reverend al. >> "hardball" will have full coverage of the speech next. chris jansing, thank you for your time tonight. and thanks to you for watching. i'm al sharpton. "hardball" starts right now. congress backs the president on war. and this is "hardball." ♪ ♪ good evening, i'm chris matthews in washington. president obama is just about to dress the country on the votes by both houses of congress now, supporting his decision to arm and train syrian opposition forces for the battle against the terrorist group isis. the senate just voted. 78-22 to authorize the arms and training. the house voted yesterday also in support of the president's position. senator angus king of maine joins us now, he's an independent to alines with the

democrats. senator king, what does this mean? does this -- oh, let's go to the president. >> -- international coalition to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as isil. france will join against isil targets in iraq and as one of our oldest and closest allies, france is a strong partner in our efforts against terrorism. we're pleased that french and american service members will work together on behalf of our shared security and our shared values. broadly, more than 40 countries, including arab nations have offered assistance as part of this coalition. it includes support for iraqi forces, providing humanitarian aid to iraqi civilians and doing their part in the fight against isil. here at home, i'm pleased that congress, a majority of democrats and a majority of republicans in both the house

and the senate have now voted to support a key element of our strategy. a plan to train and equip the opposition in syria so they can help push back these terrorists. as i said last week, i believe that we're strongest as a nation when the president and congress work together, and i want to thank leaders in congress for the speed and seriousness with which they approached this urgent issue, in keeping with the bipartisanship that is the hallmark of american foreign policy at its best. these syrian opposition forces are fighting boat the brutality of isil terrorist and the tyranny of the assad regime. we ramped up our assistance, including military assistance to the syrian opposition. this new effort will provide training and equipment to help them grow stronger and take on isil terrorists inside syria. this programming be hosted outside of syria in partnership with arab countries and it will

be matched by our increasing support for iraqi government and kurdish forces in iraq. this is in keeping with a key principle of our strategy. the american forces that have been deployed to iraq do not and will not have a combat mission. their mission is to advise and assist our partners on the ground. as i told our troops yesterday, we can join with allies and partners to destroy isil without american troops fighting a war in the middle east. the support from congress shows americans that we're united in confronting the threat of isil. with their barbaric murder of two americans, they thought they could intimidate us or cause us to shrink from the world, but today they're learning the same lesson as terrorists who have gone before. as americans, we do not give in to fear. when you harm our citizens, threaten the united states and threaten our allies, it unites

us. we stand together to defend this country that we love to make sure justice is done, as well as joining with those who seek a better opportunity for a future with dignity for all people. these air strikes continue, we're taking out their terrorists, destroying their being haves and equipment and stockpiles, and we salute our dedicated pilots and crews who worry carrying out these missions with great courage and skill. as commander in chief, i could not be more proud of their service. as i told some of our troops yesterday, the american people are united in our support for them and for their families, and as we go forward as one nation, i'd ask all americans to keep our forces and their families in their thoughts and prayers. thanks very much. >> senator king, we just heard the president there. i was wondering if we had a vote in the u.s. senate on whether to authorize the air strikes, the combat by the united states, would it have passed anywhere near 78-22 like the measure did

on arming the opposition groups? >> well, my first thought was isil did the impossible. it generated 78 votes on anything in the united states senate. that ought to strike fear that there's that kind of almost unanimity. i don't know. i think the important phrase the president used, tim, was -- the important phrase he used, i'm sorry chris. going back in time. the important phrase he used was an element of my strategy. the rest of the strategy, i think, is going to come before the congress sometime after the elections in november or december when we have to talk about an authorization for the larger air strikes, the whole strategy in iraq and in syria. that could be a different discussion, a different debate. i think it will still be a favorable one, but i think congress has a role to play there and we'll have to step up. >> let's talk about the vote you made tonight. do you have a sense and i'm not being unfair here, i don't think. but maybe i am. do you have a sense of the politics of syria, the various

factions that we're talking about aiding and arming, giving arms to and training and perhaps even paying them? do we know these people that we're giving guns to? >> well, there is an effort to -- the term they use is vet. to find out who they are, to check them out, talk to contacts in syria. so there's that process. i don't think anybody can make any guarantees about these people. syria is one of the most complicated places on earth. there are something like 1,200 different opposition groups. so just imagine trying to sort that out. but that's certainly one of the tasks that we're going to have as we go through this process. the last thing we want to do is arm people who will turn around and use those arms against us. so that is the first step in this process, and i think we do know how to do it. i don't think it's going to be fool-proof. but i think there's a reasonable chance that we're going to be able to do that successfully. >> what do you think of this historically? here's the united states, which

won independence by beating the hessians. now we're clairing war on isis but not having an army of our own willing to go in, because the american people don't support it, to have to go out and scramble and recruit, muster really, an army of people we don't know and hope after we train them, they'll fight the war we want them to. isn't that an odd situation? >> well, there's a difference between syria and iraq. in iraq, there is an army. there's the iraqi army and there's the peshmerga, the kurdish army, and they are fighting for their own country. these people that we're talking about in syria are syrians. and i don't think we're approaching this way because of domestic politics, although i suspect that's in the back of the president's mind. but the real reason is, trying to do it ourselves isn't going to work. we know that, we've learned that. it's got to be, this has got to be a war involving the local

population of that region, particularly sunnis. this can't be viewed as a western war on islam. if it is, that's what isis wants. that's why the crucial element of this, there are two things. one, it's got to be a real coalition. we have to have people who are going to be in there fighting, they're just not holding our coat while we do the fighting. and the second piece s the government in baghdad has to be inclusive and give the sunnis in northern and western iraq some loyalty to baghdad instead of to these guys in isis. >> do you see any evidence -- and again i don't want to be too tough here, but it's "hardball," do you see any evidence that the jordanians are being threatened by isis, or the saudis, or the emirates, any of the sunni powers that are normally with us, do you see any evidence they want to get on the fight on the ground? take the ground campaign to isis? >> i don't know about the ground part.

i think there's evidence that there's going to be air support from those countries, but i think that's what's going to be developed over the next few days. and that's why this vote today in the congress was so important. if we had backed off of this, then i think forming a real coalition would have been almost impossible. they'd have said, what do you expect us to do when you're not going to step up? so i think the vote today is a big plus for the president and secretary kerry to go to those countries and say, okay, we're committed, where are you going to be? and my sense is, chris, that it's starting to build. some momentum on this coalition is going to build. but that's an absolute necessity. if that doesn't happen, it's a fool's errand. we're not going to be able to dislodge these guys. we have to have a coalition and have the support of the people on the ground in those two countries. >> we keep hearing around the edges from the administration, the chairman of the joint chiefs and the vice president backing it up, that if worse comes to

worst and we can't win through the air, that we'll go in on the ground. what do you think about the american people, they say we can't beat isis from the air, and air campaigns rarely complete the job, would we go into syria? >> i don't think so. now, i was in that hearing from general dempsey said, i would recommend some additional u.s. troops -- i don't think the president would accept that recommendation and i don't think the american people are there. but my ultimate reasoning on that is, it won't work. it's not going to be successful. we can't police this area of the world. we've spent the last dozen years learning that, and i don't think we need to relearn it. so yes, general dempsey opened that door yesterday, and i do think we need a plan b, what if it doesn't work? but you're right, there's no such thing as a surgical war, no such thing as solving this with just air power. it's going to take boots on the

ground, but they shouldn't be our boots. they've got to be the boots of the kurds, and the iraqis and the syrians. >> we got to make somebody else hate them as much as we do. thank you very much, senator. before today's vote, senator rand paul delivered an empassioned speech against the arming and training of the rebels. he said americans should stop listening to interventionists who were wrong about every foreign policy decision of the last decade. if you look at so-- here's rand. >> who are we really arming? what will be the result? where will the arms end up? think about the insanity of this. we are giving weapons to people fighting in trenches with al qaeda. this administration and its allies have been on both sides of this civil war. it's messy, it's unclear. there are bad people on both sides. we need to stay the heck out of

their civil war. then, as isis grows stronger are, or they not quelled, then what happens? then they come back again and again. there's already the drum beat. there's already those in both parties who insist that we must have american gis on the ground. i'm not sending any american soldiers. i'm not sending your son, your daughter, or mine, over to the middle of that chaos. >> joining me now senator roger wicker. thank you for coming on tonight. >> glad to be on, thank you. >> i don't think that's the popularity opinion of either party. very much an isolationist statement. where do you think that fits into republican or anybody's thinking today that things are too messy, too hard to pick sides, we better stay out? >> well, let me just say, there were 12 republican votes against the resolution, 10 democratic votes and i don't think most of those people would agree with

the language of senator paul. i think there were budget reasons, a number of doubts about the strategy that caused those no votes. >> what do you make -- i want to ask you the same tough question. because i don't know the answer. do we know syria's politics? our country is pretty much 50/50, left, right. but finding people that are willing to take on this fight against isis and we can arm and train them. >> those are very, very good questions. and one thing that your viewers need to know. this is a three-month authorization. this expires mid december. in that time, the president has an opportunity to get the coalition going, to answer some of the questions that have been asked about who's going to participate. which arab nations, which muslim nations are going to step forward and actually be involved

in this war. and then the president will have an opportunity to come back during the lame duck session after the election and make his case for a more permanent authorization. this i think was viewed by a lot of the people who voted yes, as not wanting to turn our back on the commander in chief, not wanting to send a signal that we're not willing to stand up against a group that he says we've got to crush, that the secretary of state said we have to use all of our powers. that the secretary of defense said they're unlike anything we've seen before. so if they're that serious, i think 78 members of the senate and about that percentage of the american people want to give this commander in chief an opportunity to make the case and to show us over the next three months that he has a plan that can win. and a plan that if he's

successful, he can hold those gains, unlike we did with the gains we had after the surge. >> you know, i was thinking about the whole idea of training another army, the british were able to do it after india. couple hundred years, they developed that relationship. but bought into democracy. and that worked. but we're in iraq and afghanistan for a number of years. paid their salaries, gave them uniforms and rifles. american gis teaching them. they folded when isis attacked them. and there was an amazing attack in '74 and '75 and they folded. how can you create the willingness to fight and die for a cause in somebody else besides the person who really has that fight in their heart? >> well, i think the mistake made was after the surge, which wasn't successful, i think the mistake was made by president

obama in not following the advice of his generals. i do believe we could have negotiated a status of forces agreement. we could have gotten the maliki government which was in charge at the time to allow a residual force to stay there, i think that history will determine that 15 or 20,000 american troops would have prevented this sort of disaster with large portions of iraq taken by terrorist groups. >> that's a good argument, but it would mean that we would be doing a good portion of the fighting ourselves again. >> i don't know that that would be the case. but let me say, we've kept residual forces in europe and it's worked. my son was stationed in korea. our troops aren't fighting there. but they are a stabilizing force, and i honestly believe we could have kept a stabilizing force there and we would not be

having the chaos. >> i've got to go now. >> the president needs to convince the american people that if he is successful within his wildest dreams, and we actually gain every goal that he wants to, that we won't throw it away yet again, and we're being called on a few years from now to take this hill a third time. >> i understand that. in germany, we were fortunate when the germans lost hitler, they quit. it didn't continue to be a battle. of course we had the communists on the other side. anyway, thank you, senator. coming up, congress has approved the president's plan to arm and train the moderates, but critics warn our new allies may come with deadly baggage. as we've been talking about, this is a tricky one. this is "hardball," a place for politics. when fixed income expes work with equity experts

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the kansas supreme court court has ordered the removal of taylor's name from the ballot, clearing the patch for a match-up between orman and roberts. taylor dropped out earlier this month but republican secretary of state said he did not comply with the state election law limiting when nominees can withdraw. today the court dismissed that argument. great news for the democrats who are hoping orman will align with them in the senate. we'll be right back. we are a collection of smalls. a home saved. a hero homebound for a new opportunity. a kitchen that kick starts careers wells fargo invests in our communities a little differently. small measures that add up to make our whole even greater.

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government of syria. and running background checks on a force of fighters halfway around the world, chuck hagel assured congress on tuesday that it's worth the risk. >> a rigorous vetting process will be critical to the success of this program. dod will work with the state department, the intelligence community and our partners in the region to screen and vet the forces we train and equip. we will monitor them closely to ensure that weapons do not fall into the hands of radical elements of the opposition, isil, the syrian regime or other extremist groups. we believe that risk is justified by the imperative of destroying isil. >> still many are skeptical about the vetting process and doubts remain about making alliances with groups we know so little about. josh, thank you for your article today. i read it when i got up early. it's about the whole question of who we're giving arms and

training to. this country, i know this sounds odd, but it's true. we trained the flyers of 9/11 in florida. the guy giving the lesson said, i thought they were from germany. they weren't. they were islamists. now we have guys in our own military turn out to be terrorists, one at ft. hood. how in the abstract can we go to another country, that we can't even go into and somehow pluck out of that country, people who are going to be allied with us in the fight against isis? how do we even locate them? >> well, i think that's a real question, chris. some of these people have been lining up, asking for our help for some time for the free syrian army. we know after a couple years know who some of those people are. the question is, can we get up to a number like 5,000 troops, which is what the obama

administration is talking about training in this program that will probably take place in saudi arabia? can we vet that many people in a year's time or less? and will 5,000 be enough? or do we need alliances with the local militia in syria who are nastier by comparison than anybody that might be in the fsa bunch? >> you cover everything. so you know the problem of vetting. we have a united states senate that can't even approve ambassadors. it takes forever. >> yeah. >> how do we vet and find out whether a person, is it just telling us what we want to hear? i want to train to fight isis, but they want to fight assad, or fight the west, or shari'a law? we don't know what they're fighting for. >> this is an enormous problem and you have skret hagel make it sound as easy as running fingerprints through a database. what we know, in iraq, there was a trained army there and they basically folded and a lot of

those weapons that the iraqi army had ended up in the hands of isil. so this idea that we'll be able to pick these folks out, people that the obama administration have derided in the past as not reliable, definitely hard to think this is going to work out. the number one problem, we're selling a non-war war. >> it's what the british did when they fought us in the american revolution, hiring the hessians. there were great german fighters, but they didn't have their heart in it. joe manchin spoke about the complexion yesterday raising serious questions about the people we may be aligning ourselves with. here's senator manchin. >> i'm not confident that we know who our allies are. and to illustrate that point, i refer my colleagues to press

reports from moderate syrian opposition forces sold american journalists steve sotloff to isis, who beheaded him and put the video on internet. are those people are allies? >> that's a hell of an accusation. i know from another journalist that there was another group that had steve sotloff, they had him, they were going to trade him, then they sold him apparently to isis who didn't want to sell. they just wanted to kill him. >> yeah, there are a lot of these smaller militias inside syria. a lot of folks think there's a few groups, isis, this free syrian army. there's alnusra, but there are dozens, if not hundreds of militias, that are defending this hometown in the context of this battle with the syrian government and their allegiance on any given day is up for grabs, sometimes perhaps to the highest bidder available.

they'll make agreements with different groups each day. so to think the u.s. can keep its hands clean and get everybody to line up is just, i think, a fantasy. >> are we going to pay this army? >> i think that that's a big part of it. i think we have been paying them already. >> how do you trust anybody if you're paying them? everybody is going to say, you can pay me, give me a uniform and a gun. i'll take that. how do you know their loyalty is in the same direction as ours? i always wonder why we're paying soldiers in a army we're creating to fight a war that we'd like to fight, but we can't fight it at home and those countries don't want us there. >> we know their loyalties are not in the same direction. their main enemy still is the assad regime and we're trying to get them to divert and focus more attention on isis. they don't like isis. they've done nasty things to free syrian army fighters to the other moderate forces.

but at the same time, the main object of all the fighting in the last two to three years, has been to bring down the a sad regime and the notion that we can step into it at this late date and convert them to some other goal, i think, again is just hard to believe. >> you have to figure that assad and his family, which have all been played up wonderfully in "vogue" magazine, this very beautiful family and all this phoniness, he's thinking, i got another lease on life. >> yeah, this lengthens his grip on power, something that america at least in words, if not necessarily in deeds has been trying to loosen over these many -- last three years or so. so this seems to extend his life span there at the helm in overseeing this very messy conflict that now we want to get in the middle of. >> there's always the potential of unintended consequences when the u.s. gets involved with these factions in foreign conflicts. people really don't know very well. many trace our modern day problems in afghanistan to the

regan policy to arm the afghan mujahideen who fought against the soviet union in that country. hillary clinton cited that example in her testimony to the house appropriations sub committee in 2009. let's watch her looking at how the roots of these things develop. >> let's remember here, the people we are fighting today we founded 20 years ag funded 20 years ago. we did it because we were locked into a battle with the soviet union and it was president reagan in partnership with the congress, led by democrats, who said, sounds like a pretty good deal. let's deal with the isi and the pakistani military. and recruit the mujahideen. it wasn't a bad investment, but let's be careful what we sew, because we will harvest. >> there's an interesting phrase. let's be careful what we sew. if you saw charlie wilson's war,

it was about the congressman from texas who got us involved in paying for missiles to bring down the soviet helicopters and began the soviet union as an empire, and yet they sort of morphed into a different direction later on. they didn't like the west, didn't like occupiers, didn't like people like us. >> and according to administration officials, this has been obama's big concern all along. this is why we've gone so slow in the effort to arm these fighters, why we've been reluctant to give them anti-aircraft weapons and anti-tank weapons. the worry is these teams will be turned on some force friendly to us, or on ourselves down the road, but the president has been moved off the dime on this one, basically by the threat of this particularly brutal force of isis. and he's now willing to take that risk, as skret hagel said, that this might come back to haunt us later. >> josh, you're allowed to assert an opinion, right? so i'm going to ask you this.

is this stupid stuff, as the president would say, when he says, don't do stupid stuff, arming people we don't, giving them training and perhaps paying them to go into syria, is that stupid stuff, as you see it? >> i think it could become that. at the moment, we think we know who the rebels are. but there's some question, as we open the spigot, the risk just increases and i think there's a point in which we're taking a big chance and some of these weapons will fall into the wrong hands. >> thank you very much. we'll be right back. a body at rest tends to stay at rest... while a body in motion tends to stay in motion. staying active can ease arthritis symptoms.

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2016, bernie sanders has been getting a lot of attention lately as the only self-identified socialist. he's always been considered something of an outlier. but that's not all that's set him apart. a local paper recently discovered sanders recorded an album of folk songs back in 1987. yes, they found a copy. let's listen. ♪ if i went walking that ribbon of highway ♪ ♪ i saw above me that endless skyway ♪ ♪ i saw below me that golden valley ♪ ♪ this land was made for you and me ♪ >> i think you call that brooklyn country. needless to say, i'm not sure the critical reception will be all that positive. next up, another politician busted for plaj yarism.

they accused her of lifting passages from a health care survey by carl rove's survey and passing it off on her own website. first they called the accusations absurd, but after another blatant cut and paste, the campaign confessed and took the passages down. they keep getting caught, and keep doing it. up next, the eyes of the world are on scotland as the country votes for independence. alan cumming is a big activist for the movement, he joins us here. and you're watching "hardball," a place for politics. will mean making it lighter. one day, factories will work with the cloud. one day... is today.

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welcome back to "hardball." the world has its eyes on the historic vote for scottish independence. as of this morning, the opinion polls showed a tight race that could go either way. the atmosphere is electric, the votes are in right now and results are likely to come across the popped around 2:00 a.m. east coast time. that's 2:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. a million unknowns permeate this race. for the first time the voting age of the dropped to just 16. there are questions about britain's nuclear arsenal, which is housed in scotland. there could be a war over use of the british pound. and then there's our relationship with britain, our closest ally is looking at an historic upheaval, a major embarrassment for prime minister david cameron. it comes down to pride versus risk. we're thrilled to bring in alan cumming, legend of the stage and screen, grew up in scotland, an outspoken person for the

independence. i loved him in cabaret as everybody else was lucky to see him in it. i think you and i may disagree. i feel like i'm rooting for the mom and dad to get together and there you are, rooting for the divorce. explain why you choose the risk of scottish independence over what you got now. >> well, i think there's a lot of things on the table. but mostly, i think it's a question of values. that's why i want scotland to become independent. i think we are different. we always vote much more left than the rest of the country and we rarely get a government that reflects that. and so the things that we really value, like free education, a really great health service are under threat. if we don't get to control our own destiny, like the rest of the uk, those things are starting to disappear or to actually cost more money. so for me, it's very much about, we know the economic situation is a good one, in terms of what

scotland's potential is. it's just about us being allowed to control it and not be told what to do by a government at the other end of the country. >> how much of it is nationalist pride like william wallace in the movie, we've never had a country of our own. i don't know if the accent was right, but is that part of your feeling? >> i think i've actually been impressed and surprised about how the "yes" campaign has not played that emotional card. they've been much more focused on the issues and it's been the other side that's drawn the sentimental card. david carman teared up in his last speak on that. but i just think that obviously there's a lot to do with that kind of whole, we are being oppressed and persecuted by

english landlords. but i think when it comes down to it, we'll still be very much in a situation where we're always engaging in england. it's not about hating england. it's about us not being told what to do by people who don't share the same values as us and don't seem to care for us that much as well. >> do you think the queen talked down to you? i read your piece that you suggested the queen was condescending by saying, why don't you people take this seriously? >> i think scots should think very carefully about this decision. like, hello? we've been thinking about it very carefully for years. and i think that is emblem attic of the way that scots are viewed by the establishment, and by the establishment, i mean, not so much the monarchy, although i referred to it there, but more the westminster government and the establishment of -- there's a famous photograph from -- i

think they're at oxford. it's a bunch of students all dressed up. david cameron, cleg, johnson, they're all from this privileged and established organization. they have gone on to be the establishment. and that, i think, is something that we as scots looking at that think, why can't we -- why are these people telling us who to do with our country, when we have very different values, and we actually base our system on merit and talent and hard work, and not on just kind of, you know, privilege. >> so it sounds like a battle. i had a british teacher who talked like this. it's a battle against the establishment. the people that went to oxford and cambridge who come from the right families, always connected by cousins and they've been running the place forever. is that part of your assault on what is the status quo? you don't like that? >> i don't like that. but it is more complex than that. but i do definitely think

there's an element of that. this is a chance for scotland to not have to deal with that. to actually good afternovern ou for ourselves. it's become apparent in the last couple of weeks, the way that the establishment, if you like, and i include all three of the named political parties in westminster in this, the way they've kind of treated the scottish people. and bringing the max thing back on the table when they insisted it was removed from the table a year ago and not expecting the scottish people dealing with that situation, not expecting them to balk at that. i find that emblem attic again of this disdain and the kind of slight. this worries me, if we don't take this chance to not have to deal with that, when is the next time we'll get that chance? >> let's take a look at this ad, it's part of the "no" campaign. you have a woman there month made up her mind. it was criticized as being

patronizing toward women, they said. the bbc said it backfired embarrassingly amid accusations of lazy sexism. let's watch some of the ad that's turned people off here. >> he will not read off the referendum. started again first thing this morning. have you made a decision yet? i was like, it's too early to be discussing politics. eat your cereal. not much time left for me to make a decision. but there's only so many hours in the day. and one thing i do know, i will not be gambling with my children's future. you know what, i've made up my mind. i'm going to do what's best for scotland, so that will be a "no" from me. >> what did you think of the "no" advertisement? >> i thought it was so condescending and sexist and just revolting. i mean, really. oh, politics, i'm far too busy with the kids to deal with that. i mean, really?

come on, people. it's another example of, you know, don't get me started. >> well, i'm glad i did get you started. i'm a huge fan, as you know. and i'm rooting for you to be eli gold, that chicago operative because i used to be an operative like that, i think it's great you're on american television and stage and i love cabaret. thank you very much. the audience love you. >> thank you. >> the new season of "the good wife" premieres this sunday. for more, let's bring in toby, the washington bureau chief for the sunday times of left-ha. did you know the scots don't like the condescending attitude of the english? >> yeah, alan put it very, very eloquent case. you listen to that case, and if you're somebody that wants the united kingdom to stay as sort of one country, your heart sings. i think he's absolutely right that the tenor of the "no"

campaign has been, you foolish scottish peasants, don't you know that everybody's who's clever knows you should remain in the united kingdom. >> what about them being tired of being under the boot of the establishment? >> very important point. if you look at cameron and miliband and cleg. all oxford and cambridge educated, an establishment class, a southern english class -- >> what about gordon brown, he's a scott and he's been fighting like hell for unity. he's a great guy. >> gordon brown, i thought his speech was magnificent, and that was the first sign, i think, it was the end of the englishmen going north of the border and preaching to the scots. >> what's a plumy boy? >> like a posh person. and that was from the heart. that was a very emotional argument for the union. and i think if the "no" vote does sort of win, then i think

people will look at gordon brown's speech and think that was the thing that saved the day. >> what's left of britain if great britain is not united anymore? >> a lot less. 8% of the population goes. a large amount of the land mass -- >> what do you call your country? >> well, the debate over the flag, what the flag's going to be -- >> is it the united kingdom of britain and northern ireland? >> people talking about our uk as. >> oh, come on. >> exactly. >> we fought a civil war over this issue. but something we've never had, the nationalist thing again, like edward long shanks, the british king up there. >> but i think english people and to a lesser extent welsh people and northern ireland people will feel like a limb has been chopped off. >> i keep thinking of the wars

we fought on the same side, the british and the americans, world war i, world war ii, everything we fought together. the sound of the bagpipes, that was a thrilling part i had a great grandfather who was in a scottish regiment that merged with an english regiment. he was taken prisoner. he escaped. i probably wouldn't be here if he wasn't a scott who joined the british army and moved to england. >> thank you, toby. "hardball" back after this. i'm randy and i quit smoking with chantix. for 33 years i chose to keep smoking... ...because it was easier to smoke than it was to quit. along with support, chantix (varenicline) is proven to help people quit smoking. it's a non-nicotine pill. chantix reduced the urge for me to smoke. it actually caught me by surprise. some people had changes in behavior, thinking or mood, hostility, agitation,

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there's a famous name running for governor in georgia. recent polls show him highly competitive. check the "hardball" scoreboard. jason carter, grandson of former president jimmy carter is challenging republican governor nathan dooel. according to a new poll, that race is deadly close. deal the governor has 43%. carter the challenger is at 42%. keep your eyes on this one. we'll be right back.

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let me finish tonight with the what could be the finish of great britain. we may be watching the destruction of britain right now as a significant nation in the world, a familiar and trusted ally of the united states and the world. what will be left when scotland goes its separate wait? will we still call great britain even when it's severed in two? will the part left still deserve the word great? what will become of the british armed force now that a part of

it is no longer there because along with the bagpipes will go the regimentsed that fought alongside the welsh and northern issue because along with the flag of scotland goes the people back home in scotland who cheered on the british army in world wars and every other fight. i admit to rooting for the union. i feel a bit like hailey mills character in "the parent trap" rooting for her divorced mother and father to get back together. i want the british as our good and reliable ally. what will become of the special relationship once great britain is no longer a country? i fear this pattern in the world and fear the chronic talk in canada of the french speaking province of quebec going its own way, belgium flems and wal loons. i read of the bask and catalons pushing to separate from the spain and worry occasionally where we're headed here in the united states as we see the erosion of english as our agreed upon common lang. nothing is harder than to unite across the barriers of language.

so we'll get up tomorrow and learn the results from scotland. if they vote to secede, do not cheer. the times we're entering into, differents played up, common ties played down, division looming as the all-purpose -- that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. all in with chris hayes" starts right now. >> tonight on all in -- >> sending arms to so-called moderate islamic rebels in syria is a fool's errand and will only make isis stronger. >> over objection, the senate approves the president's plan to train and arm syrian rebels. >> i want to thank leaders in congress for the speed and seriousness with which they approach the this issue. >> we'll look at what the phrase moderate rebels really means. plus new disturbing details surface about the latest nfl player accused of domestic abuse and child abuse. >> after she was physically