't accept gays. there was no risk of disruption, only of competing ideas. a federal judge later commented the teacher had mild depression and intolerance. other students agreed because they asked, why doesn't he have free-speech? legal question is whether the constitution permits students are schools to regulate hurtful speech addressed to groups or individuals and are out of school she was still a law

professor and conclude that even an exceedingly narrow speech code in this growing threat harassment cannot survive constitutional scrutiny in the united states. justice alito there is no right to be protected from hurtful words. free-speech principles simply conflict with efforts to reduce the harm that disparaging speech can cause. under our constitution liberal secular democracy that strives to inculcate tolerance in our citizens and more importantly perhaps and culture of mutual respect rather than simply tolerating each other must tolerate the expression of intolerance.

that means that the state can't use coercive powers to punish speech. but the speech clause doesn't leave educators without any recourse. schools can teach empathy, encourage peers to step up to support each other and can modern constructive ways to disagree. they provide a training ground for responding to hurtful speech with more and better speech as the first amendment generally requires and looks for and for learning how to have substantive conflict about real issues without going too far and cutting off conversation.

a growing number of incidents in which schools reach out and claim they can punish what students have said. schools increasingly claim they track and punish what students say 247 keep track of their students online communication from their computers from the house. remember that the whole rationale for giving schools more power to restrict speech is the special environment and purpose of the public schools. schools say they can violate speech that is fully protected by the constitution outside the school if it violates the schools rules of decorum.

many state statutes put this responsibility on schools in areas such as bullying. the laws unsettle likely to remain so because the supreme court just last week denied in the case in which all 16 judges on the fifth circuit went further than any other appellate court and allowing schools to discipline a student for off-campus speech. american students who wrote

and recorded in which she sexually harassing. no one ever argued in court or even asserted outside of court that this was not true no one said that this it never happened. but the school services harassment of school personnel which the code does not allow. these were gangster rap lyrics. the figurative violence found in rap songs by killer mike. they might not know that

killer mike himself is not actually killed anyone. so this leaves the law very different in different parts of the country you live in very clear that criticism of school staff members is a very likely kind of speech to get a student in trouble. tell about was sent to an alternative school for troubled kids and similar things have happened to students who have posted so-called satirical adolescent humor fake myspace pages, making fun of

school administrators complaining about the staff member bad teachers. great speech exists to protect dissidence. that is a core principle of democracy and one that should be honored in our school systems. the states region of the child's home also creates and expressed conflict between what educators think and parental liberty and what is acceptable for their students to say and doing post. parents often punish the students in these cases such as the off-campus speech cases if the speech was ruled a crude but sue the school to get the course of

discipline of the state of the child's permanent record if i have time i will fill you one more story. this was an on-campus in position into a private online conversation between two middle school students. the conversation had something to do with sex. we never learned its actual content. when school officials learned about it from the family they went after the girl who responded to his indication to talk about sex. if older class. (laptop and demanded her id

and passports for over accounts, did not call her mother, interrogated her with police present, opened our accounts and found a facebook sex quiz in which she said i thought it was fun and funny and condemned her for doing is online quiz as well as her personal correspondence. so warrantless search and when the mother filed a lawsuit even though they had not actually punisher of became clear we have learned since this episode that personal computers pulls everything that is a person's mind that was not as clear the time.

these intrusions teach young people. they teach students to dismiss as meaningless the rights which only have. they teach young people that there is no place to hide from an authoritarian government undermining every corporate. i look forward to the responses. [applause] >> professor ross' example, once got dragon the principal's office for talking inappropriately during the reading of the

lord's prayer. given that the school is a public school in the officials were involved in violating, in retrospect it was my finest hour but did not seem like it at the time. our 1st commentator has traveled from philadelphia today to be with us. received her doctorate in political philosophy from tel aviv university, awarded to successive tel aviv university postdoctoral grants from 2,001 to 2004 a post- doctorate research associate. while in israel she served on the joint palestinian israeli committee sponsored by the peres piece center. a member of the young

scholars forum participated in the women faculty form an established is really institution for postsecondary education. her research focuses on education, normative aspects of education social policy and social effects of war. her books, citizenship under fire tough choices. both of which appear with princeton university press. welcome to the cato institute. [applause] >> thank you. thank you for the invitation

for my 1st appearance. i have been thinking and studying up until now and mentioned that two other things are for my reading of this book is my current work with preparing novice teachers and working with school administrators i try to impress on them the key issues that relate to free speech and other legal and social expectations that we have a practitioners in the field of education. and i'm serving currently as the chair of the committee

and open expression of the university of pennsylvania. i like to raise two points, philosophical or principled point and the other more practical one. the 1st one, the book exposes the petty and sometimes contradictory foundations on which we rest our expectation of schools in the domain of educating for democracy brought. schools are expected to reflect the democratic principles, but even if they are working with children and youth there are also expected to control their students behaviors in ways that would readily be recognized as

unconstitutional in other contexts. we have this conflicting demand. in various ways we expect schools to operate in less than fully democratic ways. and sometimes our actual legal practices this would not be acceptable. if we focus on speech as an expression of the core value which is just a subset of speech when it comes to children in particular youth , probably a smaller subset. a lot of worthless speech. even if we think about speech only in the context

of speech is expressing core values schools mandate there value pluralism and allow for a variety of views to be hurting considered not only to preserve rights but to sustain the school is a microcosm of the vibrant public sphere which was the key message. on the other hand only think about schools is training grounds for democracy rather than as a microcosm of democracy then we more readily accept the need to limit. we may reasonably expect the schools more strongly guide students including limiting speech rights if we think they are further away from being ready to take on their civic growth. the democratic microcosm

depends in turn on our view and most importantly the courts view children. conversely are they barbarians who need to be tamed and trained so that they can fit into our hard-won and establish social order. this offers a framework for current legal approaches and informing in the way that defend students speech. in the former camp that sees children as junior citizens in schools is reflection, and this is very close kemal long history and american and is

obviously a worthy and well-established one, but it is worth noting that both in theory and practice this view is pretty much considered lost. as we see in the course decision examples of practice that are projected, the more extreme version. the field of practice they are violated more often than is justified. or if we take us seriously as we should more than is legally justified. they have a uniquely important role is not only

as scholars and protectors but also a citizens we train our gaze more common practices, even if it is not regularly recited. it is in some parts of the country but not as commonly as the past. practices and concerns to the extent that we care as we should. many schools today are taking the route that circumvents the entire debate we are having by policing student speech. the discussion rests on the existence of a student

speech or holds a banner, petitioner response and then the court needs to decide whether the speech action have been protected taking into account the content of the speech in the context in which speech took place where was in the school or outside of the school as we heard. it was clear to me the courts view, the more expansive interpretation cannot easily be realized in today's education. most centrally unconcerned by the question to what extent can the speech itself be protected, to what extent can we defend students rights to speech independent of the content? in a growing number of

contemporary schools and a growing number of schools, especially those serving low-income and minority students spend days, weeks, and months without ever being allowed to use their voices. expected to follow her lead and respond only when spoken to and only with the responses written in the teacher's guide. and there are cases in which it's focused, usually there is a timer on the teacher's powerpoint that goes up to three minutes and you get a very limited question such as how would you solve this equation or sometimes what

would you do if you were malcolm x. and you get two minutes to discuss with your friends and a guide discussion and then we are back to the teacher. have seen also numerous cases in this context, particularly when students -- when teachers are using quotes to draw the students attention and make sure they are focusing. the teacher would call and all the students would have to respond. first amendment. he is some kind of call and response. if you participate, even if you were sitting quietly not being disruptive listening to the teacher but he did not respond you will be reprimanded, usually with

attention and after four times with suspension. outside the debate the rest of the school is silent including the hallways and most notably an impressively lunchroom. speaking to the person next to you is a privilege it has to be earned. kindergarten to 12th grade you hard to have silent lunches. students must always single file with one hand covering her mouth to their member not to speak. the use of one voice, this is considered to be a violation of the behavior code and is met with an automatic punitive response.

reasoning behind this practice is a reasonable belief that students must obtain a strong level of academic performance in order to succeed in life in different domains, including a citizens. and also the belief that this can only be achieved if we are monitored and limited to these extreme extent. there is one since i want to read to you that shows the courts aligning with this view. this is in relation to the morris case. i have read the courts, violence and subpar learning environment as to justify restricting civil liberty where schools are failing. so where we have lower performing schools we have a stronger reasoning or justification for

free-speech rights. the village tyrant is a powerful metaphor for those who subvert undermine. their charity is expressed in the effort to suppress speech most notably by defining various speech is unacceptable or on the other hand the speech is required. i would encourage those of us who care to consider also the increasingly common practices which make it harder to address within our current legal framework published novelist and then the way of the democratic education and were clearly not be supported by the liberty framework. to be clear, i

wholeheartedly agree that basic academic skills and equal educational opportunity are essential to a functioning democracy for reasons i will not elaborate here. like reading or math citizenship is learned by doing. it will not evolve as a side effect. practicing the skills is essential for democracy. intentional development. [applause]

>> thank you very much. the cato institute depends on the first amendment in a lot of ways. it was always part of the outsider status. we want to get people with the dominant views to come here and debate us. we always want to make sure that the cato position was defended and today professor ross part of the position for the libertarian position and we also do education. thought to include my colleague it is education

here. in fact director of the center for educational freedom. he served in the u.s. army, taught high school english. a freelance reporter covering government education. before becoming a director he was a policy analyst, the author is in the classroom and his writings have appeared in all the leading publications. he has been on c-span, cnn talks in numerous radio programs. he double majored in government english, masters degree in political science from rutgers university and a phd in public policy.

[applause] >> thank you all very much. i think doing educational policy all the time that threats to basic rights in public school is not a subject that gives nearly enough attention. all sorts of questions have been pushed aside with the obsession over test scores. and these are topics we absolutely need to talk about. there may be some collusion trying to keep people away from today's event by closing down the metro, but we will see. within the book i appreciate the discussion of federal overreach, the role in

education, but especially the anti- bullying 2010 dear colleague letter was asked about this before the event. but it was particularly striking that the only mentioned the first amendment in a footnote and only once. going to come up a little more often. i do have one particularly huge objection, conservative groups when you talk about the kind of speech not protected by the first amendment. we're not going to call the police in this case, but it

is an important distinction. >> it's right, government entities are very clear. we also have to be clear, concerns i have about the book. they are not actually often thought of as training places. learning liberty by living it. people tend to not look at schools this way. and 2nd, it concerns me the use of the term democracy.

for the 1st, if you read historically they were not all that interested in learning liberty by living it. there were more about shaping people from above. a pretty well-known. he was really an early advocate of widespread public schooling and said they should create a schooling system that would render the masses more devious and thereby fit them more easily. talked about teaching, inculcating common morals. people themselves they came together but more will take an elite notion of what a proper citizen is and that we won't have problems when

they are older. men often called the father public schools the matter what name you give probably the leading advocate for public schools. and talked about public schooling not really about bringing people to work out their differences but making them sort of similar, people who held the same sort of italy views that he did. talked about the same thing general intelligence does but it was really about inculcating the common morality that he hoped was held by people a lot like him. we will go to the progressive era is one more example. a very well-known public schooling figure and advocate and again, he and a lot of people like him do

not necessarily see the schools is a place where you learn liberty. he said, we should give up the extremely democratic idea that all are equal. the employee remains an employee in the way gender remains a wage earner. using an iq test. your future is in a factory. was not really oriented toward public schools being where we learn to be citizens. certainly some public schooling advocates did want that. he was much more in the summer we had schools are kids work on projects together, sort of a different view in this notion that was more driver. this idea that we should sort of shape people in a

way that would be uniform. the discussion it seems to me has been 5th or 6th or 7th 0,900th priority next to test scores, test scores, test scores which is what we have reduced education to being. then just to talk a little bit about the term democracy , it's a lot for me and it is important how we use it, but it is also used interchangeably, representative government, a leveling of people. people can say it as synonymous with individual liberty, sometimes it means majority rule. often it means in some way public control. this latter notion derives a common belief the public schools should basically respond to whatever the communities view. usually whoever is being

represented which leads to a fundamental clash, individual rights versus community values. education is about social reproduction. this is how we shape students to be part of our community, our society. they have to share the norms and values. i think you can see that most clearly because no one ever forgets bong hits for jesus. so you remember that case. they go back to the colonial era, the 1st law for public schools was called the old looter satan act. if you get jesus or satan in the name of the law, in any event ultimately there is a fundamental problem especially when you talk about democratic, the idea

we should have some control is inherently conflictual. conflicts cannot be escaped. now i'm going to do a shameless ploy and rerun something that will go up behind me. i never rely on my own ability to operate anything. the reason this is here, it is supposed to illustrate how many conflicts we have. this does not include how you teach multiplication or the right day to start the school year this is about values and identity -based conflict and the reason it tends to be inherently conflictual is that you have diverse people, ideologically diverse, religiously diverse, but they are all ultimately supporting one system that we are trying to get to

treat the more educate them all, but one system can teach everything that everybody wants. they can be deceptive just to look at it. a lot of those little pins barry other pins. that would look less intense but there are places where there are people. what makes it to courts and into the media is not every conflict that we have. oddly it is the tip of the iceberg. ..

it deems this book is worthy of putting in the library. this book over here, this feature for here is not what you'd been in the library. and that is inherently conflictual. we have on the map the incredible power of the map and user friendliness is these are all the books banning reading material conflicts you again publicly tip of the iceberg but there's about 220 days. this is only the remaining of 10 years starting in 2005, some of them reach further back.

but that is inherently conflictual. is it unjust for those who would not choose to pay for the chocolate war. you may not have read it, but that's one of the most challenged books. what about people to say i don't think i should pay for it and i don't think my children should have to read the adventures of huckleberry finn. people say yes. they make the decision went to reader what not to read. there's a problem that leads to an equality. they automatically as second-class citizens. you might even in its religious discrimination, that you had creation and you're injecting religion, which is certainly something we want the government to do.

also, i think a couple more small critiques and i think professor talked about this i won't go into it too much. there is an argument for people who go in the classroom everyday thing you have to have a law, even if it is people's speeches because they can be very difficult to run the classroom if you don't have that. even if someone is saying some in perfectly legitimate viewpoint, you can have your 45 minutes evolve into a debate about something we need to cover other material. and of course for testing purposes you've always got to cover other materials. finally, there's an important about shared norms and beliefs. research by james coleman and others have shown that private schools and religious schools may outperform public schools because ultimately everyone who goes to that school except for

schools norms and values and that creates a sort of cohesion. you don't have to have his face in public schools rules and regulation and often muddling through is to illustrate very well in the book we are not really sure what to do. how do we decide the policy to have her how to treat the student when we know it will make some people in the community angry and others won't like what they do. private schooling, everybody you agree with the handbook says that enabled much more coherently and creatively. i don't want to say this a slamdunk research. do some research and show this. the only way to truly treat people equally from government, speech rights and religious right is educational freedom ultimately cash money students. not specific schools and give

educators for them to start the schools they want, policies they want and let those people freely interact. somebody wants maximum rate can choose a school like that. somebody says i want no excuses tough discipline, maybe not even speaking in the cafeteria kind of atmosphere can choose that as well. if he chose a school because i want maximum freedom, but much of the getting bullied, you can also leave that school and in a way you're a captive audience. you can choose schools for any number of reasons. parents make those decisions and

go elsewhere if they're unhappy. i think it's absolutely important, crucial to understand the threats to freedom of speech and others and how to minimize public schools. this book does an absolutely terrific job of talking about the issues, diving and then the result with your chart, which i'm going to put up in my office. i think it is even more important ultimately to move to a system in which those kinds of thread can be escaped by the people that the education system supposedly serves. thank you. [applause] >> neil's comment about conservatives and libertarians remind me of my old friend walter burns book, which goes back to 1950s. you will not get the sense that as a libertarian boat. it is indeed a very different kind of approach to the first

amendment which is called conservative. that's a come and might be worth emphasizing at this moment that most of the conservatives, liberals and libertarians i know was rightly decided, which is to say they don't believe public figures should have heightened protection and most of them are frankly appalled to hear unsuccessful politicians otherwise. i'm not no, we shall go to our questions and answers. please wait -- raise your hand. please wait to be called on. wait for the microphones so we can project it to the world. announce your name and affiliation unless you have reason to want to remain anonymous, which i don't think anyone does. it's your comments in the form of a question. this gentleman here.

>> thank you. my name is brett tied name is brett i'm at the american university. when i went to high school, i went to a private catholic high school to the debates around free speech there don't quite match the same. i was wondering if a personal experience that i've had with censorship administration, how that would play out in public schools. i was the editor of the school newspaper's op-ed section and i was planning on publishing an editorial opposing the administration's position of the test taken on homosexuality and they demanded they review the article before publishing it in ultimately they took several months at the review until i left the school coincidentally. i suppose my question is when it comes to school sponsored speech, does the administration had the ability to review what students want to see something like school newspaper in a public school?

>> absolutely. in public school they can say we are reviewing everything before it comes out. they can censor it by eliminating the article altogether, by forcing you to rewrite it, by taking parts out and of course the case was about a school newspaper that wanted to run actual news stories on opinion pieces about teenage fee in the school and the impact of divorce on student and the principle essentially got rid of the newspaper because he wanted to get rid of those articles at the last minute but it went further. this is either not a topic appropriate for a school sponsored newspaper or that the viewpoint was so provocative within the community.

i said earlier they can't really say they're going to censor it because it's controversial or it might be too difficult for some of the younger student to handle. they would find some pedagogical reason for schools goes wrong is they've gotten sort of lazy. they don't but if they could come up with something. that's the sad news. i'm actually going at the end of this week to talk to the annual meeting of the columbia scholastic journalism association, which is the meeting about the high school students who run the student publication and their advisers. i will probably have some more stories after that meeting. >> in the back row. i feel rude even moderator. i don't know their names.

>> hi, my question for you guys is while this does seem to be a general problem across the united states, do you think it should be addressed nationally or in individual communities? >> that's a terrific question. i feel indicated, local control is a very important part of our educational system. elected school boards, local superintendence and as far as i'm able to grasp the newly crafted law that replaced no child left behind, the federal government is stepping back from giving the kind of guidance they been giving the last 10 years. but the constitutional law is federal law. so we really have to have an interplay between the understanding of the first amendment law interpreted by federal courts and what communities do on the ground.

one of the recommendations in my book it's just because the first amendment allows schools to engage in certain kinds of censorship were to play certain innovations on student speech doesn't mean that school districts have to use those powers. so one thing that people who believe in a model of education that emphasizes learning how to be citizens and enact it play might do is run for school board or go and tell the school board, we would like to be a community in which the school doesn't admit students speech that doesn't disrupt death, even though you have the power to do that. we would like to send a different message in this environment. usually the people who talk up about speech in the local

community are those who would like more censorship rather than months until there isn't an event. once there is a censorship incident, quite understandably, principles of school boards tend to dig in their heels rather than reconsider their policies. i suggest this is a good conversation to have before you play has been can't hold or some other issue has arisen. >> other questions? down here to the right. both of these gentlemen. >> michael lenders, washington d.c. i'm wondering if any of the courts have considered the possibility that educators would be doing while to solicit provocative speech rather than just allow it. >> i love that idea. but i've never seen a court say it. have you ever seen a principal say it?

>> i have seen some administrators who provides to encourage -- to encourage speech. there's a very interesting study is published in a book called controversy in the classroom and the authors who actually show a set of cases in which classroom teachers are using controversial topics and controversial opinions as pedagogical for developing capacity or for sometimes the writing, learning how to write her for speech and debate purposes. this is a regular classroom, not at the club. basically, they show generally

speaking, i mean, this is a very large study that they did over five years with thousands of students that they later also followed up with after they graduated to see the extent which they remain act as the descendents, the extent to which they both participate in other ways. and they do show that when you encourage them also model controversial speech in the classroom, for example, when you live in a community where most people, for example, are very strong advocates of the second amendment and you come in, even if it's not your view with the teacher, but you comment and say here is why we should have very strict regulations. or the opposite. basically your capacity to encourage students to develop critical thinking skills and respectfully debate skills. and all of the other capacities that allow you to be a good,

active citizen are really strengthened. so you do see in practice from teachers and administrators. i will say this is a mainstream. >> yeah, i would just add that i think schools and educators tend to avoid controversial issues quite apart from the first amendment question because often the sometimes the school has a diverse community that is working when and they are just trying to avoid conflicts that might give them a hard time. there is work right to political scientist that came out a few years ago now with subsequent work, that survey biology teachers and they found about 60 some% of biology teachers soft-pedal evolution or don't teach it at all mainly because they are trying or they think they're trying to avoid getting

anybody angry. a lot of avoiding controversy makes your life easier not to aggravate people. >> teachers can also lose their jobs if parents get angry enough. even if they have tenure and if they stray from that viewpoint in the curriculum that the school board has chosen, they can get in a lot of trouble. >> david soul sin. some years ago i worked for the michigan legislature and i worked on a bill to protect the rights of public school students in publishing newspapers. there are plenty of sources of rights for students beside the u.s. constitution. each state has its own constitution in each state can pass statewide laws. i would like to know, has that

happened? how states relied on constitutions to protect people's rights? have they passed statute and the rights of free speech? >> terrific question. yes, a number of states have enacted prior protections for students speech read and are currently found in the federal doctrine from the court. california basically says the material disruption and are it applies to every kind of student speech in k-12 regardless of the supreme court precedents. and they also a few years ago passed a law protecting the advisers to high school publications going back to your question about your op-ed piece of an adviser in california fights to protect the rights of the student journalist, and statute says they can't be discharged for that and there are a number of organizations that are actively working to try

to get more states to pass more protective laws for student journalists. a number of states came close to doing it, but experience because from governors. one case involved students in a suburb of chicago at a very good high school with an award-winning newspaper who discovered the staff of the school district had gone a junket and dug out the travel received and showed they stayed more days in the hotel and the meeting went on and they weren't allowed to publish it in the school newspaper. the "chicago tribune" found all of the standard for journalists investigations and published a kind of student rights statute to cover student journalists and the governor vetoed it. what a shameful. but that is another place going

back to the local or national problem, it is both. >> the gentleman right here. >> thank you asking this question my capacity as a high school basketball coach. i'm wondering when your scholarship touches on this issue in following the case right now. in the state of washington over the course of career had at the end of games, centered the field field and prayed by himself. bush didn't raise the problem some kids on the team said coach, what are you doing? i'm praying. and we join you? of course, free country. whenever they say that, that is always wrong of course. so as more and more people joined him this case is ongoing.

i wonder if your research touches on that issue when students came voluntarily to pray with him. >> yes. the last chapter of my book focuses in large part on religious expression by student. one of the problems in this area is that next to the doctrine speech which many brought their hands and say this is confusing for me. i don't know how to use it, which they do preside over antitrust, other very difficult cases, but try to make it clearer. next attack, the the condition of the establishment clause is an enormous disarray because the supreme court has basically not

relied on a certain old set of doctrine and hasn't really replaced it with anything else. individual justices have their own purchase, but the lower court don't have much guidance. so teachers and principals are confused about what amounts to an establishment clause violation. how does this relate to free speech for students? they too often think that if students express religious views like praying over the sandwich i brought from home, not even trying to get other students to join him, and that the school be accused of an establishment clause violation by allowing this to take place. that is clearly not true. the supreme court has repeatedly said students have the right to pray in school as long as they are not disrupting class and to express through speech or religious viewpoints to each other. the problem is when you have a

teacher encouraging people who have a question if our dissipation is really voluntary. the law is pretty clear it should be from the students themselves. if a group of students said we've noticed the coach has been praying in the middle of the field and would like to do that, too. do they do it separately? do they join the coach? when the coach that team members whose bias and pretty much in charge of a lot of the time and i'm a very important authority figure to you, you want to join me, that is a closer question. certainly he said we are going to do this as a team, that is. >> joe momentum the center a couple more to wrap a period >> i have kind of a quick

scenario question for you. if the teacher is hospitalized due to an incident at a high school and is assaulted and ends up in the hospital post on facebook but she ends up in the hot little and got fired because of it, is that violated her first amendment rights? >> i'm sorry, the teacher? >> sorry, i wasn't clear. the teacher was assaulted in an incident at school and was hospitalized because of it. while in the hospital she posted on social media site that she was in the hospital. can she be fired for that? >> it depends -- the law would be different depending where she lives because the courts are not entirely in agreement. but there are some limit to what public employees, including teachers, can say about her

work. and so, a lot would depend on whether this was considered a matter of public concern or not. hypothetically, you know, if she were that say attacked by a student or by the school principal, that probably to me would feel like a matter of public concern. but if it was something else, she probably could be. it's very hard to say without knowing where this took place. >> this'll have to be our last question. >> dr. mccluskey, to your point commit his missile issue more about free expression, but property rights. if an public property the original sin in this whole debate, where in the public poverty, the government would be in a position to be an arbiter of speech. >> i've never put it that way and i'm not an expert on

property law or anything like that. i do think that is certainly a real problem if the government were providing the schools, then most of these issues would go away. there's a lot of arguments for by government proposed schools. i think what is important is we do need to look somewhat below the conflicts themselves and say, well what may be causing us to have all these conflicts? the reality is i hope that the school choice. to some extent, that means private schools because even charter schools understands public schools. they are still bound by this. we are nowhere near most people going to private schools for most of are very real issues to be dealt with.

until we can meet where everybody is going and you and the educators essentially agree on what the rules are going to be and that's the best way to balance lots of competing goods. one more peoples but the values on different things, but also worse than things can coexist together. you can't have a school that is both nonreligious and it teaches their religious.or in which a lot of people want. in terms of whether or not it's a public authority issue i just never framed it that way. >> when professor ross and i met on a panel here, outside the first amendment that they advocate. of course i was perplexed of having all the answers when people disagree with me. there's a point here that's

important. the importance of the first amendment despite the fact we disagree about many policy issues. in fact, i think that's an important thing to remember in a context like this at a time when there's lots of polarization, lots of partisanship and not to intractable conflicts. it's important to people across parties and across ideologies remain committed in unified to a strong first amendment protection. i think this book subverts students first amendment right and important contribution to building that unity and making us appreciate the importance of the first amendment. i would like to thank professor ross for coming today. for coming down on a potentially difficult day to be with us here and my colleague, neil mikulski for applying on -- appearing on

the panel. he must care about the first amendment cannot today and appreciate each one of you coming. let's have lunch and talk more about this. lunch will be held on the second floor at the georgia maker conference center which is that the spiral staircase at the front of the building. restrooms on the second floor. a new way to lunch, look for the yellow wall and purchase your own copy of tran 11 -- "lessons in censorship" up there. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> tonight, we are thrilled to welcome award-winning journalist and news anchor, or a promise from a fresh the heels of last week's democratic debate which he moderated with the same integrity and no holds barred approach that you see an exhibit in its role as innovations lead news anchor since 1986. [cheers and applause] more than 2 million people turn into a sniping