of your life. and you may be escaping because police forces, security forces threaten you but not for political reasons, they were doing it for reasons associated to organized crime. that makes it a little difficult. however, i think it still constitutes if you escape gang violence, if you demonstrate it, it can constitute ground for asylum. there are other grounds when you can demonstrate. the problem is how many people that escape, that left their home countries able to demonstrate thate effectively. this is why some groups are are talking about refugee status because the situation is one of a critical mass of people who re just simply leaving in mass

given they fear for their lives. none of the people we have lked to came without a smuggler. so we read reports where they say about half of people don't use a smuggler to cross a border. we haven't come across with that to be the case. that -- iher issue is lost the train of thought. h the train. when you look at the numbers, it's perhaps might be one in four or five people who use the train. so the issue is not the train alone but the whole journey itself that gets people through the united states from mexico.

i'm a by product of the cold war. i left my country for political reasons and crossed the board in the 1980's. and train or no train, i was going to leave the country. so i think we are going through the same experiences today but in different circumstances. >> i think we're going to have to call it a day. i want to thank you and your team for your report and the presentation today. thank you very much for your bringing a different perspective than we usually discuss here. thanks very much. let's give them a hand. [applause] ? veterans health care was one of the key issues congress worked

on this year. our prime time programming tomorrow night will include highlights from the hearings we covered. plus president obama signing the veterans healthcare bill last week. here is part of one of the hearings. >> he was a risk for suicide nonetheless he was discharged and told to follow up. how in the world you can ask someone who can't remember the questions asked to follow up with the va is beyond me.

brian deteriorated quickly from december 2010 to may 27, 2011 when he took his life. he couldn't stand how he would be angry, depressed, anxious, but he didn't know how to cope. it took a toll on his relationships. if the d.o.d. and va assessed brian for suicide risk, it was their duty to treat him but he received nothing. e he applied for disability but was unable to wait. >> our prime time special on veteran's health care is omorrow night at 8:00 eastern. >> here are are some of the highlights for this weekend. friday at 8:00 p.m. eastern a history tour looking at the civil war. saturday the communicators. sunday on q and a political commentator pat buchanan.

on c-span2 friday night books on hillary clinton, barack obama and edward snowden.

on the next "washington journal" swournl live on sparn every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. [applause]

>> good evening and welcome to tonight's feature debate between dinesh d'souza and bill ayers. i'm a junior at dartmouth and the current editor and chief of "the dartmouth review." it is my privilege to serve as moderator and introduce you to the topic. before we get underway, i would like you to locate the nearest emergency exits and silence all cell phones. please note that flash photography is strictly prohibited, but our artists -- participants would like to encourage you to take photos and share what you are seeing on social media sites. when individuals like bill ayers and dinesh d'souza get together for an evening of discussion, there's sure to be much to talk about. the focus of the debate tonight has to do with the nature of america and its meaning in the world today. we will be asking our participants for what their thoughts are on what makes america unique and how it has succeeded and failed in living up to its own ideas.

-- ideals. the wording of the resolve have been left purposely vague. we hope that we can take up the central question fully and explore its social, economic, and political forms. part of what will make the discussion unique is the background of its participants. you would be hard-pressed to find to americans whose career in politics are more different. on the right, we have dinesh d'souza, a critically acclaimed author and political commentator. born in mumbai, india, he has a 30-year career as a public intellectual and has been called one of the nation's most influential conservative thinkers by "the new york times magazine." since the 1990's, mr. d'souza has published 12 books.

one of them inspired the film the6: obama's america," second most successful political documentary film of all time. on his left is bill ayers, one of the nation's premier theorists on elementary education and a former leader of a counterculture movement that opposed the vietnam war. born in the chicago area, he is best known for his involvement in political activism in the 1960's, and the leader of the weather underground, a self-described communist underground group that conducted bombings in the 1970's. in the years since, he has emerged as a leading public atellectual, and has had distinguished career as a professor of education at the university of illinois, in chicago. he has written about social justice and characterized education as an ethical enterprise. his most recent work, "public they," describes experiences and perspectives as un-american dissident.

an american dissident. to have two individuals of such distinction with us tonight is no small feat. thank you to the tireless work of our supporters. we would like to thank the young americans institution. their dedication to the ideas of liberty and the sporting -- supporting apparatus of liberal debate will be displayed in full throughout tonight's discussion. we'd like to acknowledge the contributions of the college republicans and libertarians, whose efforts on the ground in hanover were instrumental to make sure the debate could take place here. we also want to thank the campus, and we hope our ideas tonight can positively impact our own discussions after the debate has ended. i will now turn the floor over to mr. bill ayers. he will have 18 minutes for his opening remarks. at which point in time, mr. do sousa -- d'sousa will have 18

minutes to make his. they may rebut each other's points, then have 10 minutes to ask questions of one another. to audience will be asked participate in a question-and-answer session which will continue for 30 minutes, until the debate ends. we ask that audience members reserve all the questions to the time allotted and present their questions clearly and directly, so as to give others around him a chance to speak as well. we hope that by making this event responsive to issues that interest you that we can create an evening of debate that's as enjoyable as it is memorable. without further ado, i yield the floor to mr. ayers. and thank both of our speakers for participating in this forum. [applause] >> thank you all for coming. this keeps being called a debate, but i don't know who the pro or con is. i think it is discussion about a

lovely question -- what is so great about america? when a dialog was proposed to me on this expansive question, i immediately said, i think i will make a list. let's see -- on my list, topping the list is chicago. that's right. because it is my hometown and i know it well. and because it is one small piece, in all of its outsized and crazy complexity, of america itself, the city is the essential american metropolis. chicago is one of the things that are so awesomely great about america. the musical "sure," the film "the jungle," and the blues are brothers, and the filmmaking wachowski siblings studs terkel. "a raisin in the sun."

nelson auburn, whose dazzling book was called "city on the make." he once described chicago as a beautiful woman with a broken nose. he would have said the same thing about america. so great, and there's more of course. lake michigan, the vast inland sea now under siege from cataclysmic climate change. the massive, inviting prairie, that fires our imaginations, and beckons us toward the far horizons. the chicago cubs, who teach us humility and perseverance. [laughter] whenever i travel abroad, and often inside the united states, the city's name evokes a clichéd response. for years it was al capone. then, refreshingly, michael jordan, michael jordan. someone asked me recently if i knew oprah. of course, i said. it is a small town. today, the universal reaction of hearing chicago is one word --

obama. chicago is home to barack obama, the president of the united states. the first black president in u.s. history. during the primary battle in 2008, when asked which candidate he thought martin luther king jr. would support, senator obama responded without hesitation -- reverend king would not endorse any of us because he would be in the streets building a movement for justice. undoubtedly true. it raises a couple of interesting points. it tells us a little bit of what we should think of our own activity. one point it raises that if you take a brief glance at history, you recognize that it's building movements and changing things. -- movements that changes things. passed theson, who most far-reaching civil rights legislation since reconstruction was never part of the black , freedom movement. franklin roosevelt was never part of the labor movement, and

abraham lincoln never belonged to an abolitionist party. those three presidents are remembered because of fire from below, and that is what we ought to be concentrating on. when you think about political power, often you think about the white house or the pentagon and that medieval auction house that we call congress. and you think, that is where power lies. there is power in the neighborhood, the factory, the mill, the classroom. the university, the high school. power is there, and that is the power we have access to. too often, we stare at the sites of power we have no access to. but in a democracy, we can't wait passively, wondering what the king has in mind for us. we are not his subjects, because we are the sovereign, the collective authority. we have the opportunity and the responsibility to enact our sovereignty every day.

chicago's jane addams acted on her citizen responsibilities every day, and she is part of what is great about america. socialist, feminist, lesbian, pacifist, addams established hull house, and went to start the first juvenile court in the world, which freed people from prisons and poorhouses, the first public kindergarten in america, the end to child labor, and a thousand other projects. she argued that building communities of care and compassion required more than doing good. more than volunteerism. more than the ultimately controlling stance of a lady bountiful. it required a radical oneness with others in distress. and identity of purpose with the wretched of the earth. when she opened her settlement house with her sister activists and lived there with an open, unlocked door, in the heart of a poor, immigrant neighborhood,

with families in crisis and need, she pushed herself to see the world through their eyes, and fighting for their humanity, achieved her own humanity as well. j edgar hoover, the g-man wizard opportunismkills of outstripped any crime-fighting abilities. he had called jane addams the most dangerous woman in america shortly before she became the first american woman to win the nobel peace prize. 50 years later, at the helm of his vast criminal enterprise known as the fbi, he bestowed that same honor on my partner, bernadine dorn, and it was possibly the only time we agreed. the most dangerous woman in america indeed. there are today countless women sweating out jane addams' hopes all over america, naming circumstances and situations as unacceptable, working to right wrongs, fighting for more peace

and more democracy, more joy and more justice. these men and women propel themselves to act in solidarity with, not in service to, the people with whom they work. they are what is so great about america. what else? my list contains multitudes. first, the spirit of democracy. the precious and fragile ideal that every single human being is of incalculable value. endowed with certain inalienable rights. the faith in that ideal using , faith in the biblical sense of theence of things unseen -- conviction that people need no kings, queens, or rulers of any kind and we are capable of aching the decisions that affect our lives and the people what the problems are also the people with the solutions and with the wisdom and energy of ordinary people is our most precious reality. second, the inspiration of liberty.

the aspirations towards liberation, the belief that all human beings ought to be free to invent and reinvent ourselves, to shape our identities and every sphere of our existence without the traditional constraints of king or court or church or howling mob, and whether we are concerned with our social character or our politics, our manners or sexual practices, we can resist convention and strike out in a path of our own choosing or own making. third, the pursuit of social justice. like any compelling term, social justice is not easily defined because it is not so much as a point of arrival for a specific destination as it is a longing, a journey, a quest. it is a ceaseless striving by human beings in different places at different times under vastly different circumstances, and pursuing a range of strategies

and tactics and tools, for greater fairness, greater sustainability, equity, recognition, agency, peace, and mobility. these three themes, democracy, liberty, and justice are generative. the more you have, the better off you become. the more you give away, the more you have. they are clearly dynamic and unfinished beings pulsating with the uncertainties and chaos of life, not static or fixed or simply instrumental. and yet each is made more vital and unrestrained when encouraged and assisted by the arts of liberty, and specifically by a small but mighty phrase, easily embraced by the humanities -- i wonder. it is not the known, after all, that propels people out of bed and out the door. it is not the taken for granted that prods us up the next hill. it is not received wisdom, including all the deadly clichés of common sense, that pulls us forward and pushes us to create or invent or plant and build. the deep motivation at the core

of our humanity, the powerful force driving towards liberation, is the vast and immense unknown. that is why the phrase "i wonder" is indispensible. i really don't know. as soon as you know something for sure, it becomes boring or self-righteous and it turns tedious or dogmatic quickly. if you think all there is to know about a certain thing, then fervor may be there but not curiosity. not the drive. at that point the questions close down, answers come too easily, and you become a threat to yourself and perhaps, others. there are zillions of americans whose lives who have soared in the wings of wonder. einstein, stravinsky, twain whitman, hughes, kelly, the marx , brothers, woody guthrie and

pete seeger, tommy morello, just to name a few. in a free and democratic society we learn to live with questions. and in dialogue. we learn to speak with the possibility of being heard and we learn simultaneously to listen with the possibility of being changed. remember the brief but famous dialogue in the form of two simple questions between ralph waldo emerson and henry david thoreau, shouted over a prison wall not far from here? what are you doing in there, henry david? emerson asks his incarcerated friend, locked up for refusing to pay taxes to a war-making state, a slave state. thoreau responds, what are you doing out there? that's a good question. what are you doing with your spirit of democracy, your rumors of freedom, and your various quests for justice? there is a wisdom simple to -- there is a rhythm simple to state but excruciatingly difficult to enact, to state to

-- staying true to the spirit of democracy and justice. simple to state. open your eyes, pay attention, as step one, be astonished, do something, and then doubt or re-think. i will elaborate. open your eyes. this means you cannot make sensible, bought full, -- thoughtful, participatory decisions about the world unless you participate in it. i think of my mother. i took care of her at the end of her life. some 20 years ago, she had broken her ankle and she said to me, what about this thing called global warming? i didn't want to scare the hell out of the old lady, so she gave me a mild version. saidave me a cold look and i am sorry i asked. , well, you asked and someone told you. and when you are told something, you feel a call on you to do something. you open your eyes and you feel astonished at the loveliness all around you, and you are also

astonished about the unnecessary suffering that human beings impose on one another and then you do something. you have to act on what the known demands are, recognizing you are a limited and finite to actbut you have anyway, on whatever you see and understand. then you have to take the fourth step. you have to reflect and wonder if everything you did make sense. were there other ways to do it? if you don't doubt, you become orthodox and dogmatic. some of you must know monty python's "life of brian." do you know this? you guys are not nerdy enough. google them. "life of brian," monty python. it is a story of a reluctant messiah. who at one point is standing on a rampart in an ancient city, like jerusalem. he shouts down at the mob below, look, you have got it all wrong. i am not the messiah. they say, it he is the messiah.

he says, no, you have to think for yourselves. you're all individuals. yes, we are all individuals, they cry. they repeated in unison. no, no, you are all different. frustrated, "yes, we are all different," they say together. one bewildered man in the crowd goes around and says, i'm not. the others gang up on him and say, shut up, you are different. that is what dogma does to you. what is so great about america? there are the arts and the artists. gwendolyn brooks begins her palm on the dedication of the picasso chicago, does man love art? america is a place of voyages, metaphorically as well as literal.

there is always complexity and contradiction at the very heart of the matter. centuries ago, a genoan adventurer and his band of fellow travelers punched into the unknown, wrote the wild waves until they discover the bahamas and as the authorized text tells us, discovered america. we know that story by heart, and it is worth noting that whatever else it represented, that exploit, part myth, part symbol, took a surplus of imagination and vision, resourcefulness, and courage on the part of the wild and random crew. every story needs a prologue. every opening, a forward. no story could ever quite begin at the beginning. centuries before that, another group of voyager's summoned their imaginations and visions, their own resourcefulness and courage, to travel thousands of miles on foot across the bering strait down through forest and mountains into the great plains of north america to settle there and bring forth generations. that is another story we all know by now. there is a third -- a central

part of our shared american narrative and another piece of what is so great. those americans who rose up to oppose the castilian invasion and resist the colombian genocide. crazy horse and kochi's -- cochise mobilized their own visions and their own american hopes. clearly, history is more than facts. it is as well the narratives we create to circulate those facts. it is more than an intersection between what happened and what is said to have happened. each of us, both then and now, is both actor and narrator in history. we are each a work in progress, thrust into a world not of our choosing, and yet destined to choose who to be and what to become in the unfolding drama. >> two minutes. how many? >> two minutes. >> i may have to take three.

sorry. america is a crazy quilt. and the people -- yes, the people. the opening lines to carl sandburg's love song to america, where we come from and where we will forever return. here's a fun fact about him. he moved to chicago from the -- from milwaukee where he , served as secretary to the city's first socialist mayor. the city had the longest run of socialist mayors in american history. one of them had met albert parsons as a five-year-old child in 1986. he was later hanged for his role in the haymarket demonstrations. it turned into a police riot and massacre. when he was on the run from the police, he hit out in the home of daniel's and socialist parents, who owned a factory there. texas,parsons was from and had fought with the confederacy during the civil war. he went through an essential american transformation when he renounced white supremacy, a life-altering choice available to all of us, right here, right

now, and became a leading voice for anarchism, socialism, workers rights, and the eight hour day. he married lucy parsons, who was a former slave who outlived him by half a century. show trial, the remaining defendants were cleared by the illinois governor. until anotherrite governor declared himself an abolitionist and cleared death row in 2003, just hours before he left office. two years for going to prison himself, fraud, corruption, the usual stuff. it was a magnificent action challenging capital punishment , and so now george ryan is my favorite illinois governor. death penalty abolition, one of the great things about america. the death penalty itself is the shame of the nation. >> time.

>> there is constant contradiction in chicago and america. there is always another incongruity, disparity. another challenge or absurdity. until the end of time, another pathway opening. >> time, mr. ayers. >> i will just finish this paragraph. standing directly near the world as such, stands another world, a possible world, a world that could be and should be, but is not yet. that is a good thing because contradiction may save us. nothing is settled once and for all. we are in the middle of the muddle, right from the start. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> thank you very much. i am honored and thrilled and moved to be back here at dartmouth.

i was, many, many years ago, a student sitting here in this very auditorium listening to speakers and debaters, and it is a particular privilege to be back in hanover having this debate on a really important topic. as you know, this has been a topic of some controversy and some sensitivity. earlier, before the debate, we were discussing some possible security measures and we decided we should not have metal detectors for the audience but we did have metal detectors for the two speakers. [laughter] now -- what's so great about america? as i think about this topic, i harken back to my days as a young boy growing up in india, coming fresh faced at the age of

17 to the united states for the first time. i have never lost the shock of my first impressions of america. i have lived in america almost my whole life and i am very much of an insider. i have long been an american citizen. but i still try to maintain a little bit of that dual perspective that sees america from the outside and from the inside. i think this is really important because very often when we debate america, when we complain about america, we are doing it within the prism of america. we are doing it in a sense, and shortsightedly in the matter of the fish condemning the surrounding water. we are using a utopian standard. america's terrible. compared to what? well, the garden of eden. that is never the immigrant perspective.

the immigrant is always aware in addition to this utopian standard -- i don't reject it -- there needs to be a comparative or historical standard that looks at america compared to other places on earth. in other words, we have to keep our feet on the ground or else we run the risk of losing the human and realistic perspective of things. for example, mr. ayers talked about social justice, dividing the pie, getting people a fair share. it never seemed to occurred to him -- how you get a pie? who made the pie? how do you make a pie grow? it is very easy to pull out the carving knife and start splitting. it is much more difficult to actually be the one who comes in with the pie. i want to talk little bit about america in the broadest scheme of things, to look at what america has meant in the world.

if you think about human history, there are very few great inventions in history. truly great inventions. the invention of the wheel, the invention of fire. i think america is responsible for perhaps the greatest invention of all -- the invention of wealth creation. what does that mean? that means that for centuries, and even millennia, no one knew how to create stuff. no one knew how to create wealth. i remember as a kid, i would go to school and i would have 10 i would look at the other kids and they had more marbles than i did, and i said to myself, how do i go from having 10 marbles to 12 marbles? i realize there was no way. none of us had any money. we had marbles. the only way for me to go from 10 to 12 was to take someone else's two marbles.

historically, wealth was acquired through theft, through acquisition, and through conquest. how did countries get founded? machiavelli says all great nations are founded in crime. you found a country by invading someone else's country, killing who is running it, and declaring yourself king. that is how wealth was obtained for thousands of years. the idea that you can start with 10 marbles and end up with 15 marbles without stealing someone else's marbles, that is the american ideal. that is a very old idea. -- bold idea. you can, in a sense, create something out of nothing. it is virtually divine. the reason this went unnoticed for centuries is that the people who create wealth, who are basically the science and technology guy on the one hand, and the entrepreneur or the merchant on the other, these two

guys have been hated in virtually all cultures throughout history. the merchant, trader, entrepreneur is a low man on the totem pole. confucius says that the noble man knows what is virtuous. the low man knows what is profitable. in india, we have the caste system. who is at the top? the priest, then the royalty, and down the list to go until one step from the bottom, the hated untouchable, and above him, the merchant. the trader. lowlife scum. a great muslim thinker in the middle ages said looting is a better way, a moral way, to get wealth. why? because he said trading was slightly effeminate. you are essentially slyly exploiting the wants of another. he said that looting is very manly, because you have to beat

a guy in open combat and take his stuff. it appeals to the manly virtue of courage. i say all this because i wanted to convey -- by the way, this is true even today. even if you go to europe, even now, inherited money is better than earned money. why? inherited money is like manna from heaven. kind of the way bill ayers got money. earned money means from the european point of view, you probably had to run over a guy to get it. it is looked down upon. here's what i want to say -- you have the totem pole with the priest at the top, the merchant at the bottom. what america did, what the founders did, is they flipped it. they created a society that would be devoted to wealth creation through trade and technology and entrepreneurial capitalism. this was always an american

idea, but it was always intended to be for the benefit of everybody. the declaration of independence does not say all americans are created equal. it says all men. the american recipe was, from the beginning, intended to be made in america but intended for global export. everybody could benefit from the system. if you look at the original constitution, before the bill of rights was added, it only talks about the right to patents and copyrights. technology, invention, is the key to american success and american affluence. what is the benefit of this? the benefit of this is stunning. when i first came to america, the most impressive thing to me was not that there was affluence in america. i knew that. the most impressive thing was that the ordinary guy, and i'm

not talking about the smart guy, i'm talking about the not-so-smart guy. i'm not talking about the hard-working guy, i'm talking about the guy that did not work that hard. the greatness is of america is that the not so smart, not so hard-working guy still had an amazing life. he had a nice home, two cars in the backyard, if you're in california, he had a small pool. i'm constantly comparing america with my friends in india -- one guy who has been trying to immigrate to america for i don't know how many years. the poor guy can never get a visa. i said to him, why are you so eager to come to america? he says, dinesh, i want to move to a country where the poor people are fat. [laughter] what is he getting at? what he's getting at is the phenomenon of mass prosperity.

of the ordinary guy having it fantastically well. that is true, but i want to go beyond that to suggest that what america really offers is not just comfort and wealth and the ability to live well, it offers you the chance to write the script of your own life. not long ago, i asked myself, how has my life changed by coming to the united states? how it would be different if i stayed in india? i grew up in a middle-class family and i did not have great luxury, but neither did i lack for anything. in coming to america, my life -- is it better off materially? yes. but it is not radically different. actually, my life has changed more in other ways. had i stayed in india, chances are i probably would have lived within a five or 10 mile radius of where i was born. i would have married a girl of my identical social, economic,

caste, and cultural background. i would have become an engineer like my dad, or a doctor like my uncles. i would've had a set of opinions on a bunch of subjects that could be predicted in advance. what am i saying? what i am saying is my destiny would have been in large part given to me. not that i had no choice, but there was a defined parameter. the beauty of america is that in this country, we have the ability to write the script of our own life. we are in the driving seat of our own future. our biggest decisions in life are made by us. america creates the sense of possibility, and out of that, you can become an activist, a community organizer, in a sense, what are you doing? you are living off the great capitalist explosion of wealth that you did not even create. who is doing that? most of you. if you look at your life, you are actually living up the dream

of the early karl marx. the early karl marx said it would be great to live in a society where there was not a whole lot of work to be done. in which we can sit around, do a little bit of work in the morning, and then we can do some art in the afternoon, and some intellectual banter in the evening, and then some artistic expression. in a way, he was describing dartmouth. [laughter] but what he kind of missed is, how do you get a dartmouth? who pays for it? where does the abundance come from? there is nothing like dartmouth virtually everywhere else in the world. all the foreign students want to come to a place like this one . why? because they represent a fulfillment not just of the right wing, if you will, capitalist dream, but also left wing, the progressive dream of

self-realization. i want to turn to a moment of what is happening to the american dream. what is happening, i fear, is that it is beginning to be shrunken in america. incredibly, it is beginning to be seized upon elsewhere in the world. we are losing our own dream. it is going to other people. if you look around the world, what you see is countries like brazil, china, india, russia, coming up. they are growing at five times the rate of the united states. why? we have taught them the secret of wealth creation. for a long time we tried the bill ayers formula. we tried to go over and build homes, lend them money, all of which were a complete waste of time and money. well-meaning, and admittedly for

the moral edification of the people doing it, but of no real value to the people on the ground. finally the indians and the , chinese had an insight and it could be called, very crudely, the advantage of backwardness. what is the advantage? we don't have a whole bunch of money, but we do have a whole bunch of people. if we can get those people not to sit around doing nothing, talking to anthropologists or social workers, but making stuff that other people actually want to buy, we will take over the world market. that is really what has happened. the american dream, our dream, has now become a global dream. this is the great gift that america has given and is giving to the world. it has actually been globalization. i am talking about global technological capitalism, has been far and away the greatest anti-poverty program ever created. all of the concoctions of jane addams, and frankly, mother teresa, and every government and

obama,out, and barack pale next to the simple ingenuity of the iphone in a small indian village were some female entrepreneur is using it to sell a bicycle. in other words, what has delivered the goods for people is not, ultimately, social agitation. rather, it is the very american sense of taking nothing, sand, and making it into silicon. it is that ingenuity that is far more profound an act than saying, what do i do to divide the pie? everyone has an opinion on that. now, i want to say a word about american foreign policy. bill has not talked a whole lot about it. but i do want to say that american foreign policy, to me, viewed as a whole, has actually made the world much better and much safer. there are all kinds of exceptions and stupid stuff and

the vietnam war and the war in iraq and this and that. i grant it all. but just step back and ask yourself this -- what would the 20th century or the last 100 years have been like if there never was an america? what would have been the outcome of world war i? or world war ii? or the cold war? what would the world be like if america sort of never existed? for all of our blunders and for all of our self-interest -- by the way, democratic societies have every right to be self-interested. we elect governments to look out for us. the question is not if america is self interested, but in being self-interested, is america making the world better or worse? we self-interestedly got into world war ii. we didn't even care about hitler. it took the bombing of pearl harbor. self-interest. but that self-interest got rid

of nazi germany and japanese imperialism. we fought the cold war, but who would deny that the end of it, the world is much better and freer? the russians have all types of problems but no one wants to restore the old communist party. american power has been, ultimately, a great boon for the world. in a way, it kept the world secure. why? for this reason. what america invented is the idea of wealth creation as an alternative to conquest. frankly, most people in the rest of the world believe in both. if china today or russia had america's power, they would be using it for wealth creation. we taught them that. they would also be using it for conquest. what america can do for the world now is show the importance of transitioning from the one to the other. it is another way of saying that

american foreign-policy is not about acquiring real estate. people tell me, if america invaded grenada and iraq and afghanistan. my point is if america invaded , all of those places, why don't we own them? the truth is, america goes in, america gets out. we don't want to own anyone else's real estate. our foreign-policy can be summed up in two phrases -- trade with us and don't bomb us. that is it. [applause] there are all kinds of criticisms to be made in america. i will be happy to make them as will the next guy. but i think taking the global perspective, taking the perspective of history and the comparative perspective, i end up with the words of jean kirkpatrick who said, sometimes we have to face the truth about ourselves, no matter how pleasant it is.

thank you very much. [applause] >> so many straw men set up, it is hard to know where to begin. no one said that america is the most terrible place. there are a couple of assertions you have to take on faith that are astonishing. one is the idea that america's great invention was wealth creation, not based on fact at all. what about the theft of the entire continent? that was a theft. it does not mean -- [applause] 90% of the residents who lived here were murdered, and that was a part of it as well. i will go back to the question of contradiction. i said in the opening that contradiction may save us and i think we need to see things as contradictory.

i find a real arid lack of imagination when you assert that the only thing we can do is see america in relation to someplace else rather than to fire our imaginations to imagine standing right next to the world, a world that could be or should be, and committing ourselves to work toward that better world. we don't have to say, oh, jamaica is better. that is not the point. the point is, are we perfect? no. can we improve? yes, and how can we do that? i am going back to contradiction. i want to say three things -- one, the muckrakers and whistleblowers and truth tellers from upton sinclair to ida b wells, to chelsea manning and edward snowden, they are what is so great about america.

the citizen activists who brought us the clean air and water act are largely responsible for the fact that you live in a country where you can turn it on the faucet and drink clean water, unless you live in west virginia or one of the fracked-up states. they are what is so great about america. captain john brown, harriet tubman, with that necessary pistol in her pocket. there are the feminist fighters, from seneca falls on -- sojourner truth. let me ask you two quick questions, taking those last two movements. are you all against slavery? i know i am at dartmouth, but really? [laughter] can ask again, are you against slavery? [audience answers "yes"] if you are against slavery 150 been ago, you would have against the founders, the bible,

your families, your friends, and common sense. but we would have all been against slavery then. but we are all good abolitionists now. we are all for a woman's right vote now, right? but 150 years ago you would've been against the founders, the constitution, the bible, and the law. let's agree, we would have been those good people, but the fact is it takes an imagination to step outside. you don't look at slavery and say, we are better than these other countries. you say, this is something that needs improving. that is how you begin to become an active citizen. you jump into the contradictions as they are. you make a stand for human beings, for justice, for social justice, and in the last 150 years or 200 years, the people who have made a difference in this country, the people who have actually inspired us to do

better than we would've done, not by looking elsewhere but by looking at ourselves, the people who really made a difference are the american radicals, from jane addams to emma goldman. from john brown and harriet tubman to eugene debs. and the legacy continues, with ella baker, martin luther king, malcolm x, and up to today. michelle alexander, on and on. as ella baker said of martin luther king, martin did not make the movement. the movement made martin. we have plenty to do to put our shoulders on the wheel of improving our lives and the lives of others. [applause] >> the debate has taken an interesting turn because we sometimes hear the phrase american exceptionalism.

i think one thing you have been hearing today is that in a way, we are talking about two types of exceptionalism. for example if i were to talk , about great americans, i would talk about the wealth creators, benjamin franklin, edison, steve jobs. i think those guys collectively have done more than all the redistributers combined. i'm not saying there is not room for both. i'm just trying to put priority where it belongs. when it comes to tough issues as a country, slavery it is time to , talk a little bit of sense. i think we are at a moment now where we can do that without resulting, without mere slogans. 90% of american indians were murdered? genocide? actually, that is not true. the white man came to america and brought with him, unwittingly a whole lot of diseases, malaria, smallpox.

the vast majority of indians contracted the plague and died, and it wiped out the majority of them, and this was a tragedy. of a genocidemore than when the black plague swept across europe and that came from asia. i don't see europeans submitting reparations proposals in the u.n., because they have the sense to realize that this is part of the tragedy of history. people carry diseases to which people had no immunities at the time. this is not to excuse broken treaties or the rest of it, but it is a way of demanding a certain intellectual precision when we talk about these things. slavery -- isn't it a fact that the founders allowed slavery? it is. why did they do it? because if they had not allowed it, there would have been no way to have a union. 12 of the original 13 states had

slaves. certainly the southern states, but most of the northern states would not have joined the union had there been an attempt to forbade it at the outset. what lincoln said was a founders declared the right to freedom so that the enforcement could follow when the circumstances permitted. in fact, 300,000 whites from the north died to end slavery, securing for the african-americans freedom that they were not in a position to secure themselves. i am really glad somebody ran the underground railroad. but i don't know why no one mentions those 300,000 white soldiers who had nothing to gain and gave their lives to and end slavery. [applause] when martin luther king said in the 1960's that i

am submitting a note and i demand it to be cached i was , waiting for the southern segregationist to say, what note? we did not make any promises to you. he was not appealing to the promise made by the southern segregationists. he was appealing to the declaration of independence. here is an amazing fact -- martin luther king was appealing to a charter and a principle articulated by a southern slaveholding planter, thomas jefferson. it is another way of saying is -- that far from repudiating the founding, what martin luther king was doing was claiming the promise of the founding. he was claiming the rights so the enforcement could follow when the circumstances permitting. this is a way of saying to americans that we can look at our history, with all the passion and tragedy built into it, and take a certain justifiable pride in the original principles which the founders got right from the start. thank you. [applause]

>> this is the cross examination. the way it works is, i pose a question to mr. ayers. you answer and post one to me. we will go back and forth. my first question to you -- you started out as a revolutionary and -- well, you started out in the bin laden mode. you tried to bomb the pentagon and u.s. capitol. here's my question -- you sounded totally different today. you talked about being an educator, you talked about socratic doubt and wonder. what happened to that old revolutionary? is he still alive, or has he thrown in the towel?

>> i think i actually feel i am still a revolutionary, if by revolutionary -- if what you mean by revolutionary is having a fully worked out program by which we can kind of imagine a different world and overthrow a government, i am not that. but if by that you mean someone who is willing to dive into the contradictions, try to make sense of them, fight for more peace and justice, more balance, more sustainability, and being willing to live with ambiguity and complexity and trying to move forward, sure. i see myself as someone who sees the need for fundamental change. i will give you an example. to me the struggle against white , supremacy, which i invited everyone to join, is a struggle that goes on. it is not over. it has not ended. it is a struggle that still goes on. and it takes different forms. [applause] it is not slavery, not jim crow. the destruction of voting rights, the overrepresentation of black men in prison, that is white supremacy. that is what we should be fighting. 2.5 million citizens in prison?

what is that about? 5% of the world's population imprisoning 20% of the world's prison population? that is an outrage. we should change it. [applause] >> i have to agree that the lock them up impulse is getting out of hand. >> it is very out of hand. my question to you -- you have written, among other things, and implied it again today, the slaves are dead. let's face it, the descendents of slaves are better off. you said many times that i am not submitting a note to get reparations from the british as i'm better off. of course there are other ways , to think about. you may have taken an esl class and there are other ways to imagine coming to the west besides the slaughter of millions. in any case my question is, many , people say that the state of israel, a catalyst for the creation of the state of israel is the holocaust.

do you have the same opinion about the holocaust, that it was, in some sense, worth it, because look at the end? >> the argument about the holocaust is this -- i'm not saying the jews are better off by the holocaust because they got israel. a completely different way to put it is that the moral anguish about what happened in the death camps did help, in fact, to create political support for the state of israel. the point about colonization and slavery is a little different. last year, i believe it was, or the year before the indian prime , minister went to oxford and he gave a speech that if he had given when i was a kid, he might've been strung up on the streets of bombay. what he basically said was, he said that gandhi had a dream of wiping a tear off of every indian face and now it is a global technological capitalism that is helping to realize that dream.

not india's 40 years of socialism, but technological capitalism. but he said something else, and this is the controversial thing he said. he said we have benefited. we are in a position to take it -- take advantage of global capitalism because of the legacy of empire. that is the keyword, the legacy of empire. he said that although the british empire was very hard and imposed indignities on people who lived under it, their descendents, modern indians now, speak english and have technical institutes and also have an infrastructure that enables them, not to mention democracy and separation of powers and checks and balances. and contracts, courts of law. you walk into indian courtrooms and you see dark-skinned guys with white wigs. that is the legacy of empire. the indians could take off the wigs. the british have gone home. we could stop speaking english. we could go back to the old way. but nobody even proposes that.

nobody thinks the british came with good intentions. but it is a way of saying that colonialism, for better or worse, was the transmission that brought some of the values we both affirm to india. sense,are saying, in a that as bad as the holocaust was, it helped. we should be grateful for the creation of israel and this was the transmission. >> absolutely not. i think on the cost/benefit analysis, i would say absolutely not. the state of israel is a good thing to have. you may not have needed a state of israel if the jews were safe in europe. it would be preposterous to say -- >> the same is true of slavery. it is preposterous to say it was a good thing. >> i am not saying it was a good thing. >> you said the descendents were better off for the institution. >> the descendents were not enslaved. >> white supremacy still manifests itself in different ways. it is not a matter of individual racism, it is the matter of structures that are influenced

by a system that keeps others down. that is something that still exists. and surely, we can all submit ourselves to fighting that system. >> i am not saying no. all i am saying is i am saying , what frederick douglass said. he stood up before an abolitionist society and said, i will not celebrate the fourth of july. it's not mine. it's your fourth of july. the fourth of july is an emblem of white supremacy. the civil war began. lincoln, who took douglass at his word, that he didn't belong in america and wanted a country of his own, said, ok. i'm going to now look to find where we can relocate the freed slaves after the war. lincoln had 7, 8 places he was sending emissaries to see where free slaves could have a country of their own. but frederick douglass said, no, we don't want to go anywhere. for all the problems, we are 100% american. we want to stay here.

this is our home. that is all i am saying. american indians, blacks, indians, all of us have a choice today in a free society to live in the old way. american indians who stay on their reservation will not have cell phones, they are going to live the old way. we are going to chase bison. we are going to hunt and live the "national geographic" life. that is how it used to be and that is what we value. we will make it as if columbus never came here. >> who is arguing this? you are making this strawman. who is arguing this? [applause] you have a great argument against somebody, but i don't know who it is. >> that is my point, everybody has voted with their feet to live this way. everybody wants cell phones. nobody even thinks about this. [applause] >> everybody has not voted with their feet to live in a permanent war economy. everybody has not voted with their feet to say, look, we have a trillion dollar military budget.

that is wrong. that is outrageous. the idea that we go over there and help people and then leave, that is the nature of empire now. it is not going over there and holding the land, it is a neo empire where we control the resources. we control the way money is spent. in 2010, the taxpayers, us, gave $300 billion to private corporations like halliburton in no-bid contracts, and that was the biggest corporate welfare scheme in the world. that was the biggest one that has ever been executed. and that is going on regularly. this notion that somehow corporations are persons, and walmart is a person. and that is the end of the political system of democracy. that is the end of it because money buys political office, it buys judgeships, it buys redistricting, and that is what we are living. and we should resist it. [applause] >> look, i will admit, there is no question the government runs all kinds of rackets with private industry, and it does it in the corporate sector, the

defense sector. i think you also have to admit in the social welfare sector. there are all kinds of alliances government makes with groups to privilege them or give them advantages. here is the point i want to make about foreign policy. i think the iraqi war in retrospect was very stupid. >> but you supported it at the time. >> i supported it at the time because i believed that the time there were weapons of mass destruction. >> why did you believe that? it was so transparently false. [laughter] -- [applause] at least 50% of the american people knew it, and every scholar knew it. >> first of all, here's the problem -- the problem is that saddam hussein at the time was behaving as if he had nuclear weapons. the u.n. said to him -- if he had no nuclear weapons, he should have told the inspectors, come on in, take a look, i don't have them. but he was acting like he had them.

that said, it is inexcusable to invade a country when you don't know -- it is like it is inexcusable to go into somebody's house if you don't know they have drugs in the toilet. >> even then, it might be -- >> if you do not know, you should not do it. you are uncomfortable. >> you are saying, we know that north korea has weapons. should we go kick their door in? >> of course not. >> that's your logic. >> let me qualify the logic. what do you call a dictator who has nuclear weapons. the answer is, you call that person, "sir." in other words when people have , nuclear weapons, you have to treat them with kid gloves. that is kind of why we did not want saddam to get them. >> we thought that he had them, but we knew that we did not have them. >> we did not know that. >> the intelligence knew that. >> let me make a bigger point. i will make it very briefly. you talk about the money we

wasted on these foreign expeditions. to a large degree i agree, but i think one point comes clear from that. we did not go to those countries to steal their stuff. the fact of the matter is we have spent a whole bunch of money in iraq. we could have taken it right back from them in oil, taken their oil fields, taken their revenue for as long as we could hold them. but bush, the hated bush, handed the keys to the oilfields to the iraqis and said, guys, it is your oil. sell it, burn it, do what you want with it. this is iraq war cost us a whole bunch of money. stupid though it is to spend that much money, it is not evil. we were trying to do something good in iraq. [applause] >> it is not stupid to do what -- trying to do something good, i think you are dreaming. it is not stupid to do what they did if you are giving the money to halliburton and lockheed martin. that's what they did. billions of dollars were transferred, taxpayer dollars, were transferred to those operations by these very

manipulative, lying -- one of the things we should congratulate ourselves for is the u.s. always lies us into war. it was true in vietnam, it was true in iraq. the reason is we like to think , of ourselves as a peaceloving people. if they said, we are going in for the oil, we would say don't do it. instead, they say we are doing , it for democracy. --k at what we have in a have now in iraq. we were nationbuilding, freeing women, right? and in afghanistan, iraq, over and over. this is the nature of empire today. it is about resources. that is what you see the wars and the invasions and the military bases, hundreds of military bases all over the world, american military bases mostly guarding the sector of oil. >> the u.s. military bases keep open all the u.s. traffic in the world. -- all the commercial traffic in the world. the reason that stuff comes over here safely, is not boarded by

parrett and bombed, is -- boarded by pirates and bombed, is the u.s. navy is keeping the lanes open. >> time. i think let's go to questions and we can go that way. >> we have two microphones with two individuals manning them. if you have questions, please come to the front and they will take them one at a time. michelle, you want to start? >> sure. >> my name is michael walsh. i am from troy, new hampshire. mr. ayers, i lived through your times. i was in vietnam in 1968, the tet offensive. 101st airborne division. [applause] i came back -- you have to hear the other side. i came back and i was at the moratorium in boston common and then i heard abby hoffman speak. we marched and took over harvard square.

i was more tear gassed that night than i ever have been in my life. you took an armed stance against the united states government, and i might not agree with it, but it took courage to do that. how do you still feel about the right to bear arms? do i have the right to bear arms, or does the government only have the right to have guns? >> you are asking me about the second amendment? i think we have gone way too far in that we need to find a way to take back some of the extreme kind of gun ownership that exists. it's not a question of, do i think -- i think we should disarm, and i think that means that we should absolutely allow serious background checks to allow serious limits. the idea that somebody has a right to a machine gun and that is protected as second amendment is pure folly and that is ridiculous.

that leads us in a very dangerous direction. [applause] >> mr. do sousa, would you comment on that, please? >> we have a bill of rights. i think it is sort of odd. imagine if you use that kind of rhetoric with the first amendment and you said something like i think speaking is an ok kind of thing to do but i think we should all limit our speech and i think we should all be really careful of what we say and if the government wants to run background checks on us, people would say, are you out of your mind? why do we have the first amendment? [applause] so i'm not for uzis or machine guns, but i am saying let's extend some of the same rights to the second amendment as we automatically extend to the first. >> but the truth is we debate the first amendment as well as the second amendment. we debated. and the supreme court in its wisdom has decided that giving goo-gobs of money is protected by free speech.

these things are debated. that is something i also think is absurd. >> i'm not putting it outside of the bounds of debate. i am just saying there is a presumptive vote in favor of free speech, and they have the burden to be met to curtail it. and it has to be the same way for the right to bear arms as well. [applause] >> paul? >> hello, this question is directed at mr. d'souza. i saw "2016," and it made me think a lot. but this question is more about some of the things that have changed since you were at dartmouth college. dartmouth college has made incredible advantages for lgbt students. opening andhey are lgbt affinity hub. we are hosting a conference. and we are holding our 30th

reunion. many people consider your time as editor in chief at "the dartmouth review" to be the lowest point for lgbt students at dartmouth college. a lot of people talked about how you outed students, you went to meetings at the time. people talked about how you would go through letters of lgbt students and publish confidential information in the review. i wanted to ask, number one, what do you have against queer people, when is that going to change, and why do you have those views on them? [applause] >> first of all, i have to say i'm really kind of amazed that my activities as an undergraduate, which were actually in the late 1970's, early 1980's, are being discussed.

the good news about it, i will tell you, is that i was there, and "mother jones" was not. here is what i mean. when i began to become a successful author in the 1990's, many years after i went to dartmouth, left-wing groups on the campus created i would call an urban legend history of "the dartmouth review," looking back at what we supposedly did and basically fabricating stuff and handing it out and relying on chinese whisperers on the left to preserve these legends. so, for example none of them can , name any students that were named in the review. you will notice this is all just what he allegedly did. i did not do it. i have never been to the gsa, never been to the meetings, never taken any of their files. at one point we wrote an article on college funding for the gay student association, and in the article we mentioned the four officers who had applied for college funding and we noted in their application they had not described any intellectual activities and were basically using the money for parties.

so the thrust of the article was college fees go to fund intellectual and cultural groups. they do not go to basically fund beer kegs and they don't fund recreational activities. and the question was, why was the college doing this? you can agree or disagree, but the point i am making is the "mother jones" recapitulation, 30 years old, there is no resemblance to the fact. i am happy to defend what i said, and quite frankly i have done some sophomoric things when i was in college, my main defense. i was at that time indeed a sophomore. but i don't want to be held accountable for things i did not do. >> so you were misunderstood and they have the facts wrong. will you now give a full throated endorsement of queer rights? >> i don't know what a full throated endorsement of queer rights means. >> just say it. say it loudly. i mean, i have read your stuff, and it has homophobia written

all over it. [applause] i have read, for example, your attack on french intellectuals as people -- who would trust men who carried handbags? so i hear this -- a fulluld not give throated endorsement of french intellectuals. >> again, that was not when you were at dartmouth. i think the young man has a question. the question is, can you now say that queer rights, gay, lesbian, transgender rights are fundamental to your view of what freedom would look like today in america? >> i'm a firm believer that we are all in this country a minority of one. i don't believe in racial rights, i don't believe in rights accrued to groups. i believe as individuals we have all the rights we are entitled to under the declaration of independence and the constitution, gays and lesbians included. [applause] >> amazing. amazing. so you don't see groups. you are like stephen colbert, you don't see groups, you just see people. you don't see race, gender.

those categoricals are not there. if a group of people you could prove are categorically kept down because of their identity as gay, you would oppose that? >> let me ask you a question. would you affirm right now as a group the fundamentalist evangelical christian rights? >> affirm what? >> let me clarify. >> affirm what? >> let me clarify. >> they are there. some of them are here. >> let me clarify. among the dartmouth faculty, and this is probably true of the ivy league, self-described evangelical christians are smaller in number in proportion to blacks, hispanics, gays and lesbians, any of these so-called minority groups. >> so-called. >> they are the smallest minority of all groups, so presumably evangelical christian rights would mean the right to have a group, the right to be recognized as a group, the right to -- >> they do have a right to have a group and they are recognized as a group.

>> right for affirmative action, the right to have the university go out and recruit people to make sure their perspective is well respected, sensitivity sessions to make sure students don't make derogatory comments towards evangelical christians. would you affirm all that? [applause] >> i don't think -- where are the evangelical christians demanding that? i think you are making this up. i think this is another straw man. you are saying they are a minority that is oppressed. show me where they are oppressed. they may be small in number. where are they? and what is the oppression, they cannot get tenure? are you kidding? are you kidding? conservative, evangelical christians have tenure all over america. so what are you talking about? >> what i'm talking about -- >> he is talking about a group that was systematically discriminated against. >> i would submit if you or do -- if you were up before a tenure committee today and you have one applicant who was let's say a champion of queer theory and another who was an outspoken defender of evangelical christianity, the queer theorist would be far more confident speaking up and saying, this is who i am, and would expect that

to accrue to his or her benefit, whereas the evangelical christian would do anything he or she could to suppress that, to be quiet about that, because this is the acceptable bigotry of the ivy league, and you know it. [applause] >> you have made up this narrative. there is no truth to that. you obviously know nothing how tenure committees work. it would depend on publications, peer review. it would not depend on whether you are popular. you are wrong about that. it is not true of dartmouth, it is not true of harvard, it is not true of illinois. [applause] d'sousa, let me clarify my question. >> perhaps we should move on. in fairness, we should perhaps have other questions. this is a debate about america broadly. i don't want to get too caught up in the bushes on this. >> in the interest of fairness for other people who have questions, we are going to move

on. >> yes, let's change it up a little bit. i attended a public hearing this morning regarding a bill called >> in the interest of fairness hcr-10 that was introduced to the new hampshire state federal relations and veterans affairs board. this concurrent resolution applies to the congress of the united states to call for a convention under article five of the united states constitution to have a constitutional convention. i not only would like the speakers to think about this issue and reply, but the audience as well. what are we going to do about our constitution? >> you know, in history there are very few times in history where there has been almost out of nowhere i would say a semi-miraculous event. greece in the fifth century bc, out of nowhere. pericles, socrates, aristophanes , theater, philosophy, all congregating together, and nobody knows what was there

before and there has not been a whole lot after. elizabethan england, germany, 19th century, philosophy, music. i think the american founding is one such moment, a remarkable group of people with deep insight came together, and they gave us a formula for wealth creation. and it is no rebuttal to say that we are living 200 years later because the principles of the founding are as relevant today as they ever were. so what do we do? it terrifies me to think that, for example, we can have a constitutional convention now and have a group of comparable wisdom, basically you could say update the founding. more likely, we don't need to redo the founding. what we need to do is live by the principles of the founding. [applause]

>> i don't -- i mean, i think that the constitution is there to be changed. and it does need to be changed. we need, for example -- one of the things we need to fight for is the right of every person to vote. one of the things that astonishes me is how much effort goes into suppressing the vote, trying to not let people vote. and this comes largely from the right, but a lot of other directions, too. there are many ways suppression happens. we should fight for and believe in universal suffrage. that is not in the constitution, but that is the kind of constitutional change we should make. everyone should have the right to vote, and everyone's access to the ballot should be unrestricted, and we don't have that situation now. in fact, we have felony disenfranchisement. if you look at felony disenfranchisement, it follows the entire struggle, the entire history of the civil rights struggle.

the civil rights struggle was a struggle for justice, but it had a couple of tactical things that mattered. one was integrating the schools, one was access to the ballot. in both of those great struggles, we have not moved forward. access to the ballot was undone through felony disenfranchisement. what we ought to do is fight to extend the ballot, and parenthetically the other suppression tactic is money. money in politics takes away your right to vote. it is not one person, one vote, it is monsanto with 10,000 votes. we have to get rid of the electoral college. that would be a good thing to do in a constitutional convention. this is an absurdity held over from slavery. [applause] there are things we need to do, but i would think the right would join with the left and say every human being, every citizen has the right to vote. and that means if you have a felony, you don't lose your citizenship. in fact, while you are in prison, ballots ought to be brought to you. you are still a citizen.

why shouldn't you vote? why not? why do you get disqualified from being a citizen because you committed a crime? that's ridiculous. we should extend the vote, we should do away with gerrymandering, we should get phony money out of politics. >> we are about halfway through. >> my name is adam. i am head of the atheist's humanist agnostics on campus. one quick comment, evangelical groups outweigh the lgbtq groups. just in one of them, they probably outnumber all of us. the idea there is less of them , that they are a persecuted minority i think is absolutely , unfounded. >> remember, i said faculty. >> faculty, of course. a question i have, you were talking a little about religion, politics monitoring thought, giving us -- getting rid of

things like slavery, giving us women's rights. do we need to further go along this process of erosion of religious parties as well as governmental priorities to make it better? >> i'm not sure i'm understanding your question, sorry. say it again. >> please forgive. do we need to erode religion a little bit further or government policies further to move further along the social scale of woman's rights and slavery? >> i think he is saying, should government take a tougher stance against religion to limit presumably what seems to be religious -- >> public policy. i would not want to say government. >> give me an example of what you mean. what do you mean? >> you gave the example of slavery and women's rights, saying that religious ideas were covering both of them as though they were upholding both of them. do i have that wrong? >> i said religious ideas? >> that was one of the things

saying that people 100 years ago or 50 years ago were supporting. >> oh, what i said. now i'm with you. what i said was if you were against slavery 150 years ago, you would have been against the bible, the constitution, the law, the founders, and your preacher. that is what i said, because those forces were all in favor of slavery. the antislavery movement was a tiny minority until the civil war, and then it became a mass movement. >> one quick clarification. i am trying to say, do we need to go further in order to get more liberal rights eroding these ideas more to get further along the social scale? >> i think we need to fight to extend the realm of human freedom. frankly i think in the 5000-year history of states, it has only been very, very recently states have done anything to extend the realm of human freedom, and they have only done it when there has been power from below. they have never done it on the their own free will, never.

it is always about building a different kind of world and we fight for that. >> these debates make no sense if you don't talk in somewhat specific terms. my argument would be that we have interpreted the establishment clause of the first amendment about religion in such a way as to make religious believers, in fact, into second-class citizens. here is what i mean. let's say tomorrow somebody were to say let's put a statue of voltaire next to the u.s. capitol. there is a procedure for that to happen. people would debate the legacy of voltaire -- do we admire him? how much influence has he made on america? completelywould be on the merits. voltaire yes, voltaire no? if somebody said let's put a statue of moses on the steps of the u.s. capitol, people would say, you can't do that, it is

violating the first amendment. now, moses has had more impact than voltaire, but the point is it would not be debated because moses would be tossed out without consideration as somebody whose very name violates the first amendment. i'm saying this is discriminatory against believers. [applause] >> i think that is not -- here you are saying the establishment clause, you want to reinterpret that, but the second amendment you genuflect in front of. it's kind of bizarre. as i said i think they are all , debatable. but the idea that religious people are discriminated against is flatly not true. this is a country that absolutely recognizes your beliefs and you are allowed to practice them anywhere. what you are not allowed to do is bring them into government and have government say this is

the correct one. full terror and moses are completely different. >> hold on. >> there is a difference. although there was the court in georgia that had the 10 commandments in a statue. read the 10 commandments and see if that makes any sense for secular democracy. >> you are saying i'm allowed to have my religious beliefs in private and not impose them on a public square. i ask you, are you allowed to impose your secular beliefs? >> you are allowed to have them in the public square. you are not allowed to have the government establish them as the right one. that is the difference. it is a huge difference. not only are you allowed to have them in the public square, in our political debates, every candidate almost has to bow down and say i go to church every sunday. it is ridiculous. why can't he be a candidate, as credible as an out atheist? >> i think he should be. >> i don't know. >> but in a society in which there is the consent of the governed the reason politicians

, do that, as they happen to have religious people whose votes they want. if they have the guts to say i am an atheist and i don't care whether religious people vote for me, that would show a little bit of courage. >> that's true. that's true. >> but if you want religious people votes and you want to pander to them, i do not have sympathy for you. >> it is fine to pander to them. my point is you're making a false parallel. full terror is just a person. we can decide whether we like them or not. moses -- if you put a statue of moses or jesus someplace, that would be -- not in the public square, but in the government arena. you are not allowed to and you should not be. >> here, the clouds part. what we are seeing is that religious figures and religious views are singled out, and in a sense -- so the supreme court has not gone your way on this because while they used to interpret the establishment clause as meaning religion is bad but atheism and secularism is fine in the public square, now the supreme court has been more nuanced.

for example let's look at , dartmouth. if people go to dartmouth college -- and let's assume that dartmouth college is a public institution. let's make it the public square. you say i want to start an atheist society. the college goes, wonderful. we recognize you. they give you $2000. someone else says we want to start a society for catholic christians. according to him, that's a state activity. because it's religious. >> no. doesn't dartmouth have a catholic group? >> dartmouth is a private school. i was saying in my example -- >> the university of illinois has a catholic center right in the middle of its campus. it's allowed. >> i am arguing for a nondiscriminatory -- where believers and nonbelievers alike share, without discrimination, access to the public square. if somebody wants moses up there, we'd debate it on the merits, the same as we would voltaire. [applause] >> i would like to ask dr.

ayers, where do libertarians have it right, and, mr. d'souza, where do libertarians have it wrong? [laughter] >> libertarians cover a multitude of sins. there are anarchists and libertarians who have come together. i will tell your where i think they have it right -- a deep skepticism of government, of the imposition of the state into our lives. i think where they have it right is full support for sexual freedom. you can do your thing. anarchists and libertarians would say full gay rights. in fact i was having a , discussion with a libertarian outside one of my talks and i said, i think we could agree on full rights, including the right to marry. he said, no. the state should not be involved with marriage.

if you want to get married with your cult, or your neighborhood, you can do that, but not the state. i said, that seems right to me. we can agree on that. i think the other place you get it right is to close the pentagon, stop the trillion dollar drain on our lives. i think libertarians believe that. i think they should. that is where they get it right. you want to say where they get it wrong? >> libertarians are right, they are certainly right to be suspicious of government in general. i believe that whatever the government does, it does it badly. [applause] that is as true of the defense department as the department of housing and public development. >> how about the roads? you like the roads? how about clean water? >> i like clean modern and clean roads. here is the problem -- on the issue of defense, i think that libertarians are sometimes inconsistent.

jefferson used the phrase "empire of liberty," and his point was that if we believe in freedom, it is a little inconsistent and hypocritical to be freedom only for us. we should want other people to be free as well. i don't believe in achieving that by invading other countries. i like the reagan doctrine. people should fight for their own freedom. you fight, we will help. so when they were fighting -- >> we will pay for it. >> hold on. against the soviet union, we did not send troops but we sent material assistance to the rebels to overthrow -- and that was the beginning of the end of the soviet empire. so libertarianism is half right on foreign policy. libertarianism is almost completely right on economics. where libertarians are right is that the government, just as it does not have the right to interfere with your life, it does not have the right to reach into your pocket and take your wallet. that is also part of your freedom. [applause] >> where the libertarians get it wrong is they think the market

is holy, so they said the government is bad but these corporations that have taken over the government, they are good. that is nonsense. so even the idea that somehow the government spying on us is a bad thing, google spying on us is a great thing because of the love of the market and private enterprise. it is foolish. >> shouldn't the government not have the power to dish out -- the corporations by the government, should the government not have the power to dish back to the corporations? >> what do you mean, dish back? for example? >> we agree that the government makes policies for corporations. however, shin the government not have the power to make favorable policies for some corporations and not others? >> i'm still not following

exactly what you're saying. i think the government is almost a wholly-owned subsidiary of big capital. it is a very dangerous situation. you look at something like where we are in health care. we are the only industrialized nation that does not have universal health care for its citizens, and meanwhile we pass this kind of weak bill a couple of years ago which basically gives hundreds of millions of dollars to the insurance industry. what is that about? it is about the government again giving corporate welfare, which it does best. >> we have time for one more question. >> i want to point out there are statues of moses and mohammed in d.c., right above the columns of the u.s. supreme court building. so, yes, we actually do have moses in d.c. we lost nelson mandela, sadly, and we are all against apartheid. >> now. >> i would like for you to speak

to the fact that we support israel with massive amounts of aid. but they have codified in their laws that arabs are second-class citizens and different laws govern the arab and jewish populace. why do we as a government support and apartheid system today, and will we look as ridiculous as other governments? david cameron, for instance, was part of a government that supported apartheid. will we look as ridiculous today as he does now? [applause] [boos] >> i am going to go first. the challenge of the state of israel is that, while america was founded as a society of individuals, a minority of one, israel was founded with a different idea. that was the idea of having a jewish state. think about that. it was the idea of creating a jewish state.

the jewish state differs from the modern state in the way that the old testament differs from the new. the old testament was a single community with a single ideology. when moses came down with the 10 commandments and saw aaron worshiping the golden calf -- the idea of a jewish state is to have, if you will -- israel does not have full separation of church and state. it is a jewish state. you are, it seems to me, attacking the legitimacy of having a jewish state. >> having the government support it. why do we support that? [inaudible] >> first of all, we have established a constitution and a way of life for us but we also recognize we live in a big world. we make allies with people, some

of whom we agree with 100%, some of whom we agree with 5%. why? because foreign policy is a still the principle of a lesser evil, and sometimes you ally with the bad guy to get rid of the worst guy. if you forget that lesson, you yank the persian rug out from the shah of iran, and you get 40 years of khomeini. and you get a country that is basically causing nonstop trouble in the middle east, trying to have nuclear bombs. all of this is the legacy of one sanctimonious jimmy carter, who said i want nothing to do with the shah of iran, and then we have khomeini. here is the point. why do we support israel? the truth of the matter is that what you have is little israel, a little outpost of western civilization in a large piece of real estate that is fairly hostile to it. now, i agree that israel is a problem. why is it a problem? not necessarily just due to the palestinians.

it seems like every 15 years, all the arab states gang up on israel and israel pistol whips a whole bunch of them combined, and it is really embarrassing. here is little israel, so israel is seen as the little satan, and we are the great satan. we have to recognize that israel's state is bound up with hours, for better or worse. i don't agree with everything israel does. i'm not saying we should be giving billions of aid to israel or egypt, for that matter. i am not putting this out of bounds for debate, but i am really glad to have, albeit a small ally in the middle east, and i think that if israel were to vanish off the face of the map, that would be very bad for american interests and bad for the jews. >> i really appreciate your question. [applause] i want to point out two things.

we all support nelson mandela now. we did not support him when the fight against apartheid was actually going on. nelson mandela was only taken off the terrorist watch list in 2006. so let's get real -- now we all love him and he was a grandfather who reconciled. how about his speech when he was put in jail for life? how about reading that and seeing who the real nelson mandela was. he was many things, but he was a freedom fighter. when he was a freedom fighter, the united states officially did not support him. i ask you about slavery and women's rights, and the question is, is there something 40 years from now that your grandchildren will say, really? you did that? just like we say that about slavery. are there other things that we would do better? extracting the last drop of oil from the ground is one example. or mass incarceration, more

money in politics. these are our things your kids may look at you and say, really? it cost obama $1 billion to be elected, and you call that a democracy? ridiculous. israel is an apartheid state and there are things we could do about it. it is ridiculous that this country alone gives israel the kind of money it could step up on. israel was created not in an empty land but in a land with people on it. unlike most colonial powers, which takeover and want people to say -- the british taking over india -- israel has pushed out the indigenous population. that is going on to this day with the settlements. there is something you can do. sanctions, the bds movement, you can find it online. this is something that we should all be aware of and participate in. israel and palestine exist there, and there is no justice unless we can figure out a way

-- they can figure out a way, really -- the palestinians, to have self-determination and a future to live for. [applause] >> i'm afraid that is all the questions we have time for. our speakers will answer your questions at the book signing tables. i would like to ask mr. ayers -- we only have so much time for the event tonight. i'm sorry. if you have an additional question and you want to ask the speakers, please consider asking them after the event. [inaudible] how do you feel? >> i'm open. i could care less. >> if maybe we could have each person come up to the podium and ask a quick question on it and then we will sum up and answer the questions so we can keep the debate within time, but at the same time, hear everybody out.

would that be a reasonable proposal? [applause] go ahead. it is your turn. >> you want them to come up? >> i'm sorry, let's take all the questions. >> ok, that's fine. >> i am a sophomore at dartmouth. i am an immigrant myself. i came from korea to the united states six years ago, and i have benefited tremendously from an education here. but i would like to contest your assertion that america constitutes an unequivocal force -- good force in the world. you say america creates a prosperity for all people in the world, but that seems to be very condescending. and dismissive of all of the valuable histories and peoples

of the world. to me it seems -- i would like to gently remind you that not everyone in the world is enamored with america. -- american hegemony. and your exotic concept of western modernity and globalization. although i admit that has had some good effects on the world, it has also carried with it many negative repercussions. from imperialism to subjugation of millions of indigenous peoples on this continent alone. i would just like to say that for me the greatest thing about america is nothing short of a population, it is the ability to end slavery or its subjugation of indigenous people. it is its ability to own up to its mistakes. but seems very much contradictory that you propose to represent the immigrant experience and the immigrant voice and the immigrant perspective on america when you yourself are so wholly biased in favor of american exceptionalism and complacency. [applause]

>> we will take some more comments and then some up. >> bill ayers, you're right about chicago. i went to the university of chicago. it is a great city. you are right. dinesh, as a student of mine, i am very proud of him. but one issue is very important for everybody in this audience. it is the greatness of the constitution and the first amendment. congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion and the free exercise thereof and the freedom of speech. that does not authorize a religion to announce that abortion is illegal in the constitution. that is a violation of the first

amendment and you have to know science to know that. what everyone in this audience needs to know is that what is not great about america is you live in the most scientific and technological society in the world and our citizens and our students need to know more about science when they discuss political things. [applause] >> my question is to you, dinesh. you mentioned that you like thomas jefferson about the constitutional convention. what you say about his belief that if you do not change the constitution every 20 to 30 years, you are enslaving the next generation? >> my name is rachel. my question is for dinesh. you talked about great britain and how they went into india and put their thoughts and ideas in

what india should be light and -- should be like, and then the united states went to iraq with their guns and try to create democracy, but what has iraq benefited from the united states going there like india benefited from great britain going into india? thank you. >> my question is to mr. d'souza. coming in, i not know a whole lot about either candidate. i agreed about things like american exceptionalism. there are definitely some aspect of an that are good and there are definitely good things that it has created in the world. american capitalism has fostered a lot of things like innovation. i guess i came into this agreeing with a lot of your ideals and then i hear you talking about things how the native americans would have continued shooting their buffalo and bison unless they had things like the trail of tears and the american government colonialism imposed upon them, or things

like how the poorest person in america owns two cars or things about how israel has gone around pistol whipping other countries every 10 years or so. my question is, do you truly believe the rhetoric you're speaking or is this a cost benefit analysis from what gets the most attention in press and what factually speaks to the ideal that you are trying to support? [applause] >> my question goes to mr. bill ayers. i am from newberry, new hampshire. i am just a citizen of the state, moved up here from new york and am now living in the great free state of new hampshire. the point i'm trying to make was this -- it was going back to your questions of why we went into iraq. i believe, if i am correct, that the majority of the congress did

vote on that and based upon the facts that they had at the time, we went into iraq based on that, weapons of mass destruction, and i think mr. d'souza was accurate on that as far as that goes. we did go there. as far as where the money went to, as far as halliburton and everything like that goes, my question is why were you not on the front lines going against that? i will tell you a little story about something that i heard from two kids that went and actually served in iraq. one served for three tours, the other served for two. the point i'm trying to make is that when you talk to the people on the ground, one of the troops over there fighting, what the people over there want is what we have here, and that is freedom. [applause] that is what they want.

they want to be like us. it makes this discussion go way overboard when you put down this country. or you try to say that there's is something wrong with this country. there are plenty of things wrong with the country, but there is outweighed by what is right with the country including our boys going over there and fighting for those people because those people want what we have. they will always want that. whether they were put down by a tribe over there or not, that is where they are at. [applause] >> mr. d'souza, your balanced and broad historical perspective shows how important immigration is to this country. people like you are the future of america, not the jaded and clichéd blame america for everything types. i hope your friend gets a visa. why is there such a consistently hypercritical view of america

and the west and the right in our high schools, college, and media? thank you. [applause] >> my question is for mr. ayers. i have read a lot of your writings on education, and i would like you to comment on what we can do as activists to help prevent the handing over of public education to corporate interests and testing agencies. [applause] >> if there are no more questions, i would like to ask mr. ayers to give a brief conclusion of his remarks. >> answer these questions at the same time? >> in five minutes, can you do a little overview? >> you start. [laughter] >> sure. i'll start. i remember before i came to america, on the outskirts of mumbai, there were a group of, i think they were yale

anthropologists who would come to india to study the local people. they set up a bunch of tents and they pulled out zoom lens cameras and they were recording those and they were basically recording the lives of the slum dwellers outside of bombay. slum dwellers would come up to the anthropologist and say, i want your jeans. i want your camera. and the anthropologists would say, oh, no, that is a very simplistic point of view. you are unfortunately inside the prism of ethnocentrism. we're not here to affirm the superiority of western culture. your culture is just as important from your point of view as ours is. clearly, these were veterans of many anthropology and sociology classes at the ivy league and the slum dwellers would say, yeah, but can i have your jeans? can i have your camera? now, what am i talking about? there is a one-way movement in

the world -- away from agrarian, impoverished societies of people who are grinding and eking a living out of the ground, people who are living in the rest of the world the way they have lived for millennia. all of those people can now see that there is a better, more prosperous, more abundant way to live with more possibility and it is nothing short of shameful to go around lecturing those people on what they should want from the benefits of western modernity, privileged, enjoying all these accoutrements and telling other people that they do not deserve modernity is a disgrace and you have no right to do it. now, those are the people who want what we have, and frankly, they do not want our generosity. this is probably the greatest insult of globalization. the chinese? we don't need you. we will do it ourselves.

we will take over the world economy and become the manufacturing center of the world. send all of your aid workers home. this is powerful stuff. they have learned our recipe. so here is my point -- here we are at dartmouth. what to be in the middle of the 21st century? don't sit around saying, we did civil rights, we did feminist rights, we have done gay rights. whose rights now? you can do that if you want. this is a rich country and there is a lot of time to pass your time. but this country on the top of the world will be sliding right down to third or fourth status and other countries will come up and take our place and those will have the kind of power that we have had since world war ii and it will be a very different world and it will be a little bit of a tougher world because those are people who believe in wealth creation but they also believe in conquest. and we cannot expect them, when they have our power, to achieve our priorities.

i assure you that the rise of the east, the rise of asia, is going to mean not only the end of a lot of western priorities, it is going to be the end of progressivism. why? because many of those countries want modernization, yes, westernization, no. now, what america still has is the gift of the world. someone asked the question about korea. let's talk about korea. isn't it wonderful that south korea is a free country? north korea isn't. had the united states not fought the korean war, it is very possible that the north would have engulfed the south. [applause] and we would have a retarded dictator who just killed his uncle, putting people in mass graves. that is the world we live in. sitting around talking about multiculturalism doesn't really work when we are living in a real world where there is a north vietnam and a south vietnam and the north overran

the south. the world is still the way it is. look, i am optimistic about america because it seems to me not that america does things right all the time. we do things wrong a whole bunch of the time. but we do try. and we do try to live up to ideals that remarkably were there at the beginning. there is no new ideal that we have invented. the principles were always there. sure, the founders didn't envision abortion, but they did envision privacy. they did not envision the nsa, but they did envision unreasonable search and seizure. they didn't envision civil rights, but they did envision equal rights under the law. that is right there in the fifth amendment and that is right there in the civil war in the 14th amendment. the constitution can be amended. it has a process in it to amend it. that is my point -- if you want

to change the constitution, follow the law. follow the process. don't sit around and say, jefferson thought it would be great to do it every 20 years, therefore we get to a point where supreme court justices will ignore the constitution says and do what it should say. you want to play that game? there will be a time when the supreme court will be controlled by the other side and they will do it to you. so either we respect what the constitution says, if we want to change it there is a way to do that. ultimately, i think america remains the great defender of wealth creation. look, the 20th century, america invented the airplane, america did not invent the car but it mass-produced the car. america invented the computer. america invented or has certainly mass-produced the cell phone. the whole information revolution of the late 20th century and early 21st century. america played a critical role in creating possibility, and i'm not talking just about chinese people or indians who can,ho