twitting was important. when the ayatollah came back in 1969, he was using cassettes. the world moves, 30 years late we have internet and satellite we have internet and satellite dishes,@@@@@@

from nevada. fed the election, and it was obviously fraudulent, and people came out and four days later he was gone. but that these changes are coming to iran is obvious. host: we had a woman who wrote reading alida in tyrann and one talked of the china presence in iran. guest: sure china being a permanent member of the security council, and having these close commercial relations with iran. this is one reason why we won't

get meaningful judgments of sanctions of iran. the good news is regime changes are coming to iran. the bad news is the regime whater it is will have nuclear weapons. we will have to learn to deter iran into eternal revolution or the society makes it a pacific nation. no one would care if the belgiums had nuclear weapons because they are peaceful people. host: we have our guest george will and we are throwing baseballs at him and taking the swings. next we have kevin. caller: good morning, this is my first time for years to call, i am batting a thousand this morning.

mr. will, i respect your opinion and i believe you are left in the journalism industry that have quality respectively. and here is my concern, i think we have lost sight of governing our country. with the bush administration and promoting democracy with weapons and now we have an african-american president inos. -- in office. and this underlying disparity has manifested itself. i see a problem, not a dichotomy but hypocrisy, the crimes that have taken our country down has been executives, predominantly white executives, that are not indicted and now trying to take control of other countries. my question is do we need to

take a look at governing ourselves? guest: the short answer is yes, but i think we were guilty of overreach in the bush years. remember that the candidate ran for honest and more public policy. and disavowing to do what is called "nation building." to me this is an oxymoron, it's like orchid building, you don't build orchids or nation, they are a product of the long organic evolution. and the problem is that "a" it was flawed going in and "b" refuted by the unpleasant experience of trying to put iraq back on its feet. colin powell said on the eve of

invasion of iraq, remember the pottery rule, if you break it, you own it. and we owned it for years. host: what is the state today? guest: iraq, so far so good. there are unresolved questions, the kurds in the north are essentially an independent country, they have their own flag and passports and oil. and the question is will iraq tolerate this session there. and second, once the united states is gone will the bitterness that's prevailed for generations continue to subside? or will be a resurgence of it? i don't know. host: cape coral, this is bill, democratic line. caller: good morning, thank you for taking my call. mr. will, i understand you have

a vast amount of knowledge of this world. personally i consider you one of the vanguards of the party of no. you have a lot of proposals for the administration all the time. but i have never heard you seek a solution. now just like the house yesterday and the senate came up with a health bill. four pages long. and they were shaking it in front the tv's. they came up with nothing they told us. they said only that this is a proposal. but they didn't tell us anything. and that's what i consider you, you telling us a lot of things but there is no solutions to what you are saying. thank you for taking me. guest: first of all, i would like to say something in defense of the solid english

word "no." it appears in the constitution, and the five most beautiful words in english language, congress shall make no law. the bill of rights is a series of nos, it's something that the government cannot do, and unreasonable searches and seizures. and no has a role of context where most new ideas are bad or false. the truth is less plural than all the errors in the world. so to say no is a respectable thing to do. but beyond that, i would like to think i have solutions to a lot of america's problems. not all of them, but i have ideas. they don't involve expanding the government. now some people say if you are against expanding the government, you are generally

negative. that's not true. i am for the market and initiative and for entrepreneurship and for light taxes and regulation. in health care, insuring the un insured. the simplest thing, give them money. vouchers or a debit card loaded with a value. that's simple. that empowers individuals and not make them dependent on the government. host: i wonder in your life and you have said in "the washington post" and before that you were writing and teaching. did you ever consider running for office? guest: not seriously, i have lived in maryland since the mid-70's. and in 1982 some republicans wanted to know if i was

interested in running for the senate. and i said no, there were only two republicans in maryland, as far as i could tell, i was one and gene patrick was the other. it's a democratic state. and i have a metabolic urge to write, if i can't write i will explode. and i would find the life of public office interminable of sitting and hearing others talk would be tiresome. host: next caller. caller: mr. will, you are one might have favorite commentaries. and i want to go back to the discussion of the tobacco stand, and it's something that is really fascinating the dichotomy you are talking about.

but there is a big solution that nobody -- well, not nobody, it's getting to be a bigger and bigger topic all the time. that's legalization of marijuana. that could replace all cigarette revenues in the state in about a week. surely you know about the history of this country, and you know who harry sangber and on their stance of legalizing marijuana, and i would like to know your stance of legalizing marijuana. guest: it's going to be an issue soon, it will be an issue at the state level. but it's going to be a national issue and should be. when you look on one side of tobacco, their illnesses kill

400,000 a year, more than vehiclular accidents, cocaine and alcohol, combined. it's far away the largest call of preventable death in this country. compared to which marijuana looks rev lent lyly benign. ly -- relevant benign. and more than a decade ago "national review" said that the drug war is lost. and that's dealing with the drug problem on the demand side. and we have to deal with demand.

and marijuana is not cocaine in its effects and social cost and all the rest. i think what the caller raised isinterestingly in the next five years a discussable issue. host: the hearings got underway on capitol hill on the health care issue. and last sunday you were talking about health care, and i saw some commentary on blogs. and i thought i would show it to people that didn't hear your points. here it is. >> the president trying to maintain above the fray, laying down the principles that he doesn't want to lay down bottom lines, is this approach going to work? >> no, this is a slippery

argument, about the public option. and the president said if you @ one is to keep them honest, as if the government is a lagoon of honesty, and this is refuted by any administration. and second that it would play by the same rules, and as you said, what's the point? and third it's necessary to give choice to consumers. there are 1,300 entities offering health care in this country, another one won't change that. and finally that the american people are not smart enough to handle this market, they have done rather well in computers.

host: mr. will, where do you think this debate will end up? the overhaul of this country? guest: i don't know. and this is usually taken as the authoritative slur, and came out this week and this is a trillion dollar industry. the radicals of health reform, said we are not going to take it this time and get the management of budget from the obama white house. which is to say we don't want a disinterested estimate of the cost of this thing. furthermore this whole debate is taking place in the context conditioned by one great fact. it was a survey, it said that 80% of americans rate their

health care good or excellent. there is no clamor for a radical change for health care. let's of things could be done, i have ideas that are more radical than obama. but we have to understand that the american people are not clamoring for this. host: you can't leave ideas of more radical ideas without an example. guest: john mccain had an idea, give people money, tax the compensation. tax as compensation employer provided health insurance. but make up for the tax by giving people a refundable tax credit for the 40 million that pay no taxes. a refundable tax credit, 7500 for individual, to buy your own. furthermore health savings

accounts, if you buy a high-deductible policy, you are eligible for tax deferred savings out of which you pay your out of pocket. and that you turn into shoppers, and i ask the audience, how many when you go to the doctor, you need to have the following x-ray. how many say how much? no one does that, we have a third party payer. american people have a buffet of health care, we have eaten the shrimp. but we need to turn people into shoppers, and make them sensitive to the health care in this country, that's voluntary. as known risky behavior. obesity and type ii diabetes, all of these problems.

we have to make responsible choices. host: here is a response by twitter. do you use twitter? guest: i barely use e-mail. host: may are saying that the clamor for change in health care, a change in cost. guest: yes, they would like to have medicine at 1959 prices. they can't have that. medical expenses are less competent. in 1965, we enacted health care, and you know how many coronary surgeries it paid for? zero. and medicine is much better, betsy mccoy of the american

spectator said that american people ha 50% go for these products, and health care has gone up because it's more competent than it used to be and we want that. host: next we have diana on the republican line. caller: thank you, i would like to reflect the comment by the previous guest, gutierrez, that consumers and credit card contracts need to be modified. and understanding he said, i don't even understand my own contract. i am not a person of

exceptional intelligence, and i understand my credit card contract. and my question has to do with public education in the last 30 years that's deteriorated. do you see a parallel of the public education, the insight of the general electric and the quality of people that are legislating in our federal and state legislators? guest: let me get to education in a second, one of the antic moments of politics, when the president came out and said that these contract are complicated. and we will simplify them. this is the federal government that has given us 350 million words with a tax code so complicated that the significant number of his

cabinent can't comply by it. so that the federal government will provide clarity is amusing. and on the subject of education, we know what the problem is in education. basically we have a school year of 180 days. 195 in most of the european nations. 200 days in germany, 220 in korea and japan. you take the difference of 195 and 180, 15 day difference. multiply by 12 years, essentially the german and european children are getting a full year extra school. we are hard workers, but we are not working our children enough. host: huntington, virginia is

next. caller: good morning, i would like to address several things, but i want to touch on something that the lady said. i happen to be an educator, and one thing that bothers my colleagues, they say we need a raise. i try to explain we don't need a raise, what we need is educators, and when we have a classroom, i teach a fourth grade class, and at one time i had 26 kids in my classroom. that makes it very, very difficult to get anything accomplished. the reason i wanted to call you and talk about, now we are facing a huge problem with north korea, and their nuclear proliferations. the question i have is what do you think their main intent with this is? and i feel personally that

china is neck deep with north korea and so is russia. and i just feel in my heart of hearts that their way to once they get -- we can already reach hawaii and alaska, and once they get a missle that reach the west coast, they will bomb and put japan out of business, what do you think about that? guest: japan, i think that the conventional wisdom that japan has nuclear weapons and has the components and needs to put it together to the nuclear weapons. and we come to a point where japan comes officially as a nuclear power because of threat you are talking about. north korea is more worrying than iran.

because that regime is opaque and arguably nuts. so it also presides over a country that's destitute. and one of the things it can do to raise money is to sell these weapons to interested parties around the world. and there are plenty of them. host: question from twitter, this gentleman wants to know, mr. will should be asked if he thinks that we is expand the war in afghanistan? guest: that's an interesting question, twitter is 140 characters? host: yes. guest: i have learned so much. anyway afghanistan is a problem, and we sentmore troops to make it 60,000. the new ew york police force is 20,000, and this is a nation

with barely's central government in its history, effective that it runs from one border to another. i asked the secretary of defense some months ago whether it might be possible for the united states to achieve its objectives in afghanistan, offshore, and using missile strikes. our goal to prevent it from being a staging area for more groups. and our objective in afghanistan is not to give them a happy democracy. the secretary of defense said no, we couldn't do it. and knows more about this than i do. but the important thing is to avoid mission creep. to understand our objective in afghanistan is to enable

afghanistan not to be a threat. not to turn it into a shimmery city on a hill. host: silver hill, good morning, mary, you are on with george will. caller: thank you for taking my call, and tonight abc had a special and there is a lot of criticism going around. will there be anybody representing any critics of the health plan? or is it really going to be a pro-obama plan? guest: the short answer is i don't know, and i will have thoughts given that will be presented to president obama and his people. and since i am not an

enthusiast of the president's health care reform, i will have it dissent. host: and one writes, so mr. will wants to solve the health care problem by throwing taxpayer money at it. is this a conservative solution? guest: clearly the health care with the uninsured being free riders off of us, and getting substantial health care, and taxpayers are already paying. the question is it's conceptually simple to solve the problem of the uninsured. you do that by giving them money. now the question is that money well spent. we can argue about that. and there is a question of whether or not mandating health insurance is something as a nation with a libertarian streak we want to preserve is

comfortable with. host: louisiana, on the republican line with mr. will. caller: mr. will, i am insured and it's from a large insurance company. my husband is working and i am disabled. and he makes less than $20 an hour. and our deductible is $5,000 each. now in order for us to get any medical help, we have to pay that $5,000 ahead of time in order to get any medical treatment. so the only thing we can afford is office visits. and the doctors around here they will not accept us unless we come up with that $5,000 first. i don't know where you get your information from. we are insured, it's taken over

one-fourth of his income to pay the premiums monthly, plus we have monthly visits to pay for with co-pays, plus medications. we can't afford the deductibles to get medical treatment. so we are not different than the people that are uninsured. my daughter is under the same insurance company, i will not name them, and her deductible is $300. i don't know if she has to come up with that first or not. host: why such a difference between yours and hers? caller: i have no idea, she works for a bigger company. guest: there is a lot we don't guest: there is a lot we don't know, and that is a $4,700 difference in the deductible. and i would like to know what the insurance provider market is like in louisiana. it seems one thing we ought to do in this country, people in

louisiana ought to be able to buy their insurance from new jersey providers. i don't know why we have this antique system. and to give people like the last caller, a bigger range of choice to pick from all the health providers in this country. host: we only 13 minutes left and no question has brought you to the subject of tarp program and financial markets and what you think of obama's announcement of regulation? guest: on his announcement, i don't know. i don't understand all the instruments that are going to be regulated. this i will say, the idea of the federal reserve system ought to be the systemic risk regulator. this alarms me, because the federal reserve has one duty, to