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[captions copyright national able satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] best known for his involvement in the political activism in the 1960's, and the leader of a weather underground, a self-described communist underground group that conducted a public bombing campaign in the 1970's. he has had a distinguished career as a professor. he has written about social justice and characterized

education as an ethical nterprise. his most recent work, "public enemy" was released in 2010. to have two individuals of such distinction with us tonight is no small feat. goal to the tireless work of our supporters. we would like to thank the young americans institution. their dedication to the ideas of liberty and the sporting apparatus of liberal debate will be displayed in full throughout tonight's discussion. we like to acknowledge the efforts of the college republicans and libertarians whose actions on the campus were instrumental to make sure the debate could take place here. we also want to thank the campus, and we hope our ideas tonight can positively impact our own discussions after the

debate has ended. i will now turn the floor over to mr. bill ayers. he will have 18 minutes for his opening remarks. this question and answer session will continue for 30 minutes until the debate ends. we asked that audience members reserve all the questions to the time allotted and i present their questions clearly and directly as to give others around him a chance to speak as well. we hope that making this event responsive to issues that interest you that we can create an evening of debate and as enjoyable as it is memorable. without further ado, i yield the floor to mr. ayers. and thank both of our speakers

for participating in this forum. mr. ayers? [applause] >> thank you all for coming. this keeps being called a debate, but i don't know who the pro or con is. i think it is discussion about a lovely question -- what is so great about america? when a dialog was proposed to me on this expansive question, i immediately said, i think i will make a list. let's see -- on my list, topping the list is chicago. that's right. because it is my hometown and i know it well. and because it is one small piece in all of its outsized and crazy complexity of america itself, the city is the essential american metropolis. chicago is one of the things that are so awesomely great about america. the musical, the house and film

the jungle," the blues are -- blues brothers and the film making wachowski siblings nelson auburn, whose dazzling book was called "city on the make." it once described chicago as a beautiful woman with a broken ose. he would have said the same thing about america. so great how my and there's more of course. lake michigan, the vast inland sea now under siege from ataclysmic climate change. the chicago cubs, who teaches humility and perseverance. [laughter] when ever i travel abroad, and often inside the united states, the city's name evokes a

cliched response. for years it was al capone. then, refreshingly, michael jordan, michael jordan. someone asked me recently if i knew oprah. of course, i said. it is a small town. today, the universal reaction of hearing chicago is one word -- obama. chicago is home to barack obama, the president of the united states. the first black president in .s. history. during the heat of the primary battle in 2008, when asked which candidate he thought martin luther king jr. would support, senator obama respond without hesitation -- reverend king would not endorse any of us because he would be in the streets building a movement for justice. -- undoubtedly true. it tells us a little bit of what we should think of our own activity. ne point it raises that if you

take even brief glance at history, you recognize that it's building movements at changing things. lyndon johnson was never part of the black freedom movement. franklin roosevelt was never art of the labor movement, and abraham lincoln never belong to an abolitionist party. though three presidents are membered because of fire from below and that is what we ought to be concentrating on. when you think about political power, often you think about the white house or the pentagon and you think, that is where power ies. there is power in the neighborhood, the factory, the mill, the classroom. power is there and that is the power we have access to too often we stare at the sites of power. we have no access to. in a democracy, we can't wait passively, wondering what the

king has in mind for us. we are not his subjects because we are the sovereign, the collective authority. we have the opportunity and the responsibility to enact our sovereignty every day. jane addams acted on her his citizen responsibilities every day and she is part of what is great about america. socialist, feminist, lesbian, pacifist, adams established whole house in went to start the first juvenile court in the world was freed people from prisons and for houses, the first public kindergarten in america, the entry child labor and a thousand other projects. she argued that building communities of care and compassion required more than doing good. more than volunteerism. more than the ultimately controlling stance of a lady

bountiful. it required a radical oneness with others in distress. when she opened her settlement house with her sister activists nd lived there with an open, unlocked door in the heart of a poor, immigrant neighborhood, with families in crisis and need, and she pushed herself to see the world through their eyes and fighting for their humanity, achieved her own humanity, as well. j edgar hoover, the g-man wizard of oz -- he had called jane addams the most dangerous woman in america shortly before she became the first american woman to win the nobel peace prize. 50 years later, at the helm of the fbi, he bestowed that same honor on my partner, bernadine dorn, and it was possibly the only time we agreed.

there are countless women sweating out jane addams' hopes all over america, naming circumstances and situations as unacceptable, working to right wrongs, fighting for more peace and more democracy, more joy and ore justice. these men and women's propel themselves to act in solidarity with, not in service to, the people with whom they work. they are what is so great about america. what else? my list contains multitudes. the spirit of democracy. he precious and fragile ideal that every single human being is of incalculable value. using faith in the biblical sense of faith unseen. the conviction that people me know kings, queens, or rulers of any kind and we are capable of

aching the decisions that affect our lives and the people what the problems are also the people with the solutions and with the wisdom and energy of ordinary people is our most precious reality. second, the inspiration of liberty. the aspirations towards liberation, the belief that all human beings ought to be free to invent and reinvent ourselves, to shape our identities and every sphere of our existence without the traditional constraints of king or court or church or howling mob, and whether we are concerned with our social character or our politics, our manners or sexual practices, we can resist convention and strike out in a path of our own choosing or own making. third, the pursuit of social justice. like any compelling term, social justice is not easily defined because it is not so much as a point of arrival for a specific

destination as it is a longing, a journey, a quest. it is a ceaseless striving by human beings in different places at different times under vastly different circumstances and pursuing a range of strategies and tactics and tools for greater fairness, greater sustainability, equity, recognition, agency, peas, and -- agency, peace and mobility. these three themes, democracy, liberty, and justice are generative. the more you have, the better off you become. the more you give away, the more you have. they are clearly dynamic and unfinished beings pulsating with the uncertainties and chaos of life, not static or fixed or instrumental. each is made more vital and unrestrained when encouraged and assisted by the arts of liberty and specifically by a small but mighty phrase, easily embraced by the humanities -- i wonder. it is not the known, after all, that propels people out of bed

and out the door. it is not the taken for granted that prods us up the next hill. it is not received wisdom, including all the deadly clishas of common sense, that pulls us forward and pushes us to create or invent or plant and build. the deep motivation at the core of our humanity, the powerful force driving towards liberation, is the vast and immense unknown. that is why the phrase, i wonder, is a measurable. i really don't know. as soon as you know something for sure, it becomes boring or self-righteous and it turns tedious or dogmatic quickly. if you think all there is to know about a certain thing, then fervor may be there but not curiosity. not the drive. at that point the questions closed down, answers come too

easily, and you become a threat to yourself and perhaps, others. there are americans whose lives who have soared in the wings of wonder. nstein, stravinsky, whitman, hughs, kelly, the marx brothers, woody guthrie and pete seeger, tommy morello, just to name a few. in a free and democratic society we learn to live with questions. learn to speak with the possibility of being heard and we learn simultaneously to listen with the possibility of being changed. remember the brief but famous dialogue in the form of two simple questions between ralph waldo emerson and henry david thoreau shouted over a prison wall not far from here? what are you doing in there, henry david? emerson asks his incarcerated

friend for locked up for failing to pay taxes. thoreau responds, what are you doing out there? that's a good question. what are you doing with your spirit of democracy, your rumors of freedom, and your various uests for justice? there is a wisdom simple to state but excruciatingly difficult to enact, to state to the spirit of democracy and justice. simple to state. open your eyes, pay attention, as step one, be astonished, do something, and then doubt or re-think. i will elaborate. open your eyes. this means you cannot make simple, participatory decisions about the world unless you are willing to look at the world. i think of my mother. i took care of her at the end of my life. she had broken her ankle and she said to me, what about this thing called global warming? i didn't want to scare the hell out of her, so i told her and

she says, i am sorry i asked. well, you asked and someone told you. and when you are told something, you feel a call on you to do something. you open your eyes and you feel astonished at the loveliness all around you, and you are also astonished about the unnecessary pain and suffering that human beings impose on one another and then you do something. you have to act on what the known demands are, recognizing you are a limited and finite eating, but you have to act anyways on what you seem to understand. then you have to take the fourth step. you have to refrain, wonder if everything you did make sense. if you don't doubt, you become orthodox and dogmatic. some of you must know monty python's "life of brian." you guys are not nerdy enough. google them. it is a story of a reluctant messiah.

he shouts down at the mob below, look, you have got it all wrong. they say, it he is the messiah. he says, no, you have to think for yourselves. you're all individuals. yes, we are all individuals, they cry. no, no, you are all different. frustrated, yes, we are all your friend, they say together. one bewildered man in the crowd goes around and says, i'm not. the others gang up on him and say, shut up, you are different. that is what dogma does to you. what is so great about america? the arts and the artist. the dedication of the picasso

statue in chicago begins, this an love art? man visits art but cringes. art hurts. america is a place of voyages, metaphorically as well as literal. centuries ago, an adventure and his band of fellow travelers punched into the unknown, wrote the wild waves until they discover the bahamas and as the authorized text tells us, discovered america. we know that story by heart, and it is worth noting that whatever else it represented, that exploit, part myth, part symbol, took a surplus of imagination and vision, resourcefulness, and courage on the part of the wild and random crew. every story needs a prologue. no story could ever quite begin at the beginning. before that, and other cruel voyageurs, their own

resourcefulness and courage, to travel thousands of miles on foot across the bering strait down through forest and mountains into the great plains of north america to settle there and bring forth generations. that is another story we all know by now. there is a third -- a central part of our shared american narrative and another piece of what is so great. those americans who rose up to oppose the castilian invasion and resist the colombian genocide. they mobilize their own visions and their own american hopes. clearly, history is more than facts. it is more than an intersection then what happened and what is said to have happened. each of us, both then and now, is both actor and narrator in history. we are each a work in progress,

thrust into a world not of our choosing, and yet destined to choose who to be and what to become in the unfolding drama. how many? >> two minutes. i may have to take three. >> sorry. the opening lines to carl sandburg's love song to america, where we come from and where we will forever return. here's a fun fact about him. he moved to chicago from the -- milwaukee where he surfed as secretary to the city's first socialist mayor. one of them had met -- he was later hanged for his role in the haymarket emonstrations. that turned into a police riot and massacre. when he was on the run from the police, he hit out in the home of daniel's and socialist parents, who owned a factory

there. he was from texas and fought through the confederacy through the siffle war. he went through an essential american transformation when he renounced white supremacy, a life altering choice available to all of us, right here, right now, and became a leading voice for anarchism, socialism, workers rights, and the eight hour day. he married lucy parsons, who was a former slave and outlive him by 50 years. hanged in 1887. -- declare himself an abolitionist and cleared death row in 2003, just hours before e left office. two years for going to prison himself, fraud, corruption, the usual stuff. it was a magnificent action challenging capital punishment

and out george ryan is my favorite illinois governor. the death penalty itself is the shame of the nation. there is always another incongruity, despair the -- disparity. until the end of time, another pathway opening. >> time, mr. ayers. >> their stance another possible world, a world that should be what is not yet. that is a good thing because contradiction may save us. nothing is settled once and for all. we are in the middle of the model right from the start. thank you. [applause]

> thank you very much. i am honored and thrilled and moved to be back here at dartmouth. i was, many, many years ago, a student sitting here in this very auditoriums listening to speakers and debaters and it is a particular privilege to be back in hanover having this debate on a really important topic. as you know, this has been a topic of some controversy and some sensitivity. earlier, before the debate we were discussing some possible to security measures and we decided that we should not have metal detectors for the audience but

we did have metal detectors for the two speakers. [laughter] now -- what's so great about america? as i think about this topic, i harken back to my days as a young boy growing up in india, coming fresh faced at the age of 17 to the united states for the first time. i have never lost the shock of my first impressions of america. i have lived in america almost my whole life and i am very much of an insider. i have long been an american citizen. i still try to maintain a little bit of that dual perspective that sees america from the outside and from the inside. i think this is really important because very often when we debate america, when we complain about america, we are doing it

within the prism of america. we are doing it in a sense, and shortsightedly in the matter of the fish condemning the surrounding water. we are using a utopian stander. -- standard. america's terrible. compared to what? well, the garden of eden. that is never the immigrant perspective. they are always aware. in addition to this utopian standard, there needs to be a standard that looks at america compared to other places on earth. in other words, we have to keep our feet on the ground or else we run the risk of losing the human and realistic perspective of things. for example, mr. ayers talked about social justice, dividing the pie, getting people a fair share. it never seemed to occurred to him -- how you get a pie? who made the pie?

how do you make a pie grow? it is easy to plot the carving knife and starts splitting. it is much more difficult to actually be the one who comes in with the pie. i want to talk little bit about america in the broadest scheme of things, to look at what america has meant in the world. if you think about human history, there are very few great inventions in history. the invention of the wheel, the invention of fire. i think america is responsible for perhaps the greatest invention of all -- the invention of wealth creation. what does that mean? that means that for centuries, and even millennia, no one knew how to create stuff. no one knew how to create wealth. i remember as a kid, i would go to school and i would have 10 marbles that would look at the other kids and they had more marbles than i did and i said to

myself, how do i go from having 10 marbles to 12 marbles? i realize there was no way. none of us had any money. we had marbles. the only way for me to go from 10 to 12 was to take someone else's to marbles. historically, wealth was cquired through theft, through acquisition, and through conquest. how did countries get founded? machiavelli says all great nations are founded in crime. you found a country by invading someone else's country, killing who is running it, and declaring yourself king. that is how wealth was obtained or thousands of years. the idea that you can start with 10 marbles and end up with 15 marbles without stealing someone else's marbles, that is the merican ideal. that is a very bold idea.

that you can, in a sense, create something out of nothing. it is virtually divine. the reason this went unnoticed for centuries is that the people who create wealth, who are basically be science and technology guy on the one hand, and the entrepreneur or the merchant on the other, these two guys have been heated in virtually all cultures throughout history. the merchant, traitor, entrepreneur is a low man on the totem pole. confucius says that the noble man knows what is virtuous. the low man knows what is profitable. in india, we have the caste system. who is at the top? the priest, then the royalty, and down the list to go until one step from the bottom, the hated untouchable, and above him, the merchant. the trader. low life scum. a great muslim thinker in the middle ages said looting is a

better way, a moral way, to get wealth. than trade. why? he said trading was slightly effeminate. you are exploiting the wants of another. he said that looting is very manly, because you have to beat a guy in open combat and take his stuff. it appeals to the manly virtue of courage. i say all this because i wanted to convey -- by the way, this is true even today. if you go to europe, even now, inherited money is better than earned money. why? inherited money is like manna from heaven. earned money means from the european point of view, you probably had to run over a guy to get it. it is looked down upon. here's what i want to say -- you have the totem pole with the priest at the top, the merchant

at the bottom. what america did, what the founders did, is they flipped it. they created a society that would be devoted to wealth creation through trade and technology and entrepreneurial capitalism. this was always an american idea, but it was always intended to be for the benefit of everybody. the declaration of independence does not say all americans are created equal. it says all men. the american recipe was, from the beginning, intended to be made in america but intended for global export. everybody could benefit from the system. if you look at the original constitution, before the bill of rights was added, it only talks about the right to patents and copyrights. technology, invention, is the

key to american success and american affluence. what is the benefit of this? the benefit of this is stunning. when i first came to america, the most impressive thing to me was not that there was affluence in america. i knew that. the most impressive thing was that the ordinary guy, and i'm not talking about the smart guy, i'm talking about the not so smart guy. i'm not talking about the hard-working guy, i'm talking about the guy that did not work that hard. at the greatness is of america is that the not so smart, not so hard-working guy still had an amazing life. he had a nice home, two cars in the backyard, if you're in california, he had a small ool. i'm like, wow! i'm am constantly comparing america with my friends and india -- one guy who has been trying to immigrate to america for i don't know how many years. the poor guy can never get a visa. i said to him, why are you so eager to come to america?

he says, dinesh, i want to move to a country where the poor people are fat. [laughter] what is he getting at? the phenomenon of mass prosperity. of the ordinary guy having a fantastically well. that is true, but i want to go beyond that to suggest that what america really offers is not just comfort and wealth and the ability to live well, it offers you the chance to write the script of your own life. not long ago, i asked myself, how has my life changed by coming to the united states? how it would be different if i stayed in india? i grew up in a middle-class family and i did not have great luxury, but neither did i lack for anything. in coming to america, my life -- is it better off materially? yes. but it is not radically

different. actually my life has changed more in other ways. ad i stayed in india, chances are i probably would have lived within a five or 10 mile radius of where i was born. i would have married a girl of my identical social, economic, cast, and cultural background. i would have become an engineer like my dad, or a doctor like my uncles. i would've had a set of opinions on a bunch of subjects that could be predicted in advance. what am i saying? i guess my destiny would have been in large part given to me. not that i had choice, but there was a defined parameter. the beauty of america is that in this country, we have the ability to write the script of our own life. we are in the driving seat of our own future. our biggest decisions in life are made by us. america creates the sense of possibility and out of that, you

can become an activist, a community organizer, in a sense, what are you doing? you are living off the great capitalist explosion of wealth that you did not even create. who is doing that? most of you. if you look at your life, you are actually living up the dream of the early karl marx. he said, it would be great to live in a society where there was not a whole lot of work to be done. in which we can sit around, do a little bit of work in the morning, and then we can do some art in the afternoon, and some intellectual banter in the evening, and then some artistic expression. in a way, he was describing dartmouth. [laughter] what he kind of missed is how do you get a dartmouth? who pays for it? where does the abundance come from? there is nothing like dartmouth virtually everywhere else in the world. all the foreign students want to

come to a place like this one because they represent the for -- the fulfillment not just to have right wing cap thrist dream but of the left wing progressive dream of self-fulfillment and self-realization. i want to turn to a moment of what is happening to the american dream. what is happening, i fear, is that it is beginning to be shrunken in america. incredibly, it is beginning to be seized upon and elsewhere in the world. we are losing our own dream. it is going to other people. if you look around the world, what you see is countries like brazil, china, india, russia coming up. they are growing at five times the rate of the united states. why? we have taught them the secret of wealth creation. for a long time we tried the

bill ayers formula. we try to go over and build homes, lend him money, all of which were a complete waste of time and money. well meaning and admittedly, for the moral edification of the people doing it, but of no real value to the eople on the ground. finally, the indians and the chinese had an insight and it could be called, very crudely, the advantage of backwardness. what is the advantage? we don't have a whole bunch of money, but we do have a whole bunch of people. if we can get those people not to sit around doing nothing, talking to anthropologists or social workers, but making stuff that other people actually want to buy, we will take over the world market. that is really what has happened. the american dream, our dream, has now become a global dream. this is the great gift that

america has given and is giving to the world. it has absolutely been globalization. i am talking about global technological capitalism, has been far and away the greatest anti-poverty program ever created. all of the concoctions of jane addams, and frankly, mother teresa, and every government and out and barack obama pale next to the simple ingenuity of the iphone in a small indian village were some female entrepreneur is using it to sell a bicycle. in other words, what has delivered the goods for people is not, ultimately, social agitation. rather, it is the very american sense of taking nothing, sand, and making it into silicom. it is that ingenuity that is far more profound and act in saying, what do i do to divide the pie? everyone has an opinion on that.

now, i want to say a word about american foreign policy. i want to say that american foreign policy, to me, viewed as a whole, has actually made the world much better and much safer. there are all kinds of exceptions and stupid stuff and the vietnam war and the war in iraq and this and that. i granted all. just that back and ask yourself this -- what would the 20th century or the last 100 years have been like if there never was an america? what would have been the outcome of world war i? or world war ii? or the cold war? what would the world be like if america sort of never existed? for all of our blunders and for all of our self-interest -- by the way, democratic societies have every right to be self-interested. we elect governments to look out for us. the question is not if america is self interested, but in being

self-interested, is america making the world better or worse? we self-interested we got into world war ii. we didn't even care about hitler. it took the bombing of pearl harbor. self-interest. that self-interest got rid of nazi germany and japanese imperialism. we fought the cold war for self-interest, sure, but who would deny that the end of it, the world is much better and freer? the russians have all types of problems but no one wants to restore the old communist party. american power has been, ultimately, a great boon for the world. in a way, it kept the world ecure. why? for this reason. what america invented is the idea of wealth creation as an alternative to conquest. frankly, most people in the rest

of the world believe in both. if china today or russia had america's power, they would be using it for wealth creation. we taught them that. they would also be using it for conquest. what america can do for the world now is show the importance of transitioning from the one to the other. it is another way of saying that american foreign-policy is not about acquiring real estate. people tell me, if american -- america invaded grenada and iraq and afghanistan. if america invaded all of those places, why don't we own them? the truth is, america goes in, merica gets out. we don't want to own anyone else's real estate. our foreign-policy can be summed up in two phrases -- trade with us and don't bomb us. hat is it. [applause] there are all kinds of criticisms to be made in america. i will be happy to make them as

will the next guy. i think taking the global perspective, taking the perspective of history and the comparative cost -- perspective, i end up with the words of jean kirkpatrick who said, sometimes we have to face the truth about ourselves, no matter how pleasant it is. thank you very much. [applause] >> so many strongmen set up, it is hard to know where to begin. no one said that america is the most charitable place. there are a couple of assertions you have to take on faith that are astonishing. one is the idea that america's great invention was wealth creation, not based on theft at

all. what about the sacking of the entire continent? that was a theft. 90% of the residents who lived here were murdered, and that was a part of it as well. i will go back to the question of contradiction. i said in the opening that contradiction may save us and i think we need to see things as contradictory. i find a real arid kind of lack of imagination when you assert that the only thing we can do is see america in relation to someplace else rather than to fire our imaginations to imagine standing right next to the world, a world that could be or should be, and committing ourselves to work toward that better world. we don't have to say, oh, jamaica is better. that is not the point. the point is, are we perfect? no. can we improve? yes, and how can we do that? i want to say three things --

ne, the muckrakers and whistleblowers and truth tellers from upton sinclair to ida b wells, to chelsea manning and edward snowden, they are what is so great about america. the citizen activists who brought us the clean air and water act are largely responsible for the fact that you live in a country where you can turn it on the faucet and drink clean water, unless you live in west virginia or one of the fracked-up states. they are what's so great about america. frederick douglass and captain john brown, harriet tubman, what that necessary istol in her pocket. let me ask you to quit -- quick questions, taking those last two movements.

are you all against slavery? i know i am at dartmouth, but really? [laughter] can ask again, are you against slavery? ou would have been against the founding of the country 150 years ago, but we are all good abolitionists now. we are all for a woman's right to vote, right? men? we're all for a woman's right to vote now, but hundred and 50 or's ago you would've been against the founders, the constitution, the bible, and the law. let's agree, we would have been those good people, but the fact is it takes an imagination to step outside. you don't look at slavery and say, we are better than these other countries. no, you say this is something that needs improving. that's how you begin to become

an active citizen. you make a stand for human beings, for justice, for social justice, and in the last 150 years or 200 years, the people who have made a difference in this country, the people who have actually inspired us to do better than we would've done, not by looking elsewhere but by looking at ourselves, the people who really made a difference are the american radicals, from jane addams to emma goldman. up to today, the influence of michelle alexander, on and n. as ella baker said of martin luther king, martin did not make the movement. the movement made martin. we have plenty to do to put our shoulders on the wheel of improving our lives and the lives of others.

[applause] >> the debate has taken an interesting turn because we sometimes hear the phrase american exceptionalism. what you have been hurting today is that in a way, we are talking about two types of exceptionalism. if i were to talk about great americans, i would talk about the wealth creators, benjamin ranklin, edison, steve jobs. i think those guys collectively have done more than all the redistributors combined. i'm not saying there is not room for both. i'm saying there is a riority. it is time to talk a little bit of sense. i think we are at a moment now where we can do that without resulting, without mere slogans.

90% of american indians were murdered? genocide? actually that is not true. the white man came to america and brought with him unwittingly a whole bunch of diseases, malaria, smallpox, etc. e vast majority of indians ontracted the plague and died. but it was more than eight genocide then when the black plague swept across europe and i came from asia. i don't see europeans submitting reparations or genocide proposals in the u.n.. why? they have the sense to realize that this is part of the tragedy of history. human beings have carried with them diseases to which they had no immunity at the time.

his is not to excuse it or the rest of it, but it is a way of demanding a certain intellectual precision when we talk about these things. slavery -- isn't it a fact that the founders allowed slavery? it is. why did they do it? because if they had not allowed it, there would have been no way to have a union. 12 of the original 13 states had slaves. certainly the southern states, but most of the northern states would not have joined the june had there been an attempt to forbade it at the outset. what lincoln said was a founders declared the right to freedom so that the enforcement could follow when the circumstances permitted. in fact, 300,000 whites from the north died to end slavery, securing for the african-americans freedom that they were not in a position to secure themselves. i'm really glad somebody ran the underground railroad.

i don't know why no one mentions those 300,000 white soldiers who had nothing to gain and gave their lives to and slavery. [applause] and finally, when martin luther king said in the 60's that i am submitting a note and i demand to be cash, i was waiting for the southern segregationist to say, what note? we didn't make any promises to you. but, in fact, martin luther king was not appealing to the promise made by the southern segregationists. he was appealing to the declaration of independence. here is an amazing fact -- martin luther king was appealing to a charter and a principal articulated by a southern slaveholding planter, thomas jefferson. it is another way of saying is that martin luther king was claiming the promise of the founding. the founders declared the right so the enforcement could follow

when the circumstances permitted. this is a way of saying to americans that we can look at our history, with all the passion and tragedy built into it, and take a certain justifiable pride in the original principles which the founders got right from the start. thank you. [applause] >> this is the cross examination. i pose a question to mr. ayers. you answer and post one to me. we will go back and forth. my first question to you -- you started out as a revolutionary and -- well, you started out in the bin laden mode. you tried to bomb the pentagon and u.s. capitol. here's my question -- you

sounded totally different today. you talked about being an educator, you talked about socratic doubt and wonder. my question is what happened to that old revolutionary? is he still alive? r has he thrown in the towel? >> if what you mean by revolutionary is having a fully worked out program by which we can kind of imagine a different world and overthrow a government, i am not that. if you mean someone who is willing to dive into the contradictions, try to make sense of them, fight for more peace and justice, more balanced, more sustainability, and being willing to live with ambiguity and complex at the and move forward? sure. i see myself as someone who sees the need for fundamental change. i'll give you one example. to me, the struggle against white supremacy, which i invited everyone to join, is a struggle that goes on.

it has not ended. it still goes on and it takes different forms. [applause] it is not slavery, it is not jim crow. the disruption of voting rights, the overrepresentation of men in black -- of black men in prison, that is white supremacy. 2.5 million citizens in prison? 5% of the world's population imprisoning 20% of the world's prisoners? it is an outrage. we should change it. [applause] >> i have to agree that the lock them up impulses getting out of hand. >> it is very out of hand. now my question to you, you have written, among other things and you implied it again oday, that slavery is dead. let's face it, the descendents of slaves are better off. you said many times that i am

not submitting a note to get reparations from the british as i'm better off. there are other ways to think about. you may have taken an esl class and there are other ways to imagine coming to the west besides the slaughter of millions. my question is, many people say that the state of israel, a catalyst for the creation of the state of israel is the holocaust. you have the same thing about he holocaust, that it was in some sense worth it because look at the end? >> the argument about the holocaust is this -- i'm not saying the jews are better off by the holocaust because they got israel. a completely different way to put it is that the moral anguish about what happened in the death camps did help, in fact, to create political support for the state of israel. the point about colonization and slavery is a little different. last year or the year before,

the indian prime minister went to oxford and he gave a speech that if he had given when i was a kid, he might've been strung up on the streets of bombay. he said that gandhi had a dream of wiping a tear off of every indian face and now it is a global technological capitalism that is helping to realize that dream. notty and's 40 years of socialism, but techno logical capitalism. he said something else in this is the controversial thing he said. he said we have benefited. we are in a position to take it vantage of global capitalism because of the legacy of empire. that's the key words. although the british empire was very hard and imposed indignities on people who lived under it, their descendents, modern indians now, speak english and have technical institutes and also have an infrastructure that enables them, not to mention democracy and separation of powers and checks and balances. and contracts and courts of law.

you walk into indian courtrooms, and you see dark-skinned guys with white wigs. the indians can take off the wigs. the british have gone home. we can take off the wigs. -- colonialism, for better or worse, was the transmission. they brought by is that we both affirm to india. >> you are saying as that of the holocaust was, it helped -- we should be grateful for the creation of israel and this was the transmission. >> absolutely not. i would say that the state of israel is a good thing to ave. the jews were safe in europe. it would be preposterous to say -- >> the same is true of slavery. it is preposterous to say it was a good thing.

>> that is not what i said. you said that -- >> they were not in slavery -- >> white supremacy still manifests itself in different ways. it is not a matter of individual racism, it is the matter of structures that are influenced by a system that keeps others own. >> i am not saying no. i am saying what frederick douglass said. he stood up before an abolitionist society and said, i will not celebrate the fourth of july. it is not mine. it is your fourth of july. the fourth of july is an emblem of white supremacy. the civil war began. lincoln, who took douglass at his word, that he didn't belong in america and wanted a country of his own, said, ok. i'm going to now look to find where we can relocate the freed

slaves after the war. lincoln had 7, 8 places he was sending emissaries to see where free slaves could have a country of their own. but frederick douglass said, no, we don't want to go anywhere. for all the problems, we are 100% american. we want to stay here. the us is our home, and we want to stay here. american indians, blacks, indians, all of us have a choice today to live in the old way. american indians who stay on their reservation will not have cell phones, they are going to live the old way. we are going to hunt and live the national geographic life. that is how it used to be and that is what we value. we will make it as if columbus never came here. > who is arguing this? [applause] you have a great argument against somebody, but i don't know who it is. >> that is my point, everybody has voted with their feet to live this way.

everybody wants cell phones. nobody even thinks about this. >> everybody has not voted with their feet to live in a permanent world economy. everybody has not voted with their feet to say, look, we have a trillion dollar military udget. that's wrong and outrageous. the idea that we go over there and leave, that is the nature of empirism, not going over there and holding the land, it is a neo empire where we control the resources. in 2010, the taxpayers, us, gave $300 billion to private corporations like halliburton a no-bid contracts, and that was the biggest corporate welfare scheme in the world. that is the biggest whenever executed. and that is going on regularly. this notion that somehow corporations are persons, and walmart is a person. and that is the end of the political system of democracy. that is the end of it because

money buys political office tom -- judgeships and buys redistricting, and that is what we're doing. and that is what we're doing and we should resist it. [applause] >> look, i will admit, there is no question the government runs all kinds of rackets with private industry, and it does it in the corporate sector, the defense sector. i think you also have to admit in the social welfare sector. there are all kinds of alliances government makes with groups to privilege them or give them advantages. here is the point i want to make about foreign policy. i think the iraqi war in etrospect was very stupid. >> you supported it at the time. >> i supported it at the time because i believed there were were weapons of mass destruction. >> why did you believe that? it was so transparencies false. at least 50% of the american people knew it, in every scholar knew it. >> no, they didn't. first of all, here's the

problem. the problem is that saddam hussein at the time was behaving as if he had nuclear weapons. the u.n. said to him, if he had no nuclear weapons, he should have told the inspectors, come on in, take a look, i don't have them. but he was acting like he had them. that being said, that said, it is inexcusable to invade a country when you don't know -- it is like it is inexcusable to go into somebody's house if you don't know they have drugs in the oilet. you are uncomfortable. >> you are saying, we know that north korea has weapons. should we kick their dorian? -- door in? >> of course not. >> that's your logic. >> let me qualify the logic. what do you call in dictator who has nuclear weapons. the answer is, you call that person, "sir." when people have nuclear weapons, you have to treat them with kid gloves.

that is why we did not want saddam to have them. >> but we knew he did not have them. >> we did not know that. >> all the intelligence knew >> let me make a bigger point. a large degree i agree, but i think one point comes clear from that. we did not go to those countries to steal their stuff. the fact of the matter is we have spent a whole bunch of money in iraq. we could have taken it right back from them in oil, taken their oil fields, taken their revenue for as long as we could hold them. but bush, the hated bush, handed the keys to the oilfields to the iraqis and said, guys, it is your oil. sell it, bernie it, do what you want with it. stupid though it is to spend that much money, it is not evil.