place on the campus of miami-dade college we have 525 authors representing every genre and good afternoon if you don't know the name of the director here at the

washington d.c. office. so with this discussion in today led by our honored guest today which is the autobiography sir these papers or from the library archives of when he was writing the book that a acknowledgement makes the point maybe love was lost or forgotten about. so what is that like to find things?. >> was that stupid?.

>> that is one of the great historians of the conservative movement as a great biography of barry goldwater the history of modern conservatism with history of the heritage foundation has a distinguished fellow in have come to admire him so much. but to come to full fruition this week with the victims of communism fund with the memorial here is washington so as to read through this you will see that

preservation of liberty is the true passion so in the war of the captive nations over the years serve the major early program library of congress to look negative and eggs women 100 years since the bolshevik revolution in is whether those things as we inspired to leave anything behind. so despite courageously to avoid all those connections he was a fellow at the institute of politics in a number of years ago. [laughter]

>> that is wonderful and it is so typical yes, sir. generous in your remarks. i appreciate them and i appreciate being here at the d.c. office. my papers are at the hoover archives because there were so many other conservatives at the hoover as well so it is a rich trove and if your interested in writing about communism or anti-communism the place to go is the hoover institution so you should know the president's at the heritage foundation

will be all and about another month from who've -- robert hoover -- robert rubin was an admirable man but that was saddled with the ada he was personally responsible somehow for the great depression. but that is not the case. so ladies and gentlemen i have tried to do with this book is look back and if you think about it of those conservative giants unlock the earth of the 20th century those giants were ronald reagan, goldwater and buckley and i did read

biographies of all three of them and studied them and what do they have in common? they were charismatic leaders who could inspire an audience into action in free enterprise can bring more prosperity to more people than any of their economic system. they look to the transcendent being fuller guidance and inspiration. they hated communism that is one of the reasons why and every other form of tyranny and the is a the constitution as the north star it wasn't just something that they did on their own. barry goldwater.

if i would ask the audience here or watching or listening you may have a vague idea of who he was but essential to the conservative movement as a matter of fact he sparked that revolution and the grandson of a jewish president born in poland sent to san francisco during the gold rush then came next door made his way down to phoenix where he turned his operation into a leading department store goldwater was a college dropout his freshman year than that was it. his father died early and

expected the he had to go back to help run the business. he did write another book called the conscience of a conservative. 120 some pages. 3.5 million copies. published in 1960 3.5 million pop -- copies maybe alan even settle at 100,000. and then promote the book never had a cup of coffee but did keep a bottle in his said the refrigerator and

the democrats and republicans would sit down to talk over things and with those relationships and friendships and hal i wish we could have more of that today. >> if there was president goldwater the vietnam war would have been one in 12 months president would use whatever force is necessary no nuclear-weapons he made that clear during that campaign but rarely will

come home to take the lead as a matter of principle to not get involved in a land war in asia. so that $1 trillion experiment would not be attempted. i was the director of communications but before that i was also the news director for the draft then hired late in the year my first daywork a was a volunteer assistant

november 25, 1963 november 22nd came first i was the news director in iran to the committee headquarters and was in the eye of the storm. because everybody's assumption was of those who killed him. there was no knowledge of who did that. in one tv anchor said this was the heart of goldwater land and that is how he was described perot people were

yelling at us. assassins, murderers. so we were under tremendous pressure but then came the announcement the fair play for cuba committee because we knew it was the communist cuba of french to say it is in one of ours but one of theirs. but barry goldwater was blunt in spoke directly as members of young americans with the people out there and i can remember the first time i had my first formal meeting as director of

communications i put together a comprehensive campaign how he had flown in food and supplies otherwise might have perished. to be a member of the earth did the gay and the naacp. talking how he went down the columbia river during world war ii i was two minutes into representation when all of a sudden a big hand comes out to say stop. if you tried any of that madison avenue crap i will

pull a lot of the office is out of the campaign. is that clear? he was a two star general and i said yes, sir. he said this will be a campaign not to of personalities. marvelous but wrong because he could talk about the human side and it is possible that he does not sound or look like a warmonger somebody with social security but that is the way he was to offer the conservative choice. the other thing to talk about is what happened in the last week.

to a particular tv program called the time for choosing . . . . >> my staff here is not too happy about this, tv talk of yours. it's, among other things, talks about social security and we sort of put that to the side, and we really would like to run something else. we'd like to rerun this half hour we have of me with iewk -- with ike at gettysburg. and ronnie says, well, gee,

everybody seems to like the tv address. i've been giving it and people like it, and i can't help you. you've got to talk to the people who put up the money for it. and then he said, well, barry, have you heard it? he said, well no, actually i have not. let me call and listen to it, and i'll call back. so they ran an audio version of a time for choosing, and goldwater says what the hell's wrong with that? [laughter] run it. so he calls back and says, go with it. go with it. that tv program, that one program, made ronald reagan a political star, national political star overnight. it raised easily $1 billion within 24 hours, changed thousands of votes, and it led to a bunch of republicans coming to reagan and saying we want you

to run for governor the following, the physicalling year. that's how -- the following year. that's how important that was. in political shorthand, no political candidate goldwater, i think no president reagan. that's how important that speech was. extraordinary. ronald reagan, my first meeting with him, serious meeting, was in october of 1965. and he had been spending the last several months testing the waters as he called it to see if the people of california wanted him to run. he'd pretty much made up his mind. but i called him up and i said -- and i was working on a profile of him for readers digest. and i said can i come out and visit with you. oh, yes, come on ahead. so for two days myself and my

wife anne traveled with him. and she had been active in new york politics, and i valued her judgment, and she'd also had been an editor and a fellow co-author with me. and so there were four of us, only four of us in this limo. there was the driver, anne up in the front seat next to him, me in the back and reagan over here. and between me and reagan was my tape recorder. now, don't bother to get out an iphone, you guys all know what an iphone is. i had a woolen sock which is this big. it's like a piece of luggage. [laughter] it's an old reel to reel. and i had that between us. and a great big microphone which i was asking reagan questions. i asked about his political philosophy, and i thought i'd

share with you on this, this was 1965. he quoted a 1947 interview in which he said that whether, quote, it comes from management or labor or government or the right, the left or the center, whatever imposes on the freedom of the individual is tyranny and must be opposed. that was his philosophy which he had come to over years of study and reflection and reading. well, at the end of that second day, of course, we were convinced, anne and i both that, as we said, he's got it. i mean, he's really got it. and he said, well, come on up to the house, have some iced tea. we were working hard, give you some cookies. so we went up to pacific palisades to their home. very modest home, actually. filled with all kinds of ge gimmicks because he'd been working for ge for all those

years. and he went into the kitchen with nancy to do the iced tea and cookies, put us in the library den which was very small really. i looked over, here were all of these shelves and shelves of books. so, of course, what did i do? right? got up, began looking at them, looking at the titles. history, politics, economics, volume after volume after volume. and i began looking at the titles. conservative classics, and there are four books in particular i'll mention. the road to serfdom by friedrich hayek, witness by whitaker chambers, an extraordinary autobiography of an ex-soviet spy. economics in one lesson by henry haslett, a classic of its time. and a book which i had not read,

"the law" by frederick bostiat. i learned later he was a 19th century economist, a free enterpriser and someone who had influenced many, many people including ronald reagan. i said, okay, maybe he hasn't read them. so i reached out and began taking the books out of the shelves. and anne said, no, no, don't do that. nancy may -- no, it's going to be okay. [laughter] picked them out, opened them up, dog-eared, underlined little phrases in the margin. he had read these -- i'm not saying that he read every book that closely, but those classics that i'm talking about, yes, he had. and here was a thinking, reasoning person who had arrived at his philosophy the old-fashioned way, one book at a

time. and i said right then and there that reagan is an intellectual. he's an intellectual. he's comfortable with ideas. he understands the power of ideas. and with that kind of foundation, that kind of intellectual foundation, a political leader can do all kinds of marvelous things which, as we know, is exactly what he did. in my last book -- i wrote four books about reagan -- i talked about various qualities that he had. his courage and also his sense of humor. and i'd like to share with you here was a bit of humor at a summit meeting that he did with gorbachev. it's a story of the american and the russian arguing about the freedom in their countries. and the american said, now look,

i can go into the oval office, pound the president's desk and say, mr. president, i don't like the way you're running this country. the russian said, well, i can do that too. you can, the american said? the russian said, sure, i can go into the kremlin, look into the general secretary and say, mr. general secretary, i don't like the way that president reagan is running his country. [laughter] now, yeah, it's a great story and funny as all get out, but then you begin to find there's a moral here, there's a lesson here. there's something that reagan was trying to communicate to gorbachev which is about freedom of expression and how we must break down those barriers if possible between us. he had, as you know, the rare ability to see what others could

not. and this is what we call the quality of wisdom. you think about it, this is the early 1980s. you had liberal intellectuals like arthur schlessinger jr. and john kenneth galbraith who were visiting moscow after being over there for weeks and weeks and lauding the economic accomplishments of the soviet union in the early '80s. they were lauding it. we now know that the soviet union was an economic basketcase. when gorbachev came in in '85, just a couple of years later, he was horrified at the shape of the economy because they'd been spending so much money on arms and an arms race. so what was ronald reagan saying at the same time that people like schlessinger and galbraith were saying? he was telling the british parliament that marxism, leninism was headed for the ash heap of history. now, you go back, you'll find that people were sort of

pooh-poohing that, but he was absolutely right. and, of course, before the end of that decade and by the end of that decade the berlin wall was down, and the soviet union in 1991 was no more. that sense of humor. in december of 1981, i had rewritten my reagan bio again, and i wanted to present a copy of it to him. and my publisher said, well, look, be sure and have a chapter in there about the attempted assassination, which i did. so i added that to this edition. and then he said, well, we've got to do something special on the cover. so in black, big black letters on a yellow background complete through the assassination

attempt. it's very tacky. [laughter] you know, i don't like that. i don't like that. it'll be great for sales. complete through the assassination attempt. i went back and forth on it. okay. so come into the oval office, and there is reagan. he had almost died in march, this was december. he looked fabulous. looked like about 50. big smile, been building up his body. he looked strong, vital. he just made you feel so good. and i said, mr. president, here's a copy of the biography. oh, thank you. and so it's a photo op and they're taking pictures and we're chatting back and forth, and he looks down. i can see him, at the cover complete through the assassination attempt. and he raises his head and says, well, lee, i'm sorry i messed up your ending. [laughter] you know, who but reagan could

make a joke out of somebody trying to kill him? [laughter] amazing. bill buckley rescued me from myself. i'd beenover in paris at the sorbonne occasionally going to class but spending a lot of time doing research in various cafés. [laughter] and testing the alcohol you can content of -- alcoholic content of various drinks. but i also was writing, and i thought i was going to be the next scott fitzgerald or ernest hemingway. i kept getting back rejection slips. i wrote a novel, wrote short stories, wrote poems, rejected. and i got very depressed and saying, well, you know, what am i doing? i came back home, sitting in my parents' home thinking what am i going to do? should i write another novel?

more short stories? whatever. i took time out to write an essay, short about france where i'd been living saying unless they elected a strong leader like a de gaulle, they were headed for, you know, the bottom. a long ways from napoleon. and i sent this off to national review, and i had never met bill buckley, and he accepted it and published it. and i said, oh, the market is telling me something. [laughter] the market is telling -- >> was that your first publication? >> yeah. that was my first publication, first professional publication was in "national review." and so i put aside the novels -- [laughter] and the short stories and the poems and began writing nonfiction, and thank heavens that i did. as i mentioned, and i'll finish

up, let me say one more thing about bill buckley because i think it's important. we may get a question about this. i think an important lesson to be taken from bill buckley's career and life is this: we need to practice fusionism. when buckley started "national review," deliberately included on the masthead can conservatives, libertarians and anti-communists. those were the three major strains of conservativism at the time. then welcomed people like richard viguerie and others of the new right and the social conservatives and then also welcomed irving crystal, norman pot or of, so the neo-cons. that, i submit to you, is what we needed needed the today, is w fusionism, a new fusionism. >> uh-huh. >> now, not easy because there are many more strains of

conservativism today. not just four or five, maybe eight or nine or ten. i haven't read the post this morning, so maybe there's one more, one new one. [laughter] but we need that new fusionism. so i say they all were anti-communists, and that's how i got into conservativism, was there anti-communism. living in paris i was there in october of 1956 when the hungarian revolution occurred. i was so exhilarated, i was so excited because all of these young men and women my age were standing up against the soviets. and then, of course, two weeks later the soviet tanks came back, the troops came back, they killed thousands of young people my age, thousands and tens of thousands of hungarians fled. and i kept waiting for my government to do something, and they didn't. it was p -- it was some

perfunctory, matter of fact statement, and i resolved that whatever i could do for the rest of my life to support those who were opposing communism and to opposing tyranny, i would do whatever i could to help them. and coming out of that was the victims of communism memorial foundation. and we founded and we dedicated that memorial in june of 2007, a decade ago, ten years ago. we're very fortunate in that president bush was there to accept it for the american people. we -- it wasn't easy. it took us 14 years. and there are 24 steps which you must negotiate to build a monument in washington d.c. 24. and we went through all of them. and since that time, since that dedication a decade ago dozens of national leaders have visited the victims of communism

memorial to lay a wreath and to say a prayer. and this past june some 22 embassies, 22 embassies laid wreaths at our annual commemoration ceremony. and then we were joined by more than 20 ethnic groups as well, particularly those from china, korea, cuba, laos and vietnam as well. we're going to continue to disseminate the truth about communism, particularly about those five regimes, five communist regimes; china, vietnam, north korea, cuba and lao to s. and as -- laos. and as mike said, a week from today we're going to have an anniversary. not a celebration, but a marking of the 100th anniversary of the bolshevik revolution, god that

failed, and we invite you all to it. we look forward to that day when all the remaining cap ty peoples and nations -- captive peoples and nations are free and independent. we're sure that that day will come because we know that the truth will make you and keep you free. that's what we're all about. so thank you very much for listening. [applause] >> let me start off, ask one question about the personal side. i didn't realize that the ph.d. you have was something you pursued and acquired later in life, that you had been living a full life as an activist involved in different aspects, as you say, of the conservative movement. but then you decided to get a ph.d.. it was in history, i assume -- >> politics. >> politics, okay. that's a big decision. maybe give us a little background on that. but also once you got into the thick of that, was there anything, any intellectual tradition, any writers and

thinkers that you had not at that point become aware of because of your studies you suddenly became acquainted with and -- >> right, right. >> the intellectual journey aspect of this. >> well, it was a political journey first because i'd had my own public affairs firm here in washington only working with conservative and anti-communist clients and candidates. and i'd, you know, i'd done the presidential campaign, and i'd done -- bob dole with was a client of mine, strom thurmond was a client of mine. had a number of congressmen, the republican national committee, the white house even. so that was all great fun. but i was burned out, frankly, after 20 years. [laughter] and i said, you know, no mas. i mean, no more. [laughter] that's enough. that's enough. and i said i've always wanted to teach. and i'd been writing all the way along despite also ghosting for others. and i said if i want to teach though, i must have a ph.d..

i must have that. and i gave a lecture at catholic university on the 1980 election, and i predicted that reagan would win. and someone from the politics department said why don't you come over and get a ph.d. here at catholic university. so that encouragement, i did. another reason why i did it was that our bookkeeper embezzled us, stole from us several thousands and thousands of dollars. and people said, well, you really ought to declare bankruptcy, and i said, no, i'm not going to do that. i'm going to pay off everything that we owe. it was considerable. but that also persuaded me that perhaps the time was to close down the doors of lee edwards and associates, which is what i did. intellectually i now had an opportunity to read in such depth that i hadn't before. i mean, for the first time i

really read seriously the conservative mind, the road to serfdom, the constitution of liberty and other classic conservative texts. and then a whole array of books about foreign policy, international relations and so forth. and i just loved it. and i began from that thinking, well, what kind of classes can i put together. i got that degree in '86 and began teaching at catholic university in '87, and i just completed my 30th year of teaching at catholic university as an adjunct. and i'm going to be doing the politics of the '80s -- >> oh, really? >> -- in the spring. yeah. i had been doing the politics of the '60s, but i'm going to try the '80s in the spring. >> that's great. wow, that's wonderful. i just, i admire that, that you were able to make that transition --

>> well, it would not have been possible except for my wife anne who met me do it and our daughters. >> yeah. >> because, you know, i was doing things in the evenings and on the weekends and so forth. and they backed me up, particularly anne. god bless her. things got a little tight there, shall we say. a lot of hamburger helper -- [laughter] >> pre-chick-fil-a, wasn't it? [laughter] okay. at this point how about we turn to our audience for some questions and, please, microphone in the back. christine brooks. >> thank you, mike. one of the stories that i've heard you tell a couple of times that i always enjoy hearing you tell stories about going to political conventions with your father when you were, i think, 11 years old. >> yeah. >> so i'd like to hear what you think about political conventions now as opposed to the ones you remember attending as a child. i'm sure they've changed significantly.

>> right, right. well, political conventions -- well, i went to the first one in 1948 when i was, what, 15, 14, something like that. in philadelphia. and my father was with the chicago tribune, a political reporter. he covered the white house, washington, d.c. from the 1930s to the 1970s. he covered every president from fdr the nixon. covered every political convention from 1940 to 1972. and so he brought me along in 1948. what i remember, of course, i was till quite young -- still quite young, just how noisy it was, how smoke-filled it was. i remember the smoke. this convention hall in philadelphia, you know? oh, you'd get high -- [laughter] just inhaling. and the lights. i mean, there was always something going on.

it was bright, it was vibrant, it was something vital going on. you could feel all of that. my own personal first convention 1960 when walter judd almost stampeded the convention with his keynote address and almost forced richard nixon to take him as his running mate. if he'd had him, nixon might very well have run. conventions are are important because -- are important because platforms are important. that's still my argument. they inspire, they inform, they lay down a foundation for the workers of the party when it's the democrats or the republicans. so platforms are important. and they are formed at a convention. now, you don't have the smoke-filled room like i saw or smelled in 1948 that you did then because today we have the primary system.

and so much of what is determined at a convention has already been determined by who has won this or that primary. frankly, i wish there were more of a balance. i think the wisdom, to bring in the collective wisdom of political leaders is important, and i wish -- i don't want, you know, half a dozen people to sit around and make the choice, but i think there should be more input from them. and i think this idea that it only depends upon what primaries determine, i think that's going a little too far. >> diane? >> thank you. thanks, mike and lee. thank you so much for your body of work and all you've done in the pursuit of liberty. we've, we can't thank you enough for all you've done. >> thank you. >> just wanted to talk a little bit more about fusionism and the fact that youd hadn't realize --

you hadn't read the post today. well, there's a new group that includes bill kristol, evan mcmullin, they've sent a letter up to the hill saying support the mueller investigation. how to we come back together -- do we come back together as a conservative movement when there's so many different factions now? >> right. >> we've got the people who want to kick out everybody in congress, the people who want to support trump no matter what. it seems to be more divided than ever, and how do you see that coming back together? >> well, fusionism was easy -- [laughter] 40 years ago, 50 years ago when bill buckley first conceived the idea with the help of frank meyer, because there were only three strains. then along came the neo-conservatives and then the social conservatives, the new right, which gave you five. today you probably have maybe

ten. who knows? bill kristol may do one more new one tomorrow depending upon what the reaction is to the one he tried to launch today. but i think that's all to the good. i don't mean to make fun of that because, to my mind, although the movement has many more elements, many more strains -- no question about that -- all of that, to me, is an indication of vitality. you know? people want to be in a position to lead and to direct this movement in this direction or that direction. i mean, they're fighting over the control of something very important, not something unimportant or something that's really to be interred. quite the contrary. what was vital seems to me in the first case with the original fusionism, number one, there was charismatic, principled leadership in bill buckley

intellectually and ronald reagan politically, and then there was a dual threat, an external threat which was the soviet union and an internal threat which was liberalism as reflected in the great society. what we needed today for our new fusionism -- and i've written about this, and i think it's going to be in "national affairs" perhaps in the next issue or two -- in this new fusionism is to focus on one or two demonstrable, visible threats. and i think that we were reminded once again that the external threat today is radical jihaddism as what happened in manhattan just a couple of days ago. the heritage foundation did a study, it was published just in the last week or two, there have

been 98 terrorist attacks since 9/11. 98. which have been prevented by our measures coming out of the patriot act. increased intelligence, more visible presence of police, the fbi getting involved and so forth. so that's the external threat. the internal threat is, well, i take bernie sanders' appeal very seriously particularly among young people. young people think, oh, well, socialism is just one more political philosophy. it's far more than that, far more than that. it is a direct threat to our way of life, to our system of looking at economics. i was asked this question, well, what do we do about it? i said, well, the next time a young person says i don't see anything wrong with being a socialist, just say, well, would you like to give up any right to

have anything personal that you own? just you no longer can can have anything personal that you can call your own. are you willing to believe that the individual is not important, that only the group is important? are you willing to give up all of your individual rights to the group? to the country? and finally, are you willing to give up god? are you willing to give up any belief in a transcendent being? that's, those are the things that socialism/communism are all about. they're against private property, they're against the individual, they're for group think, and they're against god, you know, the opiate of the people, of the masseses. so those are the two threats. and the other thing that we need is that charismatic, principled leadership.

that's not exactly obvious right now, but i think that person or persons will come to light because i don't think that we can just sit back and expect the conservative movement to do nothing. i think quite the contrary. it's being challenged right now to come together, to fuse itself , to begin to do what it has done in the past. and i think that day is sooner, perhaps, than a lot of people realize. >> yes, sir. >> hi. nicholas, i'm a former yaf-er myself -- >> once a yaf-er, always a yaf-er -- [laughter] >> so, yeah. but i was a yaf-er in undergraduate school in california, and it's an honor to meet someone who signed the

sharon statement. i was wondering if you could maybe speak to the events that led up to that famous document in connecticut. >> well, the picture is 1960 and if you were a young conservative in 1960, what are your alternatives? i mean, you've got john kennedy who's obviously, for the day, a liberal democrat, and you've got for the republicans a moderate, sometimes conservative/anti-communist but really basically a moderate in richard nixon. so where do you go? what if you truly believe in this limited government? what if you truly believe in free enterprise? what if you truly believe in individual responsibility? what if you truly believe in a strong national defense? all these compromises which are going on within this party and that party, what you need is an organization committed to conservativism. not young republicans, but young

conservatives. so bill buckley said, that makes sense to me. i will be happy to host a meeting. so about 90 of us showed up at sharon, his home, in september of 1960 to found young americans for freedom. and you might be interested in there were two arguments, two big, basic arguments. number one was whether or not the phrase god given rights should be in it. whether the word or phrase "god given" should be in the sharon statement. we debated that. and there was a vote taken on it. and the vote was 44-40 to keep that vote. that's -- i mean, there were libertarians at the beginning, they were there as part of that coalition that we were putting together. that's how close it was. now, what did the libertarians do?

did they walk out? no. they stuck around. they said, well, this is this new organization is going, we're going to sit around, we're going to debate and see where it goes and so forth. we're going to make a commitment. so they stuck to it. they didn't walk out. the other debate was over the name. the two possible names were young conservatives of america or young americans for freedom. and i and david frank and others were for young americans for freedom. we wanted to be inclusive. we wanted to reach out to as many different people as possible, and we thought that maybe just calling ourselves conservative was too limited. so that vote was much more dominant for young americans for freedom. and we thought at that time, as i said to you earlier, that, well, we were quite full of ourselves, pretty arrogant, that we could change the world. and we didn't change the world perhaps, we made a difference in

american politics and maybe had some impact upon the world itself. >> heather? >> i have a three-part question. >> uh-oh. >> my name's heather gradison. are you with -- are you the one that came up with the bummer the sticker, hey, you, h2, 0? >> no, that came out early by somebody who had a scientific background. but people loved it because it was so different in american politics, and there were bumper stickers and plaque cords and -- plaque cards and things like that. wish i could claim. >> well, i was 8 years old, and that was the beginning of my learning the periodic table. [laughter] the word "conservative" has taken on just a terrible distinction. the liberal media has made it come across that way, and yet we

now have this new word for liberal called progressive. any idea how that happened? >> well, liberals have always called themselves progressives going back to woodrow will stomp. this is -- wilson. this is nothing new about this. it's just that they liked and adopted with i think it was fdr liked the word liberal more so than progressive, but he wanted to go back to the origins. they were very pleased to call themselves progressive. i have to respectfully disagree with you. we've worked hard for 50, 60 years to make the word conservative acceptable. i think it is, and i think we should not give it up at all. it's a very honorable word. you can play around with it and talk about conserving things like the founding principles of our country, western civilization, all kinds of things. so i think it's a good word, and i'm not going to --

>> [inaudible] >> yeah. well, you've got to get out of washington. [laughter] >> okay. and my final question, i hope it's not embarrassing -- >> uh-oh. >> why haven't i ever heard of you? [laughter] >> gee -- >> drop the mic. >> mike, i'll let you answer that. >> that's one of those unanswerable questions. [laughter] >> you were behind the scenes. >> yeah, but he's also -- i think my exposure in washington in conservative circles, lee's been a major player. and you're right, a lot of it is behind the scenes. he's very modest. he's not one of those sharp-elbowed types that walk into a room and wants everyone to know he's in there. he has accomplished what he's accomplished through, with grace and style and modesty, you know? and his intellect. >> clearly. [laughter] in the center of everything going on.

>> that's why he has a great biography. >> i would put him on tv as often as possible. [laughter] >> you have to get out more. i think that's the message here. >> well, i'm waiting for my invitation from cato, chris teach. you've got to talk to your -- christine. you've got to talk to your bosses. >> hi. my name is -- [inaudible] japan native, u.s. citizen. my question has nothing to do with what you were talking about today. pardon me for that, but i can't help. president trump is leaving to asia-pacific for his next trip which is very, very important. if you had any opinion on that, it's kind of vague, but i would appreciate it. >> right, right. well, i'll say this, i have visited asia quite a few times over the years. i had a particular interest in that because of a man named

walter judd who was a very important adviser on u.s./asian relations and particularly china for many, many years to a number of presidents from truman to reagan, as a matter of fact. i think it's a very important trip. we can see what president xi is doing over there in china. he's being very aggressive. he is challenging us, and i think we have to be prepared to answer, you know, firmly and not belligerently. for example, this idea of the islands out there in the south china sea that cannot be permitted, the idea that we might be weakening our support of taiwan. that cannot be allowed. taiwan and the republic of china is an important actor out there in that part of the world. if it's necessary, we need to encourage japan to develop the appropriate weapons to counter

north korea. i see where the president of south korea said yesterday, today, whatever, that he's against developing nuclear weapons for south korea. well, i think he needs to rethink that, and i think there needs to be an open debate about that in korea and perhaps we can help in that debate. so i think this is a very important trip. and, yes, we have to be concerned about europe, but we are an asian power still, and so what happens out there can have an influence not only for today, but tomorrow as well. >> thank you. >> mauricio. >> thank you. my name is -- [inaudible] i am from italy, but i just finished my ph.d. here in virginia. my question is what these great conservatives of the past that you mentioned, reagan, goldwater and the other, would say of today problems of democracies? we have big erosion of

democratic values around the world in democracies. i come from europe -- [inaudible] poland, hungary and many others. with mike we were having a conference, and we spoke about the return of nationalism and the return of pom limb as -- pop limb -- [inaudible] so more than communist regimes like in the last -- [inaudible] through revolutions, today we have a big -- [inaudible] so what -- what we should do to fight against these. thank you very much. >> i think we have to be very careful about overreacting to certain actions which have taken

place in places like hungary and poland. i've talked to young people in those two countries, and they're comfortable with a nationalism as they define it because they are still democracies. criticism, for example, of hungary, but at the same time the people of hungary have given a two-thirds majority in the parliament to the present party, majority party there. the same thing in poland. not quite the same margin in the parliament, but still considerable. so i think we have to be very careful about just dismissing, quote, nationalism. nationalism within a democratic context, it seems to me, is allowable. it's what the people want at this particular time. i think here at home, the same

thing. i think we have to be careful. it's so easy to be distracted by mr. trump, isn't it? [laughter] i mean, and it's so easy to get caught up in the what i call the twitter game. i think with regard to the president, follow two tracks. one track and the more important is to look at what he's doing. and as a conservative, i like very much the gorsuch nomination. i like very much his standing up against isis as we see how important that is given what happened in manhattan just a couple of days ago. i like very much his deregulation campaign, what he's carrying out there. i like very much his tax cuts as a conservative. those are all good things. now, some of the other things on trade and so forth, immigration

i'm, that's not something. but on the other hand, the other track is the twitter track. and, yes, you cannot ignore it, but you can't allow it to subsume whatever is happening on the other track. so let's focus on the more important parts of this administration, what is being done and accomplished and maybe a little less on the rhetoric. and maybe just sit back a little bit and try to enjoy it. [laughter] it's some sort of game, it's some sort of thing that he's done maybe to -- that he's doing maybe to make us smile at the outrageousness of it. >> but there have been some scholars who writing about a democracy recession, you know, around the world. turkey is an example and, i think, the philippines and so on. >> right. >> is there a role for, i mean,

one thing i remember about heritage is one of the few federal programs that heritage usually supported and usually to resist any attempts to cut or in many cases grow were the public diplomacy -- >> yes. >> -- ailments of our state department and other agencies, you know, radio-free europe and those kinds of things. is there a role, you know, is there any kind of a soft power, public diplomacy kind of role to help citizens in those countries not see those countries fall under the sway of a, you know, an authoritarian type, a return to authoritarianism? >> right. i think if you look back, you're talking about previous leaders. if i were to ask goldwater or reagan or walter judd what they would say today, they would not be for an america first. they would say that isolationism is not possible. they would say that freedom, the cause of freedom concerns us,

and we should encourage it, we should promote it, we should publicize it wherever we can and however we can. ask that has to be done -- and that has to be done not only through specific programs like you're talking about, mike, but also has to be done by our leader. and this is where i certainly fault the president for this. but yet at the same time, we can see he's reaching out, he's going to asia, right? he's spending ten days there. he's had meetings with mr. abe, he's had meetings with other leaders of other countries, so he's not ignoring the world. and so i think there must be a balance there in which we say, okay, let's be concerned about what e affects us first, but we have to acknowledge at the same time that what affects us is also the state of freedom around the world. and and let's speak up. let's speak up when we see dangers to that freedom whether

it's in europe or whether it's asia, whether it's africa, whether it's latin america. it's a heavy burden, but we still are are the one sole superpower in the world. >> right. >> and that carries with it very, very solemn responsibilities which we cannot ignore. >> bob. famous uncle bob. >> thank you. thank you for your book and your career. back to buckley. his only child, chris buckley, wrote what many see as a devastating book about his parents. what was your reaction to it? >> well, i wish chris had not written that book. i think it was -- added little to the life and career really

and the impact of bill buckley. obviously, though, he had to write it. it was something that he had to get off his chest and out of his mind, out of his spirit. and so he did. but what i can say is although that was a devastate thing portrait -- devastating portrait, that in the last year of bill buckley's life chris buckley and bill buckley, father and son, were reconciled. chris moved into the home up there in stanford, and that last year he was with his father night and day and was there the day that he died. and i think that says perhaps more about chris than the book that he wrote about his mother and father. >> any more questions? okay. i think with that, please join me in a warm round of applause

for lee edwards. >> thank you. [applause] >> and will you be able to sign books? >> and i will sign books until my arm drops off. >> okay, thank you. [laughter] thank you for coming. [inaudible conversations] >> i'm the programs director of the miami book fair. miami book fair takes place in downtown miami at miami-dade college. this year we have a little over 525 authors representing every genre. anything that you can think of, we're representing at miami book fair. >> join booktv for the miami book fair live from miami-dade college saturday and sunday november 18th and 19th on c-span2. >> what about your kids? you know, your kids are going to

ask. i asked my mother, 1973. i'm sure people ask it all over the place, and imagine you're white and your kid says how come you can always tell somebody's black even if you can't see them, mommy? the impulse is to say, that's not true. black people sound like southerners. and you know that's not true. or the impulse is to say, no, everybody talks in different ways. you shouldn't stereotype. if your kid has an iq over 40, they're going to think i'm not stereotyping, i'm hearing the truth. so what do you tell the kid? and i think that we need to get comfortable saying black people have a slightly different sound because they often spend more time with one another just like white people sound more like one another because they tend to spend more time together. and that's true of all human groups. that's not racist. it's just true and harmless. there's nothing wrong with the way viola davis sounds as opposed to the way melissa mccarthy sounds.

but she definitely sounds black. and i can tell you because she does the voice of a queen on the disney cartoon series sophia the first. yes, it's in my house because i have small children, and once i had my back turned, and the queen said something, and i had never seen that character. it was that little bell that went off. i thought, huh, the queen is black. is she? and i turned around, and i forget what the queen looks like, but i went on to imdb. who does the queen? it was viola davis. i it wasn't an accident. i don't have any special powers, i hear what every american can hear. there's a black sound. so i have a chapter about that in the book. third thing in the book is the answer to an objection that is traditionally leveled against arguments that black english is okay. well, they can't talk that way in a job interview.

somebody always says that. somebody is talking about what some of the complexity might be about how you shouldn't mock the language because you're mocking the speakers, and somebody will say, yes, that's true, but they can't talk that way at a job interview. but, okay, nobody said they were going to. nobody needs to be told that. and i think that why you get that response is because of a sense that we often have that the way somebody speaks casually is going to interfere with their ability to speak the formal variety where they are. now, with black english that's even worse because everybody thinks it's mistakes. it's assumed if you talk that way, you won't be able to speak standard. but even if we understand that it's not mistakes, there's a sense that, well, if you use that system, it will keep you from using the standard. that is an american kind of misimpression, a perfectly understandable american misimpression because our dialect diversity here is

relatively thin. english hasn't been here for 2,000 years as it has in, for example, england where different ways of speaking have been doing this for much longer. and so there are kinds of english there that barely sound like english to us. america is 15 minutes old, and so we don't have that depth of this. i'm not going to call it dialect diversification, that sounds like a disease. it's just that there hasn't been as much of this going on. some, creole, south carolina, hawaiian pigeon, louisiana creole-french. but those varieties are all spoken literally on the geographical margins of the space, andly creole -- louisiana creole-french is essentially extinct. for the most part, there are dialect differences, but there's a certain vanilla aspect to the way english goes here. black gish -- english is the most divergent form of english that most people in the united

states have any reason to hear. so what we miss is that living in two very different dialects of the same thing is a very ordinary human experience, and in the legions of places where this is normal nobody worries that speaking the home thing is going to interfere with speaking the formal thing. nobody in sicily is worried that somebody who speaks siciliano is going to use it in a job interview instead of italian. there's siciliano which really is different enough from that, that if you roll the dice again, and it would be considered a separate romance language. it's very different. and if you see something like "the godfather" or some episodes of "boardwalk empire," you'll see characters translatedded using sicilian because it's

different enough that anybody that knows territory to show them speaking textbook italian, it would be ridiculous. whenever you see them speaking that language, they're really speaking something almost as different from italian as spanish. but that person speaks standard italian in school, in the job interview. there's no debate in sicily about whether siciliano threatens -- they speak the standard language. then what they learned on their mother's knee is something so different that it is, although often the speakers feel funny having it put this way because of cultural unity, it's really a different language. if you know a moroccan, the language they learned at home is like french. then they went to school, and they learned something like

latin. a moroccan will say i learned moroccan, and then i learned arabic. any arabic speaker that you know unless they're roughly from malta is like that. they wouldn't say that they're bilingual, but the idea that egyptian arabic is a threat to standard arabic, no. i mean, as i mention this, there's an article in the new yorker last week that actually addresses at almost beautiful length. a linguist gets to this article and thinks, all right, this is going to run five minutes, but it dwells on standard arabic and egyptian arabic and the idea that people need to let go of the egyptian because it threatens the standard, no, it's the other way around. black english is the same thing. what it is is black english speakers are going to hit you with some terminology, two tongues. and this isn't a term just made up for black people in the united states, this is people speaking all over the world. the idea that you learn

something on your mother's knee or father's knee and then you go to school and pretty much that same way of speaking is what your teachers use, and that same way of speaking is on the printed page, and everybody around you speaks that way, is and so you have learned this standard, formal way of speaking at home. that sounds so normal to us, that is very strange as a linguistic experience. i would venture that at least every second person in the world would never dream of that being the situation. and that was even more the case until about 200 years ago when literacy became widespread in many parts of the world such that vernacular languages were used on the page. for a very typical experience, there are no figures on this, but a very typical experience is the way you speak most spontaneously is with your family and friends. you go to school and what's on the page is something rather different. it's not a different language, but it's different.

it's as if you say house, but what's on the page is domicile, and you just have to know. nobody imposes it, it's just the way it's always been. and you just make your way, and you learn that school way. that's humanity. that's how it works. only about a hundred of the world's 7,000 languages are written in any real way. so most people have to make kind of a jump. black english is that situation. black people have a larger english than most white people. i wanted to call one of my very first books a larger english, and they didn't -- [laughter] they didn't like that. [laughter] but what i meant was that black people have more english. so nobody's going to try to use black english at a job interview. if we understand that it's really an okay form of speech but different, something else that any black person intuits is there's a way you speak here and then another way that you speak there. so black english is not a

problem in that way. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here's our prime time lineup. at 7 p.m. eastern, scientist kelly wienersmith and cartoonist zack wienersmith report on several scientific advancements and their impact on society, humanity and the future. then at 8, stanford university history professor richard white provides a history of reconstruction and the gildedded age. on booktv's "after words" at 9 p.m., a muslim-american federal agent discusses his experiences fighting domestic terrorism. and at 10 bruce hoffman talks about the historical evolution of terrorism around the world and the rise of modern groups like al-qaeda and isis. we wrap up our prime time programming at 11 p.m. eastern

with francis who recalls the life of golda my year, israel's fourth prime minister. that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. . >> good evening. welcome to the bookstore. i am nancy. i am the owner of the bookstore. for a little bit history, this bookstore was founded in 1927 by my grandfather