national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] ♪ >> tonight on c-span, the charleston, south carolina, church at the site of the mass gunting in june, hosts a violence summit. they will gather to discuss the problem and possible solutions. here a doctor tell the story of a patient and how it affected her practice. >> i got involved in the issue of violence 25 years ago when an entire family of patients was murdered. i had just seen the baby. i talked to mom about rest beating, car seats, i spoke to

her about immunizations. all of those things that i have been trained to talk about. physicians for a long time were not trained around violence. i am here to tell you that is fast.ng and changing when valerie gamboa decided she was going out and her husband paul killed their two children, killed their mother, their two-year-old nephew and then waited for her to come home and alled her, that, for me, was transition point. point for me to say, what could i have done differently? how could i have made a difference in the lives of these patients? in the lives of my community? as surely as i stand here, i will tell you because of screening people before the mystic violence, sexual assault, guns in their home, talking to

them about safety, talking about , andhildren i take care of something called anticipatory guidance, i know for a fact that i have saved lives. will have more on gun violence tonight from the charleston church beginning at 8:00 eastern on c-span. >> three days of feature programming this holiday weekend on c-span. friday, congressional republican leaders honoring dick cheney at the capital. >> he asked when, does it bug you when people refer to you as darth vader.

an in-depth look at policing and communities. and washington d c police chief cathy lanier. >> most people get defensive if they feel like you are being offense of. being very respectful, and this is not a crisis if it is not a dangerous situation, repressed versus demands, those things change that dynamic a little bit. >> sunday at 2:00, race and the criminal justice system with valerie jarrett and others. then, portions of the washington ideas festival. speakers include mark warner, al anne-marieuthor slaughter. >> we have to band the word helping. helping is not taking the burden

off of you. you are still figuring out what needs to be done and you are asking him to help. if we are going to get to where we are going, and they have to be lead parents or equal coparents. for a full schedule, go to www.c-span.org. described american regionalism and politics. bluescribes red states and states. he addresses students at iowa university. >> it is my special honor to introduce our speaker, an award-winning journalist and the 11thd history of rigel -- rival regional cultures of north america, described as the history of north america that describes and explains away partisanship with the claim that

culture wars are inevitable. other books include lobster coast and the struggle for forgotten frontier, oceans and, travels through dangerous seas, and the republic of private. he has also been the state and national stage rival. we all look forward to learning more about the 11 rifle regions in the country that will no doubt lead to greater understanding of the current presidential campaign. please join me in welcoming: what are. colin woodard. [applause] >> thank you all. a great pleasure to be back in iowa again. nations, which this i book is about north american am speaking about tonight book is about north american regionalism, and of vital

importance in place in understanding our history, our national identity, and our current political cleavages, which are geographic as much as ideological. there are red states and blue states, that there was a civil war in the place called the south, we know that presidential candidates are supposed to say one set of things to their party faithful when they arrived in new hampshire, and then two weeks later, they completely different things to the faithful of the same party when they get to south carolina. even in this tea party era, state like vermont and mississippi might as well be on separate planets in terms of proper role of government, the relationship between church and state, even the meaning of important and key terms in the american lexicon as freedom, or liberty. or indeed the definition of

american values and identity. the point is, we are no more united as a culture, ordination, then europe is. our component cultures are more diverse and share fewer values than any two eu member states today. but we cannot talk about these critical differences in any meaningful way, because we do not have the right map. what do we mean by regions? we hear regionalism all the time. regional polls, marketing, whether people like krispy kreme or dunkin' donuts. we hear about regions, but it is always through a lens of a set of regions defined using state boundaries, and sorted in that classic federal government way, the northeast in the midwest and the south, and the west. but by doing this, particularly by following state lines, you end up distorting and deleting the true -- diluting the truth.

this approach misses the true historical fissures which are historically based, consistent through the centuries, and really respects international boundaries. again, we all know this. we know state batteries -- boundaries don't make any sense. is anyone here from maryland? anyone from maryland, they all know there are three marily -- marylands. there are three texas. austin is the state capital of texas, but houston, then in then dallas and san antonio. coastal strip of the west coast that seems to share a great deal in common and provinces and is in on with the interiors of their own states and provinces. there is upstate in downstate illinois. there's the great quote from the democratic strategist james carville.

early in his career he was famously taking of famous neophyte around pennsylvania, and was trying to tell him the realities of working for statewide office. he said here is what you have to understand. there is philadelphia, pittsburgh, and alabama in between. if he was talking about the uplands of northern alabama, he would have a pretty sound as no ethno historical ground. people in missouri cannot even agree on how to pronounce the state. clearly state boundaries don't catch something. in times of uncertainty, many americans seek solace in the works of the founding fathers, hoping that if we can return to their ideal, if we understood and followed their original intent, we could find our misplaced sense of common service -- purpose and bring the union back to unity. time and again this is frustrated by the simple, very obvious fact, that the men who

came together to confront a common enemy in the 1770's, and build a more enduring alliance in the 1800s, were not our country's founders -- but rather the founders' great, and great great, and great great great grandchildren. they shared very little in common in terms of purpose and intent. most of our true regional cultures date back to that 17th and early 18th centuries. the original clusters on the east coast, originally started from, and the light shading is where each started. these original clusters on the eastern seaboard were founded and settled by people from distinct regions of the british isles, france, the netherlands and spain, each with their own religious, political and ethnographic characteristic.

for generations, these differing cultures developed in isolation from one another, consolidating their own cherished for the bulls and fundamental values, and expanding across the eastern half of the country in nearly exclusive settlement bands. the dark section is the 1775 line. this is the expansion taking 50 -- 21850. some of these cultures champion individualism, and some utopian reform. some are guided by divine purpose, others champion freedom of conscience and inquiry. some embrace explicit anglo protestant identity. others, ethnic and religious pluralism. some valued at quality and democratic participation in

politics. others, deference to a traditional aristocratic order modeled on slave states of antiquity. throughout the early colonial time, they saw one another as competitors for land, settlers, capital, and even as enemies. these cultures you see here to opposing sides in the english civil war the 16 40's, in the american revolution, in the war of 1812. nearly all of the cultures on the map right now would consider leaving the union in the 80 years following the battle of yorktown. two of them tried to do so in the 1860's. the point is, there has never been one america, but rather several. today, there are 11. i'm going to briefly introduce them. the book goes into the nuances. i will give you the cartoon version so we can get through them all in 15 minutes.

bear with the shortcomings i'm going to do. we will start in the top right corner with yankeedom in blue. it was founded on the shores of massachusetts bay by radical calvinists and new zionists. since the outset, it has put emphasis on perfecting earthly society, through social engineering, individual self-denial for the common good, and the aggressive assimilation of outsiders. it has prized education, intellectual achievement, and community rather than individual empowerment, and broad citizen participation in politics and government. this is seen as the public

shield against the machinations of aristocrats and other tyrants, like strong county government. i will describe why it is that area is categorized as yankeedom, and it gives you a sense of what it is depicting. the puritans may have come to massachusetts bay and absorbed the old colony from cape cod, swallowed up the royalist settlements in maine, and consolidated new england in connecticut, and so on. after the dutch were defeated in new netherlands, there was a great controversy about who is going to have control over what became new york. the controversy was because, remember in my era at least, your high school textbooks which show each of the colonies, and many of the colonies were claiming a strip, going all the way across the map to wherever the next ocean was. and it so happened that massachusetts'strip went through an enormous swath of upstate new york.

massachusetts said, this nuance to us -- belongs to us. there was a big controversy. the compromise was everyone decided, new province in new york to me get sovereignty over millions of acres. by way of compensation, massachusetts will hold land title to this vast area under dispute. it happened that massachusetts-based land companies were given by the commonwealth the right to settle those zones and did so, and organized villages on the move with entire groups of people from one town, moving out to this vast area of contested land in new york, led by their clergyman to create new england style villages in upstate new york. this is why so many of the towns in that region resemble those in new england. fast-forward to the creation of

the northwest territory and the ohio territory, and you run into the same problem. that blue bit of their the lake in ohio around cleveland -- that is the western reserve, of connecticut. if you match it up, that is connecticut's strip. connecticut based land companies ended up settling the section known as the western reserve. if you look today, peleliu or rand mcnall -- pull out your brand mcnally not, a lot of towns had the same place names as connecticut. another generation, the michigan territory is happening. many of the initial settlers, who went to the constitutional current -- convention, who were the governors of the initial government, were from the

western reserve of ohio. the yankees who settled portions of upstate new york and new england, provided the first five michigan governors. similar for the wisconsin territory. you are watching this formatting of the hard drive, as it were, as the line of settlement moved forward. these were in separate bands. you can tell a similar story for each of the cultures on the right to thirds of the map. that's what it's depicting. moving on, into the area and light blue around the big apple. that is new netherlands.

it wasn't founded by the british time, the 16 40's and 50's, the netherlands was the most sophisticated society in the western world. they welcomed people from many nations on the shores of

delaware bay. it was from the very beginning, pluralistic, organized around the middle class, and spawned a culture of middle america and what we think of as the heartland, where ethnic and ideological. he had never been a priority, where government is seen as an unwelcome intrusion, and political opinion is moderate, even apathetic. it was an ethnic mosaic from the start. even around the resolution, pennsylvania had a german rather than british majority. it is a swing region because it shares yankee belief that society should be organized to benefit ordinary people, but unlike the yankees, it rejects top-down government intervention to achieve this. it ends up being a buffer zone between two traditions in the yankee and appellations that are appalachians that are at odds. it's no mistake that many maps have a large midlands section. moving southward into the chesapeake country, southern bits of maryland and delaware, eastern north carolina, you are

in the tidewater. this is set up more or less the same time as the expansion of new england, set up by english people. but it was a different group of english people. it was settled not by calvinists creating a religious utopia, but by the younger sons of southern english gentry. the semi-feuda society, where everything was for aristocrats. the 17th century version of downton abbey. the right people leading the heads of household, but we care about what happens with the hands. that social contract. in the context of the new world, it was a major problem. they found great difficulty in

finding people who wanted to stand in for the role of the serfs and peasantry. they turned first to indentured servants, and then to a full on slave system. he did not begin like the entire letter. -- like that in tidewater. it was the most powerful nation in the 18th century, but today, it is a nation in decline. has it been boxed out of westward expansion by boisterous appalachian neighbors, and

eating away at the expanding federal halos around the district of columbia, and hampton roads in norfolk and virginia, the world's largest naval base. some people say, the map change andsome people say, the map change 100 years from now, are these rings permanent? no, but the culture has a lot of inertia. things move very slowly. sometimes cultures in fact, disappear. there is no babylonia. there is no mesopotamia. if i were to move fast 100 years, the tidewater seems to disappear rather rapidly, being absorbed into something midland-ish. the federal government, in the middle of tidewater, with trillions of dollars in spending, means literally millions of people can liv economic and sociale lives without reference to the tidewater, having a cumulative effect over time. onto the boisterous appalachian neighbors. much bigger than the appalachian range itself, and the most populous of these nations. this is founded in the early 18th century, somewhat later

than the ones we have talked about. it was founded by wave upon wave of settlers from the war-ravaged borderlands of northern ireland and the english marshes, and lowland scotland. it has been lampooned by generations of writers and screenwriters as the home of hillbillies and rednecks. in reality, it is a transplanted culture, formed in a state of near constant danger and upheaval, characterized by a warrior ethic, and deep commitment to personal sovereignty and individual liberty. people of appalachia has been intensely, suspicious their history of the low land aristocrats, and yankee social engineers alike. said the region has tended to shift alliances based on whoever was the greatest threat to their freedom. working our way south to the

deep red area and the deep south, around charleston and south carolina, this is a regional culture founded in the 16 60's and 16 70's by slave lords from the english isle of and our betas, who were transparent -- barbados, who were transplanting the slave

economy in lower america. this is actually the oldest of the european american cultures. when i went to school, you had this east to west expansion, manifest destiny. in fact, the oldest european settlements in the united states are in the southwest, and came south to north.

this is the borderlands of new spain. the vast and expensive american -- spanish-american empire. essentially, it is the same. most americans are aware it is a place apart, were hispanic societal norms and language dominates. you realize that among mexicans, nor tenures have the reputation -- nortenos have a certain reputation. the north long been a hotbed of democratic reform in revolutionary sentiment. various parts of the region, before the annexations, try to break off from the rest of mexico and try to form independent buffer states, between the two federations. there was the republic of the rio grande.

the republic of texas. it was not austin and his anglo followers. they were backed by the entire spanish-speaking elite of the province of texas. that was the idea, to get away from the exploited relationship with the rest of mexico, and avoid being captured into the u.s. it did not turn out that way. that was the original plan. as you can see, today it stretches for 100 miles on both sides of the border and resembles in many ways, germany during the cold war. to peoples with a common culture, separated by an increasingly large wall. next two our second-generation nations. they are much younger. the far west and northwest are in the late half of the 19th century. they were not colonized by a european group coming and setting down a settler society, and expanding hours. but they were settled by the

rest of us. they come later. the first one to be settled actually was the left coast, not the far west. it is sandwiched between the coastal mountain ranges in the pacific ocean. is originally colonized by two groups. merchants and missionaries and woodsman from new england, who came by the sea. before the panama canal, the much safer way to get across the continent was to get on a boat in boston or new york and sale around the end of south america, through the great passage. you go all the way up the shore of south america and central and i got finally come into the mouth of the columbia river into san francisco bay. that was the easy way. the second group of people who came across did it the hard way, going overland, over the incredibly dangerous expense of the far west. not only was it environmentally and i'm it wise hazardous, but the native tribes were trying to defend their territory from intruders, sometimes to great effect. these people tended to be

miners, for traders, prospectors from the appellation -- appalachian midwest. they expanded an incredible amount of effort to convert these areas to be a new new england. they put forward schools to say the continent in a yankee way. they were all over the place credit had their own journals. they would report whether they were establishing a way to keep in the yankees way. they also expanded considerable effort trying to create new england in the pacific. and new citizen on the hill, a new humanity, we can follow the lessons in new england. they wrote about how their travels around were similar to the mayflower.

despite this, they were not entirely successful. the west coast is not just another yankeedom, because they encountered another settlement. they and up with a hybrid culture. it combines yankee utopianism, the idea that we can and should create a better world, and make the world more perfect, with the appalachian emphasis on individual self-expression. and ended up being a unique combination. think of the companies that

dominated 20th century life. apple, microsoft, google, amazon, silicon valley, it is all in that one little strip. that is like the population of romania. it's a pretty outside influence for the size of the territory. it has been the staunchest ally in federal politics of yankeedom since it was established, but it dashes with the far western sections of the interior of its own home states -- clashes with the far western sections of the interior of its own home states. the next, this is the one place where i will admit that environment totally trumped ethnography. in this area, in the context of settlement and the technology available, it was so high, and dry, and remote, it stopped eastern nations in their tracks. with minor exceptions, it was only able to be colonized by the deployment of industrial scale resources. railroads, dance, irrigation systems-- dams, irrigation systems. we exploited it as an internal colony for the benefit of the

rest of the nation's, in the far west people have been aware of this and resentful of this dependent status. and if anger has been shifted back and forth through history between being directed at hello between being directed at corporate masters of the union pacific railroads, and at the federal government. it shifts back and forth. it is an interesting phenomenon.

the next two, only have small enclaves, but play a major role in canada. the first with a score around quebec, new france --the traditions and values of the aboriginal people in northwest america, and the down-to-earth, egalitarian consensus driven. there are amongst the most liberal people in the continent in terms of social attitudes. not about being -- speaking english in montreal, but getting along in the community. it was supposed to be a reproduction of the society in france. but it did not work out that way in the american wilderness. the peasants from brittany and northern france discovered they had more culturally in common with ever -- aboriginal people.

there are letters in the french archives where some person is writing, saying all the peasants have run away, i'm starving because i don't know how to farm. it did not work out -- it deviated a great deal from france, and created a unique society. finally, the last one, first nation at the top. i did not make this slide. a blogger expanded. it is accurate. an enormous and expansive area, the newest of the oldest of the nations, depending on how you want to look at it. it is populated by native american groups and tried, to -- tribes, who generally never gave

up their land, and have largely retained their cultures. reclaiming their sovereignty now. they have pointed out, in the late 19th century, when you would have expected treaties to be signed or land to be seized, everyone thought, there's nothing up there. it is frigid and cold. there's nothing there except ice. so it never happened. in recent decades, as the constitutional environments become more sophisticated, many tribes have pointed this out. we never gave you the land, so maybe it is still ours. the canadian constitutional court essentially said, you are right. that is where you have the territory, and vast sections of what you see is first nations, areas where the original traditional territories of these tribes has been recognized by canada, and they have a seat at

the table in all the decisions that might happen in vast areas of the continent. it turns out it is not nothing there, it is everything there. they have all the natural resources. they trade it for manufacturing you goods. will not interested in all caps off they will want to it is the storehouse of north and will the storehouse of north america's resources, and all the stuff we need to keep life going. water, rare earth, minerals, and, petrochemicals, you name it. it is up there. the first nations are going to have a major role. the green one is not on this map am a but it's also part of north america. they are about to become -- they

are becoming an independent nationstate very soon. they are already an autonomous part of the kingdom of denmark. it is 95% in units speaking. it is one of the only parts were the aboriginal language is not only official, but dominant. it will be a totally different take on 21st century life, and other nations and societies. i was in greenland a few years ago, and nobody owns any land. everything is community owned. your house is leased from the people. if you go out and shoot a walrus or a seal, you bring it to your village communal ice locker, and anybody can come and take some, without any accounting. is a totally different take on things. and women have never been in a subservient role. it just never happened that way. because the scored his of drugs and alcohol are more harshly on the men, women tend to be in positions of power in greenland, from the government ministers,

mayors, and lutheran bishops. speaking of the foreign minister, who was telling us this, she said here is what you have to understand. in the 1700s when the danish came, they said, we have god, and he looks like this and we want you to worship him. we looked at each other and said, he? she is now the prime minister. it would be an entirely different take on 21st century life. these are the nations today. their affect on history has been profound. the map is echoed in the battle lines of the american civil war, the constitutional convention, and give -- leading up to the u.s. civil war, the cultural wars of the 1960's, and any hotly contested election in

history. since it is political season, let's look at that little bit. iowa is mostly in the midlands. in fact, there's no other state in the country so completely midland as iowa. there is no single state as dominated. iowa is the exception. you can see, if you really want to understand the red blue politics, you cannot look at the state level, you have to look at the county level. that is where you see the divisions. you can see it right there. presidential election maps. you can see yankeedom popping out, western reserve of ohio, west coast appearing, monochrome in the deep south. i have not messed with the colors. the red is republican and the blue is democrat. this is the 1916 showdown between woodrow wilson and charles hughes. republicans, for the first century, was a party founded in yankeedom, and therefore a century. but the parties come and go. the current parties have swapped

over the past 40 years. they switched constituencies and their program. it has shifted. trying to understand and historical timeframe what has happened, is an exercise in futility. the lasting difference is that really matter in the broader time scheme are regional and cultural, and the parties end up re-donning their garb and shifting their priorities. there is the 2004 contest -- i'm sorry, the 2008 contest between barack obama and john mccain.

it is a reversal of the counties. there is the western reserve again. left coast. but there are a couple of differences. one is, you can now see el norte, different from the surrounding counties. but also, south and tidewater are no longer monochrome. what happened between 1916 and 2008? hispanics and african-americans can effectively vote, and use the franchise, whereas they could not in 1916. many blue counties in tidewater and deep south are majority african-american. you see the political references of the majority expressed in el norte in the way it would not this is a map that asks, between the 2004 contest, john kerry

versus george w. bush, and the 2008 contest of obama versus mccain, did each county vote more for the democrat than last time or republican? as you might imagine in the hope change election, most counties across the continent voted more democratic than they had in the previous cycle -- except for this red blot, almost identical to central appalachia. obama, and he knows this, has a greater appalachian problem, consider this. it is not just partisan, it is cultural. in the most recent election, obama is sitting president, did remarkably badly in democratic primaries in appalachia against unknown challenges. in west virginia, the sitting democratic party leader, 41% of democratic voters cast ballots for a texas prison inmate instead. and kentucky, 42% of democrats in the democratic primary preferred uncommitted to the sitting president of their own party. in arkansas, obama won, but

arkansas is cut bag nelly between deep south and greater appalachia. he lost almost by 50% in the democratic primary. 2012 comes around, the book has been out for a couple of months, the barack obama was born in hawaii, but grew up in the yankeedom. mitt romney was the son of a yankee governor, in michigan, and the governor himself of the most yankee of states, and created a health-care plan that fit into the yankee does. however, he ended up having the same regional vulnerabilities and assets as obama. ended up being a wash in a

general election. romney did extremely well in the republican primaries in the same places obama did well in his primaries. against very regional candidates, rick santorum, who is the preferred candidate of greater appalachia, newt gingrich from the great south, and of the other real contestants, only ron paul did not have a clear regional cipher to look through. the others did. it was fascinating how on level, you can see that. romney, the yankee conservative, won in almost every single county in new england. every single one in

massachusetts and vermont. is the republican primaries in 2012 and ohio. green is the romney victory. essentially, romney had one ohio, because of strong support in the western reserve. same thing in illinois. the yankee north voted for romney to get down stay, he had great difficulty against santorum. romney also clinched oregon and washington, coastal california. however, pundits started saying, the primaries are coming, alabama and mississippi, this is where newt gingrich will have his chance. the polls are too close to call. except, they weren't. in now them the blue is gingrich

and the green is romney, -- in alabama, the blue is gingrich, the green is romney, the brown is santorum. santorum walked away with alabama, because he had gotten those appalachian votes again. the posters were blindsided, because they had done polls based on gender and income level and race, but not by regional cultures. mississippi was a bit closer, only because the appalachian section of mississippi is much smaller. posters ignored these kind of things at their own peril. that is the most recent presidential election, just to finish the pattern. today, essentially we have two coalitions. they are two weak coalitions, which explains the brinkmanship we have been in.

there is a blue coalition that consists of yankeedom, and the red coalition with appalachian and deep south. if you overlaid the electoral college and senate and house of representatives, that does not give a lock on anything. you control federal power, you have to have filibuster proof, senate majority. neither of them can do it. each of their respective political platforms have not

really one over the other sections that much, especially the midlands. there ends up being brinksmanship, a fight over trying to bring in one or another of the swing region, which is why the elections are nailbiter's, and why it is you can have a swing election, with a lot of switching. neither one has a stable coalition, and neither one has a platform that can reliably win over a regional super majority to actually govern. throughout history, that is what has happened. regional super majority coalitions that have allowed one political platform. in the past, usually not explicitly sorted by party. cross party coalitions would form. today, we don't have that. ideology and party are together

now. political formation or another can come up with something that can win over the swing regions or pull a weak part away from another. it's not a good spot for america or the world to be in. how would you do it? for the red coalition, the obvious play, the one that george w. bush wanted to do, was for el norte. a group of people who are family oriented, rather conservative. but that is against part of the republican base, that has a very narrow vision of what the american identity is. donald trump has made it even more difficult. that is really a difficult spot for the national republican party to be in, because the demographics, el norte is growing rapidly. if texas flips to being blue

overall because of relative demographic changes, the republican party is doomed on the national stage. it is something that i'm sure it keeps a lot of them up at night. for the blue coalition, there are more paths to forming a supermajority. trying to win over the midlands, but the other is the far west. there is an opportunity there. tidewater seems to be falling into their lap i default. far west, obama in 2008, he got invited and new mexico and colorado, but he almost got montana. he missed it by two points or something like that.

the number of candidates -- a number of democratic candidates have won, because there is that libertarian essence, but there is a concern about fairness in economics plays very well. so you have progressives. if the argument is about, a americans are individualistic, we struggle for the fittest, there's also intend -- emphasis on a fair fight, that plays very well in the far west. there are opportunities there. zooming in in the midwest, i was asked earlier this year to give a talk at an academic conference in grand rapids called finding the last region. it was billed as the largest academic conference in the midwest. in an expression of this new movement, within the academy to try to reinvigorate the study and interest in the midwest as a

region. after the prairie historians disappeared, there has been kind of a loss. to have been too focused on midwestern study -- the ones that were focused on midwestern studies have largely disappeared. there is a movement to try to bring that focus back. the conference asked two questions, among others. one is, geographically speaking, what is the midwest? the other is, why is it that it's identity has been more ambiguous and less resilient than new england or the south? i provided a couple of answers from this paradigm to those questions. one obvious one is on the map. there are really three competing cultural streams that came from the east, through what we think of as the midwest. before we start counting the area of the great plains.

in american nation terms, there is no single coherent regional culture that fills up that. base -- that space. that is part of the reason why it is more difficult to maintain. you can see these differences in the region. this is a map of cultural diffusion of ideas, using largely material objects, like construction and building styles. you can see how you ended up with a separate stream, each going back to an initial cultural heart. here is a detailed map of dialects, from the much discussed internet project. the detail is from crowdsourcing. millions of people connect with him via the internet, and record what they sound like, and a location.

this has allowed him to actually crowd source and incredible detail how people speak today, and sort it out as a linguist, into different domains. this was published after my book, so i did not talk about it, but you can see at the domain level, you have the same thing. three areas, plus the great plains. north, south, midland. again, the midwest at a fundamental level, it is how people speak. and there is a cultural geographers classic map of the religious dominant zones in the country. you can see again, the east-west division. the midwest does exist, but it is a federated entity. it is one that i would argue -- obviously there is a midwest, but what is it? you have three separate settlement streams, who all experienced the same historical challenges, and were trying to settle this remote area at the

same time, and experiencing common externally imposed political frameworks. that started with the northwest ordinance in 1787 or so. that meant a whole rolling section of u.s. territory, the future states of ohio, indiana, michigan, wisconsin and illinois, would not have slavery. that meant that the midwestern side of the ohio river ended up devolving in a very difficult -- different political framework. also, the northwest ordinance is ended up creating a firewall that prevented the expansion of tidewater from the kentucky bluegrass into the west, and also with the missouri

compromise, set-aside misery as a slave state, but said that all of the territory that makes up the future states of minnesota and iowa and kansas, and nebraska would also be free. it created an additional firewall. there ended up being a creation of a common set of experiences. the midwest is absolutely real, but it is something that is a federated entity, which i think is helpful in the effort to reinvigorate regional studies. we can realize where the achilles heels were as we work out how to define it. the takeaway of this is early settlement can matter a great deal in subsequent history. this is a map of the congregational churches in 1860.

each dot is five churches. this is a marker of yankee settlement in 1860. notice the close correspondence to the yankeedom boundaries. but also check out iowa. the inky's try to make it their own, saving them from the kentuckians, and so forth. they created these universities throughout the midwest. but they were not able to achieve dominance. however, their influence was felt at some level. i was definitely in the midlands, but i sometimes wonder -- this may be a reach -- but if you look at iowa and match it up with political behavior recently, it is amazing how much the congregational church map matches the blue red fissures. i've been asking people, why is

this, why are the rural farming counties on the eastern part of the map, why are they voting differently? that may be part of the mix. i will open it up to questions now. anybody? don't be bashful. >> thank you very much for

coming in tonight. my employment with microsoft has caused me to live in many different places around the country. when i read your book, it was very interesting to me to note that the places i have enjoyed living are places that are very similar to my beliefs politically, and things that i like culturally. guess that's why i am ambivalent about iowa. it is very pluralistic. but i like it a lot better than the deep south, for example. as you have gone through and learned so much about the subject, is that a common experience for people? mr. woodard: yes, i hear that a lot in talks. another interesting question that comes in, the early settlements of the patterns explains what are happening now, a lot of people say, but they were moving around. all of the immigration in the 19th century, and today we had

mass retailing, mass broadcasting in the media, the internet. certainly that must making everyone more homogenous, right? except, it's not. . . . .

>> they feel like they are surrounded by like-minded people. we are talking that dominant cultures. every single one of these counties you have the full spectrum of political beliefs. even in the blue and the red, you still have upwards of 40% voting for the wrong side. they have all sorts of people everywhere, it is whether or not you feel the culture around you.

everything feels right. or if you're just completely frustrated. they have unexamined assumptions i cannot stand. maybe it is a combination for most people. move and chance to people try to move where they like where they are going. other people said they tend to resemble their destination. statistically speaking, people who move 10 to be different than people who left behind. they have remaining resilience despite the challenges. as part of the answer. yes sir. >> good evening.

they said what happened to kansas? looking at the map, i noticed that kansas itself had three equal parts of appalachia, midlands and the far west. i would like to pose a question to you, what happened in kansas to create one of the few states that had differences in different regions going through. i am not an expert on kansas politics. it is rather controversial. it statewide fuel experience appears the answer is maybe not. i do not know, i would be guessing. the midlands is a swing region. it can shift depending on changes in the climate.

you have a large but sparsely populated western section. you have a big chunk in greater appellation. it is an environment where the possibility of an experiment like brownback's does not seem implausible that it would happen. it it happened and why happened now, i do not know enough about kansas to answer that. 90m not shocked, getting reasonable figures there. >> i wish there was a better answer. >> this is also partial to kansas. yes. >> hello. being from iowa is very interesting to look at this map. havell sometimes appalachia and yankee town. i was curious how the counties are selected for this. i noticed the northern part of iowa is and yankee done. it is specific to the county.

i wonder with statistics you look at. >> yes, the county unit is the only substate unit that has any kind of historical continuity. you cannot use the congressional base. counties are stable and statistics are collected by counties. in terms of deciding what county a place will be in, the project is accurate and easy to do as you are on the right side of the map. a getsgo left, it's harder and harder because the depth of history is shorter. the speed of settlement becomes more rapid. the population is often more sparse. it is one thing when you go from one county to another. the 19th century you could jump several states forward. the challenge became greater. dumb itone like yankee was easier because you could get individualized data.

because yankees at a certain point one had a larger external market nation -- external migration. they go back for a long time and see who had the daughters in the revolution. tryinge out of their was to establish that they and their families came on the original boats. every small town some local luminary put together the history of my little town and seven at leatherback volumes. detailing everything. the economic and military history. in the back third of history there were be a genealogy of single person living in

the town in 1883. every single-family living then was traced back to the old world. scholars have tapped on these because there is one from every town especially in the yankee zone. single person living in the town in 1883. by putting it all together they are on an individualized level able to know who founded this founded bys town was these people. they can trace that's backwards. that was made incredibly easy. however, we start getting out closer and closer to the far the which is roughly where regular agricultural folkways of these cultures cannot sustain themselves. they collapsed for a lack of water. you finally get to a zone around the 100 where you need large-scale irrigation or you cannot function. everything sort of stopped. closer tooser and that line, you find his spaces out. it becomes trickier and trickier. there is often not that level of detail genealogy. unlike that yankee manifest defend thest to

yankee way across the continents, the midland is the characteristic that there is no one cultural group in charge that you can have multiple communities with their own language and cultural stuff maintaining it side by side. there is a danish village here, there is a reformed dutch village growing tulips right there. they are all speaking their own language. although it's a 1920's. that is part of the ethos. if you did that and yankee don't there be somebody knocking on the door trying to get to the public school and scolding you for having a beer garden on the sabbath. in the yankee dumb it is a melting pot. -- yankee town. you almost come and assimilate into it. not sound the midlands. with every available item you have about where were the church is located.

sometimes there is a marker like the congregational church that shows you where the yankeedom stuff was. sometimes there is a particular election. sometimes federal that was highly polarized by regional isture where one culture going to vote and a certain way and that helps you tease out the map. dialect maps past and present give you a tracer warehouse how people speak by county level. that is the material culture map. you take all of these things and you overlay them and you go back and see some areas where you might not be sure. and those areas i would go in and try to read local history. i would do the best i can. business. a messy it does not follow a straight line. the map is solid. it is verse solid on the right. you have to kind of make the decision to do the best you can. the dakotas are the most difficult part to do. in terms of iowa, the reason

yankee material building culture that goes through the section of northeast iowa, all of the dialect maps you get a bolt of the yankee northern speech that works north. who are the norwegians coming from the lutheran calvinist ordered liberty, ordered freedom kind of approach to things had an overflow into the top counties from the minnesota's. the minnesota overflow into the northeastern part of violent which is why i categorized it that way. there was the yankee effort you seen these congregational churches. you see in the early history of i there was an effort to make the new territory of iowa yankee. it did not succeed. i took a conservative approach or maybe it did dominate over the pluralistic culture. about what people

in the north east section think about it. gets always good to crowdsourcing from individualized places. >> my question is, you mentioned that in modern times, people are becoming more ideologically condensed. that is infighting of social media. do you think this sort of condensing could cause things like in texas there have been more and more movements to separate texas from the rest of an old civil war secession manner. >> lie governor perry was talking about. >> that plays into the zeitgeist.

ideologythe country -- and hearts of loyalty and regional location are all starting to sink up. of course you will get frustrated. are in this place and all the opposition is from those people over there. of course you will get into a political atmosphere is geographic rather than just partisan difference which will lead you to say that you should be muttering about maybe it would be better if we seceded and had our own place. whether -- hopefully that does not become realistic. people say our literature at your map, wouldn't it be easier for broken up? if he snapped your fingers that might be true in theory. i have a more tragic sense of the human condition. i was a correspondent in eastern europe with the collapse of communism. faith that it

would all happen peacefully if we started going down that road. i think we need to work out a way to continue working together. not only because the american spearmint has been successful, but the cliche that the world needs us, and our leadership, that is true. the more time you spend out the world, the more you realize there is nobody else to step in. it is important for everybody on the planet that we succeed and carry on. >> thank you. leftwas wondering why you miami in south florida. >> that was excellent, part of the spanish caribbean. at some point i needed to decide that i need to write one book with the answer to everything american history. i need to have a go back 400 years. for the fact of the matter i needed to define it and put some

limits on it. my definition was and how far ago and i do not end up writing about two-year adelphi go about the chilling and minors that created the enclave down there at the edge of the southern ocean. i needed to have a definition for where i would stop. cultural heart. the landing point from which this extended outward has to be in the present confines of the united states and canada. that left out a few things. hawaii which is a greater polynesia, dufresne land and its associated sections of southern labrador, and the southern part of florida. the reason is that there's a 400 your history. there is each founding culture. and how it got started. then, you move forward to the next space. each one that is added, i would people about the

great celestial navigators going between islands and setting up these cultures in hawaii and micronesia. it does not intersect with most of the american story at the continental level. it probably does not even enter a sphere until the yankee missionaries get out there. it does not become a state until after pearl harbor. they did not join canada until after world war ii. the referendum for old people are still furious. they only lost by a little bit. many of them felt that they should have been a country. toe you can get on a fairy go on the established fairy that ghost between rest the country. he goes from nova scotia outback. everyone says i'm going to canada. they still say that. they're serious.

also in south florida. that itrtunate part is is unimportant and the political environment, because florida is a swing state. ,ecause there is a history florida did not matter in politics until the past 30 years the deep south definitely settled the northern part of florida that was far to the ground. it did not form the founding settlement culture of southernmost florida. that came not from the elmore tate part of new spain, but rather from spain's maritime regional culture. zoneall of the caribbean came in. they were making the ego mine the trans shipments of all of the stuff in asia that the spanish empire had done together. on these gigantic ships across the pacific. these manila galleons.

they got to mexico and they brought incredible treasures by packed meal over to veracruz. they all came up to havana and then work through florida to use fuel the spanish empire. this is a big deal culture. i'll have to tell the entire story to bring south america into the equation. it is not that it does not exist or as a newspaper columnist said , writer says that south florida is not part of the u.s.. that i say that? that is not what i'm saying. it is not part of the established regional culture. >> thank you for your questions. that will conclude this session. if you can all join me in thanking calling. thank you for coming. [applause] >> there will be a reception and book signing in the south ballroom shortly.

>> thank you for coming. >> tonight artist and columnist margaret crabapple talks about her trying of the israeli-palestinian conflict. she talks about the immigration detention centers. at encore q&a can be seen later today starting at 7:00 eastern on c-span two. >> this holiday weekend american history tv on c-span3 has three days of feature programming. again friday evening at 6:30 eastern to mark the 125th anniversary of the birth of president dwight david eisenhower. head granddaughters susan, married, and and mary eisenhower start a gettysburg college. to talk about his military and political career as well as his legacy.

then, on saturday afternoon at 1:00 60 years ago rosa parks defied a city ordinance for blacks to leave the seat on a city bus to make room for white passengers. her stand helps instigate the bus boycott. we will reflect on the boycott and see what role lawyers played in the protest and civil rights movement. are from fred gray, an attorney for rosa parks. author 6:00 civil war william davis on a little-known aspect of the lives and leadership of union general ulysses s grant and confederal generate robert e lee p -- robert e lee. by 1965 progress report on nasa's project including the man graham and the mariner four flyby of mars. before 9:00 writer and award-winning documentary film maker rick burns on how the public learns about history through film and television.

american history tv all weekend and on holidays only on c-span3. >> c-span it takes you on a road to the white house. best access to the candidates and town hall meetings. speeches, rallies and meet and greets. we are taking your comments on twitter, facebook and by phone. as always, every event we cover is available on our website. c-span.org. presidential candidate and new jersey governor chris christie held a town hall meeting with voters in new london new hampshire on monday. he was introduced by three local republicans. after he words he answered their questions. -- after is he answered their questions. [applause]

>> i am married to this guy. he is great. >> thank you. >> we are working hard. >> thank you. >> thank you for being here.

>> thank you. my name is dan representing new london when it was in the second district. and also the merrimack county for new london. i have the pleasure of introducing to you a man who will make a difference for the nation and for all the people here. i'm told of this is his 55th town hall meeting. i keep telling the governor you ought to see new hampshire. he keeps coming appearance in one would happen yet he might seem your several more times. it is an honor to have him here. we have a great republican ticket. one person really stands apart

from me. that is a person standing here. he's the one that will make you promises tonight. he will keep those because of his experience, his tenacity and .is resume we all of america. that is one thing well have in common. in that vein i will introduce to you the pledge of allegiance. >> if you can, the flag is right there. i pledge allegiance to the flag of united states as of america. and to the republic for which it stands. one nation, under god. indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> it is also my honor to be hurt governor governor christie and mary pat. andrew their son. and man i will introduce is probably no stranger to all of

you. walt ran for governor in the last cycle. unfortunately, we did not make it to where we wanted. a great man. a great veteran. walt hammerstein. [applause] >> it is wonderful to be back here. holden was the first citizen of new hampshire that supported my campaign. i think we did our first town hall here. first and foremost, merry christmas. i'm so glad i live in a country where i can say that to you. leadership matters. v8 weeks ago i was a

assistant and national talking with several hundred of my former colleagues. the four things that we always look for in leadership, whether it was the military, business, or and our families. characters first. experience a second. temperament is third. fourth is consistency. those of the four characteristics of good leaders. governor christie exhibits those to a t. me, when iant to think of the president of the united states and candidates who , is itsk for our vote

someone who i would entrust my son to? my granddaughters to? in providing for their safety and security. gentlemen, the person running for president that i would entrust my family to his governor chris christie. welcome. [applause] >> some of the most fun i've had near in new hampshire. when i came up here five different times to campaign with walt and judy. he would have been and should have been the governor that new hampshire needs now and would be in the future. his integrity, honesty, his

forthrightness supported me in my thinking of this candidacy. new hampshire would be much better if he were in concord. walt, thank you for your contribution to the state. the chairman of the campaign is here, wayne mcdonald. wayne has been right with us from the beginning, and i appreciate so much as leadership and the support that he is given to me and to our family. i want to thank the sheriff. he also has become a great

friend of ours overtime. thank you, dan. remember that earlier meeting? it was hot in the summer, we are trying to convince people that this campaign was going someplace, you believed it. i appreciate it very much. all the things are building blocks, foundational building blocks to building a successful campaign around new hampshire and around the country. but the biggest blocks, even these folks will admit, are what we are doing right now. what we are doing right now is have a group of people who are willing to come out on a monday night and give me a listen, give me a chance to convince you that i am the right person at this time in our country's history. and i love doing this. dan elevated my number of new hampshire town halls a little bit. 55 is an important number to me, because i'm the 55th governor of new jersey. i think that is where he got 55 from. this is our 43rd, but we will blow past 55 by the time we come back in the next couple weeks.

i love every minute of it because it is what keeps me in touch with the people i am representing. when you are governor, you can get very taxed. you have troopers with you all a time, they ride you around in their suv's, they pull you up to the back door of every place. when you are governor you never go to the front door of any place ever again. i've gone through every kitchen of every place in new jersey that has a catering hall. you go in those back doors and walked through the kitchen, you go through a pair of doors and see all these people in the room. you live in a bit of a bubble if you allow yourself to. one thing i did early on as governor was say to myself, i

need to be out there meeting real people where they can ask me real questions. not only what is on their mind but i can also feel the mood. that will help tell me just as much is about how might leadership is being received and how they feel about where they that will help tell me just as much about how might leadership is being received and how they feel about where they live. it has worked great for me in new jersey. it is a tradition here. so i am suited for doing these things because i have done them. that is the theme for tonight, too. you have to have done some of these things before you know how to do them right. for 13 years, i have been making decisions. every day for seven years as the chief federal prosecutor of new jersey the united states , attorney named on september 10, 2001.

that was what president george w. bush. septemberaccepted on 10th changed significantly the very next day. from the next seven years, i began working on arresting, prosecuting, and convicting in the state that lost the terrorists second most amount of people after september 11 and in the other state compared to new york. you always have decisions to make whether to proceed with an investigation or not whether , to bring charges to a grand jury or not when to ask for that , grand jury to return in an indictment or not, how to prosecute someone and what type of sentence to request when that person is convicted by a jury or of their peers decisions that , have a real effect on real people every day both those who are prosecuted and the victims whose rights are protected and acquitted by the prosecution.

there's no one else you can blame it on. you are accountable. you are responsible for those decisions. you are not one of a hundred. you are responsible. i went from that job to the governorship of new jersey which , i lovingly call an unruly state to govern. it is my home. i love it. it is where i dragged my wife 30 years ago from pennsylvania. it is where we have raised our children together there. it challenges you every day. i have a democratic legislature, 24-15 in the senate, 42-32 in the house. for every minute of every day that i've been government, upieve me, they don't wake every morning as themselves how , do we make the governor happy today?

what can we do to make his life full of joy and ease? it is a contentious thing. governing is contentious at times and difficult. but when you're the governor, you're responsible. you are the adult in the room. you have to forge consensus and consensus and bring people together together on both sides of the idle usually get things done for the people who elected you. you cannot say i cannot get this done because the bill was never released from the subcommittee where i had offered some significant amendments which were never voted on, but if they had been voted on, we would've gotten it through the full committee and, boy, we would've made really progress the entry your eyes are glazing over, no one is taken responsibility. not when you are governor. when you are governor, people want to know did you do it, or didn't you? are you getting this done or not? i tell you this because 13 years of being responsible for these decisions is what we need in my

view right now behind the desk in the oval office. for the last seven years, we had on-the-job training in the white house, a guy with the largest staff he ever managed before he took the most difficult and responsible executive decision in the world, was 30 people. 30 people. a handful of the people in this room was the most that barack obama was ever responsible for managing. and yet as a country, we gave the reins of the most complex, largest, most difficult to government the world has ever seen in the hands of somebody who had never made a consequential executive decision in his life. and we wonder, why we are so frustrated and angry with this government? we are because they are

incompetent at the very basic things that we want them to do. they are incompetent at protecting our borders, they are incompetent at providing safety and security for the american people in the homeland. they are incompetent with dealing with the day-to-day challenges of management that all of us who have had strong executive positions have had to deal with, who to hire, who to fire, how do you with those issues that come across the desk every day. they do not execute. you heard this week, the department of homeland security said 120,000 people who were given visas had their visas revoked. ok where are they? , we do not know. who are they? we don't know.

revoke them then? if you do not know who they are aware they are, what is the use of revoking them? these are the basics, everybody. this is where vince lombardi would call for blocking and tackling, the basics, what you need to do to have a competent team. we need to start there. we need to get back to basics in this country from a government perspective, and i know how to do that. but the reason why it is important to do this is because the stakes are so high. maybe three or four weeks ago we all would've thought the stakes are high, but not that high. after paris, after san bernardino this level of , competence is no longer acceptable because lives are at risk. the national schools are closed today. los angeles schools were closed earlier in the week. this is unacceptable. let me tell you why these school

systems you can sit and argue about the nature of the threat each one faced. do you know why they are closing? out of an abundance of caution. you know why they are taken as actions? there is no confidence in the fact that the government will protect them. you did not see that when george w. bush was president of the united states after 9/11 because people believed whether they agreed with the president or not on a particular policy, they were doing everything they could to protect the safety and security of the american people. we do not have that feeling anymore. we have a president who wants to release more prisoners from guantanamo even though 30% of the prisoners he has released already have been verified to be back in terrorist activity by his own director of national intelligence.

30% back in the terrorism business because he decided to release them from guantanamo. we have a president who said the other night, i do not understand the anxiety that people feel about terrorism because i do not watch enough cable tv. i did not make that up. he said it. and then we had the woman who , who saiducceed him in the debate here in new hampshire on saturday night, that as to isis, we are finally exactly where we want to be. here is what i suggest to secretary clinton. i suggest that she suspend campaigning, get on a airplane, fly to paris, and before christmas meet with the families of the murdered victims in paris and tell them, we are exactly where we want to be as to isis.

as they endure, not celebrate, endure christmas this year without their loved ones, i want her to look them in the eye and tell them that we are exactly where we want to be as to isis. the fact is she is secretary happy talk. that is her new name. that is all i'm going to call her from now on. secretary happy talk. the slogan for this administration should be, do you believe me or your lying eyes? because the american people see, they see quite well. and she is standing there in the state two days ago trying to , tell you that is exactly where we want to be.

and then martha raddatz three time tried to ask her, secretary clinton, you designed the policy to remove gaddafi from libya. now libya is in turmoil and a breeding ground for isis. what measure of responsibility do you hold for what is happening in libya? three times she asked her and three times she refused to take any responsibility for what is happening in libya. here is why she is a hypocrite. because if the libya policy had worked out well, if we had a burgeoning democracy that replaced gaddafi in libya, she would be literally setting her hair on fire and running around the stage to get you to notice that her policy was a success. yet when it is a failure, she refuses to be accountable.

she has never been the governor because when something goes bad, there's nowhere else to point. there is no other finger to point. when something goes bad, you have to be accountable. we cannot afford to put some united states senator, democrat or republican, in the white house for the next four years. they do not know how to take responsibility. they do not know how to be accountable because all they have to do every once in a while is vote. she is the worst example of it. i want to be president of the united states, not for the power. i want to be president of the united states for the responsibility. i believe that if you give me the responsibility that every day i will acquit that responsibility in a way that will make you proud of your vote . it does not mean you will agree with every decision.

you won't. as i tell people in new jersey all the time, if you're looking for the politician is going to review with hundred percent of the time, go home and look in the mirror. you are it. you're the only person you agree with 100% of the time. that is not what we should demand of people. we should demand that they are willing to be honest, have integrity, be clear, be open and be accountable for what they do as a leader. that is what i did for the last 13 years. that is what i've learned each time i've had to make a decision . there were decisions that were good and decisions that did not so go of. anyone who is human will have both. look at your own life and you know you got them. take someh we could of those decisions back, but a truly responsible person can't. the stakes are too high. because if a center for the developmentally disabled in san bernardino, california can be a target for a terrorist attack,

that means everywhere in america is a target for a terrorist attack. it is a different world everybody. , this is not al qaeda anymore. al qaeda wanted to do the big things, the uss cole, american embassies, world trade center, the pentagon, the capital building. they wanted to do big things. isis said all they want is a sweet taste of american blood. we are dealing with a different opponent now. we got to act differently. we need someone who knows what they are doing. that is exactly who i am and what i will be if you give me a chance to be president of united states. i am here tonight not to give you some big long speech could i'm here to hear what is on your mind and answer some questions. let me tell you what the rules are. in new hampshire, there is only one rope. in new jersey, therefore rules -- there are four rules

because it is new jersey. in new hampshire, only need one. you raise your hand, i call on you. this is not like the other town hall meetings that your other presidential candidates hold in new hampshire. he do not have to write down your questions on the way and and hand them to staff and have the staff read them and the decides which one i'm best at answering and give me those. i read them and answer them and everybody thinks we had a town hall meeting. i have to say the truth that it me to namee fair on the candidate that is town hall meetings that were. it would not, but her initials or hillary rodham clinton. we'll give you real you have to town hall meeting tonight in new london. i appreciate you coming and being here and i look forward to answering your questions. raise them up and let's see who has got questions here. they're going to bring a microphone to you so everyone in

the room can hear you. speaker: good evening and good to see you again . here's my question. right now our nuclear weapons , labs are run by private corporations. among other things, they work to earn a handsome of a profit as they can. my question is this -- should profit guide our nuclear weapons policy in particular our defense policy in general? governor christie: the answer is no. but also the answer should be i do not believe the two necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. if a great company is contracting with the government can provide the appropriate service for the people of this the nuclear area or other defense areas or other and theythe government

make a reasonable profit while providing a good service, i have no objection to that. i am a capitalist. i've no objection to it. if what you are saying by that question is if what will drive , their conduct is first how much money they make, whether not the job is done the right way, then that is completely unacceptable. let me just warn everybody that some of these examples, if you remember the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was a decision made by the government to change all private security guards at our national airports to government employees, the tsa. the idea was if they are government employees, they will do the job better than the private guys who failed allowing people on planes with box cutters. we have now seen over and over again in the last six or seven years spotchecks and tests that have been run at the nation's

s by tsa employees where they are missing 80% to 90% of the weapons that are being brought on to the airplanes. all i would say to you is that if the premise is that if profit , is put ahead of competence and service to the government and the people who are paying the bill, that is unacceptable. if in fact we can find a way to have folks in the private sector who do the job extraordinarily well and in the process they make a profit that is not gorging, a reasonable profit -- i'm a capitalist, no problem with people providing service to the private sector for a reasonable profit. but that is where management comes in. that is one who is responsible comes in. you have to put responsible people in charge of those issues to make those kinds of determinations. if you do not put those responsible people in charge, you can wind up getting the

worst of both worlds. you could end up being gouged and get a lousy profit for it. along those lines, i have a christmas present for you. governor christie: how great to be in new london. speaker: this is a summary of the report on nuclear risk reduction. , and it was athor panel of military people from around the world -- the chief author is marine general james cartwright. so for you i hope you will find , this useful. governor christie: thank you. excellent. something to read on the bus. i have to drive to portsmouth. i've got something to read on the right. mary pat wants to read it for me. maybe she can read it and summarize it for me? thank you, sir. i appreciate it. i look forward to reading it. right there, we are going to come up and get you one. speaker: welcome to new

hampshire, governor. as a former new jerseyite -- governor christie: where are you from? speaker: phillipsburg. i think one of the biggest threat that is facing our nation right now, other than terrorism, is the size of our debt. what we are leaving for our children and grandchildren is as former candidate barack obama unpatriotic, although he tripled what you started with. what are your plans to get government spending not only under control, but reduced to the point where we can start chipping away at the national debt? governor christie: good question. first off, let me say, as to what has happened already, just so we're clear, this president has incurred more debt during

his seven years than every one of his 42 predecessors. every one of them, combined. yes, sir, combined. everyone is doing the math right now. they are going -- wait a second. barack obama's the 44th president, he said 42, i want you to remember grover cleveland , born in new jersey, was both the 22nd and the 24th of the united states. i do not want anybody after this going, oh man, he can't be president. he didn't even know how many presidents we have had. i just want everyone to know 22nd and just so we're clear on 24th that one. i saw you. the wheels were grinding up there. man, this guy is done. no, i got it. he has increased the debt more than all those predecessors combined. it is obscene. it is obscene. and it used to be, before he became president, that our debt

was a percentage of the gdp. now our debt exceeds our gdp. that is a bad place to be. what have i propose to do? first, i'm the only candidate in this race, to this day still, and i propose this in april, that has put forward a detailed entitlement plan. why do i lead with that? 71% of all federal spending as of today is spent on entitlements and debt service. just to give you some measure of comparison, when jack kennedy was elected president 55 years ago, it was 26%. so 55 years ago, we spent $.74 of every federal dollar on tomorrow. spent $.71 of, we every dollar on yesterday. but we borrowed, what we need to take folks who are no longer

working. leadeople ask me why the with entitlement reform in a campaign? it is the third rail of american politics. anyone who touches it dies. i decided i'm not going to touch it, i'm going to hug it. here's why. it is like what willie sutton said about why they rob banks -- that is where the money is. if you want to deal the national debt, you better do with entitlements. remember that debt service at a time when interest rates are near 0%, wait till those interest rates start to go back up and wait until they really start to go up. that debt service number will climb significantly. so here is the good news and the bad news. the bad news is i have a 12-point detailed entitlement plan. the good news is i'm not going to go over all 12 points right now. you can go to chrischristie.com if you are having trouble

sleeping. go to my website, read the plan, and it has been scored by the congressional budget office. it scores out saving over a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. on social security, .1 is that we have got to do something that we should do in response to a blessing. a blessing is that we are living longer. the average life expectancy of a woman today in america is 83 years old. the average life expectancy of a man is 79. she started to laugh. this lady started to laugh because they're going to live for years longer than us. here's the thing now, 10 years ago, we were six years behind you. now we are for. we're gaining on you.

that for your vacation you are hoping for, you may not get it. you may be stuck with us the entire time. [laughter] these programs are created at a time when people died in the mid- social security used to be 60's. able to retire at 62, life expectancy for most people was between 62 and 65. great deal for the government. you pay the money your whole yearsnd you collect 0-3 deal for the rest you money and you get paid out over three years. that is why social security worked so well for such a long time. but because of increased with medical science, the pharmaceutical industry, happily we are living longer lies and lives and better quality of life. we need to change that. we need to raise our retirement age in social security. i did not get struck by lightning. i say raise it two years and phase it in 25 years. it will go up one month a year for 25 years. anybody who is on social security right now, it does not

affect them. for those who are close, it would affect them for a couple months, but that is not all. but for my children and their children, it's a big change. but you know what? by the time they get there, the life expectancy will be longer than that. in the short term what we do is , expand the absolute solvency of the program. secondly, we have to means test social security. ?hat do i mean by that dec if you make over $200,000 a year in retirement income, you stop working. cap to have at least $4 million liquid. do you really need a social security check? think about for a second. i know you paid for it, but here's the thing. if you have got $4 million to $5 million in the bank when he

retired, god bless you. good work. congratulations. second, i would say god bless america. is the only place in the world where you could of done that. here's the problem. our books are in balance. the only way you balance the books is that everybody knows this. from a business to your own personal checkbook, it is either more money and or less money out. there is no magic. there's more money in or less money out. here's the choice that we are prevented with -- present with you you heard it at the democratic debate saturday night. they say take the cap off the social security payroll tax so that no matter how much money you make, you pay that payroll tax on every dollar. they say that is the way to get at the rich. i have another way i getting at people who have been successful. if you been and honestly successful over the course of your life, did not take a benefit at the end that you do not need just because you put money over the course of your life.

why is my idea i think better than hillary's? here is why. the reason we are in this problem in the first place is because the government lied to you and stole from you. see this money is also going to trust fund right? ,it is and what al gore called it back in 2000 the lockhart. -- the lockbox. alember the guy who played gore on saturday night live who said that, whichever one you remember, you remember. there is nothing in the lockbox. it is a stack of ious. the government has already spent all the money. they spent it. they stole it from you. so here is my question. betweenad a choice given more money or not to a government that has already lied to you and stolen to you, why would you give them more? because this time they really mean it?

because i swear if you give me more this time, i won't steal it? you know they will steal it. the first time they have a choice between raising taxes, cutting spending, or taking that pile of money over there that nobody needs right away and nobody will notice is missing, i'm telling you they will do the same thing. this is not a question. i had a guy earlier on in my campaign say it's not an entitlement. i paid. i said ok, yeah, agreed. ?o what it's gone. i did not steal it. i'm just a guy reporting to you that it was stolen. and now we've got to fix it. we have got to means test it because i will not want to give this government another nickel after how irresponsibly they stole money from the social security trust fund. by the way, there's one other thing that barack obama left us with. republicans in congress on this last budget deal the social

, security disability insurance program, which has grown exponentially under barack obama and was going to be bankrupt in 2016, they stole $150 billion from social security retirement to give to social security disability. they are doing it now. this is not speculation on my part. they're doing it right now. that is what we need to do on social security. on medicare, we need to do the same thing. raise the eligibility year two years and phase it in over and 25, for folks who have over $200,000 in retirement income, meaning $4 million-$5 million saved, they only get a 10% subsidy under medicare premiums not the 75% subsidy they get now. there will still subsidize your medicare premiums, but if you're $200,000 a year, you pulling and can afford to fail a

pay a bit more for your medical premiums. those ideas plus a few others that are listed will save over $1 trillion. that is where we need to start. secondly, we need to grow our economy much faster. and i am going to not go through all of this because my answer is already getting long. i have my children with me this weekend. my older son was still here. but my daughter and my son and my other daughter, we are all together for part of the weekend, and as they were leaving to go back to school and to hockey and all of the other things, and i said to them, "so what do you think of dad's town halls?" and they said, "they are good," and i said, "no, what did you really think?" and sarah said to me, "your answers could be shorter."