this recession is that when well andstart to do you have something like the recession, they can pull themselves out of poverty. you have a health scare or an -- they're not quite at the place where they can pull themselves out and they end up falling back in. highlight the other side of what folks about these programs. host: hungry in america. for 49 million americans. based on a study of more than 44,000 americans across the country. her work available online at usa today.com. thank you very much for being with us. the president is in japan today. part of a weeklong trip to asia. he is back at the white house next tuesday evening.

congress is also in recess. lawmakers returning next monday. we will have live coverage of the house and senate next week. thanks for joining us for this thursday edition of "washington journal." enjoy the rest of your day. ♪ >> life programming today on c-span includes a discussion on mentalhealth or rams -- health programs for military personnel. from the national council of behavioral health. at noon, the american enterprise institute unveils a report on al qaeda and u.s. security in the

wake of the killing of dozens of suspected al qaeda fighters over the weekend in yemen. : 30 a look at elections in afghanistan. as. is live on c-span tonight at 8:00 p.m. ruth bader ginsburg is joined by colleagues and friends from canada and israel. they sure what it took to rise above the odds to reach the top of their fields. here's some of what you will see. >> judges don't make agendas. always.eceiving, we don't make the controversies that come before us. when they arebest on our plate to decide them. not like the political branches that do have an agenda.

-- remember the 80's in the 90's. the discourse was extremely radical of judges who were progressive. it was critical because they said they have an agenda, which is the worst thing you can say about a judge because what it suggests is that the decision-maker as an intellectual basket that will accept the evidence and information and keep the shape of the basket. allow the supposed to basket to change. when somebody says you have an agenda, it is a way of dismissing the result in saying, what you expect? it is absolutely a contradiction to what judges really do, which is to actually -- we listen based on who we are. there's no question about that. that does not mean we have an agenda other than trying to get it right other -- get it right every time. restraint. you don't sit alone.

i tell people i have a husbands. [laughter] deciding where to go to a movie is a hard thing with one. they do not choose you and they you did not choose them. marriages. >> you can see all of that event from the national museum of women in the arts tonight at 8:00 on c-span. firstf the nations top amendment authors and scholars will debate the future of free speech in the u.s., including college campus censorship, holocaust denial, hate speech on the internet and the supreme court's hobby lobby case. it is from the national constitution center in

philadelphia. >> ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the national constitution center. i am jeffrey rosen, the president of this wonderful institution. the national constitution center is the only institution in america chartered by congress to disseminate information about the u.s. constitution on a nonpartisan basis. we take our role very seriously and we are grateful for it. and the program tonight is part of our role as america's town hall. this is the one place in the country where citizens of diverse constitutional perspectives can hear the best arguments on the constitutional questions that transfixed america, are in the news, fuse our history, and help you make up your own mind. we are talking about free speech in america.

just this morning, the supreme court heard arguments on a case that will decide whether corporations have the same religious liberties under the first amendment as natural persons. we will discuss that and many other questions. i want you to ask -- i want to ask you to look at our website for upcoming programs. on thursday, calendars with will discuss his life in the law. -- alan dershwitz will discuss his life in the law. i'm especially delighted that tonight we are sharing this partnership with the foundation for educational rights in education, or fire. fire's mission is to sustain and defend individual rights, including free speech, due process, or the just liberty, and the sanctity of conscience at america's colleges and universities.

it was during the first week of my job that greg from fire came to me and said we should present a panel on free speech. and we really have assembled the dream team of free speech, commentators and freethinkers alike. it is a panel with a lot of diversity. i think you may find that some of our panelists are more ardent in their positions defending free speech than others. i will not tell you which ones. maybe we will change our minds after listening to each other. let me briefly introduce them to you and then we will get right to it. dr. stanley fish is a florsheim or distinguished visiting professor at cardoza law school. he is well known to all of us as a contributor to the opinion editor of the "new york times." greg is a member of the bar of

the u.s. supreme court and author of "unlearning liberty: campus censorship and the end of the american debate," which has recently come out in paperback. it is great. these, get it at the end of the show. and a distinguished university of law solo at the academy of arts and sciences, and a prolific commentator on constitutional law and comparisons about american attitudes toward free speech. and finally, my old friend. it is such a joy to local mu, jonathan, to the national constitution center. we go way back in washington, d.c. he is the most prominent defender of gay marriage in this country, as well as one of the most persuasive and eloquent defenders of free speech and his recent and calm -- reasoned and calm voice is recently expressed in paperback as well as many

articles you have greatly enriched public debate. i will begin with you, jonathan. yesterday, the supreme court delayed a decision about whether to hear a very important case that raises the question of whether a photographer can refuse to photograph gay weddings because of her religious objections and claims that religiously motivated individuals can refuse to serve gay people as gay marriages are popping up with greater frequency. your work has been that the first amendment is good for gay people, but a regime that allows hate speech is good for minorities in general. do these recent cases cause you to re-examine that thesis? >> no, they don't.

i'm not the best person to comment on the legalities of these cases. i don't know the case law. but let me give you a personal perspective on how i think about these cases. there are a bunch of these cases. they all involve in one way or another the class of religious conscience with antidiscrimination law, which often means homosexuality, gay marriage, in the case of the obamacare law, it means contraception. and there are a lot of these. there was a case in colorado that is not a legal case because the suit has not been filed, but a christian dog walking company fired a customer because they agreed with legalized marijuana. they said, get your docs and get them out of here. we are not going to walk them anymore. i regret this. this is not the kind of society that i want to live in, where people are taking the side. i urge the gay community publicly and privately that the right answer is sensible accommodation worked out legally through the process.

i worry that first amendment jurisprudence, which locks in one answer forever, we lose the flexibility to negotiate. there is no reason we need to have one national rule. different cities and states are striking different valances. and gay people, for example, or abortion rights activists, for example, and people of religious faith should be forced to sit down at the table and negotiate over statutes and strike a balance. >> wonderful. greg, you have spent the last 13 years defending free speech on campus. how do the battles today look different than they did when you started? and what are the most important battles today? you recently noted that you have a growing list of 120 speaker controversies in recent years to high-profile dissident cetaceans -- deuce invitations -- disinvitations. what is the state of free-speech

battles on campuses today? >> i'm the one weird law school student that went to law school to do first amendment law. my passion was free-speech. i don't know why i came to that, but that is why i went to law school. i specialized in it. i took every class at stanford offered on free speech. i even did six extra credits on free speech during the tudor dynasty because i loved it so much. and even with all that preparation, when i showed up and became the first legal director of fire in 2001, i was stunned by the kinds of things that can get you in trouble on a college campus. and 13 years later, i'm still stunned on a daily basis. that is the only reason i wrote the book, because i got tired of people saying, ok, that is one example. i talk about dozens of examples.

there are a lot of trends, but one trend of a lot of trends is that it felt like when i first heard in 2002, diversity students would at least make some kind of bow to some kind of higher purpose to what they were doing, even if it was entirely disingenuous. they would say, and don't make fun of tuition prices or don't make fun of the dean in the name of tolerance and diversity. they would invoke these sometimes sincerely, sometimes for the greater good, but sometimes only half sincerely. in the past two years, i have seen more cases where they are not even bothering with that. it seems there have been a lot of these very old-fashioned examples of, just don't criticize the university. i don't have to justify it. just do as i say. which i think is the result of a lot of bureaucratization and just giving power for a long time. every time around this time of

year, a lot of speakers get disinvited from campus, or they are forced to withdraw their names. disinvitation season happens every year. that is not so much a first amendment problem as it is a cultural problem. we are teaching students to think if you don't like the opinion of someone speaking there, you don't challenge them, you chase them off and get them disinvited. i think that is the wrong way to think about this. >> great. eric, not long ago, the president of the united states and the president of egypt disagreed about how to treat a free-speech issue. this was the video of the muslims that was to have led to the benghazi attacks. under pressure, the president said it needs to be removed because it shows a group of leaders in an entire religion, which is illegal in egypt. and the president of the united

states was defending google and youtube's right to post the video, but caused momentarily -- but caused momentarily on that because it incited violence. but google and youtube refused because they said it is not criticizing a religion, but a religious leader. our non-american free-speech traditions, they are obviously very different. america is more protective of free-speech. is that the right thing? and did google do the right thing? >> it is a bad thing. i teach international law and one thing i instruct about again and again is between american norms and norms in other countries. this is sometimes put under the rubric of american exceptionalism. one way that the united states is quite different from other countries is in its commitment to free speech.

you can make three distinctions. there are countries like egypt -- and you know, authoritarian countries obviously do not like free-speech and there is no reason to want to be like them. but european countries have a different attitude toward free-speech from that of the united states. europeans tend not to be as absolutist. they take seriously the fact that people can be offended by speech, that it can cause turmoil, as illustrated by this video. and what is striking is that these human rights treaties, which have provisions about freedom of expression, but the provisions are much narrower than what you find in the united states. the provisions will say free-speech is a right, subject to various constraints, such as public morality and public order. i think president obama did a reasonable thing. this video is causing foreign-policy problems for the united states. the united states is trying to improve relations with muslim

countries and he wanted to at least show people in these countries who don't share our views about freedom of speech that we respect their views. he couldn't, obviously, order google to take down the video. if he had that power, it would have been an interesting question whether he should use that. i think people are wrong to criticize president obama in this case on the grounds that, basically the rest of the world doesn't share our views and they just have to get with the program. they've got to be like what? like us? and if they are not like us, then who cares about them. that is not a practical way to run foreign-policy. we love our first amendment so much and we think very proudly of american traditions about freedom of speech, which actually only go back a few decades, not to the beginning.

but this is such a part of the american self-identity that it is very hard to make compromises even when they are warranted, and that is a problem. >> great. professor fish, you have written a book on free-speech called "there is no such thing as free speech, and it's a good thing, too" in case that tells you where he falls on this spectrum that i suggested. and now you have written about academic freedom. what is your view of the relationship between these two concepts? >> before i answer, i want to say how much i agree with what eric just said. if you recall salman rushdie and the fact that there was an order issued against him for the writing of the satanic verses. i was at a conference, a humanistic conference -- don't go to human is to conferences. [laughter] but i was at one, nevertheless. i used to be in that game and this topic came up and someone

stood up in the audience -- and they meant it, this was not a joke -- and they said, what is the matter with those iranians? haven't they ever heard of the first amendment? [laughter] the relationship between academia and the first amendment can be simply described. free-speech as established by the first amendment is an inclusive, democratic idea. academic freedom is a notion that only lives coherently within an academic structure, which is determinedly exclusive. what academics do -- our trade is to make judgments on each other. and what we do is not foster speech or to ensure that it will flourish, but rather it is the

case that we devise mechanisms by which we give ourselves the right, at least those of us that have tenured positions, to say who can and who cannot speak freely. another way of looking at the difference between academic freedom and free speech is to think of the topic of holocaust denial, which has been with us for quite a while and will be with us, i predict, for a very long time. holocaust denial in our society under the strong absolutist first amendment abuse that eric referenced is something that cannot be stigmatized or oppressed. holocaust denial can be promoted on websites, radio programs, videos, and so forth. but in the academy, holocaust

denial is interdicted. it is not that it never rises, but when it does arise, it never arrives as an option. it is not regarded as an alternative vision that one might sincerely have. rather holocaust denial is regarded as one might view "elvis is dead" denial. so it is therefore the property of kooks and crazies. you can get promoted in a history department for writing about it, but if you advocate it, you will neither get hired nor promoted. there is the structure of inclusion and a structure of exclusion. but this goes again to eric's point.

the first amendment that we now have, which i would call not in a friendly tone a libertarian first amendment. the first amendment we now have is a recent development. and i would say it only emerged fully in 1964 with the famous case "new york times" versus sullivan, which is a case that is dear to the heart of all free-speech ideologue. before "new york times" versus sullivan, it was possible, and in fact it was done by the supreme court to withdraw protection of the constitution from speech either because of what it did, the effects it had, or because of what it said. there was a content test and then the effects test. the effects test was called a bad tendency test.

at the beginning of the 20th century, the idea that some forms of free-speech have a bad effect and do not deserve protection. that was followed by the clear and present danger test that said, well, yes, the effects may be bad, but we should wait to see how bad they may be, to see when the danger is imminent and then stepped in. but it is still an effects test. the content test was a said that's -- it was a test that said, look, there are some forms of speech that are worse and they do not deserve constitutional protection. i have one of my favorite notes from a 1942 case. "social value and any benefit derived by them is outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.

all that changed in 1964 when the "new york times" versus sullivan court said that all speech must be protected independently of either its content or its effects. and independently of whether he was defamatory or it causes stress of a variety of kind, because the important thing in the case was to keep the conversation going in a wide open, robust, and uninhibited way. >> [indiscernible] >> right, which i sometimes call the john wayne theory of the constitution. and that was the beginning of the end of everything. [laughter] >> and that part of the world ended in 1964. >> actually, it was the beginning of the beginning of everything. let me remind you what the world was actually like in 1954 when

the magazine you've never heard of -- because i hadn't until about yesterday -- called "one" published in l.a. -- >> oh, yeah. >> good for you. >> it was the first openly gay intellectual magazine. it was not publishing sex ads or anything like that. it had articles and short stories and it was openly gay, and the united states post office shut it down because the content was unacceptable to society. they took it off the stand and said you cannot mail it, and just for good measure, the specific issue that they had as a cover story "you can't say that" about the censorship policies of the government. that is what they were doing. there was no reasoning at all and the supreme court struck down with the postmaster general had done, creating a wide-open field for debate of gay rights

in this country, a position considered obscene and dangerous to children in my lifetime, and allowing the field open for people like me to make our arguments and eventually to windows arguments. thosedow arguments. >> i think you can win the arguments by gaining control of the political process, with since that is the way the arguments are always one anyway. >> the ideas won the arguments. we had no political power. >> you did not win anything. >> i'm delighted that this first panel does not, first of all, need a moderator. >> go away. [laughter] >> and that the debate has been joined so fiercely and that, in fact, we had fighting words. now we know where everyone stands. these self moderating panels are so much easier to preside over. we have on my left the two first amendment libertarians, as professor fish put it, who defend the american free-speech tradition, which holds generally that speech can only be bad if

it threatens and is likely to cause imminent harmful action. and on the right, and we actually did not plan this, i will call them the first amendment dignitarians. you can correct me. who are defending speech that blasphemes groups or defends their dignity may be banned. and i want to ask greg as a libertarian to respond to the dignitary and argument that the responses from the muslim video should have come down. the google people were not convinced there was evidence of imminent threat. in retrospect, it turned out they were right. the video did not cause action.

22-year-olds in flip-flops were basically making a decision in the middle of the night. did they make a better decision than the president? >> almost as soon as the videos went up -- i mean, people who are contrarians on free-speech on campus are actually am i in my experience, in the mainstream. 59% are those that would be laughable if challenged in a court of law. they have been defeated every time. the extent to which free-speech has been appreciated on campus has taken a long decline in my own career. and there is an advantage to the tutor censorship. one of them is the idea of where we came from, and the idea of the spectacle of academics arguing essentially for blasphemy laws, saying we should be banning speech because it offends someone religious faith -- and i remember someone challenged me on this. and i said, you are not actually free unless you can question someone else's ideas. and that was so established that by the time you get to the

establishment of the first amendment, it is relatively taken for granted. now, to the argument of whether or not we recently -- only recently started taking free-speech seriously, i also dismissed that argument. milton was writing about free-speech in 1644. i would like to point out that almost as soon as the map has had the power to communicate ideas, a were arguing for free speech. even long before milton. free-speech was a powerful weapon and a powerful goal throughout intellectual history, starting as soon as people were allowed to speak it out loud. what stanley is conflating is that the first amendment is not found to apply to the mistakes until 1925, and that is because of something called the slaughterhouse decision. they could not have actually

applied it before. the 14 commitment came out during the civil war, and unfortunately there was a stupid decision by the supreme court that prevented that from having full force until 1925 when it started to be incorporated through the due process clause of the united states constitution. but there were better and better you see a little dip in the second red scare in the early 1950's. but, of course, i see 1964, i see it as being this wonderful moment. when people argue against, it the obama administration argues against it. can you imagine a rand paul or a sarah palin being able to sue a journalist because they said something that was vaguely critical of them? that's what they're argue. they're argue for the right of politicians to scare them it's a good decision, and do we want

our politicians to be able to sue us for saying mean things about them? i don't. >> defaming them is not the ame thing. well, under the standard, you have to make reference to the various opinion, because that's where the actual malice came rom. these places aren't less democratic than the united states. they might be more democratic, because people who might otherwise be detered from entering politics by the kind of slimy media system that we have, can go into it, you know, not having to worry about being defamed. >> i called it europe worship. >> we see a lot of that here in america. >> my dad grew up in yugoslavia. my mother is british. i spent a lot of time over there. >> yugoslavia. >> and it's funny how much it

mystifies brits and my friends about how much you hear, wow, europe has such great laws with regards to speech. we would never tolerate their national security laws. those by themselves are crazy. the recent -- >> but why -- canada is not a police state. but what is the harm that's taking place in -- there is a concrete harm that's taking place. >> well, people say there's a whole lot of chilling going on over there. for example, it's getting mighty hard to criticize something of the islamic faith, for example. there are reasons both legal and extra legal for that, but people say there's a lot of chilling effect, new laws about blasphemy. i happen to have in my pocket, by mere coincidence, belgium the other day, i came determined to read this, because it's so interesting.

belgium passed a law just the other day against -- advocating sexism for purposes of this act, the concept of sexism will be understood to mean any gesture or act that is evidently intended to express contempt for a person because of thinks gender or in regards to inferior or reduces them to their sexual dimension, which has the effect of violating someone's dignity, either in the presence of several people, or through documents printed or sorblingsde or even in documents that have not been made public. >> europe is a wonderful place. there's a lot you can do before ou run into serious trouble. >> i don't have to worry about some prosecutor coming after me because he doesn't like what i said. >> let me pick up something greg said about milton. he was referring to milton's

1644 track where, as greg indicated, they're extraordinarily powerful celebrations of the freedom of speech. in fact, some of them are whistled on the walls in new york's public library. 2/3 through the way of that track, of course, i didn't mean catholics, then we burn. >> that's true. >> what i want to say is everybody has a kicker up his leeve. >> they went around in campuses saying things that they found hateful, and then he said we can't have that. what i want to say is we can't have that position is not only a possible position not only a sensible position that's ructurally and

philosophically that everyone has even if they're denying it. >> let me first say we're going to take a vote on this. you're going to have to decide whether you're for the libertarian or dig any tarnes, so listen closely. also, for those of who you have audience questions, you can do so. my question is, is this debate between libertarians and whose law is going to prevail made obsolete by technology? here's the decider. we're not the president of egypt, and we're not president obama, but these 22-year-olds in flip-flops were the first responders in dublin and india and places like that who report up to the top lawyers at google nd facebook. the decision is going to be made not by courts enforcing the first amendment, but by young lawyers and internet service providers. >> for me, what's the most interesting about that, we're

starting to see -- and i look at these arguments for or against freedom of speech, and i realize one of the things that the information science folks, the facebooks and twitter people actually get almost better than anybody is that the most fundamental value of speech is not the producing the platonic form of truth. it's not because the discussion will actually let us understand what the form of truth is. it's the fact that i now know you're angry at me. it's the fact that the price of rice is over there, it's now i know what the trends are, all of these little truths that can actually be revealed. i think if you look at twitter, you have an unparalleled chance to see something that is as close as we're ever going to get to the collective unconsciousness of the species. >> discouraging. >> it's important to know what we like for good and bad. this is important information. the really primitive idea, i make fun of my own people for having the british sides, for having what i call sort of like, oh, so we're taking the

dinner time response to unpleasant love. people have had training ideas, and it's incredibly valuable. this approach does not work, it cannot work. >> i don't think technology will change anything, because it remains that the government can bring lawsuits because internet service providers, you can bring lawsuits against google and require google to take things down. there's a huge amount of stuff that's said on the internet by anonymous people that nobody pays any attention to, so there's no need to do that, nobody cares what they say. if it's somebody who like a politician or a prominent person, then everyone knows who he is and where you can sue. back at the early stage of the internet, the concern was actually the option, that there's a famous case involving

yahoo! and france. yahoo! had nazi memorabilia on their website, and the french government sued them the worry was yahoo! has this website at's everywhere, that french defamation law would apply in the united states. that turns out not to be the case, because these companies can control where, you know, what appears in their website in different countries. i think it's a red herring. these google guys can get through just like anybody else. they can just fired just like anybody else. i don't think it's going change much. we just saw turkey shut down twitter. what people forget is that the internet actually operates because the government allows it to operate. it opens a lot of -- it owns a lot of the infrastructure. the n.s.a. can tap into it and figure out what people are thinking and saying, and so we're not going to live in a

libertarian society. >> professor, turkey shut down twitter, what happened then is greek football fans had a habit of saying the founder of modern turkey was gay. he wasn't as it happens, but it's illegal to say that in turkey because it's a form of defamation against gay people. >> which is against the law. >> google was asked to take it down. they initially refused. the turkish prosecutor said take it down all over the world. instead, google just blocked access to turkish users using their internet protocol addresses, and as a result, google was banned from turkey for a couple of years. professor fish, the decider at google was woken up in the middle of the night, and she has to decide, is this video actually blasphemous under turkish law, or is it political commentary? oh, by the way, she doesn't speak turkish, and then multiply that by people criticizing thailand and doing stuff that's illegal in india,

these lawyers are making these decisions. are you confident that they will make the right ones? >> no, i'm not confident that they will make the right ones ny more than i'm confident that jonathan rehearsed, we'll no longer be passed. what i am confident is that the strong free speech doctrine has no reality in fact. and i would go back to a ormula that's a great judge at hand, that i'm sure everyone on this panel and many in the audience will know. it's a cost-benefit analysis basically. in manners of free speech, what you want to do is calculate the harm that will be produced by allowing the speech to flourish, and then balance that against a harm that will be produced by trying to regulate it. that's the analysis and that you have to take account of the harms without entirely

vendoring to them, but not ignore them, and therefore, surrender to somewhat distraction. and for a book, some of you may know this book, that makes this argument more powerfully than any in recent years, i recommend jeremy waldren's book. he's a law professor at oxford and n.y.u. and a native new zealander. so some kind of international flavor to his work. >> it was a powerful defense of your european hate speech laws. is it realistic in terms of taking account of who's making the decisions? waldren envisions european regulators enforcing their will in european courts and so forth, but really, it's service providers that are deciding things, it's the ability of u.n. regulators to enforce their will overtaken by this new technological world, even if you're persuaded. >> you're asking about the technology and not about the

waldren argument? >> well, are they missing the point? they can claim that it can't be enforced. >> i agree with eric on this. i think that although there's a lot more tools for freedom of expression popping up as no one in this room needs to be reminded, there are also a lot more tools for monitoring expression popping up. so i think one reason you always want to be on a panel with stanley fish is, if you can, within five minutes he's going to go to the fundamental issues, and the technology does not begin to address the fundamental issues, and that's still very relevant. what kind of society do we want to have, and what are the basic ground rules? >> that's right. greg, you talked about twitter -- what was your phrase, the collective voice? >> the collective unconscious of the species. >> collective unconscious -- so there was a twitter scandal recently. there's one every week, the tweet heard round the world, the media company i.a.c. has

fired its executive. she tweeted going to africa, hope i don't get aids, just kidding, i'm white. there was a twitter mob against her, and she was called a racist, and she was fired. john said technology doesn't change things, but you used to litigate these campus things on a case-by-case basis. suddenly the mob is global. >> right. >> would you defend her rights to say that, and how can you defend it in a world where the twitter goes viral? >> it's a crazy unsympathetic case, and obviously if you're a p.r. flak and you make a statement that stupid, you're going to get fired for it. but what was interesting to me was the extent to which it turned into a out for blood cause for the people -- she was on a flight before she made it, and by the time she got off she was an international village, negative celebrity. i see this happening a lot in the way we debate with each other.

essentially social media has let us speed up the way we argue, but it also sped up polarization, and it's also sped up sort of a sense of tribalism. i think that some level, the ability to argue this quickly, i'm actually optimistic on this. i think it will teach us some amount of sophisticated lessons about what it actually means to live in a tolerant society, but i feel like right now we're going through ridiculous growing pains. ryan wrote a good article about this recently called outrage porn, just calling b.s. on the fact that we are addicted to rage. partially we do this because it's really fun for us. it really gets our juices going. we actually really like it. i particularly like the fact that a lot of times i think we're harnessing the anti-bullying movement. sometimes you see people harnessing really aggressive bullying energy to go after whatever target they're actually allowed to go after. so i think this is a great conversation that we're having, as i was alluding, to it's teaching use lot about our nature. i wouldn't to want stop it unnecessarily for some idea that maybe we can somehow perfect ourselves, make

ourselves different. i think we should actually look at who we actually are. >> i just can't resist the idea of outrage, called the definition of appealing to the interest and be offensive. kathleen sullivan said, this has to turn you on and gross you out at the same time. >> i agree with what greg just said, and i think all of us on this panel would want to distinguish between the pressures that can be brought against speech, which are social and cultural, and the legal pressures or even regulations and criminalization. so the congressman who recently said that nothing would be lost to the world but the entire national basketball association would be shut down, the only result would be an increase in street crime. well, when he said that, within 20 minutes he had to -- and this is our new favorite phrase

in society, "walk it back." i hope none of are you walking anything back. but, of course, he is paying a price, but it's not a price exacted by any legal regime, ut it's a price exacted by the cultural norms. >> we all do agree on that, and where you and i probably disagree, i think those cultural needs are by far the best mechanism to discipline speech. the official means, when you get authority criminalizing it, are counterproductive. >> and i would say in response to that statement, that is the best -- brandeis made two powerful statements, he said the remedy for bad speech is more speech. i'm only paraphrasing. he also said sunshine is the best disinfectant. my response is the only counterargument is all of

recorded history, and that, for example furk allow something like holocaust denial into the general atmosphere on the basis of strong first amendment principles, what you will have is not holocaust denial withering, but growing, growing, and growing. >> it's so funny, because my whole argument, partially because i grew up with a father who took history very, very seriously, is that human history is such an argument for freedom of speech. when you look at the blossoming of -- there was a great book about it, which talks about liberal science, sort of the rise of an intellectual system in which it's questioning -- >> just buy it after the show. >> that gets away from the time-honored historically relevant theory that if you disagree with someone about fundamental issues, you better chase them off, behead them, set them on fire, ostracize them, get rid of them. >> sounds good. >> wow.

>> that's human nature. the idea of hearing out people you disagree with is what i consider a technology. it's an ina vacation. what i found interesting is, on anduss, i feel like the theory is going much more down the side of sophisticated think there's don't believe in free speech. meanwhile, when it comes to results of what happens when you let pilots talk back to their co-pilot or co-pilots talk back to the pilots or let institutions have a back and forth that actually is an incredibly healthy and productive thing, i think the evidence is just getting better and better for free speech, but we're losing more and more faith. >> you don't want them saying that. i'm sure if they did, they'd get feared. >> but the information feedback, though -- >> it's all information, not all information. that's the difference between us and you. we think it's an empirical question. >> yes, that's right. >> time and again, there's an empirical question of either the parameters for speaking should be broadened or narrowed. it friends on the

circumstances. in some campuses, you might want broader speech, in others you might want narrower. some historical periods, like if you want to use a historical period, it was probably a bad thing, that speech was so free, or rwanda is another example, where freedom of expression over the radio let to a holocaust. there are other situations, like the united states now, where extreme speech is not as harmful, and protections aren't as necessary as in these other places. but it's always an empirical question. it always requires a pragmatic judgment. this kind of fundamentalist approach you take based on some reading of history is just not appropriate under any circumstances. i would argue that in practice, the wonderful balancing test which we do so finally, very quickly devolve into lawsuits and heavy-handed governments and shutting down one and people with political power using it against those without power. even set ago side the very big

issue of can you really have these very fine-tuned tests that you talk about, i would argue empirically that history is absolutely on my side, and i have lived it. i have seen in the past 20 years hate speech against homosexuals is a resource in the liberation of gay people in this country. i wouldn't have said that 20 years ago. a man died the other day named fred. >> oh, yeah, right. >> you know fred. what he did would be illegal. he picketed military funerals and said god hates fags. that's pushing it even for me. that is way out there. the human rights campaign could have hired this guy in the sense that he did so much to expose the hate on the other side, it helps us when we have these people to argue against and when they are out there front and center, and we've got 20 years of an extraordinarily successful minority rights movement in this country to prove it. >> it can work that way sometimes. as an example that you've just

given, it can work in other ways, other times, which is what eric just said. i think in this context of anti-semitism, there's a general feeling in this country that anti-semitism, at least in the united states, is a phenomenon of the past, or at least anti-semitism of the kind that was very active in the 1930's and 1940's in this country. i happen to believe that that kind of virulent anti-semitism could flare up tomorrow. and each time there's something like the bernie madoff case, i'm afraid it will. this may simply be a feature of an unfortunate fact that i'm older than you are. >> i have to ask both the libertarians about this morning's news. the supreme court heard the most important free speech case. year, the hobby lobby case involving the question of whether a religiously motivated owner of an sandarts crafts

store called hobby lobby could refuse to provide the contraceptive coverage required by the affordable care act, also known as obamacare, because of his religious motivations. the supreme court went from protecting the first amendment rights of individuals to those of corporations on free speech grounds, and it may now extend it to religious rights, a corporation as well. you were skeptical of the american libber reign nism our earlier discussion. did the court go too far and should it not extend this right to hobby lobby? >> i think it did. i think this is a good counterpart to jonathan's argument, which is that the first amendment as it's actually practiced in the united states doesn't always or ect unpopular people weak groups. you know, it can be -- once it's in place, it can be used by anybody, including by powerful corporations and by powerful groups, and, in fact,

in this very interesting twist, sometimes from the 1970's to the 1980's, first amendment absolutism went from being a liberal position to a conservative position. it's now allied to property rights and the rights of corporations. hobby lobby, really a religious freedom carkse it's in the same ballpark. my view is, you know, let the political process work out these compromises. another thing that jonathan said early on, which i think his intention with first amend am, if you think people can work out the tensions between religious conscious and rights of women or other sorts of beliefs and concerns, then you don't want the supreme court and the other courts applying this doctrine in order to defeat these compromises. > want a libertarian response.

dignitarians are being consistent. you know, there's some aclu liberals who defend citizens united. are you barking up the wrong tree now that you've embraced the first amendment, which is being used to strike down public accommodations laws in much of the regulatory state? >> i just think it's interesting. i never had heard -- i wouldn't say so directly in the 1970's and 1980's free speech became a conservative issue. i've always wanted to write an article saying do you take that, liberals? do you actually believe this is no longer a liberal issue? it's true that on campuses, i end up fight ago lot of people who come from the left side of the spectrum, who believe that, you know, who think that free speech should be limited for any number of reasons, sometimes noble, sometimes not so much. but i do think that part of the tactic -- lately, being a fundamentalist, i actually agree with the supreme court for the most part on freedom of speech issues and we're saying, oh, now liberals don't believe

in free speech because now conservatives can use it? i mean, that's a startling argument to me. it's a negative thing now that a right is available to everybody? >> just so i got your position. citizens united was correct and hobby lobby should be protect, you think? >> i don't know enough about hobby lobby. i do think that citizens united was correct. >> jonathan? >> to me the core issue with hobby lobby isn't freedom of speech, it's the corporation. i tend to think the first amendment should not an plied to corporations as it is to people, but it is not an area in which i specialize. >> well, i want to once again indicate my agreement with eric. as far as citizens united goes, the topic that was discussed in steven's 90-danger dissent and dismissed in the majority of opinion was the topic of corruption, that is, is it a matter of empirical fact that a great deal of money expended in the ways that are now possible will corrupt the political

system, or has a tendency to corrupt the political system? that's the kind of questions that i think should be asked, not questions which depend on some abstract value like freedom of spretchings >> but it's not so abstract. the massive opinion you were talking about, one of the reasons why -- i make the point that we're not -- that it's not complete free speech absolutism, it's because when even it's into the law that i find academics being so dismissive of when it comes to freedom of speech, there's something called scrutiny. under the right empirical circumstances, and in constitutional classes, you've always come up with the scenario where i'm like, well, in that case, that's how you end up with the inciteful doctrine and with the limitations on free speech that i think the supreme court and we agree with. but when it's this extremely highly subjective standard that puts -- that gives people the

power to decide which opinions they like and dislike, that was the formula for disaster that i watch take place on campuses all the time, and it's amazing how quickly administers learn and students learn to be -- they need to silence the opinions they disagree with. >> you can't avoid objective standards in the law. they're all over the place. it gives the government the authority, you know, to say the protesters can be over here, but not over there, or you need a license before you can march. those raisin credibly complicated questions, and the judges have to decide, you know, somehow using very subjective standards. so the issue isn't really whether the standards are subjective or not, the issue is really whether -- how much the democratic process will determine the extent to which people are permitted or not permitted to say whatever they feel. >> but a central part of the analysis is viewpoint and neutrality, and i think viewpoint neutrality and content neutrality are actually

-- the closer you get to the expression of pure opinion, that's when you're on the clearest round with the law. i think that's actually a very pragmatic standard. i think that works very well employer i canly, and also making the point that essentially my opinion is something that i should -- that i should be entitled to, something that can be very well maintained, while at the same time trying to limit the influence of bias of power. >> even in defamation law, it's still impossible, especially if it's a private person. when you defame someone, you're simply expressing your opinion. that means a judge somewhere is going to decide whether your opinion has enough evidence and is -- >> that's not entirely right, though. basically when it comes to defamation law, one of the threshold questions is whether this is a false assertion of fact, and that also makes perfect common sense. am i saying i hate this person? that's not defamation.

am i saying i know for a fact this person is a pedophile? that can be defamation, particularly if you knew it. a lot of these are less than i think you're making them out to be. >> since we've had in defamation, the rise of the idea that public officials, it's not that they can't be defamed, but it's much higher, much higher standard to defame them, and then first it was, well, public officials, then it was those who have dealings with public officials, and so i think that the effect here was to weaken the possibility of defamation in what i would call the "new york times" versus sullivan spirit. >> interesting. >> and we should note that earlier this month, "new york times" celebrated its 50th anniversary, so happy birthday, "new york times." we have a series of excellent audience questions, and i'm going jump right in. what reassurance do we have that gay rights advocates will

not trample on the first amendment rights of those of us who have the >> there are a lot more of you than there are of us. be worked outo through the political process, but there are tons and tons of christians out there and they will stand up for their rights and they were going to be heard. that is how this process works. it is initially adversarial, but i'm confident that we can and in 10 will get to a point years were we will have a pretty good to will agreed-upon set of rules for where these boundaries will be. >> is there a limit to hate speech and what is it? >> i don't believe in the hate speech exception, and neither does the supreme court. i do think the court struck a pretty good balance and outlining what harassment looks like. in the lawlooks like what i think it is in the english language.

if it is harassing somebody, then that is a good guideline for what you're not allowed to do. merely having an extremely obnoxious opinion, i think that should be protected. i think it is one of the aspects of actually truly reflecting or respecting colorless and is to understand -- pluralism is to understand different classes in age groups and backgrounds, you might write now consider obnoxious. i want to take an example. bertram russell being kicked out of cuny when he had a job in 1940's before the doctrine of academic freedom became strong in the law. he was kicked out because he thought masturbation was ok, that he was tolerant of homosexuality, and he was a modern role in many cases. he was kicked out because these ideas were considered immoral. without these opinions that we take for granted have been affected in the fairly recent past is something crucial to remember.

>> i think that is wrong. of them towas wrong kick out bertram russell, but what makes a wrong is the city -- then the court allowed it how shall i put this? what was happening was russell was being hunted out because of his political views, not because of any expertise he might have or in philosophy mathematics. that general principle, introduced in 1915 by the american association of university professors in its general statement on economic freedom and tenure, far predates "new york times" versus 11. it is a very strong distinction, which i entirely support between academic work, -- >> all of this available at

c-span.org. we will take you to a news conference with the national council for behavioral health will stop they say 30% of active-duty and reserve military personnel have mental health conditions requiring treatment from launching an initiative that aims to respond to that. live coverage of the news conference getting underway here on c-span. militaryg about the and veterans, the very people who have protected our first amendment, the right to speech, the right to have a free press. i am very grateful that we are here and in this space. tasks thisral morning. one is to briefly play but the national council's involvement in mental health first aid, to for a little bit about why veterans, to knowledge our congressional champions. some of you are policy people and you know how important is champions are rare -- are to you

and helping people in their communities. and lastly to introduce our speakers and to facilitate your questions and, hopefully, our answers to your questions. the national council is an association of 2200 not-for-profit organizations. our members are in every state in communities across the country copper and they serve men and women with mental health and substance use disorders. they serve about 8 million people a year, so their reach is wide and deep. over the years, i have been involved with people with mental health, particularly with people with serious mental health, for well over 30 years. when ithose years, but ran programs or was in a policymaking position, i was involved with and sometimes even funded anti-stigma campaigns. there is something that we have

seen and done a lot of and there are many still going on, and they're all very well intended. but i always wondered, they felt elusive to me. it was about what really is the call to action? the008 when i was at national council, i was talking to a colleague who is based in new zealand. and he told me about a program that have begun at the university of melbourne in australia called mental health first aid. and he not only taught people about mental illnesses and addictions, but it helps them help the people they knew and loved. whether it was family members or friends and colleagues. and having had this long anti-stigma history, i thought to myself, now, that sounds fabulous. first of all, it is first aid and everybody knows first aid. it is like cpr. we wanted to be part of health care and part of the world, and

this was another way to get there. at that time, mental health first aid was in a few countries and it was started by two people, a nurse in melbourne who herself suffered with depression and her husband -- her name is betty. her husband tony, who i understand spoke this week. he was at john hopkins talking about mental health first aid. he is a mental health services researcher. they were walking on the beach and said, why don't we have first aid for the mind? they actually went to work at the university to create the curriculum. working with experts from across the world. partners, the departments of mental health in missouri and maryland, went ahead and said, we are going to bring this to the usa and we did so in 2008. it is now in 20 countries.

we have a youth version in the u.s.. i the summer, we expect 250,000 people to have been trained in mental health first aid. it has just had an enormously welcoming reception in this country. it is an evidence-based program. it has inrep. withrow her long and arduous procedure to get that. -- went through a long and arduous procedure to get that. australia and in it is going on in this country and other countries. it teaches people how to reach out and help someone in crisis and make sure that they get the care they need. instructors who come from local communities. those instructors know their committees. in addition to teaching people about how to feel comfortable

working and talking and having the difficult conversation, they can also tell people and help people get connected to the resources in their community. and for veterans, it could be a v.a. or local physician or it could be anyplace there comfortable. so the fact this then becomes locally driven is very important. just for a second talk a little bit about why we thought about mental health first aid for the military. 1980's and irly was running a mental health center in peekskill, new york. we had a whole bunch of programs we ran in peekskill. it is very close to the montrose v.a. and the montrose v.a. had people in their psychiatric unit who had spent years there. they became disconnected from their families and their own

communities and wound up in what are called board and care homes in peekskill. a place where you live and gives you meals, but for much of the day, did not have much to do. so we ran a drop in center and they began coming to our drop-in center. we went camping and we even went to olympic city with all the quarters these to give you on the bus -- atlantic city with all the quarters these to give you on the bus. we worked on a dude ranch in the local immunity. i got to know -- these were men. i got to know many of these men quite well. what a began to realize is, most of them had served in vietnam and we even had a few who had served in korea. and how when they came home, they began this journey of disconnection from their families and their communities. i just knew we could do better. i had had personal experience. my dad served in the pacific in world war ii.

like others of his generation, he never talked about that. never. not a word. nor did any of my uncles that had served or my friends parents. but it had taken a toll on him emotionally and physically. i did not understand that until years later. better,iously, we know but we also know the statistics, right? we know 30% of active duty and aserve military, 3/4 of million people, men and women, deployed in iraq and afghanistan, have a mental health condition. and we know the military has made great strides. i think the v.a. is an amazing organization that has raised the bar on understanding mental illnesses as well as treating them. but we still have work left to do. less than 50% of returning

veterans in need of treatment get it. and the results of that is really a national tragedy and some of you in the audience are actually from suicide prevention organization. and we know now almost 22 veterans a day commit suicide. launch mental to health for veterans because we really are our brothers and sisters keepers. each of us can help. each of us can find something we can do to help someone we know who served. if you have been trained in mental health first aid, you have the skills and confidence to do just that -- to help. we have had the support of some extraordinary policymakers on the hill. senators mark agates, kelly ayotte, and represented of lynn jenkins and ron bobber. really representatives and senators from across the country. secured $15cy

million that is going to state and local school districts to train school personnel and mental health first aid for you. we are very grateful to them, what they have done will live on and now we need their help in terms of moving mental health first aid for the military. and we will do that. the other thing that has happened is eight state and eight more are considering it, are allocating money from state budgets. they are supporting local instructors and local communities. so this is an amazing program that people understand, they can feel, they can touch, and they can support. i am very fortunate today to be with some great speakers. before we do that, i want to introduce and acknowledge jeannie campbell, the executive vice president of the national council. she is way in the back. she served for 22 years in the navy, is another reason why this

is so important to the national council. and in addition to everything else she does at the national council, she leads all of our military initiatives. so thank you. with us today, and i'm going to introduce all of them then they will speak and then i will help moderate what we hope will be a robust q&a period. we have patrick kennedy, a tireless champion for those living with addiction and mental illness. we would not have parity and equality with physical health is a were not for him. he continues to do great things in so many ways, including in the cofounder of one mind. tom tarantino, is the chief policy director for the iraq and afghanistan veterans of america. he is also a former army captain. he served in iraq in both the calgary and mortar platoon leader and was awarded the

combat action badge and the bronze star. theresa buchanan is the director of youth initiatives for the national military family association. she manages operation purple, which supports ella terry families expressing the challenges of reunion and reach integration. we also have two very exceptional mental health first aid trainers. they trained instructors and local communities. sharon thomas parks served three years active-duty in the marine corps before cofounding a suicide and crisis center. she is a licensed professional counselor and has been a national mental health first aid trainer since we began in 2008. liz reagan has also been a trainer since 2008. she has worked with a wide variety of groups as a facilitator and a trainer and

she is the wife of a veteran. her husband served in the u.s. air force and southeast asia. and we have a student of mental health first aid, the lovely tosha barnes. she is from taxes, a i've gotten to know in this role and come to really admire and love. and she is a decorated military veteran, discharged just in january after eight years of service. formally a member of the 82nd airborne, she is currently the volunteer coordinator for the military veterans here network. we are committed to doing more to support our veterans. and mental health first aid is just one piece of a very important puzzle. with that, let me turn the podium over to patrick kennedy. >> thank you very much, linda rosenberg, and thank you, daschle council, for spearheading mental health first aid and today for spearheading it for none other than our

nation's heroes, our returning veterans from iraq and afghanistan and for all veterans and for their families. i had the honor of being a cosponsor of the mental health parity and addiction equity act, which simply said the brain was part of the body. that was the law. the brain is part of the body. dids shocking that that law not even doesn't -- signed into law until 2008, which means it was historic in this country that insurance companies in addition to the federal government would not recognize the brain is part of the body, would not reimburse for brain illnesses the same way they would reimburse for any other organ in the body. way inave come a long just a few years. we have this law in the books. next two months,

in july, that law will be in effect for all insurance companies in this country. so they will have to treat equally all illnesses of the brain as they would any other organ in the body. that is why the timing of mental health first aid is so appropriate to really support now more than ever, because with this treatment now being reimbursed -- of course, you have to do a lot of work to make sure this comes to fruition, no doubt. but with the system in place, we first need to make sure the people who need treatment get that treatment. and as someone who is a consumer of mental health services, who suffered a long time with a mental illness, there is this phrase -- the elephant in the room. when you're in the midst of suffering from a mental illness, everybody knows it that you, and no one will tell you that you need help.

i know i probably would have ended up getting help earlier or staying in recovery earlier had i had the support of people who would have known that by trying to give me help, they were not interfering in my personal life. they were trying to save my life will stop so we need a change of our attitudes and our mindset when we see someone suffering from a mental illness or addiction. we need to not look at it as a character issue, but the chemistry issue. their brain is ill, but he can get better with treatment. in the first step toward treatment is identifying they need the help and referring them to the appropriate resources that can get them that help. under the parity law, will be reimbursed for that help. so why veterans?

andnderstand brain injury posttraumatic stress, or the signature wounds of this war in iraq and afghanistan. you know what we call them? invisible. it is shocking that we still call these wounds invisible when in fact the trauma of serving in a combat zone changes the brain's chemistry because of the stress associated. we know if you have a traumatic brain injury, you suffer a physical wound of war, and yet because we cannot see it on the outside, the government still does not award purple hearts for the signature wound of this war. shocking. shocking. i think that will someday come to change if we begin to do what we need to do to be there for our veterans. let me make this final analogy. they were trapped

behind enemy lines by al qaeda or the taliban, would have our first responders, our special forces go in there tomorrow to kick down the doors and bring them home. why don't we apply that same idea to our returning veterans who are held hostage, who are literally prisoners of their war injuries and their behind the enemy lines up shane and stigma that are associated with having a brain illness? what i see with these mental health first aid, veterans and to help first aid, first responders, is our 911 force. here at home. it has what they are doing is just what our special forces do. they are kicking down the doors of these returning veterans who are alone, isolated, and no one

is reaching out to help them but the people who are not trained to know how to help them and to bring them home, not only in body, but to bring them home in mind as well. thank you for letting me be here. now have the honor of turning the microphone over to one of those heroes who not only served our country in uniform, but is also serving his fellows in uniform and his fellow veterans through his advocacy at the iraq afghan war veterans of america, one of the premier veteran service organizations which is changing the landscape and how our government and how our country receives its returning heroes. tom tarantino. >> thank you. god, i don't think i really deserved all that.

but i appreciate it. i want to thank the national council for having us all here and talking about this. and the chief policy officer for iraq and afghanistan veterans of america. we are the first and largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization fighting for this generation of lawyers. i myself, being a soldier, i was thinking last night about first eight. i was thinking about all of the training of had my life. i am not a medical professional. my job was not to kill the people, it was to break things and hurt people. everything iabout have learned through the military. everything i learned in high school. you star first aid training in high school. they teach you cpr and how to identify heatstroke and all the stuff you learn in health class. in the military, they teach you i.v.ls like how to run an i/v line, how to treat someone for shock.

they do this because by giving first aid for these immediate injuries, it saves lives. it saves lives. and yet the one thing we don't learn how to treat and we don't learn how to identify are the mental health injuries. --it because these injuries as patrick said, aren't invisible, but they are not readily apparent. it is absolutely critical across america that we learn to treat these wounds as they are, as wounds. i talk to soldiers and they say, i don't want to get treatment, i can deal with it. i say, look, man, if you had a hole in your chest and got shot, you would not walk around with it will stop a say, absolutely not. why would i do that? it's the same thing. if you have an injury, walking around that injury is dangerous. it is dangerous to you because you are basically letting your

wounds faster. we are on the front lines of the fight to combat suicide. 22 veterans a day are dying by suicide. suicide isn't the problem. it is the end result of a series of problems, of a series of failures that could have been alleviated at the beginning if someone had known, just like we i.v. or to run an check for heatstroke, how to identify mental health injuries from the start. this is critical. this type of training should be everywhere because the only way we're going to get to a point treatwe can adequately mental health women's early on is if we break this down across the american culture. that is one of the things that is so impressive about this mental health first aid program

is that it isn't just about veterans. there are not that many vets out there. there are 2.5 million iraq and afghanistan veterans, about 29 across the country. if we only speaking to the veteran community, we will never fix the problem. if we give everyone armed with the same knowledge as we do about basic first aid in high school and do that for mental health, we will be at a point in this country where nobody has to live with the mental health injury in the shadows. they can get treatment. the one thing we do know is that getting treatment is the most effective way to prevent the tragic consequences of mental health injuries later on. appreciatively that this program is out there and incredibly appreciative this is starting to move across the country. i hope we get to a place and i can come back in a few years and talk about how we have all been armed with this basic knowledge. we have these tools in our

toolkit, and we can all identify these issues early on. not just to help our bodies, but also to help ourselves. thank you very much. following the is theresa buchanan. she works with operation purple, one of our best friends and partners in the veteran community and an absolute tireless advocate for quite often the people who are forgotten and are committed, the military families. i thank her for her work. theresa buchanan. [applause] >> tom, thank you for those kind words. i'm delighted to be up to join you, patrick. thank you, linda, and the rest of you, to be on this panel today. as tom said, the families are critically important in this journey. we certainly, since 1969, had been an organization that is

advocated for the military family because long before we recognized that our senior leadership were not willing to accept the fact that there were social services and what it would need to provide any type of support to the family, there were those women and years ago sitting around a kitchen table who formed this organization, who went out there to lobby for those friends who were left destitute after the service member died because the pension at that time went with the death of the retiree. we were part and parcel part of that very first success of the survivor benefit plan that today is commonplace throughout the military services. mental health first aid for veterans. i think what we are hearing today from everyone who up here will continue to hear, really

should resonate with us all that the mental health needs and the call for nonthreatening opportunities for veterans, and most important, their families and those in their community, to have access to resources that increase knowledge of the issue and provide responsive strategies remains both a significant concern and an american societal responsibility. depression. talking about substance abuse, addiction. the self-isolation, whether we like the fact they're called invisible wounds and is hoping sin because of those who are walking around and don't get the same respect and response from our american public as those who do have the physical wounds because they're each suffering entering as badges of honor in her own special way, that where does go to suicide. as tom said, we have embraced that and we are very concerned about 22 veterans a day are committing suicide.

and that is the end result of a lesion of other types of things that have gone to for -- legion of other types of things that have gone on before. what about the undocumented family members committing suicide? that is happening, too. those numbers are not being counted. we are looking for the possibly some legislation being submitted that is going to start to have the requirement to start counting these numbers, but we have untold numbers that are out there. that is one of the things that happens. when these families moved out into the communities, they are lost from the roles of really oversight unless they have reached out for connection with the v.a. % have served to protect our freedoms. the rest of us have the responsibility to honor and ensure the healthiest tomorrow for their lives and future productivity. what i like about the mental health first aid for veterans

and servicemembers and their families is it stands as a key component and behavioral health support. , the action plan, and we will be talking further about this, but it is really concrete and simple. where you are assessing for suicide or harm, listening nonjudgmentally, giving reassurance and information, encourage appropriate professional help, encourage self-help and other support strategies. adjustments are taught how to support someone developing signs in an emotional crisis or mental illness. the nationalen military family association launched the operation purple program, there were initially camps for children, military children deployed. recognizedalized -- the importance of that family model and the work we really could do with families that were

andggling with reunion coming back together after these multiple deployments. and have also moved into similar type family camp programs that we do at environmental education centers with mental health support from the beginning marry up thent to aspects from the outside and treating the brain, giving the brain an opportunity to come to the forefront. we work closely with the focus program, which is families overcoming stress. we also do it for wounded, ill, and injured and have adaptive exercises. the point of my mentioning this is, we learned early on that as you're going through, that children and families psychological well-being was paramount. we have also advocated -- our core mission is advocacy.

advocating for mental health support because we recognize there is a dearth of that available because he is to have it but also that it is accessible. again, and we're looking at reimbursements and you can get access to the services -- who can get access to the services, if they are not equally available, there's not going to be any progress made here. we have also recognize the importance of trained mental health support and we provide scholarships so that we can have military spouses get credentialed so they in turn can join the cadre of dedicated mental health professionals. , which have an app to theas a portal assistance program that can also provide on your smartphone access to perhaps

mental health first aid for veterans. one of my big take away that i hope you'll take away is families and communities have all different types of definitions. we don't look at what was perhaps the traditional because they have all become traditional families. we have moms and dads caring for service members who are connected to the military. we have opened up to where we have partners -- the world has changed. it is important for us to recognize to be inclusive with families. it is also important to realize we're talking about the importance of the families being a support network because the veteran with mental illness or addiction does not stand alone in his or her treatment. the family support is key to the successful support in treatment. we must not forget that. most importantly, we must continue to reduce the stigma associated with seeking

treatment. i think we're all going to vow together to work together to truly underscore that seeking treatment is a strength, a sign of strength and not a sign of weakness. mental health first aid for veterans is a major step in the right direction to make that happen. thank you. >> thank you, linda. i think the national council for this event. i feel honored to be here today. i am sharon thomas parks, a veteran of the united states marine corps. since leaving the marine corps, i have had a long and satisfying career in behavioral health. i have been a trainer for the past six years. i have trained hundreds of people from public safety officers, many of whom are veterans, to university faculty and staff and students, and health care professionals.

the most frequent comment i hear from mental health first aid participants is, i wish i had this training 10 years ago. so while i was in the marine corps, i was part of a very cohesive unit. we drilled until practice became second nature. mental health first eight has a similar approach to repetition -- first eight has a similar approach to repetition. it was kind of a natural fit for me to get involved in mental health first aid. because it provides support for the person who's in the training . winning in battle is not about doing it on your own. it is about being part of a cohesive unit and never leaving your buddies behind.

mental health first aid is sort idea, that it is not about leaving someone in distress out there alone by .hemselves in the world when i left -- when i was discharged from the marine isolated,elt alone, and disconnected. those are three factors that put particularly veterans, at risk for developing a mental health problem. home might've been a little easier if my family was trained in mental health first aid. fortunately, i just created the support that i needed. a suicide to cofound and crisis intervention center.

now, not everybody can do that. and we really should not expect anybody to have to do that. training and experience gave me confidence. and i got involved in mental health first aid because it gives people that same kind of confidence. theto run away in fear from mental-health problem. it gives people confidence to engage a person who is expressing mental health challenge and to ask, are you ok? do you need help? so winning the battle against mental illness can't be done alone. it is not done alone. if we don't offer help to a veteran in distress, we are leaving a warrior behind. mental health first aid gives

people an action plan like teresa mentioned. it is an action plan and it provides the training to help make that action plan become second nature. this is an extraordinaire program that will benefit veterans, their families, and their community. i am very proud to be a part of mental health first aid. thank you. >> it's a little tight back here. >> hi there, i am liz rearden. pastbeen a trainer for the five years. i'm the very proud spouse of an air force veteran. the husband dave served from 1971 to 1975 in southeast asia. you talk about the invisible wounds of war. i know what it is like firsthand have someone who you live -- really loved to have to go

through that. train number of years, i did not know what to do. i figured, it is vietnam, long time ago, time will heal those well, it doesn't. i did not know to say. finally, we got ourselves down to the veterans administration hospital in white river junction vermont where they have a primary mental health clinic. we finally got down there. the very first thing they said to us when we walked in the door was, thank you for your service. and that opened a door for us because also, they were so nonjudgmental. my husband was able to tell his story. they were not surprised. i said, of course, why wouldn't you go through this? but we are concerned about you. fore words open the door recovery for him and the other guys or the program with him. and now, a number of years

later, he is healthy and strong, and healthy and strong because someone new the words to say to open the door to help him get treatment. he is also here because we talk about the buddies, the band of brothers in his program. i saw that platoon working in or helping each other out. the most important reason why he is here healthy and strong is because of him. he is here because of his courage, his sacrifice, and his persistence in getting treatment. i am really, really proud of him. that "we are concerned about you" is what opened the door for us. those are the words we learned to say in mental health first aid. often, those of us who are family members, do not have the right words. with mental health first eight, a gives you something to say, wait open that door. the other wonderful thing about this program is, it was designed by veterans, families, and those

them.e involved in love it helps us because the people who have been there are helping us as we go forward. words changed my life and my husband's life and you can change other people's lives as well. have, and my sisters and cousins and brothers generations, we have a bunch of young people coming in. young people who have served were coming out, young people going in. they are nephews and cousins and sons and daughters. i have members of my family and members of people in my committee saying, what do i do? what can i say? mental health first aid can help us know what to say. everybody pretty much has a veteran in their lives. somebody you know, somebody who might be family, it could actually be you.

what is so wonderful about mental health first aid, gives us that resource and the ability to connect. i am very proud of being part of this. i expect this is going to make a huge difference and other people's lives and i'm looking forward to that. thank you very much. >> thank you, liz. i would also like to say thank you to my fellow brothers and sisters in arms, thank you for the family and the friends that i continue to network with in this journey. my name is tasha barnes. i am here with several hats on. i'm a veteran. i served with the 82nd airborne. after leaving the service, i became a peer specialist and a volunteer court nader for the veteran peer network and the great state of texas.

i have been a student of mental health first aid and i firmly believe in that this program, like mental health first aid for veterans, will change our country for the better. soldier nines a years ago and i was part of an extraordinary units that supported one another through everything. they were my family. when my service ended, i just wanted to get home safely. i assumed everything else would fall right into place once i adjusted and became a civilian again. afterter returning home, four months of searching for a wasand not finding one, i in despair. here i was, a college student and a veteran, but could not get

a job. i was struggling emotionally. i found it hard to reconnect with the community i had previously been a part of. i was depressed and i was suffering from anxiety. i had trouble sleeping. and when i would hear loud noises and alarms go off in the middle of the night, i instantly will look for my rifle -- digging i was back in afghanistan under mortar fire. a many of us know i'm veterans can be reluctant to ask for help. we believe it is up to us to solve our own problems and that asking for help is a sign of weakness. now i know it is not weakness, it is a sign of strength. but i was afraid to admit i could not turn it around on my

own. and i was very, very lucky to have family and friends who supported me through that time, including a colleague who literally grabbed me by the hand and led me to community support program. that one action change my life. she did not have all the answers, but she knew i needed help. and she knew where i could find it. she connected me with resources that help me -- pull me out of that dark come a dark place. that is what mental health first aid is all about. it is recognizing the signs of addiction -- anxiety, , and mental illness -- and connecting people with help. panhandle, i cover 30 counties.

in many of our communities are rural and secluded and too many people are uninformed about what mental illness looks like or even where to access help. but mental health first aid gives us the tool to educate everyday citizens, both veterans and civilians, and how to recognize the signs of someone in need. veterans and their families have specific needs, and this program being launched today has been tailored for those needs. every one of us in here is familiar with regular first aid. everyoneely believe should be trained in mental health first aid as well. it is especially valuable for our community leaders, our law enforcement, our educators to be

able to not only recognize mental illness and substance abuse, but direct you to those resources. but those of us who work with veterans and members of the military know that this kind of , realion can make a huge difference in the lives of veterans and their families as they manage this transition home. in my nine years of working with veterans and servicemembers, everyone who has taken the mental health first aid emerges believing a veterans program will have the power to change and even save lives. i am truly honored to be here today to see this become a reality. thank you once again for everybody here. >> thank you. >> thank you for your service.

[applause] >> ok, now it is your turn. questions. >> thank you all for your service and for this terrific program. i am a licensed independent clinical social worker who is done outpatient mental health in the clinic in virginia, which is affiliated with belfour. my question i think will direct to tom tarantino and theresa buchanan. the rest of you can chime in. when i work with these families, this a very different population. the continued family relocation and having to move around to different cities and towns was an issue. however, when i worked with

families from pentagon, one of the concerns that was raised by the officer and his family, well, my son or daughter may want to join the military, what about confidentiality? my charting was severed from the military. what are going to be the repercussions? what about confidentiality? i think the military struggling with, it's ok to get treatment, but that was a major concern that came out of this, even from the spouses, the confidentiality. >> your question is about confidentiality of records? >> the program is great, but when you get on the bases and the charting -- thank you. >> thank you for your question. you raise what has been problematic for years. i worked and family advocacy in

the 1990's and recognized in terms of just that fear because it also can compromise their clearances and if you're in an installation, who is going to find out. one of the programs that has evolved from that and is made a significant difference, i think, is the military family life consultant program. the department of defense did instituted a few years ago during the wars. advantages of all licensed clinicians, mental health professionals, is they don't document think counters. they are really making some terminus inroads with helping to mitigate the stigma associated. this is going to be a time-honored process that has occurred.

there are resources out there having people, the credibility factor, talking to someone else saying, i used this person and it is going to be fine. there is that concern. we are concerned. i know you're concerned because of the impact with the troop drawdown. no one wants a mark on their record that is going to set them apart or make them perhaps more vulnerable. i think if we continue to work -- that program is there. there is huge support for it. it seems to have great acceptability with the families because they're placing people in schools, placing people in communities, and also having them at programs so they can then to some of the linkage. for the veteran, it will not be as much of an issue. but getting over the hurdles. >> tom? >> i will be brief.

, and we're still a long way from this, but we need to get to a place we don't worry that much about confidentiality. you don't telik respective employer you broke your arm don'tyears ago -- you tell a prospective employer you broke your arm three years ago. we need to educate everyone and that will help us get there. >> one of the branches of military that has more mental health provided in any other branch of special forces. why would these folks who jump out of planes from a swim underwater for two miles without breathing, come out on the beach and speak five languages, take out osama bin laden and home before dinner time ridding to their kids, why would they need until health? you know what the commanders answer to me was? we don't look at mental health

as a sign of weakness, we look at it as an opportunity for strength. we call it in the military a force multiplier. i'm like, i hope we can take that same idea and bring it to the rest of the country because the military has figured out that they need people at their optimal strength -- physically and mentally. so by getting help, you improve your optimal strength. and don't we as americans onto be at our best? why would we reject something that would make a stronger? i think as tom said so eloquently, we have to take this question head on because it is framed adequately for most of america's public right now, but it is an attitude, hopefully, that will change as some said because we look at this in a totally different way. is for peoplelth who want to be stronger.

>> thank you. another question, please. >> i am mike turner. we spend about 18 months looking at a dozen of the best programs in the country and try to discern what are the features that have the most impacted at the community level. we absolutely felt the programs that involved peers as the first point of contact were incredibly successful. and you're down the road, they have the data to prove their effectiveness. rather than a question, just an urgent request, trying to mental health first aid in the hands of the peers. it automatically incorporates many mental health -- >> one of the things we have done, mike, in every other group we have worked with, the instructors are from that group. so probably between 10% and 20% of the instructors today have lived experience with either mental illness or substance use

problems, and the same thing as we launch this. we're looking for people like t ousha to become instructors and work with veterans groups. great point. another question, please. is, who haveng been very good about it, continue to identify where you are from, who you are and where you're from. i am patricia with the military times newspapers. you mentioned the amount, the cost of the youth program. was wondering what the estimated cost of this program is and where the funding sources are? >> we estimate that if there were no sources of support, so you had to rent space, yet a pay for an instructor's time, you had to buy the materials, serve coffee and maybe lunch, which it

is an eight hour program -- it will cost about $150 to be trained. in all cases, it has been supported through either philanthropy our government funds. so there are some corporations that are using it to train managers, human resource managers. they in fact are expending their own dollars on the space and the time of the trainers and all of that. but for everybody else, foundations across the country have stepped up. as i mentioned earlier, eight states and i think eight more have allocated money from their state legislative budgets and of course, the congress right here in d.c., bipartisan, appropriated $15 million that will go to ogle school districts and state school districts -- local school districts and state school districts. >> if i can answer that in a different way. do we ask, to cost to put a

defibrillator in an airport? do we ask a much it costs to do cancer screening? we would not think of asking that question. and no one would think we did not have the money to do it. with the lives we would save. the thought that we would have to think about the dollars, when is someone else pointed out here, the suicide rate amongst our returning heroes is indictment on us as a nation. indictment on us as a nation. and we can do better. the fact we don't even keep track of how many of our returning heroes and up in county and local and state jails because there is no counting of how we return our veterans home, and we welcome them home with open arms or put them in a jail cell? tragically too often, we are locking up the very people who fought for our freedom because they're not getting the proper

care and treatment for the " of war.e wounds it is scandalous. i think this press conference is so vital because it starts to turn the tide on how we view " and wenvisible wounds start treating them with a visible response rather than the invisible response that too often we have treated these wounds of war, by the way, we turn our back on the veterans who are suffering from posttraumatic stress and brain injury instead of turning toward the challenge their facing dashe, how can we help you facing and saying, how can we help you after all you have done for us as a nation? i think our veterans for their service and we owe it to them to do a better job than we have done so far and welcoming them home. >> well said. ok, we have hit the noon mark.

well done. i hope those of you who continue to have questions will feel free to come up and ask them. and if you need more information, we are here. you can go to the mental health first aid website and contact the national council, any concern the contact any of us. thank you to our fabulous panelists. we are very grateful to you. [applause]

>> if you missed this regime, you can catch it at www.c-span.org. at least 40 u.s. veterans died while waiting for permits in the phoenix health care system, many of whom were put on a secret waiting list. according to a recently retired top v.a. dr., that is from cnn. we willple moments, take you to the american enterprise institute who are hosting a forum on al qaeda. it investigates why thcu