events from washington dc and around the country created by cable in 1979, c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider, c-span, your unfiltered view of government. >> starting now, booktv on c-span2. every weekend 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books. >> this weekend on booktv, journalist michelle malcolm offers her thoughts on us immigration policy, and jason chaffetz argues liberals are trying to undermine the trump presidency and sunday we are live from the book festival. we kick off the weekend with economics from the recent national book festival featuring parag khanna.

>> how many of you are from the washington area. how many of you are from outside washington? how many of your capitalists? how many anti-capitalists here. how many came because you think you will learn to invest in asia q2 we have two distinguished authors here and individuals and i know them both and let me introduce them and we will get into the background and conversation. to my immediate right is the author of this book "can american capitalism survive?" by steven pearlstein, steve is a native of boston area and he went to college at trinity and a number of things in the journalistic area after starting his own magazine in boston, worked at the washington post for many years

and for his writing on the 2008 financial crisis he won the pulitzer prize. he is now the robinson professor of public affairs, in addition to writing for the washington post and writing books. talk about your book in one moment into his right is parag khanna who lives not in washington dc but singapore. he flew all the way from singapore for this event which is very good. [applause] >> his book is "the future is asian". he grew up in many different places around the world, dubai among other places, and he's a graduate of georgetown university school of foreign service where he got his bachelors and masters degree and his phd at the london school of economics and he has

written many books about global affairs, he is the head of future map which gives a lot of strategic advice to companies and other organizations and he is a person who esquire magazine said not long ago that he was one of the 75 most important people of the 21st-century. >> a lot to live up to. >> we will see if you can live up to that some point so steve, your book has a very exciting title. "can american capitalism survive?". the answer is sure, okay? does it have to do anything to change? >> it probably does. it will survive, but whether we will continue to be the richest country and have the most vibrant and innovative economy and the best social and legal and political institutions, that is not a given. >> in your book you point out we have a lot of challenges now

and you point out income inequality, social mobility issues and things like that. why are there not riots in the streets, why aren't people is upset about this is you think they should be if they are reading this book? >> it is not so much that they read the book but have experienced the sort of unfair, unequal capitalism that we have. why don't they write in the streets? first of all, it is america and secondly it is not bad enough but i would say the election of donald trump is a good indication they are pretty unhappy with things and are willing to sort of lash out at the establishment and the elites and that's a pretty good indication maybe we are not too far from it. you say american capitalism. what type of capitalism do you

like better than american capitalism? >> like my students i think swedish capitalism is a little better. northern european capitalism is a little more humane, provides more economic security, not so shareholder focused, they don't have as many financial crises, they don't start financial crises. >> they have very high taxes. people move out of those countries to avoid those taxes. >> they used to but the story you are telling is one that is really 30 years old when they did have very high taxes and realized, when a tennis player moved to monaco or something like that to avoid taxes and they reduced taxes. their overall tax burden is around 50%. our overall tax burden is around 35% but they get a lot for that. for one thing they get their healthcare which represents almost 18% of our economy. so 9% of that is private so 9%

of that differential can be accounted for by healthcare and they get free childcare, mostly free education including higher education so they get more for that and they seem to like it which is not to say we have to do the same but that is where their politics and their culture and history has taken them. >> those countries often have the highest happiness index so our happiness index. >> pretty low for the industrialized countries if you factor in that we are richer. >> let me ask you about asia for a moment. asia, you say the future is asian but the past is asian as well. asia was the center of the world for 1000 years as far as economy and so forth. >> i could call it the present is asian also because if you think about global demographics half the population is asian today, 50% of global gdp is in

asia today. so it is past, present and very much future as well if you think of the growth rates. >> went to the west take over asia as the dominant political and military power and economic power as well, when was that? >> roughly the 16th century with the rise of the european colonialism and things could have turned out differently. i'm not a historian but two episodes i'm looking at our real turning points not only in world history but how asians think about those episodes and how it motivates them. one is the ming dynasty standouts treasure fleet as far as the indian ocean is africa but then retreated in order to focus on domestic, economic issues and border skirmishes and that allowed european colonial powers particularly portugal to move into the indian ocean but imagine vasco da gama rounding the cape of good hope and seeing ming

dynasty fleet in the indian ocean, just how successful would not only the portuguese explorers but the dutch and british companies have been and then the ottoman sacking of constantinople in the 50s and that motivate europeans to look for alternate routes to asia. the lessons asians draw on historical episodes that enable the rise of the west are they should not retreat from their commercial, political expansionism and that sort of thing but also they should not be divided and conquered and they don't view their success as great ingenuity but also -- >> the transpacific partnership. would that have been a good thing to keep our foot in asia but do we heard ourselves by not moving forward? >> economics is everything to asians, economic growth,

building economy and building trade networks. over the last 30 years with the rise of economic partnerships, the transpacific partnership. all the acronyms i am throwing at you unfolding in real time in a diamond to integrate. for us it would have been an enormous opportunity -- already we can see the data about america's declining market share and what we are seeing is our exports may fall to countries like china as a result of the trade war. canada, mexico, japan, australia and new zealand are all actively joined the tpp even competing to lead it and eat away at american market share and we will be left out. >> for those not familiar with it, what is that and where did the name come from? >> the belton road initiative is a continuation of what has been happening for the last 25

or 30 years in terms of this resurrection of the precolonial world where asians had more to do with each other than the rest of the world. particularly in the last 5-10 years, i have been watching this over the last 20 years they have been investing massively in cross-border railways, pipelines, highways. now they call it digital silk road, optic cables, 5g, the infrastructural networking of asia and china has committed hundreds of billions as well. it is the bazooka of infrastructure. >> your definition of asia is from where to where? >> the real bugbear to me as a student of geography there is only one definition of asia and asia is not a continent. our kids always learn the wrong thing which is that asia is a continent, europe is a continent, there's one big continent called eurasia. europe shares it with asia.

they are two regions but asia, two thirds of it, mediterranean sea to the red sea all the way to the sea of japan, from russia to singapore to india, that is asia. there is no dispute about what is asia. the fact is the last 10, 15, 20 years we've been focused on asia as if it is just china and china represents all of asia and china is only one third of the asian population. half of asia's gdp and other countries growing faster than china and much of what we call the middle east, saudi arabia, turkey, israel, these countries are geographically in asia and more and more they are gravitating towards the rest of asia and the way from the west economically and even strategically. >> in your book you make the 1970s which i lived through and worked in the white house is a great time because he made it sound like people were happier.

is that true? >> i would say it was a transitional period and it wasn't a great time, not because you were working in the white house. but in fact, this is apropos, it was during the 1970s that our economy began to become very uncompetitive for a variety of reasons and as a result of that and as a reaction to that we decided japan looked like they were going to take over and we were going to be left behind, we were going to be like britain, a falling industrial power and we pulled up our socks and made our capitalism leaner and meaner and it worked and we became the most competitive country in the world so the 1970s was not a particularly good period, you say for workers, it was a good period for workers at least absent inflation but the 1950s and 60s are considered the golden era.

>> in the 1980s reagan took over, thatcher took over and the concept of shareholder being the most important part of the corporation took over. as this roundtable said shareholders are not the only thing ceos and companies should worry about. what do you think of the business roundtable statement? >> i would say the pendulum swung from do little regard for shareholders and profits to too much regard for shareholders and profits and now happily the pendulum is swinging back and the statement by the roundtable was more a signal that the leaders of the biggest companies in the country understood that it had gone too far and they would like a more balanced approach which not like the 1970s but more like the 1950s. >> income inequality, as that is the 1920s. do what do you attribute our

growing income inequality? you >> technology, trade, deregulation which happened in the 1970s when you were in the white house. >> they didn't listen to me. >> there has been a natural tendency toward winner take all competition among companies and among workers. the top lawyers today get paid much more than people slightly below them. the top professors, top athletes and companies, the top companies make huge profits, google, facebook compared to companies that are almost as good product so the winner take all quality, lack of antitrust enforcement, it is a long list, but they are not all because of government and i think this is a mistake people make, they think that is reagan and thatcher and of course they play a role but a lot of it has to do with norms of behavior.

in the 1950s and 60s the chief executive probably had power over the board of directors to pay himself huge fee. they wouldn't of thought to do so. it would have been socially unacceptable. of a gun to the country club another ceo would have said don't do that. it makes us all look bad. and anyway you will make democrats of all of our workers. they didn't do it in those days. >> you think people were happier in the 1950s than they are today? >> we know they were. the best period of time. >> we do surveys of this, we ask about satisfaction with life and their economic situation and they were. they weren't richer. they only had one bathroom in the house -- >> people who were happier were white presumably.

>> minorities were disenfranchised in the 50s and 40s. >> yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean they weren't happy. they had more vibrant communities than some of them have today and it was built around their church and their communities. happiness as you well know, people don't get richer until they have incomes of $70,000. then money and happiness, those lines start to depart. people were happy mostly because they had economic security and this is something i think the market fundamentalists don't understand. people assigned high-value to economic security and we have much less secure economy for middle-class and working-class. >> some say economic security and happiness with their financial situation arises when

you have exactly twice what you already have. you need twice what you have before you are financially secure. in terms of politics, you say in your book that the contribution system in our country is skewered towards wealthy people and is making our economic system not so competitive. >> i would say what i said about that, there are things we can do and should do and we can talk about that on the policy sense to make our capitalism more palatable to people. but we can't do any of those things until we change the political money situation. >> how would you change that? constitutional amendment due to a constitutional amendment requires a constitutional convention or 2 thirds of each house and 3 quarters of state. is that realistic? >> i think so. it is realistic if you think having and the democratic congress and democratic president at the same time are realistic. there is a lot of support for

an amendment that would allow a reasonable restriction on political money. everyone who thinks they would vote for that constitutional amendment could you raise your hand? there is broad support for that idea. [applause] >> people who come to book festivals may not be a cross-section. >> they are not. they are older, richer, more liberal and live in washington dc so that is right. polling has been done on this. there is broad support for that. >> what about -- >> you know who is against it? politicians of both parties are against it. they mastered the current system. they don't want to change it. they are happy with the current system. we are the ones who have to force it on them. >> another constitutional amendment you recommend? >> now. >> that is the only one? is there any legislation

congress could pass that you think would bring us closer to what you would like us to have? >> some of it has to do with boring stuff like antitrust. i will mention a sort of to for. i think we should have a modest $3000 per person universal basic income in the united states. some of that to replace the programs we have. i wouldn't call it universal basic income. i call it a dividend for all citizens and then i would pair that with require universal service. 3 years during your life when -- >> how would you pay for that? where would the money come from? we are in debt already. >> part of it is i would eliminating existing programs we now have and i would raise money on people like me and you. >> to cut taxes. all right. you are not running for congress vote.

>> i think if the democrats would stop talking about how they will give a middle-class tax cut because that is not what people want. they want good services, social security, medicare, childcare, good education and they don't need a tax cut and they don't want a tax cut and i wish democrats and i am a democrat and you used to be a democrat, i wish we would start playing the tax cuts game, no tax cuts period. [applause] >> maybe if i ran for congress here. >> social security system is more or less financially bankrupt. >> it is not insolvent over along period of time by a little amount. it could be made solvent very easily. >> by increasing taxes? >> i would say you could do two things, what is you could very

slowly raise the age and secondly you could subject all income to this payroll tax rather than only up to whatever it is, $225,000. >> let me ask you this. is xi jinping going to be president for life? >> i strongly dismiss between vladimir putin and xi because they have a government system. a common almost bureaucratic tradition that goes back 4000 years, russia is an oligarchic authoritarian autocracy. even though you have two leaders who appears if they could rule for life you have 22 very event systems. xi can technically rule -- he abolished term limits but there are still term structures whereas in russia vladimir putin has been president and prime minister and he can decide which portfolio is more important. i can imagine a scenario where

xi steps down either after one more term let's say because he has a number of rings. >> he is in his second term now. >> he could do one more and that would be unprecedented but it is a finite period and he has people around him from which he can choose. >> do xi jinping or others want a trade agreement with the united states or not? >> one of the hardest things to know is what the chinese people think other than what is mediated through the official spokesman. i try not to psychologically capture the sentiments of billions of people but if i could, if i had to the fact is china's largest trading partner is it asian neighbor and second largest trading partner outside asia is european. we are the third most important trading partner and that trade

volume is going down so they are decoupling pretty significantly from the united states. we should be selling the more oil and gas and soybeans in machinery and tools and technology. instead we are selling them less. >> do they want an agreement or not? >> better to have one than not to have them but it would have to be one that is not so disruptive. >> explain what is going on in hong kong are the chinese going to send troops in or not? >> the troops are there. the question is whether they release them onto the street and the answer is they might. if you want to know the answer without knowing what will happen tomorrow it is death by 1000 cuts strategy that began 20 years ago when the handover began. few people realize this but part of the agreement was something on the order of 1-200 chinese families would be allowed to move into hong kong every day so if you take 20 years and multiply by the number of people, there's more

than 1 million mainland chinese who entered and reside in hong kong in the last 20 years in addition to those before. two divided policies. clearly there's a certain hong kong the first we all know and love, certainly one, they have different passports, hong kong, british linked passport. so there is that hong kong identity i sympathize with. given the politics and the legal handover it is not likely -- >> in the 1970s we were worried japan was going to take over the world economically. what happened to japan's economy and its demographics are the worst in the world to do what will happen in japan in the next 20 or 30 years? >> it was wrong to believe japan was going to take over the world. it doesn't mean we are equally

wrong to view china as a major competitor because they are two different countries, china vastly larger demographically and economically but in japan they are in demographic decline. however, we need a new conversation about japan's it doesn't judge the country solely on the basis of the fact the population is decreasing. for one thing, they are the most devolved technological society in the world. they are moving towards a man machine synthesis like no other place in the world. they have robots everywhere in restaurants, hotels and so on. they are actually significantly revising their immigration policy. there's never been in the history of japan 2 million non-japanese people living on the four main japanese islands which half of them are chinese. you've got on top of that 7000

koreans, 300,000 vietnamese, literally several million and growing foreigners. japan is the last place on earth you would think of as an immigrant society and it's not going to be but they are drastically changing their immigration policy to the labor shortages. >> what about north korea. is kim jong un going to survive and will there be an agreement? >> i think there will be an agreement. it is already underway. >> they wouldn't remove their existing nuclear power. >> i think you would go through stages of creating a condominium. japan -- sign and south korea generally agree on what they want to see happen in the country that is between them. those countries have more in common with north korea than we do. the trump summit has to kickoff or amplify a certain dynamic but ultimately we are not -- >> who writes these love letters he is sending the president. >> i don't know.

he could have his own cottage industry at some point. this is a place that is already economically -- an economy that is already colonized in some ways by china and south korea and those countries have strong interests in extracting the resources and using the agriculture as a low-cost labor force. >> the chance of the north korean government being overthrown internally is 0? >> close to 0. >> and india. is india going to be growing at a faster pace than china? >> the thing that is surprising that india and china have an, despite a different political systems in society they both lie about their numbers, they are so flagrant it is unbearable. you don't know what to believe but the closer you look the more you have to revise it downward. an unfortunate consequence of the chaotic pl. india is, forget the growth rates?

they have structural problems around the risk of labor autonation. there is no real labor productivity and climate change and the desert, water shortages. they have a big cultural problem. >> you won the pulitzer prize for your commentary on what happened in the financial crisis. you see any similarities to what you wrote about then now and you think we are heading into a big financial crisis again? >> yes, there is some similarity and we are heading into one that is not so big. the previous had to do with consumer debt, not only hundred mortgages but hours and loans. this one is mostly in the business sector and there's a lot of debt that has been taken out not all of which has been productively used and if there's a slowdown that will come home to roost. >> the recession is starting

when would you say cute you >> our basic economy is in pretty good shape and so there is this divergence between the financial sector and the real economy and if you look at all the recent recession since the 1980dubbadash they have been caused by perturbations in the financial market. they have not been the normal ups and downs of an industrial economy that we had in the 1950s and 60s. these are financially driven recessions. i think it starts in finance and that tends to bring down -- >> you wrote about the last financial crisis, who was the greatest hero? been bringing key? hank paulson cute you president bush? congress? who deserves the most credit for helping us get out of that mess cute you

>> i would say hank paulson. >> because? >> because it was a lot harder for republican treasury secretary in the bush administration who had been at goldman sachs to get the country to agree to something very unpalatable. that you had to help the institutions, you had to prevent the meltdown of the institution that caused the problem in order to prevent a worse outcome for everybody else. many people today will say they are for the free enterprise system, politicians, but they don't like to say they are capitalist. why is the word capitalist a sensitive thing with people? >> i don't know. i see it in my students at george mason university. it conjures up a sort of moral distaste and that goes to the ruthlessness and the inequality and unfairness that they see. they are not socialists.

if you ask them, they don't really know what socialism means but they are not for the government controlling everything and owning everything. they are certainly not for that. my students, i ask how many want to go work for the government and i think you and i would be very unhappy to know i never get anyone to get their hand up and then i say would you like to go work for big business, how many would like to do that and nobody put their hand up. who wants to go work at goldman sachs? maybe one person will put their hand up and rather sheepishly. what do you want to do? i am not sure they know. but i would recommend they do. but where they want to work, they want to work at ngos, nongovernmental organizations, they want to work at startups which they somehow think isn't part of capitalism. >> startups have become unicorns. >> not that they want to get rich but those kinds of companies don't have this sort

of moral stain on them. >> how long have you been teaching? >> eight years. >> were students different they are today? >> not much. >> the biggest question is is this going to be on the exam? >> i tend not to give exams and also tell them grades are like sex. the more you worry about them and focus on them the less well you do. >> is that from experience or observation? >> observation. >> the most popular export from china is the panda bear. we have two in the zoo here. why are the pandas used by the chinese as tools of diplomacy? why don't they just give them to lots of people? >> supply and demand, there is limited supply.

just like china's northern rhino, a constant effort to breed pandas and get them to breed, they are rather slothful creatures as you may know, not as energetic as these students i imagine. i'm not sure what the exact origins or earliest state of panda diplomacy is. just a reminder that a lot of chinese symbolism and you have to differentiate between the rhetoric of the fraternity versus the reality which is more capitalist and neil mercantilist than anything else. >> let's talk about australia. is australia part of asia? >> it is. it is not economically part of asia but very much is geographically. when you think of their economy as well, a giant iron or mine hitched itself to china and they realize that and so they are in a desperate quest to diversify their export destinations to make more of

other sectors of their economy like education, healthcare, real estate. they are today the largest net per capita recipient of high net worth individuals in the world because they have this transparent immigration policy and you have japanese koreans and play notes of chinese buying real estate in australia, taking australian citizenship. under the age of 30, 35, there's much faster growth rate of the asian population and it is becoming asian. >> why would the chinese government want to build islands in the south china sea? they for tourism or what to q >> tourism in which you get to fly an f-16. my kind of tourism. the island fortification in the south china sea goes back to the fact that it is a legal gray area. these are islands that have

passed control over centuries and china wants to use the fact that there is no clear demarcation to simply build facts in the water. once china claims something and starts to build and put airstrips and military assets, you're never going to get them through arbitration to give it back. they are on an island building spree and other countries are starting to do the same and claim whatever they can close to their shores, vietnam is doing it and eventually they will have a defective settlement even though they have a disagreement. >> house vietnam doing economically. >> vietnam is an amazing growth story, one of the countries that when i first went more than 15 years ago and wrote positive things about its incredible potential i underestimated it and you go there today and you not only

see 100 million people, they remain a coherent, organized, they don't have the steaming uncontrolled, polluted megacities like vanilla. ho chi minh city is impeccably organized place with 25 million people so this is a disciplines country, urbanizing rapidly, very young and hard-working. there's a lot of high-tech supply chains, not just she manufacturing stuff, samsung a lot of others. >> because of our trade disagreement with china is it the case that you observe companies are moving their manufacturing out of china to places like vietnam? is that happening? >> it is definitely happening. i want us to get our facts and sequencing correct. we don't look back and say the trade war caused american firms to shift their supply chains out of china, wrong. shine's wages are rising before the trade war but began, japan began massively shifting out of china into southeast asia ten years ago way before the trade war, way before trump. the trade war is accelerating something that was already

happening and it is great for southeast asia. >> what about russia and its asia ambitions, is russia and asian power now? >> russia is very much asian. it is a big resource provider, russia is becoming more relevant to asia which does not mean it is as influential as china or other country like japan. they view it as a rare resource base, oil and gas, agriculture, russia, during the obama administration, vladimir putin said we pivoted to asia a long time ago and russia has constant diplomacy with china. according to an index at peking university, compliance with the initiative, russia ranks number one. anything china once in terms of modernizing the railways and

allowing us to transit goods to europe, russia does it. >> these things that have been built by china in the silk road area. it says there's a lot of depth. they don't give these roads, the finance them. will the chinese walk away from it? >> it depends. there is a wide spectrum of popularity. there are write-downs and project that never see the waves a, white elephants like you expect in any country with large infrastructure projects going on and then cases were countries are very strategic and even though the debt is high and they can't repay they are so important to china the china will forgive the debt and reduce the volume like pakistan and then cases in between where china will switch from concessional to nonconsensual which is a fancy way of saying wrapping up the interest rates to punish those countries and seize assets. >> do i need to worry about a pakistan india nuclear problem? >> know. for better or worse this is

something, moved away preemptively to settle something that was already -- >> this pakistan government know that osama bin laden was living in pakistan? >> depends who you mean by government. >> the most important question. if i have some money to invest and i want to invest in asia -- >> purely hypothetical. >> what country should i invest in first and what country should i avoid? >> southeast asian countries are small. he would invest in an asset class, and industry because they are all cross-border supply chains. he would invest in e-commerce, e-commerce conglomerates headquartered in singapore they were the tiny countries but they are operating everywhere so you would be looking at the rise of automotive manufacturing, mobile:production, healthcare and financial services and all the digital stuff, you would invest in those things, not in a country but in the region.

>> so where are you investing? >> i live in singapore. >> why is singapore always pretty prosperous and happy place? >> it wasn't always. >> in the last 20 years. >> even superficially of people know the story it had a very rough start as a former british colony and ejected against its own well in the 1960s. the countries technically 54 years old and it has become incredibly wealthy, very much a free-trade driven model of foreign investment, open immigration model. education focused, talent driven model, very good government, low corruption. >> who is the most popular american president in recent years in asia? >> obviously obama. he is still very popular. >> the most popular american cultural figure in asia?

>> that is a good question. the answer in china would be different from somewhere else. it could be basketball players. musicians. >> the chances of our country doing what you want us to do is 50%? 100%? 0%? you have a lot of structural change or legislative change you want us to make party going to happen or not? >> the things i would like specifically are fairly modest. there are lefties who think i am a wolf. i disagree with elizabeth warren on almost everything. >> you are against a wealth tax. >> yes actually. i am not that radical. the chances, i think the chances of us not improving antitrust, the chances of us

not raising taxes on wealthy people, the chances of us not dealing with political money are pretty low. as bad as our political system is today it is reasonably responsive to what people want and it is pretty clear what people want. they want a more humane and moral capitalism. >> we have given people a teaser. this book "can american capitalism survive?" why should somebody go and buy this book and read it after you told them what is in it? [laughter] >> because it makes a fairly -- it is a book in some ways about ideas and how we glommed onto some very bad ideas, greed is good, but all that matters is equality of opportunity, not income, that if we become more fair our economy will shrink,

we glommed onto those ideas, they became widely accepted and this book explains why they are not right. >> when you won the pulitzer prize they call you up are you surprised? did you say i deserved it? what was your reaction when you won it? >> i'm one of the few people whoever won a pulitzer prize was not nominated by his newspaper or her newspaper. >> who nominated you? >> an individual. back in those days anyone could nominate anybody. it was a little surprising to me the editors of the washington post. >> what did you say to them? i don't need you? >> i didn't say anything. i didn't need to. >> why should somebody after hearing this about your book why should somebody go by this book and read this book, david rubenstein? >> we haven't even scratched the surface what if you understand what 5 billion people think and what they are

doing right now and how, to put it bluntly, they don't care what we think about them, there's a lot of learning we all have to do as americans about this vast majority of the world population. >> how long did it take you to write this book? >> a couple years. >> how long did it take you to write this book? >> it had a false start but once i got working on it by myself and not with the previous co-author, the writing isn't hard for me but -- >> i read both of them, enjoyed them and i hope people get a chance to read these books, thanks very much. >> thank you. thank you. [applause] >> every year booktv covers book fairs and festivals around the country and here's a look at the events on the calendar. this weekend we are live at the

brooklyn book festival, the largest free literary event in new york city and then from october 11th to the 13th it is the southern festival of books in nashville. the following weekend the boston book festival welcomes 300 speakers and the wisconsin book festival anticipates 15,000 people in attendance. later in the month tune in for live coverage of the texas book festival in austin. for more information about upcoming bookers and festivals, you can watch our previous festival coverage, flip the book fairs tag on a website, booktv.org. >> kevin williamson of the "national review" your latest book is called "the smallest minority: independent thinking in the age of mob politics". in this book you write that i come not to praise democracy but to bury it. what do you have? >> i liken reject the idea of somebody becoming better or more important and more respectable b