onable. >> what about this notion that the government is going to take over providing the contraception if the family does not provide it? how is that different than the case of the conscientious objector? the the objector does not get their service, someone else will have to give their services and certainly would say conscientious objectors are fine. >> it is very different. that is different from someone taking it. they cannot pay for it. the government provides millions of dollars in funding through title 10 to planned parenthood clerk -- clinics that provide drugs to women who want them something by showing up for free at no cost to the woman. this is taxpayer money. the government figured out a way to put a $.50 stamp on a piece

of paper and carry it from florida to california to get a letter from california to florida. why can they figure out a way to get these contraceptives to women that does not involve nuns? they put a man on the moon but they are forcingothersto -- four orcing others. >> we are dealing there other people at stake. there are employees who will go without coverage if the nuns will not fill out the form or if anyone or if the university of notre dame will not fill out the form. the government can pay for anything but the would not say for instance that i have an

objection to paying within the same as men. we would never say the government has money to make up the salary different so no big deal. they would say we are going to enforce the laws. we would not say i have a religious objection to paying minimum wage. no big deal. the government can make of the salary difference. we would reject that form of claim let alone saying i refuse to fill out a form. the question about the conscientious objector was right. notre dame's lawyer was asked does that mean that would he a substantial burden for a conscientious objector to say i object? and he said yes create even that would have to be considered substantial burden. that is all well and good for people to believe that is fine. when someone else is losing an important benefit as a result that is where i think there has to be balance. the idea that i am entitled to

every idiosyncratic -- idiosyncrasies, other lose their benefits, that is when it crosses the line and what -- the site -- society is based on secular law. >> let's try to find some areas where both sides may agree a little bit more and that may get us back to the more traditional liberties. the most recent example that i have looked at as the court against topps case. that is an area where more or less you go to -- you both agreed. x yes.

case was brought under that act. we disagree on how to pronounce the acronym. even then we have disagreement but that was a case in which that was the sort of situation that brought the coalition together. a modest religious combination that is important to someone's religious elites and granting the accommodation does not harm anyone. there were arguments need about threat to security but they did not hold up. that is the case were we do agree where religious accommodation was the purpose. it would have been different if there was i have a religious right to not associate with women prison guards. that would then cross over into imposing religious beliefs on someone else. on there might disagree. it is the quintessential

accommodation, it does not hurt anyone, no reason not to grant it. there is plenty of room for agreement under those cases. >> the reason that the supreme court ruled that this prisoner had the right to grow the beard is because the state of arkansas had no real reason. most of your -- no will reason. the state had to say because -- we said so. in the case of many of the religious freedom cases we are saying, the ones where defending our clients is often times the government says we are going to do this just because we said so. like the little sisters of the poor. like hobby lobby. where cases where the government had no real reason to not make an accommodation and not make an exemption. we do agree that this is an important case.

you start americans united? congressman, and now as a united states senator. [applause] they are suing the state of north carolina because in the city of north carolina same-sex marriage is not legal. what theywon won is their day in court. they give a day in court when there is disagreement. >> we want to talk about some other things. i will turn it over to mike. are these cases, are they becoming more difficult, are we becoming -- as we become

increasingly pluralistic, is that creating a pluralism anxiety and are we getting to the situation where religious accommodation cases may be difficult for the courts to deal with? mike: i think there is more at stake here than just details. there's a conflict of vision behind many of these cases. there is a form of modern liberalism that says only the individual in the state israel. -- is real. then there is the approach i would call principled pluralism. that says a community of communities that allows people to seek a vision of the good consistent with the common good

is a positive thing. it has a positive value. i do think it really matters what perspective, what political philosophical perspective you bring to these issues. i come from a more conservative side that says the most important institutions are not the state and more than the individual. they are the institutions in which the individual is shaped or morality is passed. where culture the standards of a -- culture are created. the government has a positive role to nurture that pluralism. i do think that there are deep political, philosophical disagreements behind us that are not going to be solved by appealing to these cases.

meryl: how do we deal with pluralism in a increasingly diverse society? greg: very carefully. i think at the end of the day there needs to be humility and empathy. the word empathy is derided in some circles when lawyers say it. i think it is important. we are a diverse society. we have people with diverse views. we cannot always get everything we want. sometimes we should get what we want, and sometimes we should not. i think what has disturbed me and many of my colleagues about

the weaponization of the religious freedom act. the idea that my rights are different when my ability to act 100% in accordance with my religious beliefs is different when i am at church than when i am at a business. when i am at church, if i went to pray with only people of the same race and religion and sex orientation, i can do that. but if i open a lunch counter, or am a caterer, even if i devoutly believe that interracial marriage is wrong, i cannot turn away that couple. i think we need to recognize that there are other people out there. religious beliefs are important and extremely, deeply held and about, but in a country -- i based on secular law that could be a trump card. it is an important limiting principle that is necessary to balance everyone's rights.

mike: i agree that a democracy is designed for disagreement but it is undermined by individual content. -- mutual contempt. there is an emphasis on civility empathy. i was in salt lake city, utah talking with church officials. they really did attempt a process by which church officials met with gay rights activists and legislatures in a difficult negotiation to come up with an approach. it is an exchange of sorts. it specifically protects gay people in public accommodations, which i think was regarded that side is real progress, and specifically protects the ability of religious institutions to maintain their

identity in positive ways. jonathan roche who i know was involved in that effort in hopes it may be a model for some other states. it could be. it shows the possibility of civil disagreement and at least minimal agreement on some very basic ground rules of pluralism. meryl: we talk about civility, let's also talk about what was at one time considered to be a repository of civility. that is the college campus. there's a lot going on right now in terms of religious liberty and free exercise. is the approach being taken on the campuses providing access to everybody? is there a right approach? is there enough respect for

civil discourse on campuses now? could campuses do better? kristina: greg is the expert on this issue. i think it is closely associated to the point you have made having to do with civility and empathy and accommodation. when my parents first came to the united states, we lived in a tiny house. in puerto rico, my mother had been in a concentration camp in germany, my father had been in cuba, they had some bad experiences. whenever we sat down to dinner my father would close one window in the kitchen. it was very hot in the house. he would say, just in case. he was afraid our discussions would be overheard by neighbors. as he understood, this is not the way we live in the united states.

when we open the window, we drank from the freedom of expression. we could not disagree and often and yell it loudly enough. the reality is this -- for as much civility as we want and empathy, sexual minorities particularly and religious minorities, have mutually reinforce the claims against larger societies. it is so important and vital no government should touch it. no regulation should touch it. so much for civility because to matters of human identity. the government should protect them and not invade them. religious liberty is the ability to live according to your deeply held convictions. whether that takes you to organize religion or no religion

at all, there is no room for government intrusion into that life. the same thing should apply at colleges and universities. now it is the trend if your group does not agree with larger society for whatever reason, you should not be allowed on campus. that is wrong. it tears at the fabric of american society and freedom when groups are not allowed on campus because someone's view is held so repulsive it is not allowed in society. greg: let me take a step back. i think i heard -- there is a lot of what christina said. i want to start with a college campus and tie it up to a broader point. the specific issue she was alluding to was that many colleges will recognize certain -- student groups which gives you access to certain resources and whatnot. in order to take advantage of that you basically have to have a nondiscrimination policy. there has been objection by certain religious groups

involving exclusion of people of other religions or gays and lesbians, the case went up to the supreme court. the supreme court upheld that even a public university could enforce non-determination policies on student groups. even in those cases, student groups could use university facilities. they could get certain benefits. if it is a religious group, they should be able to exclude people. i guess where she and i disagree on this issue and the broader point is that we don't live in a 100% libertarian society. we balance liberty with other interests. things like equality and nondiscrimination. especially in the unique environment of an educational institution it is reasonable for a university to say if you want a university recognizing a group, we are going to require you not to discriminate. it doesn't mean you cannot worship however you want in your dorm room or anywhere else, it

-- if you want to take advantage of facilities, it is reasonable to say you have a nondiscrimination policy. i think this touches on a broader point. we've never had this religious beliefs you can do whatever you want. the civil rights act produces individual liberty. you cannot turn away african-americans from your barbecue place. there is a case that went up to the supreme court called piggy park. in addition to being delightful to say, it involved a restaurant owner who said he had a religious belief that prevented him from serving african-americans read he wanted exemption. the supreme court left him out of court. -- the supreme court laughed and out of court. we are balancing interest. what is appropriate for settings at a church or home is not appropriate for other settings

like a commercial spear. we have to do our best to reconcile a lot of interests and not allow any one of them to be a total trump card. my point -- mike: there can be a human cost to this controversy. a few years ago, the human trafficking programs were denied funding by the obama administration because of other policies. they held religious policies. that was a real cost. look at gordon college in massachusetts. it worked for years with a local lower income school district devoted 14,000 man hours of volunteer work every year. the school district made the decision because gordon's religious views on other topics,

they are discontinuing that topic. children suffer. i think there can be when it comes to provisions of social services, many come through private and religious institutions in america. a too rigorous application of some of these points can have a serious human cost. kristina: i think vegetarian group should be able to say that the leader should be vegetarian. i think women's group should be manned by women leaders. i think christian groups are muslim groups should say the leaders -- anyone could come. none of our client has said they discriminate against anyone. anyone can join the club, they want the leadership to abide by

the mission of their club. are we supposed to make everything vanilla? as a latina, i love when race comes into the decision. -- this issue. the racial card does not need to be played on any other things. are there despicable people have claimed religious freedom to have certain use? -- certain views yes, but they? have never won. there has not been one single exemption based on a religious claim. that case was settled with the bob jones decision. will people say crazy things in the name of religion? yes. that is why they go to court. that doesn't justify government intrusion into all of these groups. it doesn't make sense. greg going -- greg: the argument does make to justify racial segregation and

racial exclusion in the 1960's and 1970's is now being made when it comes to gays and lesbians. i think that is the parallel. i'm not saying she is a racist. i'm saying, why can i run my business according to my religious beliefs? that is precisely the argument made with respect to race and interracial marriage in the 1960's and 1970's. they were rejected then and should have been rejected now when it comes to gay and lesbian couples who are now facing the same obstacles that racial minorities were in the 60's and 70's. kristina: name one case in the last 22 years where a gay person was refused service based on a religious claim. greg: your organization is in court arguing they should win. if you look at indiana, there was a case in new mexico in which a talker for refused to photograph a same-sex wedding ceremony. she brought a claim under the states religious freedom

restoration act. the court rejected the claim. the court said -- organization filed a friend of the court brief saying the photographer should be able to deny service to the gay lesbian couple. the new mexico supreme court said no, this statute cannot be invoked by a private wedding vendor. in indiana, the language was changed to allow for protection. if your organization was to -- wants to support those people, great. but to then turn around and say no, it is not about discrimination, you want to be able to withhold your cake and eat it too. which is it? kristina: let's talk about those people. meryl: we are running out of time. kristina: want to say she loved this think a client of hers and provided flowers for many months. all she couldn't do was participate in a wedding

ceremony. in a state where same-sex marriage was not even legal at the time, the court ruled it was the price of citizenship for her. who lost more? elaine who lost her business and livelihood, or the gay couple who could've gone to any florist in the state. greg: all i would say is you are entitled to that view, but you cannot turn around and say these laws will not allow termination because you are in court saying -- meryl: i am going to give eugene the last word. he wrote about whether there are mutual duties of accommodation. we have heard very strong articulations and two different positions. just because you have a right, should you exercise that? or are there mutual duties? to guarantee the clock -- cloth of societies as we go forward.

eugene: i think it is possible that religious belief and conscience would dictate making the cake. in a society where he would allow very small exceptions for people not to bake the cake, that is the nature of pluralism. it is not implicate the broad accommodation for housing and businesses and other things. be that as it may, i guess what we are talking about is where those decisions are made and whether there is a decision to be made at all. the traditional view has been that there is a balancing test there. there are two rights involved in -- involved. the courts have been a place for those decisions are made.

all that said, it is important that people win graciously in a democracy and lose graciously in a democracy. people are going to lose in these cases. how people lose will make a large difference. meryl: with that, i want to thank our speakers and think the national constitution center for hosting this today. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

>> now a conversation on free speech and campaign spending. among those will here is an attorney in the former clinton administration and one who works for the koch brothers. this was moderated by the president of the national constitution center in philadelphia. >> our final panel is about a superb topic and it is where the left in the right degree in disagree about free speech. please join me in welcoming our panelists, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] we have another dream team panel and let me introduce them briefly. mark colton's senior vice president and general counsel of koch industries. gregg lukianoff is the president

for the foundation of individual rights and education. william marshallradley smith is a visiting professor from the west virginia university college of law. he is also on the lord of the center -- the board of the center for competitive politics. this panel is cosponsored by the federalist society and the american constitution society and of all the wonderful things i have had to do bringing these two great organizations together is among the most satisfying area they have joined together because of their love of constitutional debate and dialogue and also because of the extremely generous support of the templeton foundation, which has created a scholarly advisory board called the coalition of freedom, cochaired iby lee

otis. we are cohosting symposia and we will create the best interactive constitution on the web. we are going to reach out to the top liberal and conservative and libertarian scholars in america to describe each clause of the constitution and the bill of rights what they agree about the -- and with a disagree about in terms of contemporary issues and we will distribute this free to every school kid in america. the college board is going to work with us to make sure everyone who takes the ap history and u.s. government exams has access to this incredible document. it is the living substantiation of what freedom day is about which is the vital importance of eating both sides together, not to agree but to debate the meaning of the constitution. it will be an incredible project. mark holden, there was an

incredible theme on the first panel. it was a wonderful area of agreement where and if you remember from the a.c.l.u. were talking about the work that you and koch have done in studies about incarceration. is there a concern about over incarceration and concern about free speech? mark: thank you for inviting me. at the -- we are involved in criminal justice reform work and we have been for many years. it is core to charles ckoch's

belief any free and prosperous society. going back to the last panel talking about removing obstacles to opportunity for the disadvantaged or poor. if you want to help the poor as we do, and probably everyone in this room and everyone on this panel does there is no better way than to reform the criminal justice system because they are theimpacted by that system. that's one part of it. we had some experiences ourselves with the remote justice system back in the mid-1990's that we learned from and wanted to see whatever we learned and how the process went for us, to tap into a big company with a lot of resources, what's happening to the average citizen in the street out there, so that got us involved in working with it national association of criminal defense lawyers and others. i am from worcester, massachusetts, and i worked in a jail when i was in college. i wasn't in jail, i worked in a

jail, let's be clear on that. when i worked there, it was the best job i had until i went to law school. i saw many kids i went to school with who were not the best students, who were poor, who made mistakes, and then ended up in the cycle in criminal justice because they were drug addicts some were mentally ill. that left an impression on me. let's get back to why we're all here, the bill of rights and the constitution, the first 10 amendments, all of them. at least four of them deal with criminal justice issues, and they deal between the fourth amendment, fifth amendment sixth amendment, an eighth amendment. and also the first amendment. if you don't have the first amendment, the other nine don't matter. it's all about free speech. our founding fathers may not have got it perfect, but they knew the greatest encroachment to individual liberty and freedom would come from the

criminal justice system. freedom works, center for american progress, we will work with anybody on these issues. mr. rosen: you have drawn the connection between the first and fourth amendments in a way i hadn't thought of, when you summon us back to history. you cannot have the criminal justice system without the first amendment, and the framers are centrally concerned about the connection between unreasonable search and seizures and free speech. mike lee, when he came -- this was an incredible speech on youtube, check it out. the main case that inflamed the framers was the case of john wilkes, who wrote anonymous pamphlets criticizing the king. it identifies wilkes as the author of this anonymous template, charges him with seditious libel. the greater the truth, the worse the offense, according to

british law. the greatest opinion and colonial history says that paper searches of private diaries are offenses and also freedom of thought and political dissent. i had not made that connection and you have now laid the table for what i'm want to ask you. we've had a great debate here one of my favorites last year, tremendous debate about the european conceptions about free speech. just to take a beat on what mark said about the connection between the criminal justice system and the first amendment and to what degree that might inform the work on free speech on campus. mr. lukianoff: i we also defend due process. i had someone who should have

known better, a professor at yale, saying why are these things even connected? why do you do these unrelated things? it was a bizarre idea to me. if you get to the fundamental liberal idea, what jonathan rauch talks about in liberal sides, it's all about knowing that you have limitations, but i is, that you are not omniscient, and that we need structures that help us deal with these failings. due process recognizes this, restricting people from censoring recognizes this. it's a great sense of epistemic humility that actually makes all the difference. i'm afraid that universities are failing to teach a generation those wonderful and important habit. mr. rosen: marshall, greg he has just charged us with failing to take due process into account. you are not forced to go to faculty meetings, however.

the hate speech debate is hot right now, and liberals on both sides of it. as we begin to tease that out in the last panel. some traditional civil libertarians think there are due process violations in banning unpopular commencement speakers. others are more sympathetic to the dignitary rights of offended minorities and vulnerable speakers. which side do you come down on? mr. marshall: i come down more on the freedom of expression side, but i don't come down on easily. when you're being subject to all kinds of ridicule the cause of who you are, it's hard to participate in that academic participate in the academic climate the same way you would if you were part of the privileged class that comes in with all the power on your side. i think a lot of these efforts are really to equalize the learning environment and protect

people from hostile environments, which is a very legitimate goal, one that should be followed because we need to think about that that the classroom doesn't affect everybody the same. the workplace doesn't affect everybody the same. when we see a tax on people's dignity that go on, to use that language from the former panel it weakens educational structure and the work structure and that's why there are protections against it. mr. rosen: this word dignity has come up, and there is a great clash between european and american notions of free speech on one hand and dignity on the other. the debate is surfacing about what europeans call the right to be forgotten. it comes from the french right of oblivion. the french just want to be forgotten. americans want to be remembered. the bottom line of this incredibly important line, if we

are both in europe and one of you is tweeting that i'm doing a boring job moderating the panel, i can object that it fallen -- violated my dignitary rights and google and yahoo! would have to decide if i'm a public figure or not. if they guess wrong, they are liable for up to 2% of their annual income, so we are talking areas money. i think i want to ask you this. who is right, the americans, or the europeans? [laughter] >> i wouldn't want to betray my country on national television here. i think our differing approaches to privacy on some of these issues, i think one thing americans are sometimes forgetting of late is that hard-fought right to privacy. i think there is a balance that needs to be struck and we may be going in a direction that

further than we would like to go. the area i work most often is campaign finance. it is interesting, i believe in france. i don't want to be quoted on that but here we say we need to know who's financing all these ads. they are, they say no, you cannot disclose who is financing always at, in order to protect the privacy of those engaged in political speech, to preserve social interactions as well. if her to demand to judge everybody on their politics, i think society becomes a very unpleasant place to live. there's much to be said for keeping a greater wallop privacy around what people do and say at any one time. not quite sure that answers your question, but that would be my thinking. whichever way is the best, we may be at a point now where we have gone overboard. everybody's got to know

everything about everyone, and i'm not sure that's healthy, either. mr. rosen: you raise the question of anonymous speech and i want to focus on that later. do you want to talk about american free speech and imperialism? >> there is an ideal that all the censorship that takes place on campus, at least it's done with good intentions. there are few times when human beings act with a single intention ever. i get the argument that campuses are trying to make places more welcoming and inclusive. we are not a litigation organization. we have dealt with case after case where administrators have told student that they cannot hand out copies of the constitution without getting two weeks advance notice from an

administrative. we had an animal rights activist in california who was told not only did he have to restrict his protest to a tiny re-speech zone, that he had to apply in advance and wear a little tiny free-speech badge in order to use it. so i understand the argument that there are good intentions but we just can't blindly trust in the good intentions of power. mr. marshall: on my campus, we have one of our faculty members who has written a number of critical editorials against the governor of our state in there trying to take away his center and do whatever they can against him. that's another example, i don't think we can say that one side or another has a monopoly on this. the problem about freedom of speech is we all believe in it strongly until it makes down and then it's free speech for me and not for thee.

we really need to be able to applied across the board. i do not think that college campuses are anything close to bastions of censorship where people are not free to say what they want to say. certainly in the classes i have at the university of north carolina and my clients have elsewhere, they are open forums and people say all kinds of things. the diversity of opinions are extraordinarily welcome. there may be a few of these instances, but i don't think they give any sense of the climate on american educational campuses. mr. rosen: is it your experience that college campuses are hospitable to a diversity of opinion? mr. holden: working at koch, i'm a bit cynical, i must admit there's a group called un-koch

my campus. they're working with educational institutions across the country, funding free market forces, classical liberalism, and it's led to a lot of targeting of professors who are teaching courses on free market economics. they want their private e-mails and they want to know this and that. we talk about free speech, i'm pretty much a free-speech absolutist in a lot of ways. the government cannot restrain them because they did not give them to us. we been hearing about inalienable rights since the declaration of independence groups are financed by many organizations that oppose koch politically, and that's their first amendment right to do it.

but it's hypocritical when these groups say they are doing it because they want to point out other big business interests on campus. there's a lot of groups on the left, a lot of wealthy people on the left that have businesses that are funding university projects and programs. i don't want them to get attacked at all, but it's wrong to attack either side and i don't think there is a lot of tolerance that i've seen the last few years. mr. smith: i would be more skeptical than bill. i think there are things that students know they are not allowed to say on campus and they do not say. as a conservative libertarian in a law school setting where in some cases, i'm almost the only faculty member who would hold those views, i become used to a certain ritual over the years. it usually occurs about midway through the first semester. there will be a group of students that will appear at my office, four or five students.

they will come in, and it's not quite clear what they want. they talk about class a little bit and they kind of do this, but they don't have any seeming objective. they finally someone will say something like, what did you think about x y or z? i will say i think it's a load of hot wash. they will say, we thought there was someone on our site and they start pouring out the fact that certain opinions are not allowed to be offered, that they will be ridiculed or targeted by their professors. i think most people and most professors on campuses do welcome diversity of opinion. a few people can really spoil that atmosphere. in too many cases we have given a heckler's veto to people in cases where commencement speakers are run all caps and so forth. my guess is most students would be perfectly happy to hear them,

and a relatively small group is allowed to exercise a heckler's speech. we need people who will stand up and say this is a university and you can be exposed to ideas that you don't agree with. makes the american college of universities as 9000 campus professionals this question. is it safe to hold unpopular points of view on campus? that is an incredibly soft question. only 16.7% of university professors strongly agreed with the statement. two people came out with a paper talking about how social psychology is being hurt by the lack of diversity. they give an example of being at a conference of social psychologist, asking them to raise their hands about how many of them are conservative. only three of them raised their

hand. when he realized was that statistically speaking, there are certainly more than just three in this room, but the fact that they are afraid to raise their hand speaks volumes. mr. rosen: the stats seem vaguely right in terms of the fact that conservatives seem to be a minority on faculties. why is that? >> i think part of the answer is people who come into academics do so with a certain that the idealism that often leads to left of center kind of positions. just because people might be left of center on particular issues doesn't mean they are intolerant and don't want to hear other ideas. most of the teachers i work with

or aware that the best way to have real conversations in the classroom are to have conversations of the top we are having here, in which somebody might be outnumbered 3-1, but that's ok. you want to stand up for your position, you stand up for your position, and that's a good thing. and you actually learn. i went to a very conservative law school at a very conservative time. i certainly got a lot of grief from certain faculty members on the positions i took. i think it made me stronger in my ability to articulate my views. mr. rosen: the question of anonymous speech has been flagged, and we also have to talk about campaign finance issues, which cut in unexpected ways. ways that the framers were concerned about, the main thing they wanted john wilkes be able to have was the ability to write and anonymous pamphlet. as mike lee said, that number 45 was so galvanizing to the framers that they help parties

where people would eat 45 ham sandwiches and write 45 on the sides of their tavern. mark, anonymous cam pain -- campaign speech. mr. holden: it's important because it's consistent with the bill of rights and the constitution, which we were just talking about. my point of view is that people should be able to give money anonymously or on the record. it should be up to them decide and not the government. i'm going to paraphrase the late justice william brennan, which i'm sure he will be very letter by. basically the bill of rights, the framers did not lay out what our rights were. they made sure government could not infringe upon those rights because they were presumed to be pre-existing. my point of view is to the extent people want to expose --

we were talking before we got on here. if charles and david koch, for every penny that spent on a conservative or libertarian calls or is your candidate there is no dark money as far as the kochs, in my opinion. from a cost-benefit analysis, i don't quite see who really pays attention to this other than activist on each side that want to harass and intimidate and create list. i've seen both sides do it. i know they do it against us and there have been a number of death threats. i'm not asking for sympathy or empathy. i'm just saying it comes at a cost, and who really benefits from the disclosure? there'll be ads on tv that talk about more taxes and regulation. probably not something any of

our groups are sponsoring from koch. if it's about less government or that type of thing, maybe it is. i don't see any need for all the disclosure laws other than for people to put together lists. mr. rosen: might there be a difference for disclosure like individuals or advocacy organizations like the naacp which the supreme court said should be able to have anonymous membership list, and like for exxon? mr. lukianoff: i think that there's a lot of disclosure for campaigns that's compelling, if it's a super pac or that kind of thing. the naacp versus alabama case. there's another one involving the socialist party several years ago. i'm not saying for exxon, they

don't have to disclose thing. i don't know where the right line is, what the divide is. what i'm saying is, who is really benefiting from disclosure and while redoing it at this point in time? admittedly i'm inside a bubble but i don't see driving a lot of productive behavior. mr. rosen: brad, you raise the question of anonymous speech. mr. smith: it's an important point, is not a question of all disclosure or no disclosure. i think the government should not force people to disclose facts about themselves without some really powerful reason to do so. people have a right to be private and others can evaluate that anonymity when they think about the speech. but i'm also willing to make compromises. in the real world, other people disagree.

we need to find some kind of accommodation. there's lots of different lines that can be drawn. they say dark money, nobody knows where it comes from. there are no political ads in the united states that are dark money. they are all required to say somebody hate for it. what they really mean is we don't know as much about who paid for it as we want. it just says hate for by the naacp or the u.s. chamber of commerce and we want to know in particular who that is. and there are names that don't stand out for anything americans for better things. [laughter] but you can usually find out enough about the group. one of the things that cracked me up, to give one example, i remember after 2010 when they first started talking about dark money. crossroads gps, a shadowy dark

money group founded by ed gillespie and karl rove to elect conservative candidates if i can go on a bit more, there are different options. one proposal i am seeing more and more is not getting past, but people are pushing it. somebody from the organization has to appear onscreen. it usually says hoover that has to be, the chairman of the organization. i am brad smith and i approve this message. is that a good thing? that is a different type of disclosure. that person may be homely. people do not like homely people in politics. they react better to good-looking people. it may be someone who is arabic. some people will not like that. there are a lot of things like that that we need to start being careful of and thinking about.

we have gotten into this argument, are you pro-disclosure or anti-disclosure? rather than thinking about different types of disclosure. even a person like me who could be said to be anti-disclosure is willing to live with disclosure. there are reasons people want it that are not frivolous. but sometimes we are not doing cost balancing. mr. rosen: bill, you have been wonderfully restrained. mr. marshall: when you see this being paid for by mothers for apple pie, it does not tell you much. i'm glad everyone is interested in the poor. they have little political influence because they do not give money. it is helpful to voters to know who it is they are supporting. one of the cues on that is who contributes to a particular campaign. the fact is it does not make that much difference.

but if large amounts of money can be put into races by groups who no one knows who they are, and sway elections because the other side does not have enough money to be able to defend against the attack. disclosure is a second-best regulation to give a cue to voters to have some idea why somebody is attacking a candidate or not. mr. rosen: we have to put on the table the question of citizens united. we are having a great debate about whether citizens united was rightly or wrongly decided by the constitutional society in boston on may 12. we had a great debate on a similar topic in philadelphia. it is strange bedfellows. it was two of the great civil libertarians arguing in favor of the position that corporations have the same first amendment rights as national persons.

and two arguing against it. this is an area where libertarian can evidence -- conservatives are sometimes pro-corporate speech. brad, you are an expert on citizens united. you have heard some of the debate today about corporate speech and religion rights being extended. did citizens united go too far? mr. smith: i do not think it went too far. let's take it on its own terms. the position of the u.s. government was that it could ban a documentary about a major political candidate during an election year simply because like every movie you have seen it had corporate involvement in its production and distribution. that idea strikes me as absurd.

if you want to talk about the radicalism of the supreme court they said, a government kanban a documentary about a political candidate. if you take it in a broader sense, i think it is right. the court does not believe corporations are people in the natural sense. but it is recognize that corporations have rights because the people that form them have right. thinking about the fourth through sixth amendment, the government cannot seize corporate assets and leave shareholders with certificates of stock and say, it is a corporation. they have rights because shareholders have rights. it is the same thing with corporate speech. i also think corporate speech is often good for an election. let say you have a company out there in a small town in iowa or something like that. it wants to say to the people, if our government does not take

stimulus money, this company is going under. you should know that. i think that is a good thing for the electorate to know. i think they ought to hear that from a corporation, not from the ceo of the company or some individual. i think on those particular facts and in the broader sense citizens united is probably correct. mr. rosen: the argument on the other side? you are not a traditional libertarian but draw distinctions between the state and federal government regulating elections. mr. marshall: one of the interesting things in case law is that states have not been allowed to experiment. montana had an interesting law in place that was there because copper barrens took over the government in the late 19th century. they had special laws to deal with corruption that took place.

the supreme court struck that down under citizens united without giving states the ability to experiment or see what might work. part of the issue on corporate speech and i think there are reasons why you might want to protect it, because speech is speech. we like to hear speech in the marketplace. but it is subsidized speech. the only reason it exists is because the state has allowed a corporation to come together and get all kinds of protections that allows it to amass the kind of wealth it can use to influence the political process. the theory i just gave you, by the way, on corporate power comes from justice william rehnquist, who took that position on why he did not want to protect corporate speech. mr. rosen: did citizens united make a difference in the way you are able to give two campaigns?

mr. holden: it was independent expenditures, and we do little of that, so no. but i do not think the government should be saying who should be speaking or cannot in a political season. there is a lot of disclosure that goes with that. from our perspective, the more voices that are out there, the better. this whole notion that people are going to be persuaded by an ad i live in wichita. i grew up in worcester. not places like new york or d.c. no offense to people from d.c. or new york. [laughter] we have friends everywhere. [laughter] i think most people make decisions based on factors peculiar and personal to them. whether they are swayed by ads i do not know. in kansas, we had the first competitive governor-senator

race in the first 20 years i have lived there. i cannot watch ads by the end. people are not as swayed by it. the whole idea that someone is going to change their mind about an issue they feel strongly about because someone runs in at or that type of thing, i think that is overplayed. i am where brad is on it. i think it is fun. i think both sides spend a lot of money on ads. i do not know how much impact it has. mr. rosen: one last thought? mr. marshall: i want to know why so many companies are giving money for ads if it is not working. mr. holden: they are giving it so their voice can be heard. marketplace of ideas. both sides do it. whether they are effective or not, who knows? these candidates elected in 2014 that flipped the senate will be

up in six years. people vote on issues particular to them. both sides run a lot of ads. that is how it is, for whatever reason. mr. smith: higher spending doesn't on the public. the public votes based on information. repetition is the hallmark of learning right? if you repeat yourself, you will remember it tonight. that is how you get through. it helps voters locate candidates on the political spectrum. in a sense, i think what mark and bill are right, the ads will not change the minds of people who have strong perceptions. they may not change them generally, but they may inform a voter on where a candidate is on a particular issue. mr. rosen: one last set of questions. our job is to figure out what

the left and right disagree and agree about. as in the fourth amendment area, we had a nearly unanimous opinion. but they involve rather jarring fax. eight out of nine justices protected the right of people to film violent crush videos. a similarly lopsided majority struck down california's desire to regulate violent video games. a similar majority said that hurtful protests at funerals military funerals, saying terrible things about gays and lesbians were ok. is the entire panel celebratory of the principal in these cases that we have to protect the speech we hate? does anyone think the supreme court has gone too far? mr. holden: obviously, hate

speech, no one is a fan of that. but when you frame it that way and look at how big the first amendment is and what it has allowed for, flagburning, animal abuse, that kind of thing, while that is repugnant, repelling and no honest person would be in favor of that, it is protected by the first amendment. which kind of underscores -- not to bring up citizens united -- why everyone gets so exercised over that. i think they got it right. i think the first amendment is big and broad. as we start talking about all our rights being hinged on that, that is why it is number one. everything else, including with reform issues and criminal justice issues, all flow from that.

mr. rosen: go look at the original bill of rights. the first amendment was third. the original first said there had to be one representative in congress for every 50,000 inhabitants. if it passed, there would be 20,000 congresspeople today. thank goodness it did not pass. it is sort of a coincidence it is first, but it is undoubtedly most important from the natural rights philosophy. greg, i presume you think that justice alito was wrong to dissent. mr. lukianoff: i certainly do. one of my beloved interns was interning for justice alito at the time he wrote the opinion. we were like, how could you? but when it comes to offensive speech, i think we are thinking about it wrong. we are at a major point of

divergence between what the law says and what cultural attitudes are becoming. the first amendment the ability to protect offensive speech, essential to speech as a whole is alive and well in supreme court law. culturally, our understanding of free speech has diminished a great deal. the idea of hearing people out the idea of giving benefit of the doubt, the idea of not arming twitter mobs against anyone who makes a misstatement. i wrote a book called "freedom from speech" that says we need to go beyond explaining -- i hear first amendment lawyers make this argument -- the first amendment is good because the first amendment protects it. we cannot have a circular argument. the most important thing we miss , because we have got into normative judgments about whether speech is high or low value, but what we seem to be missing is that there is a real value to knowing what people think, not if, but especially if

it is horrible. this is a scientific method of looking at the world. but it is being ignored. it is not about saying what fred phelps says is good, it is just about knowing what he actually thinks. mr. rosen: bill, maybe stand up for justice alito, who argued for dignity and said the feelings of the families at the funerals should be respected? mr. marshall: sorry, cannot go there. one of the things that brings the left and right together is the celebration of the first amendment. when we get offended, we shut down the speech. but in the abstract, we also -- all think this is a freedom. and i do think that allows reprehensible speech as well as the kind that we like. mr. rosen: would you like to

make it unanimous on this question? mr. smith: in those opinions, they do not interest me that much. they are at the extreme. as mark and greg hinted, the typical argument is that we need to protect that, protect pornography, hateful speech, in order to preserve the core of the first amendment. what strikes me as on is the core is what the court seems to be giving the least protection. that is talking about politics. that seems to be downright backwards. you get more protection at a fell demonstration at the funeral of a serviceman. as opposed to a running an ad that says my opponent is a jerk. i will say it is a point of agreement in that what seems to come out is there a strong

agreement on a robust first amendment. most of these decisions were lopsided majorities. there are some issues like campaign finance or hate speech that are divisive. but i do get some comfort that americans are still pretty good on the question of freedom of speech. mr. rosen: there is a fine bit of agreement. it is time for closing statements. in the spirit of our panel, i will ask each of you to identify the aspect of freedom of speech you think is most important in the country. what will you do to promote it over the next year? we will go in reverse order. mr. smith: i think that the core issue is the issue of political speech, which has been under attack for a long time. both sides do it. whoever seems to be losing or winning attacks the other side and tries to shut off speech. in the 1950's, you had teachers

being asked to report what books they read. things like that. now it seems like the challenge comes from the left to attack political speech, force people to disclose themselves and be subject to ridicule. i think that is a major problem. we have to get over the idea the first amendment is a bizarre libertarian barrier. i think it is what the founders thought, a way to ensure that government was clean, corruption was exposed, elections were fair and open. at the center for competitive politics, we fight on that through litigation and tried to educate people about the way money works in politics. get people thinking about what the alternative really would be if we gave government a blank check. mr. marshall: i have to agree it is political speech. but i think it is a more complex issue. one of the questions about freedom of speech is not a value in and of itself.

is it there to promote democratic decision-making? the netting on your view, you may come out to different kinds of results on campaign-finance. when you ask about a candidate the person thing you ask is how much money they can raise. in a system in which someone has to sit in a room for 20 hours a day dialing for dollars to be competitive, or a system in which poor people do not have access, that is troublesome. it is troublesome for government to do any regulation. i have to agree with that. you have a deep conflict going on. but it is not an easy result on either side. the first thing i tell my students is, if you think this is an easy decision on either side, re-think at. one of the things the american constitution society is doing and what this organization is doing, is to sit down and really

listen to each other and talk to each other and figure out what it is we are trying to accomplish so we become a little more sensible on some of these issues. mr. lukianoff: you asked for american free-speech imperialism earlier, and it was not time for that yet. but for closing statement, i will say this. it is something i take seriously. we feel very proud and confident on this panel that free speech and the first amendment will be well protected. but to a degree, i think we are kidding ourselves. free speech is in trouble and the rest of the world. we just had an article by gary trudeau that some people set amounts to blasphemy laws. there is no argument you can have for a blast me log regime and still have freedom of speech. the rest of the world has national security laws we would find terrifying to a degree.

i do get a little -- two other great, the first -- to a degree the first amendment will not mean much. unless we are making strong moral, philosophical, and practical arguments about free speech, understanding free speech is an international human right, it will not survive long in the u.s. so i am arguing that we are nowhere near this, but i am arguing for a global first amendment. it should be protected anywhere in the world to believe what you want. mr. rosen: thank you for that. mr. holden: i agree with that. not a global first amendment but the sentiment for sure. here is where i am on it. we heard the last panel talking about criminal justice reform. how that brought different groups together you would not think would be in the same room. and it has.

koch would like to find more of those issues. we would like we -- to think we have good ideas to add to the discussion. we would like to use our first amendment rights as an individual and a corporation to have a dialogue with other groups about issues of common interest. there are a lot of them out there. criminal justice reform is one. if you look at the issue, it is the tail end of the problem. you're talking about economic opportunity. we need to talk about the education system. we know our friends on the other side have ideas. we like to have a discussion instead of everybody going to their corners, throwing names running ads, and fundraising off each other. that is how we would like to use our first amendment rights. until his 2016 and everyone goes back to their corners. mr. rosen: an exhilarating discussion. we have disagreed about aspects of the application of first amendment principles to situations from campaign-finance

to the regulation of political speech but agreed about hate speech and centrality of the american tradition. and both mark and bill talked about something we have seen throughout the state, that there is a real value to bringing people to disagree fundamentally together. as those of us on the stage and in the audience are, listening respectfully to each other, so we can identify areas of agreement and disagreement. your job, ladies and gentlemen is to go have a drink, which you have earned, but to answer the question i just raised to the panelists. think about what each of you will do over the next year to celebrate freedom, participate in debates about it, and encourage other americans the same -- to do the same. this is about self education. educate yourself. you have to learn about the ordinance on all sides of these debates so you can make informed decisions.

that requires reading up on the history of the constitution, the cases that gave rise to it. learning about the arguments on both sides, not assuming that either is right in advance. ultimately realizing this one document is the thing that binds us. we disagree about some much in this room, but all of us agree about the centrality and power of the greatest document, the u.s. constitution. thank you for an incredible day for making this remarkable conversation possible. give them a round of applause. hooray for freedom. [applause]

cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: sunday at midnight, the patriot act expires including provisions authorizing the nsa walk data -- bulk data collection program. the senate meets on sunday. a short time ago the white house, the president called on senators to renew counterterrorism measures in the law. president obama: i thought this would be a good opportunity to remind everyone that on sunday at midnight a whole bunch of authorities that we use in order to prevent terrorist attacks in this country expire. fortunately, the house of representatives was able to put

forward a piece of legislation, the usa freedom act, that received overwhelming bipartisan support. and what it does is not only continue authorities that currently exist and are not controversial -- for example the capacity of the fbi and other law enforcement agencies to use what is called a roving wiretap, so if we know there is an individual where there is probable cause, that at individual might be engaged in a terrorist act, but is switching cell phones, we can move from cell phone to cell phone -- not a controversial provision. if those authorities were to continue what the usa freedom act also does is it reforms the bulk data collection program that had been a significant concern and i promised we could

reform over a year and a half ago. so not democrats and republicans in both the house in the senate who think there is a right way to go. we have got our law enforcement and national security teams and civil liberties proponents and advocates who say this is the right way to go. the only thing that is standing in the way is a handful of senators who are resisting these reforms despite law enforcement and the i.c. saying this should be done. we've only got a few days. these authorities expire on sunday at midnight. and i do not want us to be in a situation in which for a certain period of time those authorities go away and suddenly were dark and heaven forbid we have got a problem where we could have prevented a terrorist attacks were apprehended someone who is

engaged in during -- in dangerous activities, but we did not do so because of inaction in the senate. announcer: we will have live coverage of the senate sunday afternoon session where they will consider a renewal of patriot act provisions, at 4:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. announcer: the sunday night at 8:00 eastern, we will look into the personal lives of three first ladies. sara polk often helped her husband make decision. as a teacher come abigail fillmore was the first presidential wife to have a profession.

this sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's original series "first ladies." sundays at 8:00 p.m. and as a complement, c-span's "first ladies" is available through your online bookseller. announcer: up next on c-span conversation on the wars of the george w. bush administration. we will hear from a former advisor of the provisional authority in iraq, james nicholson, and peter baker. this is part of a series of discussions held during a

conference at hofstra university on the policies of the bush administration. >> ok, good evening. welcome to the george w. bush plenary forum. my name is paul fretz, and i am an associate professor here at hofstra, and i am pleased to be serving as moderator for this distinguished forum. the wars in iraq and afghanistan are arguably the most controversial and most consequential decisions of the bush administration. the decision to go to war, how to get out of the wars, and related issues have not only dominated the bulk of president bush's time in office, but have also shaped current u.s. foreign-policy options in and

around the regions. they will continue to do so into the foreseeable future. there is very little doubt that the wars in afghanistan and iraq will continue to be measures by which the legacy of the george w. bush foreign policy will be measured. with that in mind, the conference organizers have brought together this outstanding panel of public servants, journalists, and scholars to examine the way the bush administration waged wars and the consequences of them. each of our panelists is extremely accomplished and i will try to keep the introductions relatively brief although that is hard with a group like this. as i go through, i would ask that you please hold your applause until i have introduced everyone and we can welcome them altogether. giving us perspectives from the administration, we first have

thomas basile, appearing on forums such as sirius xm radio. for the bush administration in 2003 through 2004, he was a senior press advisor to the authority in iraq. he was a consultant for the republican national committee, presidential campaign, and prior to this service he was director of communications for the u.s. environmental protection agency in 2001 through 2003, and was part of the bush-cheney campaign. mr. basile is a hofstra alum as well, graduating with a degree in political science and he was named the 2007 hofstra young alumnus.

ambassador james nicholson is currently senior counsel at brownstein hyatt farber schreck, counseling clients in health care, regulatory law international relations, oil and gas, and alternative energy. s, oil and gas, and alternative energy. from 2005 before this appointment he was u.s. ambassador to the holy seat during which he was knighted by john paul ii for his human rights. ambassador nichols has been the director of the new community development corporation commissioner and the commissioner on the defense advisory on women services. he was the chairman of the national committee from 2007 to 2001. lawrence wilkerson is

distinguished adjunct profess or at the college of limb and mary. he served in the u.s. army from 1966 until 1997 excuse me. while in uniform. he was a member of the faculty of the u.s. naval war college, special assistant to general colin powell when colonel powell was chiefs of staff. from 2001 until 2002 he was associate director of the state department policy planning staff. colonel wilkerson's last position was chief of staff for u.s. secretary of state co len powell from 2002 to 2005. so the journalists and scholars that we have present. first he was a journalist that served as an afghanistan correspondent for "the wall street journal" for "the

christian science monitor" and reported in asia mr. gopal has extensively interviewed both sides of the afghanistan conflict. this is cited in his critically acclaimed book "no good men among the living: america, the taliban, and the war through afghanistan eyes," which was a final list in the national book award and the helen bernlstein award and recipient of the ritennour prize. mr. gopal was an inside fellow at the new america foundation. peter baker is the chief white house correspondent for "the new york times" and a writer for "new york times" magazine. he's covered three presidential

times in his previous blogs in "the washington post." mr. baker won a prize in the beckman memorial award for white house coverage. mr. baker was moscow bureau chief for "the washington post" during the rise of vladimir putin. he's the author of "days of fire," which provides a comprehensive look at the bush administration from the 200 election to the iraq war to the bush and cheney white house. he's serving as a distinguished conference scholar for this conference. and phyllis bennis is a director of the new internationalism project at the institute for policy studies in washington d.c.

she is a fellow of the trans national institute in amsterdam. she's been an activist in u.s. and speaks widely as part of the global peace movement. she continues to serve as an advisory for several top and the 2005 and the u.n. defy u.s. power. please join me in welcoming this distinguished panel. [applause] so for the format, we are going to have 10 to 12 minutes for each of our guests. and then there will be a

question-and-answer session and possibly in between a moderated discussion, depending on how much time we have. so we will essentially go in the order that was listed in the program. >> thank you paul, for that introduction. always great to be back at this campus. it was 18 years ago that i served on the student for the bush 41 conference and during the conversation i got to trail around john se knew new for denew new who happens to be the faster walker i'd ever encountered. and joe is following me around. and joe, i'm sorry you got stuck with me. but i really appreciate the

invitation with dr. bose and the calico center not only as an abum us in administration but also an alumnus of this university. it's wonderful to see how the political discourse surrounding the presidency affected so dramatically. it's good to see secretary nichols here with whom i was so fortunate to share a very wonderful and for me a very meaningful and emotional moment in american history when we were both able to attend president bush's meeting with john paul ii at the vatican in 2002. so it is good to see you, sir. for millennia, the causes of war and the strategies associated with it were defined by particular margins involving a combination of resource and territorial acquisition therefore producing conflict population. and i suggest that for most

people in paradigm continues to drive perceptions of war and war-making. i sub bhit the close of the cold war and the rise of the united states hegemony, the breakdown of certain alliances that we witnessed in the rise of al-qaeda and the decision-making of the united states and the aftermath of 9/11 was a sharp departure from the usual war making paradigm. i feel that we are in a transitional phase as it relates to this country handling the military vat ji to account for -- military strategy to account for this shift. the administration of george w. bush was the first administration to have to deal with this paradigm shift. during the bush presidency, the white house was faced with the challenge of facing the territorial and institutional impacts of war in the form of external forces such as terror groups embedding the governance

of state actors. the viral nature of the radical islamic movement and the exploitation of governments of state actors of the new global paradigm that had emerged after the end of the cold war. it was a historically complicated confluence of circumstances that led to both afghanistan and bush mission. the bushed a mintstration had to cope with the conflict of trying -- the bush administration had to cope with the conflict of trying to fight mobile terrorist groups and dozens of countries while fighting traditional territorial balts rebillingd infrastructures an institutions in afghanistan that perhaps may not have existed. in the case of iraq projecting out the impact that state actors might have who may exploit and support the efforts of the terrorist enemy. we spent a great deal over the last decade and a half on

whether we should are gone into afghanistan or whether we should have gone into iraq. i personally view the decision-making process by what paul bremmer called the reasonable man test comes from the old chancellor report. the president of the united states faced with the confluence of circumstances that i just described in a general sense buttress by specific intelligence act in a certain way. keeping in mind that saddam hussein had been declared a state sponsor of terrorism and regime change had been the poll soif the u.s. government since the cointon administration. i believe that president bush made the correct choice for military intervention in both of those circumstances. however, i believe the more relevant conversation for all of us remains once you make the decision to go to war, what is the principle purpose or desired outzphom you have several -- desired outcome.

you have several choices. you can, one, you can remove saddam hussein and the taliban which i believe is a false choice. you can two, remove the leadership and grab some general and ex-patriot and impose them basically trading one dictator with another. that's particularly for bush the moral and political argument fails there as well. or three, you could attempt to secure the done fri and build -- secure the country and build institutions that could support not what some people had suggested some things americans call style democracy but a pleuralistic and confluence structure. this historical gathering of maligned members in our corps have the responsibility to get the economy growing an establish security and a political framework that were established goal number three working together with an iraqi population that is more supportive that is generally accepted they tackled it with

great commitment and their earths going unlargely unnoted as the situation worsened due to -- with their efforts going largely unnoticed. as the situation worsened due to sectarian violence and a white house that as the mission went on often failed to defend its own policy in iraq. president bush understood several key points very well. one, he believed that left unchecked it was likely that we -- likely that hussein would develop a nuclear weapons program. two, hussein had funded external terror groups and it was believed that he would be supporting other terror groups. three, the war on terrorism was a long-term global threat that involved dozens of groups. so closely aligned, some loosely aligned not only with each other but also state actors.

and we're seeing this today as you see isis and ack tack and -- isis and al qaeda and boko haram and anala shry y an and all these folks are are network and a very powerful one at that. four, he believes this is a generations-long fight. and it would require long-term and aggressive engagement. and addressing the freedom deficit in the middle east and countrys that serve as incubators however long-term and complex that strategy might be was essential and in toward sharing a more peaceful world and further to end terrorism networks. where it fell short is how to fight them simultaneously. we weren't just protecting the

-- we weren't just ejecting somebody from the country and protecting territorial boundaries of a nation. we were trying to fight an insurgency while attempting to build new governments and social and political institutions. on my first day in iraq i got off at the baghdad airport and i put on my vest. i put on my helmet. and i got on the bus to go to the compound. they said by the way the road is closed. the road between the road and -- the road between the airport and the compound was closed because the army was not able to secure it. they call it the road of death. people were dying on it virtually every day. that was my first day and my first hour by knew that we were going to do have man power issues that plagued the iraq army early on and were very real. the administration had a vision

for a lighter fleet footed high-tech 21st century army. and that vision has merit. but it was incompatible with the mission that we had at that particular time. for our part nearly every civilian and military liaison agreed from the outside that we needed to maintain overwhelming foresize in order to accomplish -- forced size in order to accomplish the mission. today, at the white house, former john hopkins university professor and noted economists the newly elected president of afghanistan told the american people thank you for the work that have helped give them a shot to instead of being a burden to the world to actually have a shot at a free future. but we are clearly seeing the beginning of what the president

called generation of process -- a generational process of development. in iraq despite poor intel regarding infrastructure military assets, essential services, mass looting the iraq mission realized not sufficiently promoted by the administration and not promoted by the media. the training of new security iraqi forced his began within weeks of the promotion of the c.p.a. which enabled anybody by the rate of colonel to go to the army. ultimately, 80% of the officers and the ncos and the new army were from the old army, but they were better paid, better trained, better equipped. the central bank was reopened. and the transition within the first six months. it took us two years in post world war ii germany. oil production increase.

dozens of schools were we built, including hospitals and health care centers. a constitution was developed which shiah, sunnis and kurds and turkman's on the table to create an election in a degrading security environment. and let's not forget that more than eight million people voted in iraq's first election. perhaps most importantly al-qaeda and iraq had been decimated due one of the boldest foreign policy decisions in my opinion of the last half century made by george w. bush. delayed admittedly but necessary search. by the time bush left -- but necessary surge. by the time bush left office the economy had increased in size several times over under its time under hughes sane. life expectancy had risen. and security forces had secured most of the forces due the training an ongoing assistance from the united states. despite the consequences of a precipitous withdraw of troops administered by the current administration and the

insistence of both pears via cnn -- poor -- both parties via cnn which left iraq all by defense , fless the face of isis. we also recently just saw the four peaceful transition of power between governments in iraq which is something that had never before been accomplished in the middle east with the exception of israel. none of these positives can negate the challenges that persist. but they can when added to the conversation give us a better understanding of the need and the ability to move nations toward a freer more pleuralistic construct. in my time in iraq i saw courage and conviction of a people anxious to build a new nation. it overshadowed by a security situation that we were unprepared to address. as we look back there were many issues to be learned.

few are certain that must inform our thinking. the world has changed. the changes we face and the challenges we face rather have changed. but getting people chance to be free and to self-govern is the surest way to greater peace. i saw first half of -- firsthand ofthe consequences of authoritarian an oppression and the evil that sapped the soul of people and nations in regions in a way that we cannot fully appreciate here. and you haven't exerntsed the power of freedom until you talk -- you haven't experienced the power of freedom until you talk to somebody who has never known it and they realize for the first time that participatory government isn't some abstract theory. it is real an it is works an is achievable with great effort and sacrifice. george w. bush did not buy into the bigotry that suggests that there are certain people in this world who do not deserve or are

too unsophisticated or incapable of handling what we call freedom. i consider it an honor to have served him and i look forward to a meaningful discussion tonight. thank you so much for your attention. [applause] >> good evening. i really appreciate here at -- being here at poster university -- at hofstra university participating in the panel with these distinguished people. and i appreciate what you're doing at hofstra with this conference on the george w. bush presidency. and we won't agree here on everything that is said, i'm sure. but i bet there's one thing about which we can agree and that is that whatever is said here tonight about the george w.

bush presidency will look different to us in 20 years and different again 20 years after that. george w. bush's presidency must be declined by the etchts of -- must be defined by the events of september 11, 2001 when the united states of america was viciously attacked by an enemy who's leader osama bin laden stated as far back as 1983 that the united states was the mortal enemy of islam an must be destroyed. a 9/11 president bush declared to the president of america an -- to the people of america and to the world that he would do whatever was necessary toe protect our country to keep it safe and to keep it free. this became the mantra of the g.w. bush presidency. president reagan had his mantra that was to bring down the soviet union and to shut down the cold war. so did president bush. his

global war on terror kept us safe and kept us free. so let's start with that. president bush foretold the kind of decisive leader he would be at his acceptance speech in august 2000 at the republican national convention in philadelphia. i remember it well because i was there and i was a chairman of convention as the chairman of the republican national committee. and then candidate bush said " if you give me your trust i will honor it. grant me a mandate, i will use it. give me the opportunity to lead this nation and i will lead." little did he know then of the events that we befalls us a year later. but we found out soon after just what a leader we had.

it started immediately at 9/11. the context is worth a reminer. the president was at a school in florida but immediately authorized the shooting down of the civilian jet liner. the white house staff were told to evacuate. and evacuated in a hurry. the women were told to take off their shoes so they can run down the street. the reason was they thought a plane was about to slam into the white house. you have to think about when the last time the white house was evacuated under similar circumstances. the only time it comes to mind is when the british burned the building during the war of 1812. soon after the president went to new york city to game three of the world series to throw out the first pitch in a sense

that was a small act. presidents throw pitches all the time. but in this case in new york, while the fires were still burning at the world trade center an when the entire nation was on edge about another terrorism attack it was a big deal ha the president went of the ballpark and stood on the mound. he demonstrated that he was not afraid, that we should not be afraid and the game and the business and life of this nation must go on. the president addressed the nation at a joint session of congress. he was in command and he was comforting on safety and patriotism. an interesting side note on that date which was september 20th 2001, the philadelphia flyers faced the new york rangers in an exhibition game. the teams played two periods.

and the jumbotron switched to the president's speech. it was a live shot. when it was time to restart the game the third period, the jumbotron turned off the president and turned back to the game. the response was overwhelming. people started booing and demanding that the president be put back on. for a moment americans tuned in and heard what the president's say. they never played the third period and they ended up in a draw. so i think we can stipulate that war defined president bush's presidency. presidential his tore yeah author schlessinger he said of all the crises war is the moat fateful. all of our best presidents were

involved in a war either before or during their presidency saved thomas jefferson. he further opined that crisis helps though who can rise to it. and the association of war with presidential greatness has its ominous aspects. let's start with afghanistan. even the pope support ud us going into afghanistan. i showed my credentials to the holy father on 9/13 of 2001 at the palace. and we had prepared remarks to help me prepare. the first thing we did was said a little prayer for the victims and then talked. and i -- by then was able to give him a brief of what we thought, you

know, the derivatives of what had happened were -- and he said to me, he said ambassador nicholson we must stop those people who were killing in the name of god. an that was not a privilege communication. so i was able to report that and put that out there and it really helped us in putting a coalition together to go into afghanistan. but the pope did see iraq differently. he expressed his opposition emphatically during his annual address in january of 2003. and he looked directly at me and said, no to war. war should only be a last resort. that was his affirmation to us. but it was not a surprise. it did set off our biggest diplomatic challenge as the ambassador and our most robust endeavor to convince the holy

father of the need to invade iraq who would not go to our lead. i listed the support of two distinguished vaticanistas, as they are called. i looked at them to come to rome and assist ne an educated effort both at the holy sea and in italy. the professors both posessing cherished over their apartment welcome which means they have wonderful bona fides with the pope. but they felt the same way we did. we held meeting and talked about the need as we saw it to go into iraq. but the pope continued to view this on presemp active.

-- as preemptive. but despite these personal interventions in a session with the pope's personal emissary with the president cardinal piolagi who went to see the president in the west wing in the white house for long encounter which i attended. the pope dispatched a french cardinal to talk to the people there will to see if they could get it. of course, neither were success ful but the president understood and often said that the pope was a man of peace and he had different responsibility. importantly, though, the pope never said it was immoral for us to go into iraq. and he really couldn't because it would be violative of the doctrine of the church which said there are evil forces an

there are innocent people that are to be protected from those evil forces and that does on occasion require, you know, the institution of war an violence. innocent people that are to be protected from those evil forces and that does on occasion require, you know, the institution of war an violence. in fact, today in the train. ing up to new york i read a report from a distinguished writer for catholic news service suggesting that pope francis may indeed end up advocating the use of force against isis. so there are precedents for this. and we of course are unsuccessful as i've stated with pope john paul ii in trying to underwrite or affirm our endeavor to go iraq. as we all know in march, 2003

we entered iraq for the purpose of protecting our country and eradicating our threat possessed by saddam hussein. the case had been made to our citizens to our friends, to the pope and to the world, really, and the facs as we saw them were that hughes sane was a threat. he had invaded kuwait and iran. he used weapons of mass destruction on his own people and on the iranians. he shot at our planes an ally planes. he was working evade international sanctions. he failed to comply with numerous u.n. resolutions that required him to prove that he had. he payed the families of sd bombers. he gave every indication that he maintained stockpiles of

weapons of mass destruction. he remained belligerent and violent and refused to adhere to international demands and was interested in supporting attacks on the united states. he would unite with terrorisms and provide them with weapons of mass destruction and every material needed to attack american targets. of course, no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were found. nonetheless he was a threat to peace. and due to his continued hostility to go to war, we chose war. hughes sane was toppled and iraq did catch a glimpse of freedom and democracy. their courageous partis passion in elections demonstrated their hunger and their appreciation for freedom.

in fact, i will never forget just weeks after we went into iraq, the caldean catholic patriarch came to rome and asked if he could visit me. i received him at my residence in rome and hevs the leader of about 850,000 cal deian catholics and for whole hughes sane sort of kept in a protected status, you know, in the dispute between the sunni and the shiah. they were kind of off to the side. they knew that this would probably be disassembled. he didn't walk. he ran up the steps to my residence where i was standing and thrust his hand and said thank you for coming to my country and freing us exhibiting that innate desire

that man has for freedom and the euphoria that he exhibiting was exhilarating that that were in as a result of this. but you know, one can debate the conduct of this war as many have and one can argue that we should not have dismissed the sunni baath party dominated army and the police forces. i think that would be a very legitimate thing. one could argue that we shifted too soon on nation building an democracy building in lieu of law and order building and infrastructure particularly law and order infrastructure. there were mistakes made certainly. abouo grab comes to mine. those were fair discussions as far as i'm concerned. but i will end the way i started which is to say again

that president bush after we were invaded on 911 said he would do whatever is necessary to protect our country. he did. he kept americans safe for the next seven years as our president. was war necessary? was it worth it? did it matter? the final report of the chief weapons inspector for the u.n. concluded saddam wanted to recreate iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability after sanctions were removed and iraq's economy stabilized. i agree with those who say that had saddam done what we -- had done that we would have seen an arms race develop between iraq and iran and the sunni-shiah terrorist arms race with the possibilities of biologically, chemical or even nuclear

weapons being in the hands of terrorist would have increased greatly. the possibilities of a dirty bomb being exploded in our country. the pressure on our friends like israel, kuwait, saudi arabia and the u.a. would be greater today. and a result american people would be left safe as well. only time will tell about president bush. all i can say that he is looking better and better as the world becoming more and more dangerous. and we become more vulnerable to those who want to destroy us. what is a president's most important job? it's to keep us safe and he did it. thank you very much. [applause] >> yeah. ok. i'm going to take