at wal-mart. i remember thinking, i'm a desperate author but not quite that desperate. it turned out it was a fraudulent charge and had nothing to do with my book, though you think about it, if someone had stolen my credit card to buy my book that might have been the perfect crime. but for me personally, the most interesting aspect of this episode is that my wife noticed the fraudulent charge immediately. and it's because she monitors our credit card like a hawk. i never would have noticed this charge. if i had it would have been months and months later. she noticed it almost in real time. several months ago i was out of touch for a while, i came home, and my wife said, i hadn't heard from you for hours, but i wasn't worried because i knew you were at the bar watching the hockey game. literally every beer i was buying coming up on the screen, and i know some of you are worried about the nsa creating a 24-hour surveillance state, don't worry, i've been married 2 1/2 years, you get used to it. it's not a big deal. i want to share with you 20 minutes, 30 minutes or so the basic argument of my book. and i take as my foundational text this lovely little speech that lincoln gave in 1864 to the ohio 166th regiment when they were visiting the white house. and he told these truths, i believe they're here in washington someplace, there's probably someone in the audience who knows exactly where they were stationed and what they did for their hundred days. he said when i see troops in the white house i like to tell them about why we're fighting this war. and he told them, you know, i now occupy this big white house, but some day one of your children might occupy this white house the way my father's child has. that's such a strange way to put it. but to characteristically lincoln. because it's a way to avoid saying "the way i do." he talks about how the war is to preserve free institutions of government. but he develops that and talks about the purpose behind our free institutions. and he tells them, we're fighting this war in order that each of you may have through this free government, which we have enjoyed, an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise, and intelligence. that you may have equal privileges in the race of life. key lincoln phrase, "in the race of life." with all its desirable human as -- aspirations. it is for this the struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose our birth right, not only for one, but for two or three years, the nation is worth fighting for to secure such a jewel. for me that is the essential lincoln. there are many, many other things to know about lincoln. but if you know nothing else, this is the thing you must know. and i want to talk a little bit about the hows and whys of that, and touch very briefly at the end on why i think it's so important to reconnect with this lincoln at this particular moment in our national life. and lincoln obviously is celebrated now across the political spectrum almost without exception. there are some exceptions. but as a great hero of american history. but i think even now people tend in the common understanding to misunderstand lincoln. there's a view of him as this tribune of the common people who is imbued with common sense and was an accidental president. a highfalutin expression might be from james russell lowell who said lincoln was out of the very earth, or emerson who said he was the object ridge natural man. -- aboriginal man. this is nonsense. this is complete nonsense. this is a guy who is fiercely ambitious from the very beginning, almost the first thing he does after he leaves home, right, what is it? run for political office. he says everyone has their ambition in life. my ambition is to be esteemed by men and to be worthy of their esteem which is a wonderful expression of what ambition should be in a democratic society. and he runs for office, was put aside the presidential campaigns, he runs for office in 1832, 34, 36, 48, 44, 46, 54, 55, and 58. i have missed any? he was not an accidental anything in politics. and this is a guy who possessed an extraordinary mind, and an exceptional memory, that discerning people noticed, again, from the very beginning. he would borrow newspapers from neighbors and then when he would return them, be able almost to recite line by line editorials he had read in those papers. and finally, he had a truly exceptional judgment about people, and about how the world works. i love the story he tells, i believe he's making the point, you can't influence people with threats of far-off punishments or promises of far off rewards. he tells the story of the irishman who steals a spade, the irishman gets away with this act of theft, he's pleased with himself, he has a free spade and a friend comes up to him in the politically incorrect argo of the day says you think you got away with that, let me tell you something. when you die and you go and you meet your maker, you're going to have to pay for that spade. the irishman says, if you're going to credit me that long, i think i'll take another. and the reason of course lincoln has this knowledge of human nature and how the world works, he lived to put it in a cliched way, a life of hard knocks. there is the incident during his presidency when he writes the letter to the actor who he has seen critiquing his performance and talking about his favorite shakespeare play and what monologues are better than others, the actor thinks this is great p.r. opportunity, gets it in the newspaper, and lincoln is mocked. by everyone, right, because they're saying, this guy can barely be our commander in chief now he wants to be our theater critic in chief. the actor realize what's a disservice he has done to lincoln, writes him an apology and lincoln writes back a little note saying, don't worry about it, throughout my life i've encountered a lot of ridicule without much malice and a lot of kindness not free of ridicule. i am used to it. every time i hear those words it's like a little stab in my heart. i think to understand lincoln you have to go back to the very beginning, back to kentucky, and indiana, where he's raised literally in the middle of nowhere, when his family moved to indiana, there's a story that there was a young girl in that vicinity who was killed by a panther because her older brother couldn't kill the beast with a hatchet to the skull quickly enough. there's a story about neighbors in the general vicinity who said when they had a fire going in their log cabin at night they had looked through the chinks in the logs and seen the eyes of bears reflected in the fire. peering in. so this is not suburban bliss. this is an extremely unforgiving environment. his mother of course dies when he's very young, of milk thick, when your cow wanders out into the forest, eats poison root, no one has any idea, the splik poisoned, you drink it and you die a horrific death in about a week. and this happens to lincoln's mother and a few other family members in very short order. he has to fashion a wooden coffin and they bury her in the back yard with no sermon because there's no minister to give one months and months later. lincoln said of this area there's nothing to excite and ambition for education. his mother signs her name with an x, his step mother wonderful woman, great blessing to him, signs her name with an x, lincoln told a campaign biographer his father could barely bunglingly sign his name. and the biographer left it out. he thought this was such a harsh critique, such a harsh way to put it. lincoln of course famously has very little formal schooling. he told a story of what the pedagogical methods of the time were. when leaned very heavily on physical chastisement. he tells a story of a one-room schoolhouse where they're reading the book of daniel and this one poor boy stumbles on the name shadrack -- boom, hit right up side the head bite teacher, class goes on like nothing has happened, they read down the row and they're coming back and the kid starts blubbering again, the teacher says what are you whining about, and he had reckoned up what line is coming back to him and he sees those names are coming to him yet again and he says master here come those three damn little bells again, and i'm sure boom right upside the head again. this is the thing to understand -- we think of lincoln as the rail splitter. we refer to lincoln as the rail-splitter because of that genius act of branding, right? when the illinois republicans nominated him as their favorite son for president. lincoln never wanted to split another damn rail in his life. lincoln never wanted to see another rail if he could help it. lincoln with every fiber of his being wanted to escape this back woods isolation and make sure that no one had to if they didn't want to, live that way ever again. and for me, the story that represents the best kernel of lincoln and the key to understanding him, again, is one he tells in the white house. and he said he was -- had a rowboat when he was teenager, idling on the side of a river, and a carriage drives up and two gentlemen in the carriage and they want to meet a steam boat coming down the river. they need someone to row them out. they see lincoln. they say, kid, can you help us get out to this steam boat? lincoln says sure. he helps row them out, helps get their luggage on the steam boat. he says, just as the boat was about to leave, he realized, wait, you forgot to pay me. and decades later in the white house, he says to shock and surprise, each of these guys throws silver half dollar in the bottom of his boat. lincoln said from that moment, i realized i had earned my first dollar. and i was a more hopeful and optimistic being from that time. lincoln wanted an america where you could earn a dollar, and where you had to earn a dollar. and in a nutshell, that's why he doesn't become a democrat. [laughter] i'm the editor of "national review," right? had to get that in. i had to. come on, you can't his me for that. you gotta give me at least one. no? so the -- he's surrounded by democrats when he was a kid, people who worship andrew jackson, this great american back woods -- this bloodthirsty general. i say if you want to tell people if you want to understand andrew jackson very briefly, someone with personality, the late pennsylvania senator arlen specter, except for he might kill you. that was andrew jackson. and the democrats, they romanticized agriculture, they romanticized the back woods, and the virtues of the yeoman farmer, a democratic journalist said the difference between the democrats and the wigs is the democrats represent the hearty rustics and the whigs represent the lank, sallow accountants. and the thing about lincoln, he had this agricultural life up to the neck, and he would rather be with the lank and sallow accountants. he doesn't become a whig for opportunistic reasons, obviously, the whigs don't win the governorship ever in illinois, they don't win a senate seat, they don't carry a presidential race ever in illinois. and lincoln hated political opportunists, hated party switchers. there's a great early exchange he had with a political antagonist who had been a democrat -- had been a whig, switched over, becomes a democrat, gets the nice plum job in the land office, builds himself quite a nice house, with a lightning rod on top of it. and the story goes lincoln, this is the first lightning rod he had seen and was taken with it, but in the heat of the political debate with this guy lincoln goes to his party switching and says, you know what, i value and seek political distinction and accomplishment as much as anyone else in the world, but i would never want to find myself where i would have to erect a lightning rod on my house to protect a guilty conscience from an offended god. so what draws lincoln to the whigs? it's basically two things -- one is the economic program, which to sum identify, says we're going to have a cash economy if we're going to have a cash economy, we have to have banks. and there's a famous episode lincoln was embarrassed by subsequently where he jumps out of a window in the illinois legislature to save the bank from a legislative maneuver. it wasn't a very high window, fortunately, and the democratic press mocked him and said his leg were so long they probably touched the ground from the window and we're going to have to build a higher legislature so next time lincoln will have to crawl down a spout when he's trying to escape. but pro-banks, they said, were going to have an industrializing economy, we're not going to be an agricultural nation, which means we'll have a tariff and they said we need a functioning market economy in this country, which means you have to knit the coungeer which means you need steam boats, canals, railroads. and it's impossible to exaggerate the transformative nature of these transportation projects. because prior to their arrival, you could get goods to market if easily if you're near a river. if you get on to the mississippi, you might make a makeshift raft and throat down to new orleans and once you're there you're on the sea and it can go anywhere fairly efficiently. but how do you get back up the mississippi? that's the question. a lot of people would walk home. there's one story that lincoln's father made this trip and had to walk home. that's not the predicate of a market economy. when you get the railroads coming in, instantly these hinterlands are transformed because you might have been a subsistence farmer before, but when the railroad comes, now you can buy goods from the east. how are you going to buy goods from the east? what do you need? you need cash. so how are you going to get cash? you start growing for the market. so instantly someone who might have been a subsistence farmer may not grow food for himself and his family anymore, because that's not the most efficient use of his crops. so instantly these farmers become market players. so that is the whig economic program. there's also a cultural element to the whig program. their insight and belief was you can create the markets but you need people who are disciplined enough to take advantage of them. the great historian of the whig walker howe talks about how the whigs valued order, harmony, purposefulness and improvement. key whig word. the transportation projects of course we all know are called improvements. that's the physical expression of this concept. and there's an internal expression in the commitment to self-improvement. and this is another case where andrew jackson can symbolize a different way of looking at the world. for the whigs, andrew jackson was a man of the passions as they called it, which was a bad thing. he was a dueler and a slave owner, and a gambler. and lincoln would have recoiled from all of those things, though he did have his own scrape with a near duel, right, with james shields, where lincoln and -- anonymously insults shields, there's a challenge and they meet at a dueling grounds and lincoln as a challenged party gets to select the weapon. and he selects cavalry broadswords. which seems a bizarre choice, and some people thought was actually lincoln's way of mocking this entire process because it seemed so ridiculous. and right at the end the dispute gets adjudicated, there's no duel, and someone asks, why did you pick swords? which is a choice that seems to make no sense except for when you ream eyes shields was about 5'8", and lincoln was 6'4" with exceptionally long arms. so he probably had a one-foot reach on him and when he was asked, he said i was afraid if i chose pistols the guy would shoot me. so there's a practical choice. but lincoln throughout his life, he exemplifies and he evangelizes for this whig cultural ethic. at a time when america is soaked in alcohol, soaked in tobacco, when coarse language is the norm, lincoln doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke, he doesn't chew, he doesn't swear. he tells the occasional blue story, but he doesn't swear. he liked to tell a story about how he shared a railway car once with a gentleman from kentucky. and the gentleman was trying to make friends with lincoln, offers him a fine glass of whiskey, lincoln says no thanks, offers him an excellent cigar, lincoln says no thanks, a chew of tobacco, lincoln says no thanks. fine it will kentucky gentleman says, well, sir, can i share with you a lesson i've learned in my long travels through liar? and the kentucky gentleman says he who has damn few vices has damn few virtues. but in this sense, lincoln had damn few vices. a time when casual cruelty to animals was the norm, he was embarrassingly tender hearted towards animals. there's a story he was riding the circuit in a very gruff male-oriented environment, they're out there on horseback and the group realizes lincoln is missing, the guy riding in the back with lincoln comes up and they say what happened to lincoln, he said the last time i saw him he was chasing a bird's nest on the ground. and finally lincoln catches up to these guys, what are you doing? why are you wasting our time chasing after a bird's nest that had fallen out after tree? and lincoln said literally, if i had not returned the baby birds to their mother i would not have been able to sleep tonight. there's a story from the white house that they had a cat, and a visitor came to dinner at the white house and the cat was in the chair at the table next to lincoln, and lincoln was feeding the cat with the official white house flatware. as you might imagine, as any married man would realize, mary todd was outraged at this practice and says to the visitors, don't you think it's crazy that the president of the united states is feeding this cat with a white house gold fork? and lincoln says no, no, if this gold fork is good enough for buchanan it's good enough for tabby. [laughter] so what does lincoln do with this epic of self-improvement? he makes himself into a lawyer. and when an aspiring lawyer would write to lincoln asking how i do become a lawyer, lincoln would write back things like, work. work. work. the main thing. lincoln, his stepbrother stayed back in the back woods, and was constantly cash-strapped and would ask lincoln for loans. and lincoln would write back these well-meaning i assume but these letters saying you are destitute because you idle away all your time. go to work is the only cure for his -- for your case. so lincoln through his work makes himself a lawyer, the office doesn't look like much, right, herndon describes once finding a pile of newspapers, a pile of papers up on a shelf somewhere, had about an inch of dust with a little note from lincoln saying, if you can't -- if you can find it -- if you can't find it anyplace else look here. there's a story from a clerk that apparently lincoln had dropped some seeds in the office and there was just enough dirt in a corner for -- to sprout up as a plant. so lincoln initially is quite a small-time lawyer but becomes a big deal. a big fairly big-time corporate lawyer to put 90 today's terms, in illinois. and that's something that doesn't accord with the popular image of lincoln at all. for him wouldn't have been a contradiction at all. this again goes to lincoln's fundamental economic attitudes, which is someone who worships the rights of property, worships the rule of law, thinks in a properly functioning market there shouldn't be anything, such a thing as class conflict and opposes redistributionist economics. when a delegate visits him lincoln says not let him lose houselessness, but labor diligently to build one of his own. and under all this was a profound belief in the dignity of labor, and the right to the proceeds of your own labor. lincoln loved to quote the line from genesis, in the sweat of thy brow thall shalt earn thy bread. or if you grow the corn, you eat the corn. and lincoln believed any fundamental violation of this spring really an act of theft. when he's a teenager and his father is failing, his father hires him out, all around area for lincoln to go and do these incredibly onerous physical tasks, and lincoln does the work and his father as was his father's perfect right until lincoln was age 21, takes the proceeds of the labor. and lincoln referred to this in a speech years later, i think michael was the first to unearth this, lincoln says, i used to be a slave because i worked and someone else took the proceeds. now, that is an absurd self-pitying exaggeration, but it tells you how personally and -- lincoln took this principle and how deeply felt it was for him. and this gets to his opposition to real slavery. what's the famous line from the second inaugural address? what is slavery? it's unrequited toil. it's someone else working and you taking all the legitimate proceeds of their work. for lincoln this was such a basic principle that the very lowest, most crawling little insect on earth understood this principle. he wrote a little fragment to himself, one of his wonderful little arguments he worked that out that didn't show up in his speech about an ant. and he says if an ant finds a crumb on the ground, and the ant labors to drag that crumb back to its nest, and if you interrupt that ant, you stop that ant and try to take the crumb from the ant, the ant will fight you. because even the ant understands through its labor, the crumb now belongs to it. and for lincoln, there was no misunderstanding this principle unless you did it willfully and maliciously. and that of course is what he thought was happening in the south. and part of the counter argument to lincoln's case on all this was the idea that there's wage slavery in the north where you had folks from the south and in in the north saying look, the south has human cattle, sure, but you have wage slaves. you have people you pay a pittance for a little bit of work every day and no one takes care of them whatsoever. and they have to fend for themselves in this horrible environment. and lincoln rejects this fundamentally, this argument and says, they don't understand how the system works. because he who labors for himself last year, labors for another last year, labors for himself this year, and the year after hires someone to labor for him. lincoln said advancement and improvement of condition are a fundamental principle of a society of equals. and lincoln in the 1850's, if you read his speeches and read his writings, it's diffused with this profound sense of loss. he believes the founders, they tolerated slavery but they're embarrassed by it, they didn't mention it directly in the constitution, they thought there's no good way to get rid of it immediately but eventually it would go away. that was the attitude a long time through a lot of the south. in the 1940's and 1950's you see this new affirmative positive defense of slavery growing up in the south. people saying, you know what, this is an institution from god, it's good for the slaves, it's good for us, it's good for all society. and for lincoln, this just represented shameful, national back sliding. and a key part of his project was renewal through restoration. and almost any time and place in america we tend to worship and celebrate what is new, and this context lincoln was unabashed about talking about what was old. he would talk about those iron men of those -- of the past, those old men, those noble fathers, the old declaration of independence. peoria, he said, we need to readopt the declaration of independence. he would say things like, our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust, let us renew it and wash it white in the spirit if not the blood of the american revolution. and for me, in america, this should always be our project and our as aspiration. how do we expand opportunity, how do we forge progress through returning to our truest and our deepest ideals? and of course a big part of lincoln's debate with douglas is about the nature of the founding, the nature of the revolution and the founders, lincoln of course wins a moral victory in that debate and you know rest of the story. i love the little talk he gives in philadelphia on his way to washington where he says, the founders believe that in due time weights should be lifted from the shoulder of all men and many shall have an equal chance. if this country cannot be saved without giving on up that principle, i was about to say, how i would rather be assassinated on the spot than surrender it. and i think it's very briefly it's important for us to reconnect with this lincoln because we have a crisis of opportunity in this country, i believe has less to do with inequality, more to do with stagnant mobility. people especially on my side of the aisle like to celebrate this as the greatest land of opportunity in all the world. it's not necessarily true. by some measures of mobility, you have other english speaking countries that are more mobile than we are. you have scandinavian countries are more mobile than we are. and i fear a combination of economic factors and social factors are conspiring to create the potential over time for an impermeable class divide in this country where we have become in a different context what lincoln referred to as a society of classification and cast. so the question before us is not whether we'll be a rich country, we'll be rich for a long time, or whether we'll a powerful country, the question is will we be a good country. will we continue to be a fluid and dynamic society best suited for the pursuit of happiness? will we continue to be america? will we continue to be lincoln's america? where a bright kid literally from nowhere can make the most of himself and arrive to unimagined heights? and i always like to conclude with the famous passage from the lyceum address where lincoln talked about even then, in the 19th century when this was an immature country in many ways, we're invulnerable to military assault. he said you can take all the armies of the world, take the greatest general in world history, napoleon, put him at the head of that army and that army cannot take a step on the blue ridge mountains, could not take a drink from the ohio river by force of arms. then he goes on to say, if destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and its finisher, as nation of free men, we either must live through all time or die by suicide. and i believe that the spirit and the example of abraham lincoln show us how to live. thank you very much. [applause] >> we have time for questions or comments. rich has consented graciously to answer them. if you would step up to the microphones. we have them distributed to the right and to the left. please keep your questions questions and keep them relatively brief. >> thank you very much. i agree with your point about us trying to live up to the spirit of lincoln. considering how abraham lincoln viewed voting and elections, and trying to increase the electorate, how do you think he would view some hypothetical party that might be trying to limit the ability of people to get to the ballot box now? >> thanks for that question. [laughter] thank you very much for that question. i hesitate to get into it because i think this is one of the contemporary -- the questions about what would lincoln think about contemptery events, if i give you my answer i'll have to get into the merits about what i think about the contemporary issue and we'll get into an argument about that and it wouldn't be very useful. so i'm going to -- out of prudence or cowardice, take a pass on that one. but i appreciate the question. do we have other unpalatable questions from the audience? i hope the audience isn't boycotting further questions until i answer this one. >> how did he acquire the great knowledge and abilities that he had? how does one account for the fact that a general dissatisfied with the fact he can manage only 3,000 people receives a response from lincoln quoting pope's essay on man, that one must be -- performs one's assigned task to the best of his ability? how does he -- i can see how he would acquire the bible and shakespeare, which were in every home, but how would he know to reach into his knowledge and reading and produce pope? who told him to read pope? >> that's a great question. well, some of it is just being extraordinarily talented. and i think he was aware of it himself from the very beginning, and as i mentioned at the beginning of my remarks the more discerning people around him, including his stepmother, realized it from the very beginning. but people just took his measure superficially had no idea. he looked like a complete clodhopper, with highwater pants and all the rest of it. so one is having an extraordinary mind, but two, i think a lot of it is simply reading. that's the basis of education. and lincoln proves you don't have to sit in a classroom to do it. it takes extraordinary discipline to do it on your own if you're not in a classroom, but he did it. and for me, going through reading accounts of what were in these basic readers that kids would read then, it's heartbreaking. because the level is so high. very best literature that has ever been written, the best speeches ever given in american history, and you ride one of those and you've got a pretty good education right there. and so that was -- two of those things, one he was just naturally very talented, two, he had the drive to go out and find the stuff and read it on his own. and i believe i read somewhere that when lincoln was elected to congress the first thing he did was go to the library of congress and check out a book of euclid. how many of our fine representatives today do you think are doing that? it just shows for him the self-education, and that whig word improvement never ended. and whig reading also, it wasn't just a leisure pursuit. whig reading was a real act of iron discipline. it was something did you for a reason, and the reason was to make yourself better. >> thank you for your brilliant talk. did religion have a role in lincoln's work ethic? i think he was not a fan of organized religion so much, but did religious faith or spirit play a role in his work ethic? >> that's a great question. this is really disturbing. my book came out in june, and i've already had three questions i've never gotten before in this audience, which is very rare. i don't -- it's not something i focused on very much, because it's one aspect, one of many aspects of lincoln you delve into, that you could write a book on it. and books have been written on it obviously. so my superficial answer would be no, i don't think that religious motivation played any role whatsoever in his early efforts at self-improvement, and this is a time when he was at the very least more irreligious than he would be subsequently. i think he did acquire a faith, a faith in god, but there's a story that lincoln at this time is hanging out, free thinking types and wrote a tract attacking organized religion, and that his friends thought this would destroy his political career, and made him burn it. i don't know whether that's true or not, but that's one story and in his first race for congress this actually -- that he was an infidel and a nonbeliever was one of the charges against him in that campaign. it shows politics hasn't changed very much in a couple centuries. yes, sir. >> hi, i want to thank you for your really great talk. you captured i think the free labor idea in lincoln really beautifully. and i've always tried to -- one of the things i've tried to do is figure out what happened to that free labor idea, where it went, and one of the striking things about lincoln and free labor is that in one of the speeches you sketched out, he says if you don't become your own master, you only have one of two things to blame. either your own failure to work hard or singular misfortune. and neither one can be blamed on the system he said. that singular misfortune idea is an interesting one. i've always imagined what lincoln's free labor idea is blind to, because it doesn't matter as much in the 1850's, is the 20th century problem of risk. the risk, social risk, the kinds of things we see society responding to is something that free labor thinking just hasn't really grappled with. and this has caused me to wonder how much of lincoln's free labor thinking can be transported, modularly as it were into the 21st. the risk problem. >> that's a fantastic point, very well stated. i don't have -- again, i can't answer any of these questions. [laughter] i don't have a great answer for you. it's unknowable where lincoln ends up. 150 years later. and if you're a liberal making the case for a kind of ownership of lincoln, which president obama does, and has done quite a good job at by the way -- i live in manhattan, and there is a doorman, an immigrant from ireland that my wife and i, we haven't directly discussed politics but from his occasional bitter remarks we figure he's one of us. i gave him my book and he was delighted. he said oh, you wrote a book about lincoln? i thought were you a republican! i was like wait, no! [laughter] please! but if you're the president, or on the left making the case for lincoln, ownership of lincoln, what you say is that he was at the outer cusp of support for government activism in his context and in his time. and he basically would have stayed in that place as a case for government grew and government grew over time, and he would end up where the progressives are today. my case would be, if you just take lincoln as you find him, and take account of this free labor idealology, here's someone who has i would argue a much more appreciation for market economics than the left does, has much more appreciation for up from the boot straps individualism, who has much greater tolerance for inequality, has more realistic appreciation of human nature, a more -- a stricter view of the constitution and the limits it places on what government does, and a greater appreciation of natural rights. but ultimately it's unknowable, which is one of the reasons it's such a fun debate and it's raged for decades and decades now, and will continue to do so in the future. but you make an excellent point. thank you. >> rich, your point about lincoln as a corporate lawyer, i think it needs to be modified a little. there's a tendency in some circles, cynical circles to say lincoln was a sellout, raised in the hearts gravel frontier but he becomes a fat cat lawyer. in fact he represented railroads, and he represented people suing railroads. that he was from the school who believed as a lawyer you accepted whatever job came along. and that it's something of a mistake to think of him as primarily a railroad lawyer. >> this is great. you can't know how many nightmares i've had that i would give a speech before a lincoln audience and michael burlingame is going to get up and correct me in front of hundreds of people. [laughter] i'm going to slink off the stage right now. >> i have a suggestion too. when you're asked a question about how lincoln would react to a contemporary event, i faced that recently, a member of congress asked me, how would lincoln have felt about the pending legislation regarding immigration? and i said, well, i don't think he would have supported the democratic position. and i don't think he would have supported the republican position. i think he would have emphatically endorsed the whig position. [laughter] >> hear, hear. [applause] >> i can't resist the opportunity of asking you the same question i asked you the other night -- >> finally something i'm prepared for! [laughter] >> rich talked to the lincoln group of d.c., and you have this wonderful store of anecdotes, and so many of them appear to come from herndon's informants. you tell us how you used herndon's informants and how you chose which stories to treat as credible and worth sharing today. >> thank you. yeah, i rely a lot on herndon's informants, which i really loved -- one of my favorite resource materials -- because one, it's so immediate, these are people who knew lincoln, many of them quite intimately, and the voice of how people spoke at the time is just captured in these interviews and letters from herndon. so as a journalist i recognize if nothing else a good colorful quote. there's so many of them in herndon's informants. what i basically do, you run across a story, and the secondary sources is a book written by one of the scholars here today, and i would say, that's interesting. and you go to herndon's informants and you see it spelled out even more, you see even more colorful quotes. and so i took as much of that from herndon's informants as i could while trying to be careful about it. because some of this was gauzy memories, some of this is people exaggerating stories for effect. some of it is being a little untruthful because they didn't want to say anything possible to sully the reputation of this martyred president. but if you really are bored and have a lot of time, it's a wonderful resource to look through. thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> this weekend on c-span, today at 6:30 p.m. eastern on "the communicators," the founder and ceo of fiscal note on their congressional legislation for dichter, which uses data mining and artificial intelligence, and sunday evening at 6:30, new jersey governor chris christie talks with newly elected gop governors on what they call the next chapter of their political come back. "booktv," 10:00 on cheryl atkinson on the obstacles she faced while reporting on the obama administration -- sharyl a tkisson. and tonight at 9:00, brooklyn college professor benjamin karp tells how leading up to the american revolution, taverns in new york city were used as central meeting places to talk about british policies and foster a patriotic spirit. sunday at 6:00, u.s. house historian matthew was new ski and its curator, sarah elliott, use articles from their collections to tell the story of house pages. find our complete television schedule at www.c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. , or send us al us .weet join me c-span conversation. like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. each week, american history tv's america" brings you archival films that help tell the story of the 20th century. next, from the lyndon johnson presidential library, a 19 68 documentary produced by the office of economic opportunity -- "the mexican american: a new hope for opportunity" depicts hopes for spanish-speaking americans as part of the war on poverty. the office of economic opportunity was established in 19 64 and a abolished in 1981, but many of its programs continue to the present day under other federal agencies. my teaching days, i work for the education and progress of the spanish-speaking people of this great country of ours. i knew many little boys just like juan. juan is a mexican-american. notice that i emphasized american. when i became president, i created the mexican affairs committee in 1967. that committee is made up of some of the ablest members of my cabinet. it's the highest level committee that i can possibly name because the spanish-speaking people, i think, need to get closer to their government, and to get action from their government. >> we are >> we are bringing the to speak, to the people, rather that always having the people come to the government. i have always felt this was the better way. ♪[music] we're here for solutions. to have a sad report once again of the many, many problems. we're here to talk about just theties and not difficulties. this mexican-american finds himself with an unemployment rate that's almost double the for this area. that's not right. suffers historic injustices, because his forefathers were their spanish and mexican land grants. often,ldren, all too attend segregated or semi-segregated schools. on average, five years less schooling than other southwestern children. our mexican-americans have determined that they will do whatever they must do to themselves. there is one phrase and one word that characterizes america and what it means and what it stands for. freedom. not just liberty. not just wealth or power. the word that characterizes america's hope and dream and is opportunity. opportunity. that's what we want. mankind wants all over the world. the opportunity to make something out of
italy had come within a hair's breadth of voting in a communist government. troops were in angola. the soviets in every measurable way are winning. nine years later, gorbachev is suing for peace. they have not taken one inch of territory, which from 1970 through 1980, the soviets took eric tori under every president. they stopped dead in their tracks. it was not just military. it was using the bully pulpit to call them the evil empire. it was using radio free europe to boost the signal into the warsaw pact countries and the baltic countries. stopping the subsidy of their economy -- he used every available method, quite frankly. the soviets never knew what hit them. he hit them at many different levels. he basically brought them to their needs. >> you could sum all of that up in a simple phrase, which he used. that is "peace through strength." he was willing to negotiate with the soviets once we had achieved military superiority, which we did not have when he came into office in 1980. a great way to kick off this conference and commemorate the 50th anniversary of ronald reagan's speech. we have a great grounding in history. are going to take a bit of a break now for a few moments let you stretch her legs. we will be right back here for our next discussion. thank you so much. [applause] >> you're watching american history tv. 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span three. follow us on twitter at c-span history for information on our schedule, upcoming programs, and to keep up with the latest history news. coming up next on the presidency. we hear about theodore roosevelt's love of poetry from paul ferlazzo. roosevelt's interest in poetry developed during his time as a hunter and broadened his interest in nature. paul ferlazzo is the author of poetry and the american presidency. this is about 50 minutes. you,t me introduce to professor emeritus at the department of english in northern arizona. he received his bachelor's degree from st. francis college and a master of arts from the university of oklahoma. following this, he earned his doctor of philosophy degree at the university of oklahoma. for 40 years he taught poetry in the context of culture at universities in the united states and abroad, including italy. he has served as a lecturer. in both germany and china. he has received service awards. fordld a three year foundation grant. he has served on the boards of several academic organizations. in 1975, he was elected to fight phi.i kappa that recognizes excellence in all academic disciplines. he served as western regional vice president for six years and as the 26th president from 2004 two 2007. he is described by his students as, and i quote, "a wise, wonderful and passionate professor". he has published many articles on poets. his recent book is entitled "poetry and the american presidency". it talks about from george washington to barack obama who red and wrote poetry. the book offers a unique look into men who occupied the white house. tonight's presentation is titled, "reading poetry in the white house, the surprising story of theater roosevelt -- theodore roosevelt." please extend a warm welcome to dr. paul for lazo. [applause] >> good evening. welcome. i want to begin by thanking those were arranged this evening. and also thinking the administration at fairhaven for their hospitality. so my talk tonight is called reading poetry in the white house: the surprising story of theodore roosevelt. the reason i say surprising is i do not think most people do not think of theater roosevelt as a lover of poetry. we have had many images of him in our minds, i am sure. and none of them would have you picturing him reading a book of poetry. he was very interested in poetry. red poetry and supported poets. that is the story we are going to talk about tonight. what's. he was our 26th president. his professional life as a politician, of course, was pretty well-known. just briefly i will go over it a little bit with you. elected in 1881 as a new york assemblyman. then to the u.s. civil service commission, new york police commissioner, assistant secretary of the navy in 1897. he organized the rough riders in 1898. he was governor of new york in 1898. coming back from the spanish-american war as a hero. then a elected vice president in 1900. at the death of president half, he assumed the presidency. -- president taft, he assumed the presidency. he was the youngest man to occupy the white house at the age of 42. he was rather rapid only 20 years from new york assemblyman to president. we have this image of him as a rough writer in the spanish-american war. we know him as a great white hunter of wild animals all over the world. we also know him for the teddy bear. there are a couple of stories about this. he was hunting bear in mississippi. the story goes in two directions. he either came upon a very old bear that he felt would be dis-honor to kill that old bear who had lived successfully for so long, and so he did not kill that there. -- did not kill that there. or it was a young bear that he came upon and decided not to kill it because it was too young. i think the older bear was the true story. the result of not killing that bear, the newspapers picked it up, and it became a story in popular press. some toys manufacturer then created the "teddy" there. --bear. when arizona are very sensitive especially of theater roosevelt's work as an environmentalist. he is pictured here with a great american environmentalist. we over great deal to theodore roosevelt as an environmentalist. he established five national parks, 18 national monuments, including the grand canyon. 50 plus game and bird preserves around the country. totaling 150 million acres of forest reserve. he established the u.s. forest service. 21 reclamation projects, including the teddy roosevelt dam. wheeler great deal of our environmental -- we go a great deal of our environmental consciousness to the work of theodore roosevelt. that is a story for another evening, i think. it is something we like to think about, especially those of us who live in arizona. this is his statement about the grand canyon. in the grand canyon arizona has a natural wonder, rich so far as i know, absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. i want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it in your own interests and in the interests of the country, to keep this great wonder of nature as it is now. of course, it is still very much in its natural state. we who live in arizona love it a great deal, and i hope all of you will have an opportunity at some point to visit the grand canyon. when you do, you will recognize the importance of theodore roosevelt, not only as a president but for his environmental activity. our subject tonight, aside from the political life and history of theater roosevelt as an activist is his habit of reading poetry. here we see him pictured in a tent with a big hat on and boots and so on. he is reading. this is one of the things that he always did. he said that with him he said reading with me is a disease he actually said that. he liked to reed so much. he also red a great deal of poetry. -- he also read a great deal of poetry. some people, of whom i am one, also passed through periods, through which they would devour poets of widely different kinds. schiller, scott, longfellow, kipling, shelley, or tennyson. and again, emerson or browning or whitman. sometimes our wishes are to reed for the sake of contrast. when i live in -- i often carried the volumes of swinburne, frying pan bread, and the infrequent washing of sweat drenched clothing. on top of everything else, teddy roosevelt was an excellent writer as a. i think you will notice the vividness of his writing. the main thing about his statement is that the variety of poets that he mentions he lists 16 poets from the ancient world throughout history up to his age that he likes to reed. they come from the classical world of england america germany. together they represent a vast cross-section of the literature of poetry. they represent historical periods. every style of poetry to rhyming couplets to free verse, and every type of home from narrative to lyric. roosevelt was an intelligent -- intelligent reader of poetry. if we went around the room now and i asked you to name your 16 favorite poets that you refer to from time to time, i would probably not find 16. maybe a few we would find. but 16 poets come to his mind as he is thinking about poetry. he mentions the poet swinburne as an antiseptic he says to the life who was this person? they say a person -- a picture is worth a thousand words you could not imagine two people more different from one another. roosevelt on one hand, swinburne on the other. roosevelt was a dedicated family man. with serious commitments to traditional morality, public service, helpful living, and the adventures of the great outdoors. as a thinker and writer, roosevelt was scarily, andcholarly, forthright, eager for progress. swinburne, on the other hand, living a rebellious lifestyle. he had a habit of excessive drink which nearly killed him as a young man. he found pleasure in legislation, and held a vision of masochism in his poetry. he reveled in the fantasies of medieval. his writing style has been called impressionistic, sometimes pornographic, and occasionally vague and unintelligible. what could these two men have in common? this is the amazing thing about roosevelt. he liked to reed and reed a lot of different things. he enjoyed escapist literature as much as anything else that he red. swinburne's poems were musical and sensual with scenes that were exotic or shocking. this reading of swinburne would transport roosevelt in his imagination to a different world far from the ruggedness. he always combined the rigors of outdoor living with the pleasures of reading. on his african hunting expeditions, he took with him on his hunting expeditions a pigskin library this is a picture of his pig skin library trimmed it down to pocket-size. the covers were taken off. the book was rebound with pagan skin leather as defense against abuse they would experience in the jungle. he described his need for the peak skin binding this way. >> off in my reading would be done by resting under a tree at noon, cap speak -- perhaps by the caucus of a beast i had killed. it might be impossible to get water for washing. in consequence the books were stained with blood, sweat, gun oil, dosh dass -- dust. pig skin merely grew to look as a well used saddle looks. " this pic skin lot -- this pagan skin library. one third of these books, some 20 pounds of books or books of poetry. these poets ranged over the history of literature from homer to dante, shakespeare, keats, longfellow, poe, emerson. when asked about the reason for his selection of certain book and the omission of others he described his reading philosophy this way. "this means that i take with me on any trip a very small proportion of the books that i like. i don't like very many or different kinds of books. i don't attempt anything so preposterous as a continuing comparison between books that may appeal to a totally different set of emotions. one correspondent pointed out to me that tennyson was trivial compared to browning. another complaint that i had omitted walt whitman. another asked why i had put longfellow on a level with tennyson. i believe i did take walt whitman on one hunt. i did take others. i did not pick it was necessary to compare them. different sets of experiences that he would have at any given time, and he liked to have these books readily handy. so that what was ever going on in his life even in the jungle or on some south american trip he could pull out the book and read to his heart's content. that is the variety. i think i skipped ahead that is the variety of his reading pleasures. notice my liking to tennyson and my inability to care greatly for browning. i do not put measuring rooms to these poets. i don't see to compare keats with shelley or shelley with poe. i enjoy them all. probably one category of poetry that he liked more than any other was more poetry. -- war poetry. this is what he said about the war said he knew about. every man who has in him any real power knows he feels it when the wolf begins to rise in his heart. he does not shrink from blood and sweat. he revels in them, in the toil and pain and danger as but setting off the triumph. he admired in particular one of the great european ethics of war. he also praises accounts of fighting in chaucer's "the knight's tale". in particular, he liked civil war poetry. he praises the poems written by walt whitman, james russell lowell, longfellow, among several others for the writing about the civil war. he was able to memorize and recite poetry from the civil war. this is an example of two stanzas that he memorized about the civil war which gives you an idea of his feelings about war. "where are ye marching soldiers with anna, gun, and sword? we are marching south to battle for the lord. the mighty run of israel, his name is lord of hosts. to canaan, to canaan, the lord has led us forth. to go before the rebel walls, the compass of the north. when all her walls lie flat, what follows next in order? the lord will see to that. will break the tyrant scepter. we'll build the people's throne. when all the world is freedom, then have to world our own. to canaan, to canaan, the lord has led us forth. to sweep the rebels floors, a world wind from the north. " this was written from the point of view of the north of the victors. they are going to go down south and conquer and set those people free. the poem is full of what we would call triumph holism -- triumph. it does not leave much room for thought or analysis or concern for those who suffer or even the requirement of truth. buried under old testament righteousness. the simple rhyme scheme make memorization easy. it is meant to be carried in the minds as you go off into battle anticipating more and hoping for victory. he struggled hard for what he believed was right. his intense commitment. captioning all bravado he felt as a commander-in-chief. in 1903, his son was attending a college preparatory school called the groton school in massachusetts. he happened to reading book of poetry called children of the night. it was written by admin arlington robinson. his son liked the book so much that he sent a copy to his father in the white house. of course, roosevelt himself liked the book a great deal. who was robinson? edwin arlington robinson? an american poet and of the 19th century who lived through the early 20th century hero 28 books of poetry and 13 pulitzer prizes. prizes.n 3 pulitzer he was not a very successful person in many ways. he came from a family that was quite dysfunctional. in fact, when he was born, his mother was disappointed. she wanted a daughter. instead she was given a son. in fact the first six months of his life, she did not even give him a name. the family was away on vacation and the people who were there said the baby needs a name. they put names and a hat. a woman pulled out the word edmon. that became the first name. she was from arlington massachusetts. that is how he got his middle name. so you have a feeling that he comes from a family that is not very loving towards him. he suffered a good deal as a result of it. there was a great deal of catastrophe in the family, too. his father failed in businesses and became alcoholic and died prematurely. his mother almost i prematurely from diphtheria. he had a brother who died from a drug overdose. another brother who fails at business and became an alcoholic and ended up at a ward for homeless people. robinson was the only one as it turned out that let a full life and a rather successful life, at least as a poet. he also struggled with alcohol and depression. it is easy to understand when you think about his upbringing. the kind of dysfunctional who never married. he depended on friends and companions. he never had a great deal of money he lived kind of hand to mouth. theodore roosevelt red-p a book of this man's poetry. he liked it a great deal he wrote to robinson and said i am enjoying your poetry so much that i must write to tell you so. how are you getting along. i wish i could see you they began a correspondence. in time roosevelt of course came to know that robinson was living in this hand to mouth existence with some personal problems. he wanted to do something for this poet. he found a job in the new york customs house on wall street. this was a job that did not require a nine -- 9-5. he continued to write his poetry, and yet he would have a steady income. roosevelt did this and it made a vast difference in his life, as you can imagine. roosevelt went further by contacting the publisher. he convinced them to publish a second edition of poetry to make sure the people would buy the book. a little extra push, he went ahead and wrote a book review of this book of poems and published it so that he would be as president endorsing the poetry it was hard to picture many presidents doing that going the extra mile he was rich richer this is probably his most famous point. let's take a look at it together. he was a gentleman from seoul to andn, clean favored imperially slim. isis a shocking point and actually the first american hole poem where a self-inflicted gunshot wound is the centerpiece of the poem. it is disturbing. robinson is per train the modern condition. the trouble that people have which they hide -- train the modern condition. the trouble the people have in which they hide. loneliness, unwilling to show it, so they hide behind a mask. despite the fact that they have wealth. despite the fact that they are handsome or above anybody else in many ways. deep within themselves they can be unhappy. catastrophe follows them at the end of their lives. so this is a very serious kind of a poem. it is not a lighthearted, fun-loving poem. roosevelt was an expert reader and appreciated the craftsmanship and the all that robinson was able to capture regarding this character. this type of person who hides behind the mask. robinson stayed in the customs house as long as roosevelt was president. and when he left the white house , of course, in 1909, he had to leave the customs house. but in a letter to a friend, he wrote "my chief concern is a fear that i might turn out a disappointment to my friends and to tr, who must be wondering how long it takes a man to write 100 pages of verse." well he did write another book of poetry which he published immediately after he left the customs house. this is a book of poetry called "the town down the river," published in 1910. it is dedicated to the it or roosevelt. in fact if you had a chance to look at the book of poetry, there are two poems. one at the beginning, and one at the end. the first one is about abraham lincoln and it is called the master, and the other one is about theodore roosevelt. these two poems stand in the book like monuments. bookends to the poems that are in between that both men -- he creates the two of them, lincoln and roosevelt -- as powerful men who shape the nation and point us towards the future. the poems are identical in size and shape, they both have eight stanzas, eight lines in each stanza, they both have the same rhyme schemes. so he is obviously equating lincoln with roosevelt as the two greatest presidents from his point of view. he always wondered if he had fulfilled the wish that roosevelt had for him. he wrote to kermit, roosevelt's's in 1913. he wrote "i don't like to think where i should be now if it had not been for your astonishing father. he fished me out of hell by the hair on my head. it's so enabled me to get my last book together and in all probability to get it published. i hope sincerely that i have made him understand that i know this." well, roosevelt believed in the importance of literature for the progress of american culture. he took active steps to promote poetry and poets when he could. on behalf of his efforts and on behalf of arlington robinson, he promoted that using publications, early poems written by george cabot lodge and other young poets at the time. and at the time roosevelt wrote the introduction to a two volume set to his largest poems. in 1915, roosevelt arrange for another poet named bliss carmen, to find modest employment, so he could "save the discredit from having a man like him die of want." when the widow of a minor kentucky poet wrote about his death, roosevelt sent money from his own pocket, and persuaded andrew carnegie, of all people, to do the same. well, he was a rare individual. a man of power and action who also had a deep love of poetry. not only was he a president worthy of his image carved in stone on mount rushmore to stand forever between jefferson and lincoln, but he also found time in a busy life to read poetry, to write about the value and the importance of poetry for american culture, and to use his wealth and influence to support the life and the careers of 20th century american poets. thank you very much. [applause] thank you. if anybody has any questions or observations or comments that they would like to make, anything i could flush out for you, i would be happy to do so. yes? >> as much as he loved to read it, did he write any? >> no he did not write poetry. the question was, as much as he loved to read poetry, did he ever happened to write poetry? no he did not write any poetry, although he was a great reader. although there were other president who did write poetry. in my book, "poetry and the american presidency," there are several who wrote poetry. if particular, john quincy adams was a great writer of poetry, abraham lincoln, umm, uhh -- jimmy carter wrote poetry. ronald reagan wrote a great poem. but not teddy roosevelt. did you have a question? >> yes, i was just curious. how long did it take -- over what. did it take to carve not rushmore? [laughter] >> rushmore, that is a good question! the man who did it was named bor gulam. i think it took him like 20 years to do it. his family is now trying to carve an image of an indian chief -- crazy horse! --on another location on the same mountain, and it is going on in it is not finished yet. it took a great deal of time, no doubt. yes? question back there? in the back? >> yes, there is a great deal of poetry in the bible. there are occasions for reading and referring to the poetry. >> i am sorry, i missed the question? >> did he ever quote the bible for poetry? did he read a lot of the bible during his tenure? >> did he read the bible? >> oh! yes! yes he did. he did read the bible in his presidency. as well as other presidents, and the bible is full of great poetry. particularly in the old testament, the psalms for example. and many presidents read them and continue to read them, not only for their spiritual messages but also for the song of those poems. yes indeed, he did. yes? >> i have a story in regard to the poem "richard cory." it was one of my husband's favorites. he could site it in its entirety. in his last few days he lost the power of speech. but i got a book out and i would read it to them, and whenever i would get to "richard cory," he could recite along with me even though he had lost the ability to speak. >> yes, "richard cory," is an extremely powerful poem. and closing it with a suicide is such an unexpected ending to that poem that it is disturbing. it just enters your conscious like able to lightning, doesn't it? so yeah, it is a wonderful poem. yeah. yes? >> how did you -- how did you get started and decide to study the connection between presidents and poetry? >> yes, the question is, how did i get started on this project? about tenures ago i was asked to write an essay on edwin arlington robinson for a collection of essays on him. and so in the process of preparing that essay, i had to do a lot of research on robinson. i came upon this book review that i mentioned was written by president theodore roosevelt. and i was so surprised by that. i thought, a president taking time out to write a book review of poetry? it seems so out of character! especially him! i could not quite get my mind around that. so i finish the essay on robinson and then i went back and i did more research on roosevelt to find out what was going on. and as i read about roosevelt, i started to uncover all of this information about him and found he was a lover of poetry. i was stunned by it. and so that i wrote an essay on that. and then i thought i was finished with it. but then i started to recall that i have read somewhere that abraham lincoln had written poems. and then i thought, hmmmm. and then i found out that jimmy carter had written poetry, and then thomas jefferson had probably written poetry because he had done everything into likely. so i started researching all of the presidents. and sure enough, i came up with 18 of them who had some degree of involvement in literature and in poetry. and then suddenly i realized i had a story that no one had ever written about before! and i thought this was an interesting story. so then i put together all of these essays i wrote and then i ended up with this book. it was a good deal of research, of course. yes? the question back there? >> are those presidents who wrote poetry, did their poetry reflect their experiences or the times which they govern, or on they totally different topics and subject matters? >> very interesting question. the question is, did the poetry that the presidents wrote -- excuse me -- reflect their time, their lives, their conditions as president, and so on. and actually the answer is yes to all of those, in fact. john quincy adams, for example, who wrote more poetry than any other president -- over 350 poems -- two books of poetry, in fact an epic, epic poem of over 2000 versus, john quincy adams wrote while he was in office, and he lived as -- you know, he was a second generation adams, so he was raised to be conscious of doing good work for a growing republic. the early american nation that we were. so he had 50 years of public service as, you know, as president, as congressman, as ambassador, many, many positions that he held in government. for 50 years, yet he wished that he could have been remembered as a poet. that is how important poetry was to him. and he wrote, as i say, over 350 poems, and he loved literature so much that he wished to enter the pantheon of authors and be remembered for that, rather than for his public service. and he would take psalms for example, from the old testament, and rewrite them into english verse so that they would rhyme. abraham lincoln wrote poetry. it reflects his personality. he had a great heart for the common man and the common person, he had a great feeling for the ordinary people, and he wrote poems like that. they speak about those characteristics. a president like woodrow wilson would be very surprising, another surprising story. we think of wilson as a very serious man, of course, you know he struggled for peace after world war i and try to establish the league of nations and to bring harmony and peace to the world. and yet he loved limericks! if you could imagine that! and he would recite them constantly. he had so many limericks in fact the people thought he wrote the limericks. we are not sure, he may have written some of them, in fact. it is very difficult to trace the authors of limericks because there are so many of them and there are so many words. so this is an avenue for him to let off steam, so to speak. to let loose a little bit from his trials and tribulations as a
>> today we know that these three writers are gifts to the english language. this morning, the first author that i will be introducing non-other than dave barry. let's give him a round of applause before he comes out. [applause] >> we all know that you cannot do justice to his talents and there he is. [applause] >> you just can't do justice by reading has lengthy biography or saying that his new work, "insane city", his first adult novel in more than a decade. he is an individual for over 25 years have appeared in 25 newspapers, winner of the pulitzer prize and it's pretty cool. like every other kid in the 305, i grew up relishing reading him and today we are hearing from a hometown favorite in dave barry. in our next author is roy blount. come on out and let's give him a round of applause. [applause] >> a master of language and the humorist to boot. he has authored 22 books in a wide range from robert ely to the pittsburgh steelers if you are an npr nerd, and you may also know him as a regular panelist on wait, wait don't tell me. [laughter] and is a contributing editor of atlantic monthly. today he comes to us with his newest work, "alphabetter juice" or "the joy of text." the book for anyone who loves to get physical with words. let's give him another round of applause. [applause] and finally our last author is brad meltzer. and he is a hometown hero who has made a career out of helping all the trim others see the hero within them. he brings us work based upon the popular history channel show in his latest book is the "history decoded: the 10 greatest conspiracies of all time" ended his knew his work, he asks questions in what is going on in area 51 and did john wilkes booth really get away? brad meltzer is the number one best-selling author of the inner circle, as well as a slew of other best-selling books. i would be remiss to say that he and his wife are the leaders who founded and brought this to miami. his latest book just may build bestsellers list and without further ado, i want to have that although biology would never reveal it, he is also my bigger brother. >> same haircut. [laughter] >> over to you gentlemen now. >> i am brad's father. [laughter] >> go ahead. >> go for it. >> make you all, ladies and gentlemen. >> so your last name means arabic for sword. so when you go by something like sword, anyway, it's wonderful. thank you all for coming out on saturday morning to the miami book fair, which is the best one in the united states. [applause] and i just want to know one thing. when i am in a band called the rock bottom remainders. and we have formally disbanded, but we're still going to play because it turns out it doesn't matter. [laughter] the we will be playing at 6:00 o'clock today and the whole band will be talking and a lot of people probably never heard us perform. anyway, we are going to be playing and i won't be there because he doesn't have a lot of talent. [laughter] so i will talk a little bit about my book and it is a novel called "insane city." miami is called the insane city. it's about thing about miami -- and carl pointed this out, that you really can't make anything up about miami that is weirder than miami itself turns out to be. my book is about a wedding that goes wrong. a couple comes here for a destination wedding and the groom lines up with refugees living in his room suite at the hotel and that is and even the beginning of his real problem. he loses his wedding ring to an orangutan named trevor. that probably sounds like a far-fetched tuition. but considering a couple of things that actually happened in miami. first, i will go back a couple of years and hopefully to illustrate my point. if you're writing about the city come he can't get weirder than the city itself. but the first one goes back again and try to picture someone writing a novel in this happened in homestead when the chief of police was a guy named kurt iv and has chief of police, he was asked to speak at the inaugural meeting of his citizens crimewatch group and it was a pleasant evening and so they held a meeting on the patio at someone's house. as the chief of police, he explained how the crimewatch is supposed to work and it was pretty well right up to the point where he is a almost it on the head by 75-pound bale of cocaine falling from the sky. and that actually did happen. a smugglers plane was coming from the bahamas and was intercepted that was going to force them down and so the smugglers are leaving before they were forced down in naples and they threw out 20 bales of cocaine and did like a treasure hunt the next a pair day. but my point is if you wrote a novel, and you see a chief of police almost hit, the critics would say, come on. the other one is more recent. one of my favorite things to happen in our neck of the woods happened in february, the python challenge. it made national news and for those of you here in florida, we have a problem with pythons in south florida. they are not supposed to be here, they're supposed to be in burma. [laughter] whatever that is. and they were brought here as pets and why anyone would want to have one of these widgets to be 20 feet long and is carnivorous, i just don't know. the people brought a lot of them here and at some point, they ran out of crack. and it's like, okay, so they let the pythons go for escape and they turned out to really like south florida and, like the people from new york. it is like to hear it come in their comfortable here. and they reproduce like crazy. they use no form of protection. and they have no natural enemies all. nothing can really kill them and they are now in the hundreds of thousands and so the state of florida, our state motto. you cannot spell it without duh. so they came up with this idea. [laughter] the python challenge. which again made national news for me basically invited anyone to come down from anyone who wanted to come down and kill her pythons. although we did make them pay a 25-dollar fee and that rules out your lightweights. and you have to take a short online course and i hope the website is still up. and you can ask anybody who has ever made a living killing dangerous game. a short online courses what they will tell you how they were to do that. [laughter] cited and take the course, but i did read what they said. and they said that harry's was to kill the python. i thought you just whacked it and nazi like that was the legacy this way. but that was not the correct way to do it. you're supposed to do it humanely. [laughter] and the key is you have to destroy the brain because if you don't, you just cut off his head, according to the python challenge, they keep on thinking. maybe along the lines of holy [bleep], where is the rest of my body. [laughter] >> 1700 people paid $25 to participate in the python challenge. we had hundreds of thousands out there and this went on through the entire month of february and the total number of pythons killed was 68. i am not a biologist, but i'm willing to bet that at some point during the month of february, a mother python laid some eggs and probably a lot more than 68. so the pythons one. they beat us. we if we are going to win, we are going to have to challenge them like humanities. no, come on. although i did have a plan for saving the manatees. nobody picked up on it. the problem we have is that they are not the brightest and they are not the nuclear physicist of animals. voters keep running into them. because it's kind of like how we drive on the highway. everyone drives a special way according to their country of origin. [laughter] and so for decades not, they have been trying to get them to slow down and stop hitting amenities and i came up with an idea. let's speed the manatees up if you can't get the votes to slow them down. let's put motors on the manatees. get it up to 50 or 60 miles an hour and then we will see who wins. [laughter] so the big worry that i have, i'm sure you have as well, is what happens if the pythons get hold of the cocaine. and my point is that this is the world's easiest city to write novels in and that is why i live here. and why ended up writing about florida, which is this insane city, to wrap around to the beginning. so i'm going to now introduced to you roy blount. [applause] >> thank you, dave. i'm not from miami. so we had just little snakes in massachusetts and are not fun at all. but i've written two books now about the words called "alphabetter juice" and "the joy of text." i was reading a textbook of linguistics and the connection between words and meaning as arbitrary. which doesn't make any sense to me. that would mean that splurge and spit could mean the same thing. and i think that words have a lot to do -- not all, but the best words have to do with this. giving an example, how they move through your body. it has rss [bleep], so that is because there was a python body behind him. and so, okay. so it came from from the latin word to urinate. that is the literary latin word in the street latin use a different form, which is how we got our work. the etymologist went on to say that obviously this captures the sound and i said, this is my kind of work. first welcome all the best words come from the street and then they also sound like this. but then it hit me that this doesn't sound like that. it actually starts out and then it becomes a very bodily world. but that is technically more fun to read about than to talk about. so going off into the stories about writing that i have done. i wrote a story with wilt chamberlain who has been gone for quite a few years now, but he was a huge man and he was going to announce his retirement from basketball and i was standing next to him in the elevator once and he said something and i turned to answer him i was looking right at his elbow and there was as much room above is below. he was great to work with. i don't want to shatter any illusions here, but not every athlete is all that literate. [laughter] >> someone was interviewing key roads and said how many books have you read in your life. and he said he gave it considerable thought and said that i've never read a book. and so the guy said, you've written two. [laughter] but i guess even count those. okay, so he was well spoken and it was just my job to write down what he said so look good on paper. and we got along just fine. he was a great basketball player and he wrote a memoir in which he claimed to have slept with 20,000 women and he said, we are doing the math here. [laughter] and he said, yes, there was one big birthday party. [laughter] at any rate, he lived in this house in bel air had feelings about the height of these which was commensurate with his stature. he also had an armed element of the quarter, which was wolf muscles, you know the fur from eight wolf muscles so together and he had this carpeting and upholstery and it was striking to be surrounded by so many wolf muscles and he was surrounded by friends. he had done a story before and he thought that they had misrepresented him in the headline. so he had to approve every word in the story and his friend was there to protect him and they were as big as he was, but they were big enough to be his friend and they were just kind of standing around like this is if i was going to attack them at any moment. so went fine and the main headline came in and said my impact will be everlasting, which he had said was a word and he proved it at the time. then, however, the subhead came through in these days it's all mojo machines. we didn't have laptops, you'd you would see this and copied into this thing and it would gradually reduce it to another and at the end was a tight copy. so i pulled the subhead out of the machine and i was afraid we were going to have a problem because it's a dominant force in basketball announces his retirement and i handed it to him to read and he took it and said that a dominant force. and i said, well, i think the operative donna and force here. and his friends started saying, oh, man, and i said that i can see that this is not going to fit. as i can just place it right there. so i called back to sports illustrated in new york and unfortunately the editor had left the office and then we had this great miraculous telephone operator back then you could find anyone anywhere and she found -- i was afraid she was going to find him at a chinese restaurant and every fourth drink was free. so i didn't pay to have a drink if you really think about it. this editor was in about a six or seven. we have dysentery is individual who had a phone, and it rang and she picked it up and if everyone in the building ring the receiver, i would have separated surgery. so he never did that again. but she found it and he had had several drinks and she said i don't know, i just don't know. people were yelling and the chinese waiter would break in and say, what do you want. [laughter] and i would say that i was here with well and we were always friends and it was just like. [laughter] and the wolf muscles. i was sitting on his couch and i could feel this sort of bristling up underneath. so i said i need to hand the phone off to you. i've never been made about this or that necessarily. but to my astonishment, i saw him mollified and he said who the hell is mariel. [laughter] [applause] [laughter] [applause] >> what i love about miami is that only miami thinks that what goes great with these wilt chamberlain stories and killing animals in florida is dead presidents. that seems like the logical next step for us and i will tell you that i grew up here in south florida and i went to the highland oaks middle school and take you to the one person for the pity clap. go panthers. [laughter] you know, in 11th grade, my teacher wheels and a tv card with the tv on and when you're in 11th grade, you know what that means, it means you're seeing a movie that day and that's the best day of school, free movie, no learning, movie. which puts him in front of us, instead of the educational film, she puts on a jfk conspiracy film. it was in a kooky ones that is 500 people doing this or that there is one that says the driver of the lemieux turned around and shot him. seems like it was really going to faster we would miss him but she pulls this out and it really does ask the hard questions and how does jack ruby get past all the police officers were there guarding this man and what is lee harvey oswald doing for two years unaccounted for. my parents were like pete rose. they had those reading habits. my mom read the inquirer and the star and those were the books in my house. because that's where the real news came from. one of his favorite movies was all the presidents men and lisa watch it over and over and he didn't care about nixon anything else. he loved dustin hoffman and robert redford. the watching this jfk movie when i was in 11th grade in florida was just one of those movies that blake kicked into the foundation of my brain. nixon was big, but this was bigger and how do you pull off killing a president? was my love of history that was really in that moment. two years later and became a history major in college. i thought english is pretty useless, but history is really useless as a degree. but there's nothing -- there's nothing that could be more useless. so i went right for that. [laughter] and what happened is i've been very lucky. over the years. when you write books like i do, no one gets crazier than me, no one gets sent more proof that abraham lincoln has given me. it's like me and jesse ventura. when you find something crazy come you don't send it to the white house can from he said it to me or jesse ventura and here is george washington's cousin had. who would want this? [laughter] and this is true. john wilkes booth, years ago, his family famously shoot abraham lincoln, who dies in a barn 12 days later. every history book will tell you that he dies and then i get a phone call and minutes from the lawyer that represents john wilkes booth in the family also tell you a story and the story is that their relatives never died upon that day he actually lived and he escaped he took on a new identity and he's not the one buried in the a coffin. you won't hear the story. so yes, i want to hear that story. right? i mean, i'm busy dealing with abraham lincoln's gayness. i'd love to hear the story. [applause] >> it's an amazing story, one of the best is a lot of parts of the family insists that he -- that he escaped and one of the aliases he took on was john wilkes. now if your name is john wilkes booth and your alias is john b. wilks, you're the worst alias maker of all time. there is one point where the american public is paying real money they mummified the body, it said. people go to the carnival and pay money to see this mummified body of him. it is said mummy and john wilkes booth and the play, i love this. so i have been lucky enough to see these stories and investigative stories and what we did was we did this book, "history decoded: the 10 greatest conspiracies of all time." i need a volunteer from the audience. does anyone have a copy? this is a test for you. this is a test to see your love for me. the best part is my relatives are in this audience and their they're like, please don't call me. [laughter] sumac not one copy. okay. i'll take a copy of "history decoded: the 10 greatest conspiracies of all time" and okay, bring it on. and so this is my wife, everyone. [laughter] so this is where i get a volunteer from an audience. so we know that people like pete rose love to read and we also know people like him exist. what we did with the book is open us up in every chapter has a little secret compartment and you get to pull out the documents this is actually the letter he left behind after he killed abraham lincoln and that's no joke. every document is different and you can pull it out yourself. what i love about that is you get to see the evidence. i was in the treasure vault a couple of years ago and for me that's like the playboy mansion. i love that and that's where i go and they have these documents of an oath of allegiance that people use to sign. into this state you must in the military, we make you raise your hand and take an oath of allegiance thing that you won't kill us and we are unreasonable like that. this oath that they had signed by a guy named benedict donald and that's awesome. thing is that he's like a curse word today. but in in this moment when a handy this document, i can picture him with a pen in his hand signing this and they had a number. i think number five was benedict arnold. it wasn't just some boring thing in a the history book, but you have this document and out comes alive. and that's what we really wanted to do in the book. so of course we put in the good crazy stuff in wiki the actual document that the government used to asked to fill out if you saw a ufo. if you think you're doing useful stuff now -- i mean there is a whole department trying to figure out what the question should be in the pulpit document that says if the fo has blinking lights, check yes or no. i mean, god bless america. there is a whole department saying, good question. i like the blinking lights and now you're working. and of course we count them down and insisted it anniversary and we all know, if you don't have a heart heartbeat, you miss the footage yesterday that it was the 50th anniversary of the death of jfk and that's the greatest conspiracy of all time. this book is dedicated to my history teacher ellen sherman. when she showed me when i was in 11th grade and i'm still just with that. when you look at the story, i went across the country and every question is like some guy who blinked a lot and was like i want to ask you about this and you know this and then i get to dallas and it takes me to dallas, texas. the motherland of the crazy. and i will tell you was the only place where the first question was not jfk. because if i wanted to know about lincoln's money. so when you look at him, we all know that it is a great conspiracy. one of the greatest of all time and we all know that when you look at it and you plant the seed of doubt in someone's head, it's almost impossible to onerous. you look at the warren commission 50 years ago and they looked at this and said that lee harvey oswald acted alone. in a decade later, the house house committee looks at the evidence and say that that's wrong and we didn't find three shots were fired, we found four. so i went there for the first time, which is was a fantastic trip, take your kids. the best part is i get there and of course i'm taking pictures and making a funny face and having fun. and then a minute later i'm walking and there's a family there with her cute little twin girls and if you can picture them same smile. of course -- i love judging other people. in the play, you people are taking pictures at a murder scene. i go there and it's believed to be where that fourth shot was fired not because anyone saw something and there was a footprint. because there was an audio tape in the sky, these two men are experts and you get the drift. no one in virginia gets that joke. in virginia, they're like, i don't get it. i don't get it at all. and they say that it's a gunshot. and no one knows that three years later, 10 of the top experts in the country who do audio forensics come in and save these say that these guys were wrong, they were completely wrong. they say it was a motorcycle backfiring, okay, but the amazing part of it is that whatever they think was fired was actually a minute after jfk was killed and so his limo was all the way unweighted hospital. so once that seed of doubt is planted, that is a farce that is the grassy knoll. and there are great stories about him and of course, you do have to ask the hard questions and you do want to know where oswald was when he was in russia and what he was doing her and one of the things we put in the book is when you get to the chapter, you actually get the state department saying that when he renounced his u.s. citizenship. and he basically said that i'm a marine i don't want to be an american anyone am going to russia. can see this guy is dangerous and you have to look at him and we look at the date and you pull out of the book, you'll see that it's dated halloween of 1959 and four years before he shot jfk and they were watching him. and that is when history is most amazing three. so when you look at the story, we all focus on the death in these things and this is so interesting. they snuck in and got him in the only reason that he was able to kill him is because in that moment he says he's cold and before he's about to leave, he said he is cold and need needs a sweater and now it takes them like 10 minutes to get a sweater and he is particular about the size or color. and he gets a sweater and he waits for it and not slightly gets shot. so the amazing moment of history and those moments are fantastic to find and to look at. i think the real question is, and we look at so much information out there, we have so much misinformation. he did a great disservice to this country when in his movie he purposely mixed fact and fiction so completely and he says -- he calls this a tarmac. in the play, i've been watching a movie and saying, this is real. and they said that no one has been able to re-create that shot. and i thought, well, if no one is able to re-create it, logic tells me that there must have been another shooter and no one has been able to do that. and so cbs news had 11 different sharpshooters make that certainly we all watched that movie and yesterday they were showing it again and they think that is the real story of jfk and honestly it's not. and i think it is important for us to reclaim our history and i love that. and you thought you're just going to learn something at the book fair, but here it is. in the 60s, they thought it was at the height of the cold war. in the 70s, we thought it was her own government that killed him and then in the 80s, the prosecutions go forward and who killed jfk? the mob, the mock layout. decade by decade, it's whoever america's most afraid of is that moment in time and that is the real legacy of jfk. here's the president who took hopes to the greatest heights and then in his death reveals our greatest fears. it's a reflection of what we are afraid of and you have proof and who did a? our own government did it to us. if you open up the newspaper, i don't need to explain to why america you why america is suddenly so afraid of our own government and why we must trust ourselves. you show me a conspiracy and i will show you who you are and i will show you what you're afraid of. and that is what all conspiracies are, they are a mirror reflection of our fears and the moment with that said, i know that there will be questions or you can please ask them. [applause] >> we have about 10 minutes were some questions. so let's get some good ones here. >> you can yell them out, or there is a microphone right here. >> my husband and i came in from texas for this book fair. and i'm one of them. i would like to say something about the python story, which i think is fascinating. they invite people to come shoot it in with the python i can imagine texans coming in to want to be part of this shooting or however they kill the python because i see it as boots and belts and wallets because they sell this kind of stuff and it's a comment and not so much a question. >> i certainly hope not. [laughter] you're welcome to come down and shooter pythons. we could just drive on in and run into your borders. [laughter] >> which i rented buildings out here or anything. >> the problem with them is if you run into them, they are huge. >> we are not afraid of your borders. [laughter] >> they are tearing up farmland and they are dangerous if you run into them on the highway. >> send a python. [laughter] >> they are dangerous if you run into them in a dark alley as well. >> james ford had this come out a few years ago as well but it was probably the only conspiracy book that has an intersection between thomas martin and the writings of jfk. so i am curious as to what your opinion of the book is and whether you notice anything or any issues and where you basically stand. >> i believe this question is for dave. >> there's nothing i love more than commenting on books i haven't read. so the best part is it after the book "history decoded: the 10 greatest conspiracies of all time", all it shows me is how many jfk books i haven't read and i do think that there are great books out there and i figure there's a lot of theories out there as well and i'm sure this author is a genius and a nice person. >> are you the author? >> okay. [laughter] >> him isolated, yes. okay, i love his next book. what is it coming out and they are like, we know he is due. and we got it. so the one thing that i always challenge anyone to do is actually, there is this thing that i personally like, which is called facts and evidence and i'm picky like that. i was just in dallas and i've never actually seen the book of order was. there's too exes on the ground and they actually just took him away and we decided that this would be a good week to be paved the road. the play, okay, no people were tripping over this all the time. but when you see this book depository, the guy says, you know, this is what it doesn't explain. why did he not make this shot when jfk was coming at him instead of from behind. straight down. and that is like asking why do you like chocolate were then been a lot. but until i got there that you realize that it is like shooting ducks in a gallery. it's a long shot with nothing to protect them on either side and that is a simple shot. as to why he didn't take it, i think what a lot of people tend to do is say, what about this and not and i can say that what about the fact that obj was suddenly the president. that is a good question. show me the proof. because i think it's easy to ask questions. i think the real answer is why no one knows is because a man named jack ruby. he took away the one person who could ever tell us that someone came today and said that i worked with oswald and i was the guy who helped him, none of us would believe him, i wouldn't believe him. we just wouldn't, that's not what our appetite is and this is a story that is about america and what we believe in the death of the american dream and what we lost. and i think that sadly is going to be a lot more books written and i don't think any of them are going to have all the facts unless that's a heck of a book. >> okay. thank you. [applause] >> i want to thank all of you for being here today. authors will be signing the books at the bottom of the stairs. >> one other last thing. i could just say thank you to our host. he is the executive of city or miami. please check it out, it's one of the best organizations, putting kids in the neediest public schools to serve as mentors. and i think you for being a part of that. >> i want to thank the authors for being with us today and i know that everyone was laughing tremendously. our next event is also a ticketed event and we do have to ask everyone to leave and then come back. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> you're watching live coverage of the 30th annual miami book fair near miami miami dade college. booktv has been on the air for 15 years and we have covered this event every year and we have a full afternoon and evening of events. you'll hear from doris kearns goodwin along with scott bird, who is the author of a new autobiography on woodrow wilson. two authors that you'll be hearing from and we have several call and opportunities as well. peter baker is a chief white house correspondent for "the new york times" and we have some of the common opportunities that you have this afternoon as well. and coming up in 15 minutes, lawrence welk will be in chapman hall where you just saw dave barry and roy blount. he is talking about his book, it's about scientology and hollywood and he will be speaking and we will be showing that live and that he will be joining us for a call-in segment as well. we on the campus of the college and the seasick c-span bus is here. so as you can see coming can come on down and grab yourself a bag and you can also follow us and get schedule updates all day long at facebook and twitter apple tv and by the way, the full schedule is also available at her website, booktv.org. so as i mentioned earlier, this is the 15th year that but tv has been on the air and we have been showing you some of our past programs and we want to show you some of our past programming from miami, there is a little bit of that before the next author presents. >> i think all of us hunger for washington to deal with this. and for the news media as well to bring you a straightforward account and hold people to account and so in talking about back, trying to trace back how did we get to this place and there was, and my own career in journalism, i have covered energy in the first energy crisis when jimmy carter was president. when he had just come a couple of years earlier and i was recruited to cover maryland because they figured anyone who have covered the big democratic machine led by a controversial and colorful man had learned enough about corrupt politics to cover this story. this includes a federal court case involving mail fraud conviction was later overturned, but the trial on charges of the governor of maryland and involved two that i try to sell a race track with some illegal actions in the interim and it is very colorful and eventually the network noticed me and hired me to be doing the general assignment. a method known as covered energy and so i volunteered for energy and the next thing i knew this is what happened. and so i write about how i ended up becoming an unlikely expert on nuclear power. before the first week of the crisis, nobody sent me this. i was the energy correspondent and by the end of the first week bureau chief was sending correspondence and every 24 hours because no one knew how much low-level radiation was bare. and i hadn't been measured. the role of a the woman in this business at a time, i was told there is no room for brought in broadcasting. [laughter] and that's the way it was. and so i volunteered to get an entry level job and though i have been hired for that. and i was working for $50 a week trying to run coffee to the anchorman and then there were demonstrations and we were in the middle of the antiwar movement and mlk was assassinated him and bobby kennedy and other cities were rocking. there is a lot to cover. it was such a fascinating time to be a reporter. i was recruited to come for a local cbs station and there i was on the governor of maryland and eventually was hired by the network. then what ensued has been a fascinating number of experiences and i was the most junior correspondent recruited to help out holidays and weekends covering president carter and that meant going to georgia for thanksgiving and christmas. well, i don't know how many of you have been there. [laughter] and may i suggest that rosalind carter. and it's up the road and we basically would go in the company, we went to the house at 530 on christmas morning to begin opening the presents and then begin going to the house. rosalynn's mom, and they open their presence there. and it was not the greatest assignment correspondent ever had, but there were some benefits. we got to go to sunday school. then communicate back to all of your colleagues. and the network may have been television and eventually after covering energy, five days into that assignment, 3-mile island happen, i walked into the bureau of the chief's office and said that just occurred to me that i've been waiting to go and i'm in charge of the coverage and you haven't sent me, he sent all the men and he said that well, you are of childbearing age and i didn't want to risk sending you into that zone. and i found myself saying, has it occurred to you that men are as vulnerable to radiation as women in their ovaries? and i was on a plane the next morning. >> that was andrea mitchell from 2005 at the miami book fair international. on your screen, that's a live picture of chapman hall of miami dade college on the north side of downtown miami. and in a few minutes, lawrence wright, the looming tower of al qaeda, his most recent book will be discussed at 11:00 a.m. eastern time today. so in about five minutes or so. in his book was a finalist which was just awarded this past wednesday night and the winner was george packer and he will be talking about coverage tomorrow in miami. so showing you a little bit more, as we wait for him to get started. here's another look at a booktv shoot here in miami. >> tell us where you see the culture going. in terms of this, are we creating a culture of readers or nonreaders? where are we right now? >> is endorsing that is happening right now is that we are creating a culture where people don't listen to the other side and there's a quote in "the new york times" and i had to do with reality is fine and blind and he believed in the whatever you believe in one way or the other or whatever you believe about entitlements or global warming. but you are incapable of seeing the other side at all and you take that to congress and both sides that there and just, they won't ban or see other the other side's point of view and nothing happens. and the anger that comes out of that. a lot of people are just so angry because they just have this, this is what i think, there's no other way. >> i think that reading, especially reading about other people's lives creates a sense of tolerance. >> us away. that's the great thing about it right now, more than any other medium that we have. television is getting better, movies, it's a lot of the same hollywood stuff and the cops are bad and that we could see as good in this and that. and it is books are the one place where there is such a variety. instead, you can see the other points of view and there are other ways of looking at the world, what is really going on and it's a terrific book about afghanistan called the forever war and you read that book and you really get it. or at least you get a really good point of view on what is going on, i think. >> you are right. and i couldn't agree with you more and i also think that what is happening in terms of getting that selection, most people don't realize there are so many books printed each year and you need guides to find those books and i'm curious to know what you think, the library and bookstore and how that plays into that and how it is evolving as well. >> i mean, clearly it is evolving and it's a done deal. it's happening. but i think the really horrifying thing right now is it's happened so fast and nobody has taken responsibility for it or for how do we make that transition in a sensible way. how do we continue to get the kind of advice that we can get in bookstores and libraries and how do we keep that alive. and i'm doing an essay right now, which has to do with who is going to save our books and our libraries and who will be responsible for finding the authors who are creating this great set of american books of the last hundred years or so. and then it lists about 50 books. though who'll do that. is amazon when they do not? anime, who is doing not? and it's the same thing for the internet. .. and i think i would love to see the president, first lady, whatever, i'm like that the first lady is reminding us that it is good to exercise and not overeat which is a huge issue. what i would like to see more in washington is who is protecting books? in europe they do protect books, they protect bookstores and libraries and that is good. in germany in particular. germany, the netherlands, scandinavia, they protect it, that is the basis of the culture and i don't know that that is happening here and i am not sure where it is going to happen. >> we are back live in miami for the 30th anniversary of the miami book fair. this is the 30th year this book fair has been dead since booktv has covered it. in a few minutes, lawrence wright, cuba surprise winner, his most recent book "going clear: scientology, hollywood, and the prison of belief," he will be talking about that. that event is due to begin any minute now. we have a full afternoon of coverage, several call in opportunities, you we will talk to peter baker of the new york times, chief white house correspondent for the newspaper. his book is days of fire:bush and cheney in the white house and you will also talk to sheri fink, "5 days at memorial: life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital" about memorial hospital in new orleans after katrina. lawrence wright will be speaking in an amended. program is now beginning. >> our sponsors, american airlines, and many other sponsors. you see the list of sponsors on the programs for the book fair. we would also like to acknowledge friends of the book fair. some of you're here and want to thank you for your continued support. at the end of the session we will have time for questions and answers and the authors will be autographing books as well. as a former teacher this is the point where i click into teacher mode and remind everyone to turn off their cellphone. before you turned off, turn them off i am asking you to show your support for the book fair by messaging by texting a friend, text the letters and b f i and the amount you want to donate to number 41444, then press enter. it is that simple and you will receive follow-up reminders. please consider donating $30 in honor of the 30th anniversary of the miami book fair international. it is my pleasure to introduce jim ballsbell, the caribbean business manager for the associated press, he will be introducing our author. [applause] >> good morning. i am the florida chief of bureau for the ap. it is my great pleasure to introduce pulitzer prize-winning author, screen writer, playwright and staff writer for the new yorker, lawrence wright. he will be interviewed today by investigative reporter and editor joseph childs of the tampa bay times. childs has written about scientology which is the subject of lawrence wright's latest book, "going clear: scientology, hollywood, and the prison of belief". this week lawrence wright's book was named national book award finalist. yesterday it was named -- that is all right. applause is good. it was named one of the ten books of 2013, the ten books of 2013 by the washington post. lawrence wright's investigation draws from more than 200 interviews with current and former scientology us. in a review earlier this year in the new york times he called scientology probably the most stigmatized religion in america. based in austin, texas, lawrence wright has written six other books, the looming tower of al qaeda and the road to 9/11 won a pulitzer prize for general nonfiction in 2007. please join me in a miami welcome for lawrence wright and joe child's. [applause] >> good morning. let's begin with a word in the title of the book. "going clear: scientology, hollywood, and the prison of belief". scientology devotes a lot of organizational energy to tap into the celebrity culture that is so prominent in the united states today. talk to us about that. talk to us about what you found and why you devoted so much attention to that aspect of the book. >> scientology was created as a religion. it was used celebrities. when it was set up it was established in los angeles in 1954 and there was a reason for that. l. ron hubbard, the founder of scientology, realized americans really do worship one thing for sure and that is celebrity. where is the capital of celebrities? hollywood. scientology has become one of the major landlords in hollywood. early on, they set out to recruit celebrities. there was a church publication put out shortly after the founding of the church with a roster of perspective celebrities that included people like bob hope, walt disney, marlene dietrich, howard hughes, the most famous people in the world. those are the kinds of people they sought to use as pitch men for their new religion. celebrities did come to the church. they built a celebrity center. celebrities would feel at home. in some of the early people that came into the church, rock hudson passed through, apparently he got very upset when he was in the middle of an auditing session and needed to put some more money in the parking meter and they wouldn't let him out of the room. he stormed out and never came back. gloria swanson, sort of the faded movie star of silent movies, later people like leonard cohen and even elvis presley made a stop. he didn't stay in the church but his widow and daughter are still prominent members. the idea was celebrities are useful. they become megaphones for advertising the church and its benefit and if you look at the people who have been their spokespeople, like john travolta and tom cruise, each of these guys was at one time the number one movie star in the world and that is a very powerful blower to young people who have gone to hollywood and are solicited by the church to come to the celebrity center to see how to get an agent or get ahead as of business. if they looked at who is in the church they think maybe i could be as well. >> let's hear you talk specifically about tom cruise. he has emerged in the last 10 or 15 years as one of the essentials pillars of scientology. to the point where scientology as an organization, its reputation influences tom cruise's reputation and vice versa. tom cruise's reputation influences and defects scientology. how powerful is he in scientology? what roles does he play for the church? >> tom cruise has been the visible face of scientology for decades now. there is no more famous or influential scientology asked in the church since l. ron hubbard created it. since the beginning, the church wanted some exemplary figure that could stand for the church. they didn't get bob hope, they didn't get walt disney but they did get tom cruise, and they really got him. he is the very devoted member of the church. the leader of the church now says everybody -- every minute, forget what the figure was, 5,000 people are awakened to the idea of scientology because of tom cruise. there is no way of knowing how to evaluate such a statement but no question people know about scientology because of tom cruise. when he uses celebrity megaphone, you are tied to their behavior and sometimes it is not always an advantage for the organization that is represented by celebrity but of all the celebrities in scientology, no one is a greater moral responsibility for demanding change inside the church and the abuses taking place at the upper level of the clergy than tom cruise. no one has benefited materially more than he has. inside the church, there is clarity called the sea organization. people who have signed contracts for a billion years of service. they are paid $50 a week. many of them joined as children. really, as children. really young children. and their whole lives are devoted to serving this organization, unbelievably long workweeks and no money, and great privation and the number of them have done work for tom cruise. they build a anger for his airplane, all limousine, took the body of a limousine and handcrafted everything in it. they fix up his houses and polished his lightbulbs and he derives all of this benefit in a way that no other member does and he is the very close friend of the leader. all the physical abuse your paper has chronicled and i talked to a number of people as well who told me they have been physically beaten by the leader of the church and the number of people who have been confined in these punishment camps. i think the church is headed for and accounting but it won't happen unless people like tom cruise who have the standing the church demanded. >> keeping this team going you use in the title the words prison of believe. let's get you talking about the controls that scientology exerts over its members, its claridge land its parishioners -- clergy and its parishioners. >> it is almost like two different churches in some ways. there are public people, people that go into the church of scientology and the truth is they might go in and get something out of it and they leave. they may be followed by telephone calls and mailers for the rest of their lives but they can walk away from the church. there is another level of membership which is the celebrities who are public members but it is not as easy for them because they are often asked to be the public face of the church and make declarations and come for instance to florida and testify about the drugs and drug use and so on. it is not so easy to walk away. inside the church is this clergies that i spoke of. we don't know how many people are in it. when i was doing my research at one point they told me it was 5,000, 6,000, got up to 10,000. have you ever gotten an estimate on how many members there are? >> 6,000. >> that is what they say. take their word for it. inside the sea org, people who go in as children, they have very little education, they have little money because their resources are essentially $50 a week, they are cut off from their family unless their family or members of the church -- are members of the church, they may not have a driver's licenses or passports and many of them are stationed in but sea org headquarters here in southern california, surrounded by razor wire, motion detectors and guards, supposedly to keep people from breaking into the compound but it also effectively keeps the people that are there confined to. around different places in the world, scientology has up presence, there are what are called rehabilitation project forces, re-education camps for people that have strayed in their thinking toward their behavior who are in the sea org and at the sea org headquarters, at one point there were two double wide trailers married to get it to make an office suite and in 2006, david muscovitcz, he confined his top-level people in the church so they would go through this self criticism, chinese communist behavior. ended is not like for a weekend the nominal leader of the church, elderly man who has been there for seven years. they sleep on sleeping bags, eating swap out of buckets and get out once had a for a shower and there is a lot of physical abuse that takes place. a lot of emotional abuse as well and it was in your paper the first time you wrote about polk musical chairs episode which to me crystallizes the prison of believe better than any thing i know. david miscarriage --miscavitch came in with the jukebox and said does anybody know what musical chairs means? in scientology that is the term that has to do with sheet changes of the post, and that is what they thought he was talking about. it is also a game so he had to explain how to put a circle of chairs and people walk around and there is one chair fewer than the number of people are there are so people-for the chairs and a person who is standing is out of the game and he said the last person who gets to sit down can stand. everyone else will be kicked out of the sea org. if your wife is not in the sea org you are going to be divorced or sent to some remote sea org location and he even had airline tickets printed up in the scientology travel office where these are from locations, trailers brought in. this game went on for hours. as the number of shares diminished fights broke out, clothes were torn, chairs were broken, people were fighting to stay. that is the fascinating part of this. he was offering them freedom and they were willing to fight each other for the opportunity to stay in confinement, sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag and eating it swapped out of a bucket. that defines the prison of belief. >> let's get you talking about how outside agencies, law enforcement agencies are shielded from penetrating scientology and penetrating these abuses. so much of what you heard so far is written in scientology scripture. l. ron hubbard wrote millions of words as scientology scripture. >> he has the guinness book of world records, i have to take my hat off, more than a thousand titles. >> but when someone, some member of both religious order expresses a desire to leave they can be put on punishment detail, work detail and be examined one on one for hours at a time. had is a religious practice in scientology. when someone says i don't want to endorse this and scale the fence and a runaway, going after that person and bringing them back is a religious practice. >> speak now to how that is defensible from a legal standpoint. >> when i started my investigation i ran into an fbi investigation that was going on simultaneously and my sources were talking to the fbi. i got them to tell me what they were telling the fbi. the fbi was mainly looking at this base i was talking about, on the basis of human trafficing, people being confined against their will, human trafficking is normally something they use, they were thinking the church was vulnerable on this. they apparently got the tail numbers on one of tom cruise's airplanes in case he decided to help david miscavige make a run for it. like that is the greatest polk j. moment you could have. the fbi flank after this little trick plane. members of a former executive who escaped from scientology said if you were to break into the hole and kill the door, they would say it is all sunshine and sea shells. we are happy here. we are here of our own accord. that story i told you exemplifies that but the fbi was still investigating up until that suit in colorado, two former members of the sea org had sued the church alleging physical abuse. mark headley had been beaten by the leader of the church. his wife claimed she had been forced to have an abortion. they worked years and years to have children when they went in. they had many, they had been confined, they both had to escape. a judge ruled that all of these were religious practices and there was little law enforcement could do, the fbi gave up on their identification. what were they to do? that is one of the reasons i hold people like tom cruise accountable because we are in an odd spot. joe and i can write about it. we can't prosecute it. we can just bring public attention to what is happening, going on. the law enforcement agencies are stymied and the irs which is another agency that could make a difference is cowed. there is very little, very few avenues for actual reform inside the church except those celebrity megaphones turnaround and face the other direction. >> let's shift gears and talk about not the religious order, not the people who signed the billion year contract and also live -- say no they are going into an isolated setting. let's talk about the people who are in civilian life, people who lived down the street from me, from you perhaps and so-called parishioners. could they read your book? if not, why not? when a video of this presentation is posted on the internet could they go to their computer and see this video? if not, why not? >> if you use the verb could, if they could, if they would they won't. scientology has to me like a flock of birds. there's a group mind. it is fascinating and a little frightening to watch how uniform they are in their reactions. even people who are not under the threat of confinement. i have spoken on a number of occasions about scientology and been on a number of radio shows and so on. i only had one scientology sexually call in and no scientology several identified, no current practicing member of the church, a group like of this and if there is someone here who would like to do that i would be happy to talk to you about it. one person wrote a complaint to my editor and i send her a note saying have you read the book? no. would you like to? no. i said i would be grateful if you would quit making accusations about a book you haven't read and please let me send it to you. know. finally she continued to engage me because there was something going on with her obviously. a lot of people who were in scientology are in the turbulent frame of mind because there is so much agitation happening inside the church. she finally did say she would send the book but it would have to be in a brown envelope so her husband would no. years ago the church put out coffered dvds, cds to their members that would patrol the internet and make sure it blocked anything that would be derogatory towards the church so they wouldn't have to hear it. in scientology terms, this is all just bad information. it will do you know spiritual goods so don't listen to it and for the most part it has been my experience that scientology this take that very seriously. they don't want to hear anything bad about scientology so they close their eyes, their mind and their years. >> the person to whom you may have sensed that book, if you did, his or her spouse would have us spiritual duty to record at person if they saw them reading the book. >> and there are consequences. even for members who are not in the sea org. if that happens you go in for extra auditing, suggest that you take these courses that are very expensive and it runs up a real tab and also it is expensive but what is more threatening is the possible loss of friends, family members and members of your community that you depend upon and will turn against you if you are seen or thought to be reading material that is bad for your spiritual health. >> now we will switch a big gear and get you talking about the creator of scientology, l. ron hubbard. this great book achieved on many levels, one of the great accomplishments is the depth of information about l. ron hubbard. i have read a lot of stuff about l. ron hubbard. i read some much about him in larry's book. it seems to me you clearly set out to do a biography on l. ron hubbard and you achieved that. what drove you to drill down into him. why did you think that was so important and what were some of the oh wow moments you had? >> i have a theory as a writer. in order to tell a story about a very esoteric, complicated world you need what i call a donkey and that sounds like a disparaging term but a donkey is a very useful beast of burden and he can take you, the reader, into a world you have never been in and carry on his back a lot of information. if you have a fascinating dante, of a reader will take that ride so i had two main donkeys in my book. one was paul had a gust. academy award winning director who dropped out of scientology after 34 years, who could tell me about the world of scientology in modern times and the other was l. ron hubbard 11. one of the most intriguing people of never had the opportunity to write about a huge he really did live a fascinating life but he felt a the need to make it more fascinating than it actually was and he created legends about himself that already basis of the dianetics which was his self-help therapy that he created and later the church of scientology. the most glaring one of these is the legend that after world war ii he was blinded and crippled and confined in a naval hospital in the bay area in california and medicine couldn't help him. he developed techniques he later called dianetics that healed himself. when scientology scheme to the new yorker, tommy davis and chief spokesperson and forced scientology lawyers a long with 47 volumes of binders with material to respond to 968 fact checking query's, it was quite a day but at some point tommy davis, the spokesperson, said if it is true fact at the 11 lied about his condition, that he was blinded and crippled, then dianetics is based on a lie and scientology is based on a live. our eyebrows all went because this is the checkable fact. we had freedom of information request, military records in st. louis and we sent and in turn to get 900 pages they had on his military record, and he had arthritis in his hip. wasn't exactly blinded and crippled but you could see where he was going with that. i don't know that he was ever healed of those injuries. but they're stuck with the statements he made about himself. the most polarizing individual, and people think he is either the greatest thing they have ever seen or the creepiest and there are some political figures that reminds me of. but hubbard had a compelling manner for a lot of people and he would spin these stories about his past lives in a very humorous manner, in a seeming erudite manner, nobody ever seem to ask where these stories came from. to one incidents where i had -- they said the response was let's not get into that. >> current scientology leader david miscavige was involved twenty-seventh years, but he was an enigma to many. there has been controversy surrounding the church in recent years, a lot of this controversy that surrounds him personally. you devote a lot of energy to reporting on him. was that a design as well. >> david miscavige is the brigham young of scientology. and many new religions are created but they don't survive after the death of the charismatic leader because there is no person to follow up. and he saved it from the mistakes hubbard made. hubbard decided not to pay his taxes. by 1993 the church code $1 billion which at the time it did not have. now it does. at the time it only at $125 million, it was facing an existential moment. david miscavige decided we have to get our tax exemptions. how do they go about it. they launched 2400 lawsuits against the irs and individual agents. private detectives follow agents around and go to conferences where they trail people and find out who is sleeping around or drinking too much and publish articles in their magazines about this and past them out on the steps of even even constitution avenue, headquarters of the irs. they intimidated the irs. whatever the merits of their case, those were the fact that surrounded they're getting a tax exemption. i just said they owed $1 billion. the irs, not only find them $12 million but for gave the billion dollars, they gave the authority to decide on their own which parts of the church are tax-exempt. they even made l. ron hubbard's novels scriptures so they are tax-exempt. it was such a thorough victory it is hard to imagine. bear in mind the irs is not the best equipped agency to determine what is the religion and what is a calls but they are the only agency that have that authority and once the irs made that finding, the vast protection of the first amendment guarantee religion surrounded the church of scientology as it does all established religions and protect it from many of the legal recourse is we would ordinarily turn to. >> one more question and we will see what questions you all have. on alaska's question that is on the minds of some people here. this book is not a flattering portrayal of scientology or l. ron hubbard. he is revered within the church. so after the publication of this book how has it been for you? >> you know. you have been through the same thing. a lot of legal threats. but no actual follow-up on that. they did publish one of their freedom magazines, the new yorker story that preceded the book came out on our anniversary issue and every year in february, valentine's day, new yorker has -- its original cover, old man in the top hat and monocle looking at a butterfly and the name is used this chilly, that is the name of the character. that was the issue of the paul had this profile, freedom magazine is the main scientology magazine, that had a cartoon that was me with maggots coming out. even took shots at the fact checkers which annoyed me a lot. fact checkers at the new yorker are really good. one checker was on the article for six months full time. we had six check including the head of the checking department going through this stuff. there is a way of writing about a litigious and vindictive organization very carefully. that is how you go about it. i will say they stopped my publication in britain. in britain they had different logs with defamation and threatened to sue my publisher and backed down. penn international, the writers' organization advising me to come to england and talk to the house of lords because they were rewriting defamation laws and they have done so and i am hopeful that we will be able to publish in england. it was a consideration, the editor of the new yorker will before paul had this dropped out of the church. and in time magazine, in 1991, scientology sued time magazine. it was the most expensive suits that time magazine ever defended. it took ten years. i didn't want to put my magazine through that. i didn't want to spend ten years making depositions. if you think there is the chilling the fact there is the chilling effect. i think now more people are writing about scientology. i want to commend you and your paper for all the work you have done, that has opened up the possibility of seeing inside the church in a way that has never been as visible before. >> when he says there is a chilling effect this is the guy who wrote about al qaeda. >> if al qaeda ever got lawyers it would be a dangerous organization. >> do we have some questions from the group here please? [applause] >> i would like to ask you what do you think the secrets are? that tom cruise got, very little has been said about it and how do you feel for the future? is there any danger in scientology? >> i am not an expert on that. tom in a recent deposition said scientology was an issue in his divorce. big surprise. my experience, this has been unusual for me as a reporter. it is hard to get to people but i have never been involved in a story with so many people want to talk to have signed nondisclosure agreements. they are incredibly punitive so that if somebody who is close to tom cruise for instance were to tell her story, she would be millions of dollars would be facing her. i am not saying that is the truth with his former wives that they have all been very quiet and people around tom cruise and people close to scientology often sign such agreements. >> this is a pretty basic question. i would like for you to tell me about their belief system. they are called a church. do they believe in god? do they believe in jesus? do they read the bible? are they l. ron hubbard worshipers who just read his books? do they have agreed? the ten commandments? where does scientology coming? >> those are not naive questions. it is interesting because on the one hand the church bills itself as a religion. on the other hand it bills itself as science. that is where scientology comes in. a technologies that this is not really a belief system, this is a step-by-step guaranteed to succeed ladder to spiritual enlightenment. l. ron hubbard 11 had a perfect understanding of the human mind. if you just follow these steps, you will achieve a kind of enlightenment. god doesn't play a big role in scientology. there is a place for him. there are eight dynamics. i won't go into too much of the terminology but at the peak, it is not a clearly filled out place, scientology will tell you you can believe, you can be a southern baptist or jehovah's witness and still be a science colleges but in practice that doesn't seem to be the case. people are urged away from their belief systems in order to be fully subscribers to scientology. >> you touched on the entertainers, you read a lot about that in the tabloids and newspapers. i was wondering about their counterparts in the political scheme of things in the national and state levels, how much influence do they have, like the attorney general, one time did bring up with. they were a cult or not and they were -- decided that they were not a cult and it would be tax-free. can you touch on that? >> especially celebrity members of the church are brought in to testify as they did here in florida. if i remember correctly it had to do with especially children that they wanted to prevent teachers from telling parents their children might be autistic. it would possibly entail a jail sentence for the teacher. kirstie alley and some other science colleges came to testify in front of the florida legislature. science college this like john travolta testified in germany about the oppression of scientology. in particular john travolta had a meeting with bill clinton and this took place at the time john travolta was playing bill clinton in primary colors and clinton told him i had a roommate who was a scientology stand he was a really good guy. at that point, the state department had written letters to the foreign government chastising them for oppressing the church of scientology. they did have an effect. >> we are out of time. i know. this is the worst job. i do apologize. [applause] >> lawrence wright will be autographing his book and the green autograph area is below the escalator. the next event, we need a few minutes to prepare the room. thank you for being here and thank you for your support of the miami book fair international. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching live coverage of the 30th annual on the campus of miami dade college on the north side of downtown miami. this is booktv's fifteenth year covering this festival and as you can see the c-span buses available, if you want to stop down you can pick up a book bag when you are here as well. throughout the day we have water events, you saw lawrence wright. we will do what they're called ins. sheri fink is the author of "5 days at memorial: life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital". what is the timeline of your book? >> i am talking about five days in 2005 when the levees failed in new orleans after hurricane katrina and water drowned one of america's most beloved cities and looking specifically over what happened at those days in one of the hospitals that was surrounded by water. >> what is memorial hospital? >> memorial medical center was one of those longstanding community hospitals that had been built in 1926 and was the place people went for storms. staff would go there even if they didn't have to work. they brought along their pets sometimes. if you are going to work a hurricane you need somewhere for the pets, they brought family members and even checked an extra patient in who might not be safe at home. this was a place everybody thought was safe in a storm. >> they would ride out hurricanes like the 1965 hurricane. >> yes. what happened was this at several vulnerabilities that i learned many american hospitals do in flood zones and one of the was elements of the electrical power system were below flood level so when the water started approaching the hospital they knew they had to evacuate, city power was gone. they were relying on backup generators and they knew within hours how power would fail. when helicopters started landing on the roof to take people there were 250 patients, thousand people, doctors, nurses, staff, family members including rescue first when you know you have hours left of power so that was the first dilemma. it started getting hot inside the hospital. another vulnerability, american hospitals have, i am sorry to say is they are not required for their backup power systems to be able to keep the air-conditioning or the heating depending on where you are functioning so even before all power was lost it was august, it was new orleans, hotter than is in miami and it started getting very hot in that hospital making it difficult for the patients and the people working there. >> where is memorial in new orleans? >> it is up town in new orleans but it is two feet below sea level. it is like a bowl and it dips below sea level likable. many of the hospitals were in a similar situation. >> what is memorial's reputation? >> the reputation was excellent. this was a place where people were proud to work. the giants of medicine in new orleans have walked the halls. people were proud to work. it was a place where ratner said would work and have a child and the child would grow up and work in the same unit. there were multi generational families who worked at the top of those. the real family, the real community and well regarded. has been a baptist hospital originally known as southern baptist and with these changes in medicine we saw in the 90s and 2,000s was bought by a for profit company. >> is memorial opened today? >> it is under new ownership and back with the baptist name. >> the same building? >> the same building. i was just there the other day, they opened the neonatal i see you where people go to have their babies, many people were born at baptist hospital. they made improvements in their electrical system that unfortunately hospitals in my city where i live now, new york, do not have to make these improvements until 2013 because we discovered with hurricane sandy we have the same vulnerabilities in new york and many places are in flood prone areas that do not have their power systems protected but this hospital now does so they felt secure enough to bring the baby's back but eight years later it is a very long time for this rebuilding to occur. >> walk us through the five days. what is the date we are talking about and what happened on the first day? >> basically the first day everybody arrived, the next morning of the storm hit, very severe storm, it was scary but when you talk to people that is not what they remember. they remember that there is a which is the day near this hospital water started coming up. the fourth day all power was lost. it became very critical. you can imagine in an american hospital, doctors and nurses rely on power to do just about everything weather running at iv that used to be run by gravity, now there are electrical pumps, to the medical records systems which are now digital. that doesn't work when the power fails. think about ventilators. people who rely on machines to help them brief. those failed. doctors had decided to get the neonatal off of little babies and intensive care unit patients but they also designated a group of patients to go last. the sickest patients with do not resuscitate orders. we learned in america that may not be the best way to do tree osh, to figure out how , to fi the resources people need and a do not resuscitate order doesn't necessarily mean somebody can't benefit from care, doctors had to make the decision on the fly, they were hot and scared so these patients, it was decided they would go last and imagine they moved the patients out of their room into staging areas thinking helicopters would be coming but at some point, everybody was up on their rooftops. many people did not evacuate the city. remember the images of people waving anything they could to get helicopters to rescue them. the pilots had to decide do i rescue someone off of law rooftop who might not have water? do i go to this hospital where presumably they have supplies which they did, helicopters dropped off madison they needed. they have water, they have food. sometimes the helicopters came very slowly and these patients grew sicker and sicker and some staff grew very afraid. >> sheri fink, thousand people in the hospital when katrina hit. how many people were evacuated? >> what happened was through incredible work, creative thinking, literally doctors and staff members who went out and knew there were boats on trailers in the neighborhood and when water rose, they hot wired one of them, brought it back to the hospital and started getting able-bodied people out because dry ground was only eight blocks away. they could float them there, that would be a way to rescue them. they got people out that way, they got pets out that way and they started euthanizing pets because they felt we can't put them on a helicopter, trying to take patients and family members out but it turns out through creative thinking they were able to expand those resources and bring boats to the hospital. one of the big lessons of "5 days at memorial: life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital" is you and me, any of us can be in a disaster where official help doesn't come quickly enough and it is through creative thinking that prepares you so you and me care for ourselves, family members, our community. we saw it in the philippines, the help comes a little too late. there's a family member of a patient too who outside of new orleans, to the checkpoints which were closed, back to the border of the city, found some guys with swamp posts and directed them to the hospital, not only heard -- and her husband's mother, but many people at the hospital. so overall there was an incredible effort that kitchen with helicopters, no air traffic control, risking their lives to land on this helipad that hadn't been used in years. what was found after were 45 bodies at the top, 40 patients who died of those 45 during or after the disaster and that is when this question began why did so many patients died at this hospital that at many hospitals in a similar situation. .. >> who started that circulating questing? by the way, if you would like to participate in our conversation with sheri fink, who is the author of "five days at memorial: life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital", she is a pulitzer prize winner, please dial the numbers on our screen. we are talking about hurricane katrina and the medical ethics. sheri fink is a medical doctor. (202)585-3890 for eastern and central time zones and (202)585-3891 is the mountain and pacific phone number. you can also send us a tweet. >> there is great dissension over this, there were people who felt like this was the right thing to do and some of them bravely spoke to me and i say bravely because ultimately there were arrests involved because of this. so there were people who thought that we should give these patients some medicine and help them to their death, it essentially. one of the doctors i spoke with said that he was so frightened that he called his wife and said i don't think i'm going to see you again, he thought he had to get out of that hospital and what would happen to the patients. >> which doctors this? >> he was -- he passed away recently, but he was a critical care doctor at memorial. >> he was there for the five days? >> he certainly was. and he felt it was the right thing to do but there were others who didn't. >> can you say that the doctors at memorial were euthanizing patients? >> well, the book, "five days at memorial: life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital", takes you into debt by euthanasia they hasten the death by euthanasia or medicines, order can be called death by murder. he arrested several because a year-long investigation took place and some of the staff who felt like, according to medical ethics and the laws of the land, according to the will of the family members who are present in some cases, that we don't do this. that there is a tradition in medicine the goes back to the time of hippocrates the doctors should not be in the role of hastening death and that is something that our medical codes in the united states are very against and they say they are not allowed. there are few places where euthanasia is allowed, but only with the consensus and under strict rules towards the end of life if a patient wishes such a thing. >> who is the next doctor? >> she is one of the doctors who is ahead in neck surgeon and she gave some of the medicines to patients and i should say investigation showed that 20 patients received combination of morphine and a powerful sedative, one or the other or both and died that thursday, september 1. many physicians and nurses, several were involved in this and she was one of them, there were two nurses that were also arrested, the three of them were arrested and accused by the attorney general of second-degree murder in the deaths of several patients. and they were arrested because the prosecutors had the most evidence when it came to them and there were witnesses who had seen them and who had spoken with them about giving these medicines are among the doctors we spoke with me openly about what they did, while she spoke with me, would not address the issues around those deaths, not surprisingly, if you are arrested and accused of murder obviously. family members, all of those lawsuits are settled or dismissed now, but i think that on the advice of her attorney, she is not really address the issues at the core and say only that she was innocent and not guilty of murder. >> is she still practicing medicine? >> yes. >> where is that? >> louisiana state university, she was promoted after these events because because while the evidence was there, although these deaths were hasten, the drugs were given. what the motivation was was really what the case was hinged upon. and however if it was given for comfort, that is something that we do allow in the united states, certainly, to treat patients for comfort towards the end of their lives. but the experts were called in to look at these cases were pretty convinced, there is one who dissented, that just the pattern of so many deaths in such a short period of time led them to believe that this was more than just an effort to provide comfort. but there was great sympathy for these health professionals in louisiana because of the larger context that the decisions were made in. and failures to respond quickly enough on a governmental level, so given that context, they felt that how can these arrests, with all of that failing around them. >> sheri fink, when the news reports come out about what may have occurred at memorial? >> very early on there were doctors and nurses who really disagreed and who had been involved in the discussions over hastening death, euthanasia, putting people out of their misery, whatever order you want to use on a company felt that this was wrong and that the patients were not suffering where this was called for even for comfort medicines. one doctor said to me that our job is not to bring about death and he really dissented in some of them spoke with the media. so very early on there were intimations of what might have occurred. but of course, no real evidence and a lot of people tended to dismiss those stories as sensationalistic and not really believe what happens. and i felt like i had worked in disaster and conflict zones myself as an aid worker and my first book was about a hospital under siege for three years during the bosnian genocide. that number had actually heard of a situation getting so desperate that doctors and nurses really thought that -- some of them thought this might be the best option. and i felt it was urgent for our country to know the true story and that that was the best way to honor the sacrifices of the people who worked so hard in this situation and the lives of the people that have passed away. for us to face this head on and not walk away from it and to look at these events. whatever the motivation and the feelings of the people who did this. obviously thinking that it was the best thing to do. we need to learn from this and go forward. we don't want to see this type of thing happen again. so there's all sorts of vulnerabilities in the country, organizations getting better prepared with leadership and communication and individuals having our own things. the first half of the book is by an hour by hour rechristen what happened and we have, unlike these doctors and nurses were stuck in a situation, we have the luxury of thinking about it before it ever happens and what we would want to do in a crisis like this. >> you have a picture here of memorial hospital under water. please call on in. the phone numbers on your screen, divided by region if you are interested in participating. but it was this taken? >> that was taken on the fifth day. there was an effort to evacuate the hospital just as those injections were taking place in this is one headed toward for the hospital. that's the main hospital. and this is the garage ramp and patients again, creative thinking is what saved lives here. they save so many lives and they pushed the patients until the mob that down ramp of this circle parking garage and then carried none of these rickety metal steps to the top of that here birdsall every patient, when the power fails you have no elevators, just imagine. >> you can see the water on the streets below. still how isolated were the people at memorial on day four and a five? >> they were isolated. you know, this is the hospital that is two city blocks long like many of our hospitals. there just wasn't a pattern of regular meetings that people felt like communication was good in the hospital. so there were a few people who had radios and who were in touch with the rescuers and the coast guard left the radio there. so rumors just flew. and i was writing the book, as i thought about it, i thought about the call-in radio show that was happening and people were calling in and reporting what was happening and there were people at the hospital with battery-powered radios listening and there were rumors of sharks and hotel swimming pools and that zombies are taking over new orleans, really, does is what people were saying. a lot of the cell phones weren't working, and the phones cut out, they didn't have satellite phones working. and so you asked where they cut off and it felt very cut off. >> was the temperature in the hospital? >> people estimated it at a hundred degrees. the local weather stations not keeping records at that time. but i got weather records and i i would say it was released in the '90s in the area around the hospital and inside it became human. if you've ever been in the hospital, modern hospitals are kind of sealed shut and when the power goes down from which it sometimes does, if you have no air-conditioning, the walls start to sweat. it becomes slippery on the floor and it becomes very humid and hot and difficult to work in people's energy was sapped. >> did they have water? >> they did have water, not running water. but they have ample supplies of water. but some people fear that it would run out and they were afraid of that. >> sheri fink, you are a medical doctor as well. and have you thought about putting yourself into place for those five days at memorial? >> i have worked in disaster zones as a volunteer with some of the nongovernmental organizations. and that is really what made me interested in looking at this story. i certainly was not there when this happened and that is why it took me six years to gather documentation and to really try to piece together moment by moment what happened. but what i have is empathy for people working under situations of great stress and just what lack of sleep can do to you, what it can do to you when you hear gunshots going off and bombs exploding. and so i think that that gave me some sympathy for the conditions >> were these patients euthanized in your opinion? >> i think it is completely clear that data cannot be argued that 20 patients were found with these drugs in our bodies and it was well documented by the hospital and when they died and where they died and they receive these medicines on thursday, september 1, and they died within a short period of time. as for the intentionality of each person that did this act, that is sort of up to each person to say. two doctors said that we did it intentionally hasten the death of the patients and others that i was trying to give comfort. and so i think that when you read the book, i wanted to show the different perspectives. i didn't want to insert myself in their and the whole question of the legal aspect was how do we adjudicate these potentially criminal acts in the context of this disaster. >> sheri fink is our guest, author of "five days at memorial: life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital" and she's a medical doctor. we have is about the from a call from isabella in florida. >> caller: hello,. >> we are listening. >> caller: okay. >> i'm going to have to move on, i'm sorry. we are going to move on, and we are going to go to our caller from portland, oregon. we are listening, please make your comment for sheri fink. >> caller: hello, i was reading about this during the time of "the new york times" writeup on it. i don't know if you were the author of that piece in "the new york times" or not. but it seemed like there was a lot of [inaudible] and there was one woman director of the hospital who is making these decisions and i guess another part of it is that there really was no smoking gun in the sense that you said those two doctors came out and said yes, we did this. but they argue that no one ever said let's kill these people and so therefore people just kind of got off, and they use that as the defense of not being clear, but many people said that they knew that that's what they were going to do, yet no one actually said those words out loud to all of the individual doctors. so was wondering if you could comment on that and if you were involved with "the new york times" writeup in the degree to which the hospital staff was told that. and just as a commentary, i feel more sympathy for the patients. i know you are trying to stress the fact that these doctors were under immense pressure but i'm sorry, i have more sympathy for the patients. they are there for their care and regardless of the stress and how it is that they were thinking, their job is to save lives and it just shows you how it was during hurricane katrina that so many people shirk their duties and responsibilities and police and hospital people, that they ended up killing people as opposed to trying to care for the citizens and residents. >> thank you. >> the book raises this question is a time of crisis a time when we allow our moral our moral values to five hours at a time when we really need to hold even more closely to our root moral values and that is one of the questions that the book raises. and i think that many people were very disturbed because i should say it wasn't just patients who are teetering at the end of life who receive these drugs, in fact, one case in particular, and that ever everett was a 61-year-old woman partially paralyzed, but he was hodgins and he had expressed a desire to be rescued and he didn't sell breakfast that morning and told his nurses that are we ready to rock 'n roll. he said one specific nurse, don't let them leave me behind, don't let them leave me behind. and she was devastated because because he was one of the patients who received these drugs and he was 380 pounds in the hospital without elevators functioning and according to people who participated in the discussion about him, they felt that -- that they were so out of hope that they felt that they couldn't carry him down the staircase. and i feel that we really need to think about this because obesity is an issue in our country. this came up at bellevue last year as well. the last person rescued when the waters came up on the east river in new york city, a big public hospital, 20 some stories high, is a 500-pound man and they didn't give up hope. they kept carrying the fuel of two backup generators after the fuel pumps failed in the basement. and then until they could get elevator running and getting him out safely. so a lot of people feel the way that you do and it is one of those reasons why we really need to look at these issues. and as to this, i think that if you read the book "five days at memorial: life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital", i interviewed everyone i could, where did you hear about this idea, where did that person here from that person and etc. and you can kind of see how that initial idea was introduced in a context at first euthanizing pets and perhaps offhand comments about we are putting the patients in making the pets comfortable, when we do more for the patients. the patients were getting comfort medicines all on. they were giving them doses of what they needed for pain and four for distress as well. so the question of how does that idea percolate through the medical staff, embraced by some, rejected by others, it's all in the book, and yes, i did write "the new york times" article that you mentioned and early version of this story, which i felt even in 13,000 words could not tell the whole story and that is why i took another three years and wrote "five days at memorial: life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital." >> what did you when your poll surprise for? remapped for the magazine that this caller was referring to that was published in 2009. >> we have chuck from arnold, maryland. >> hello, doctor sheri fink. i have a question for you. i organized a group under fbi volunteer program called [inaudible] where we looked at long-term disasters and we have a group of doctors, including folks in the military and looking at the health care infrastructure nationwide. i'm wondering if you would be interested in participating with critical infrastructure and how to do it and what we might do to improve it for things like this. and i didn't know there was an interesting might have been a way to contact you to participate in that. >> thank you. i urge anyone who wants to get in touch, you can go to my website which is sheri fink.net and i am also on twitter and i have my facebook page and there is a contact form on the website as well. and i think that i'm really glad to hear that and i have heard that before. since the book has been published for some really fantastic initiatives of people really realizing that we have seen so many disasters and vulnerabilities in different parts of the country and it is really a wonderful thing when various organizations and individuals get involved in looking at these preparedness issues and there are certain things that could be implemented >> who started the investigation into memorial hospital? >> it was started by the medicaid fraud control unit and it turns out that these units are in every state, it is a body that is sort of a combination of federal monies as well as state resources. >> just. >> it was housed in the state capital and they typically investigate medicaid fraud, so this might be anything from abuse of elderly people in a nursing home to financial shenanigans going on and help facility that receives medicaid money which is most of them and they looked at best. the second half of "five days at memorial: life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital", you meet those young and passionate individuals. when these allegations are accusations came out, there was a code of silence and people were afraid, knowing that the investigation was going on. so they faced a tough battle piecing together what happened. the bodies sat in an unrefrigerated condition for a long time, so even if you do toxicology test on them, they could detect the amount of drugs, but -- i'm sorry they could detect presence of certain drugs but the amounts are very difficult to detect. so it's the whole second half of the book is how they piece together these conditions and after a year of investigating is when the arrests took place. >> the next call comes from walter in new haven connecticut. you are on booktv on c-span2. >> caller: hello, yes, i would like to comment on the military situation and i suppose they can only say that they can actually save and i suppose it is taken out of their hands and they do what they can. and i'm wondering if medical training, so the determination is sort of taken away from them. so maybe the expectation of this and watching what you can expect and what it can actually do and who they can actually save as opposed to what they think they can do. >> thank you for asking that question. i looked at the history and what we are talking about here is triaged, which comes from a french word, it referred to the sorting of coffee beans and that was exactly as you said, the original conception if you have a battlefield situation with people injured and who do you save first say verse than his concept was we save the most grievously injured without regard to race or distinction and its egalitarian, as the french would refer to it. and then some years later there was this concept added which would imply this much but this group of patients might go last. and perhaps their care would wire too many resources if you say that person, you might lose to other people, or perhaps you don't even have the resources to save them. and interestingly, when we look at the triaged protocol, say that her e-mail and units in america use today, i was surprised to learn that there are roughly nine well-recognized systems in the u.s. for it and they don't operate that category. and for us while we are not always good at predicting which of the patients will have no chance of survival and which will have a chance if we rescue them first. there has not been a lot of research on triage and i would urge anyone watching today and if you know a young person who is going up and wanting to research something important in the medical field, we don't even know how these different methods of triaged might impact the overall population and really it is about this normally, we try to do our best with each individual patient and we treat them according to the cute their situation is. we are flipping two or more populations on this kind of based approach. the number of lives saved, quality years of life, should age play a role, should we try to aim for justice and should we do it randomly, these are things that are debated and i think that we in america need to think about this in this particular story is one example and we face these types of situations across the health care system when you think about who gets resources and doesn't. or when we prepare for a pandemic, there are discussions starting to go on that would help medical professionals make these decisions and to guide them. these guidelines are being made, for the most part, by small groups of health professionals and they may have very different values on the larger public and i would urge anyone who is interested in us, to please get involved and take a look at your health department website in your state and see what is going on in terms of development of these guidelines. >> the next call comes from jana and wholesome, montana. please go ahead with your question. >> thank you. hello, sheri fink. i'm just curious how many people [inaudible] thank you. >> why is that important to you? and i think she hung up. >> okay, i'm glad to have a chance to answer this because in the book i didn't really make it clear that i felt that the race of the person was not -- i felt it wasn't necessary to always mention that. so some people have assumed that this was perhaps euthanasia of all african-american people because there was this doctor who he spoke about who had said something when i interviewed him, having to do with race and having to do with historical situations and we withdraw in our own communities and we feel comfortable with the people we are closest to them perhaps those potential fissures in society can open if we're not careful and if we allow ourselves to fear this, for example. but as best as i can tell of the 20 patients that received those drugs, about half and half african-american and caucasian or white or whatever words we want to do is to denote those races. we don't know what the denominator was in terms of the overall racial breakdown of those over there. but i can certainly say that it was not all one race or another who received those drugs and who died and they were a very low socioeconomic status as well. >> to the families get involved in these patients? >> they did. i think some people assume that this was a merciful act of the families would be glad if they think you are putting my loved one out of their misery in this awful situation when they had maybe not a great chance to survive. part of the problem was the staff didn't even know where they were sending people to and whether the next place would have the kind of care that people would need. the family members were not asked what they wanted and several were made to leave their loved ones to get on votes and evacuate themselves. i would say almost every single one feels that this was wrong except for maybe one exception, if the loved one even if they hadn't wanted to live, they still had value and that effort should have been made to rescue them. and i think it's fascinating in the epilogue that takes you all the way up and it came out this fall and it takes you right up to hurricane sandy and some of the more recent disasters. we found that one of the big challenges is that even short of euthanasia, this a time of crisis and often family members are not involved in the larger public is not involved. you say how can we possibly do that. but there is an example before hurricane sandy was approaching, and connecticut there is a hospice there. and they realized that they would have do it evacuate in short order and they assumed that they would move the most fragile and sickest is that patients first. then they went and they spoke with the families and they asked the families and they found something but the staff did not anticipate, which is that the family members closest to death wanted to go last and they wanted every chance for their loved one to be a part of that. so i think we can sometimes find things and it's crucial, really. >> the next call comes from sheila and louisiana. where's your location? >> caller: [inaudible] >> we are having trouble hearing. >> i'm south of monroe, louisiana. hello? >> please go ahead, we are listening. >> caller: hello, i like your book. and i think that these doctors have a tough call. before hurricane katrina hit, because of new orleans, what happened there and we never heard anything about that. i have researched this many times. >> she was talking about a leper colony near new orleans and she wanted to know what happened to that. >> i am not familiar, but thank you for the question. >> how much did hurricane katrina cost the health care systems? >> not only were these doctors and nurses brought before a grand jury, which i should say they did not indict, but there were many lawsuits against the corporation itself for what one lawyer described as a new theory of liability and failure to prepare for potential and possible disaster and they knew that hurricanes could hit new orleans and that there could be flooding in the new that there was a vulnerability in many hospitals. so the hospitals have been sued by the people who were in them, not only people who died, but those who suffered during the days of heat and fear and it was an particular suit and certified as a class action on behalf of basically everyone in the hospital. because of workers compensation, they couldn't be part of the suit as workers, but just as it reached a stage of jury selection, the corporation and the plaintiff settled for $25 billion without any sort of admission of any sort of responsibility. so that was just divided of this year and people just received it this year and everyone i've talked to is pretty much unhappy with the amount that they received. people feel that at least one daughter one patient who had received this, sort of let her own lawsuit and she settled this year she says she just fell at the amount wasn't enough to make the corporation think harder about disaster preparedness and making these investments and you have to wonder in this is a critical infrastructure. we want them not to be places of danger for the patients and i'm. all of us may need them ourselves if there is a hurricane or an attack of some type. we need that to be able to continue to function. thinking about that is big questions for our country. >> hello, i really love this book and i think it's amazing and i just wanted to ask questions. number one was the issue of abandonment. i know that the defense counsel for these doctors, they are using an argument in a disaster situation with american law and state law doesn't apply anymore than i thought that was very deserving and i just wanted to get your thoughts on those things. >> sure. i think that american law still applies and honestly it was difficult in a situation that juries do have discretion and they are able to, in this case, it became a question of whether that jury really heard all the evidence or whether they didn't hear all of the evidence for this. >> we both apologized, to nicole in brooklyn. >> so who designed this? >> i think it's brilliant. and that is exactly the effect that is being done. >> we have tried to fix it. >> the author of the book, thank you for being on booktv here in miami. this is live coverage of the 30th annual miami book fair. the 50 year on the air coming up, several more author events today. the next one you will see is at chapman hall with doris kearns goodwin. they will be on a panel for 45 minutes or so, the first, peter baker is a chief white house correspondent for "the new york times" and bush and cheney at the white house, he is coming up in just a few minutes. but first, we want to surpass coverage. he came out with this book. >> i laid out a doctrine that said that protect the country, we have to be on the offense and we had to deal with threats before they fully materialize and that's one of the lessons of the attack of september 11 and this includes the ideology of the innocent. but i felt that it was important to deal with because the biggest danger facing america is weapons of mass destruction and in the hands of a surrogate that has chosen this. one thing is clear in this book are not is that i tried to make diplomacy work and there is an exhaustive attempt convince them, we meant what we said whether we should have gone to the security council and i walked through the debate. your position, as you say, is legally he was in violation of previous problems the. >> yes, what is interesting is i wanted there to be a coalition of these confrontations and it's not just the united states that was demanding this or allowing the inspectors in but a lot of nations. but they cannot add without a u.n. security council resolution and a woman to build a coalition and we agreed to pass a unanimous resolution. on one hand we have a military track trying to send signals that there will be consequences. and in terms of weapons of mass destruction but i think people forget is that congress passed a resolution calling for the regime change. and after september 11, congress passed a resolution authorizing the use of force to protect the american people and when people begin to then change their mind, which sometimes happens in politics. but it can happen if you're the commander in chief and you can be playing politics with the security of the united states and with those who wear our uniform. >> anyway, it is a painful experience and i'm certainly not attributing it when their child is sent into combat. but it's a difficult position and no president should ever think about this without considering the consequences. >> he has gotten a lot of military members that have fallen and you have written about this. can you tell them about that? >> yes, it rings a bell a lot. because i want the american people to understand incredible strength of this. and i talk about this, being high level with the children and how courageous they were and i didn't want them to see weepy commander. i wanted them to hear the words that your father is a real person. and then she said he did his job and now you do yours. so there's a lot of people with strength of character that come out. and people should support them. [applause] >> under saying that those as part of its. >> we became fast friends and admire him a lot. i admire him because he's a courageous person when he gives you his words, he keeps it. laura and i spent a lot of time with him and made a lot of friends along the way in the international arena but i would say we ended up with a very fast friendship and i found it to be unusual to look beyond the horizon and i thought tony blair could do that in a way that was very strategic in thought. and tony have that. >> we had one and she was breaking into my position and this is fair and swift and the death penalty saves lives and she didn't agree. >> he were reelected with a majority for the first time in 16 years and you went in on the social security issue first and only later in 2006 push forward for changes in our immigration laws. those are not successful endeavors. what have you learned from that? >> i had to do over again, i'd probably say the immigration plan first. but i didn't. congress didn't want to reform social security. so there is an issue, i feel, in all due respect, where congress is more reactive than proactive on the issue. and nevertheless they push hard on the issue because i think it's essential that we performed social security. i made it clear that i didn't go to washington to play small ball. and i went there to deal with problems and not shy away from them. and it is wildly praised, nevertheless the issue got away and it became something that is very difficult and somebody was nervous about it and i can understand why people are. and automatically with labeling us and i have no regrets and trying those issues. and in both cases i was unsuccessful. >> you have a chapter on iraq, which goes into 2003 and a little bit in 2004. and then you have a chapter leader in the book on the search where you talk about how spring of 2006 he came to believe that our strategy in iraq was failing needed to make changes in that. and that resulted in this strategy which i think is generally agreed to have been successful and how did you turn the government -- why did you change your mind on that. >> i changed my mind because i felt that we were beginning to lose in the loss in iraq would be a major blow to the security of the united states and it would've meant that the sacrifices that have gone on prior to that moment would've been in vain and send shockwaves through the middle east and i've always believed in the universality of freedom that exists in everyone's soul and if we could get the right strategy to bring security into place, people would be given a chance in the politics were first and we were very successful in us constitution where democracy can take hold. and i have decided that it would've been catastrophic as far as i would have concerned. >> and that was president george w. bush from 2010 here and there's a live picture c-span bus that is here and we will be live all afternoon with author events and collins. go to booktv.org and get a full schedule and joining us now is peter baker, author of this new book, bush and cheney in the white house and what did you learn? >> i think he was willing to be a part of this, he didn't talk about it to the same degree, he talks about how katrina was handled and he still obviously believes in the iraq war, and he talks about how he feels in particular and i thought it was a very interesting memoir as presidential books go. >> what about the number of dick cheney? >> i think that he expresses regret, but he opens up about his attitude and his point of view, like you could get a better look and he is kind of a cipher. they don't understand him because he is not as public as bush has been over the years and i think how he saw the world and why he was pushing 40 and. >> were you able to interview both principles? >> yes, he was very helpful and very willing to talk and president bush chose not to talk to me for the book. there were about 275 people that were important in the bush years including david petraeus and a lot of others in the vast majority of the record, which makes this such a valuable document of history. >> has dick cheney been consistent in this position since 2000? >> he has been. for the most part. focused on the idea that 9/11 represents only a tip of the iceberg. he advocated policies that others may not have made and he believed it was necessary in defense of the country and he remained fixed on it. president bush always believed in the defense of the country but began to see these other trade-offs pursued a different direction like more diplomacy and things that are so controversial. even eight democrat, he basically does much of the terrorism programs. >> that terrorism program was also part of this, was in an? >> yes, he was resistant to some of the changes. he thought that they were too far in giving in to the class. making compromises on military conditions and he began living a lot of prisoners outside of guantánamo in his time and so these are changes that he finds alarming and five and the second term. we get into more details later. >> out of the relationship of all the weed eaters that they were in office? >> is a dynamic and fascinating story and i think people thought it was a static picture and a cartoonish idea. as you saw in that clip that we played, he's a smart guy, he made his own decisions, certainly he was the most influential vice vice president that we have an overtime in overtime and should be able to move apart, cheney doesn't find that a good idea and so by the end they are on opposite sides in this includes syria, russia, gay rights, auto bailout, donald rumsfeld, and then they had this sort of fight as well. >> this is our guest for "the new york times", here is his book, days of fire. (202)585-3890. you can also send a comment to twitter and you can make a comment on her facebook page.facebook.com/booktv and the harriet miers story that you tell, walk us through that. >> it's very interesting. >> but he understood what he wanted to do in this includes judicial activism and he interviewed a lot of candidates. especially throughout all the candidates, he chooses his own white house counsel. and he knew his heart and he thought everyone else would appreciate her the way that he did and it was a miscalculation and it will be a tough sell. this was done anyway. and she is savaged by fellow conservatives that don't see her as a representative of what they were looking for injustice and more importantly behind-the-scenes, i think that what we didn't see at the time was what really did her in which was white house preparations for hearings on the hill. and they discovered that she doesn't understand the difference between reasonable suspicion and probable cause and she really understands the issues of this under the fifth amendment. and it was something that she spent a lot of time on but the lawyers came away shocked and she was upset and went to bush's inner circle and said you cannot let her go up there, and push him around to the idea that it was unfair to her either and she would be under a devastating moment for her. >> a new account in her book, that there is a fire that president bush had asked dick cheney to lead a task force. >> yes. and he was a judge that was well-known among conservatives particularly in on the extent of asking goliad, who was dick cheney's favorite justice, but bush chose this in part because he had been through a rough time and he thought kerry myers might be an easy sell on capitol hill. harry reid was a democratic leader and said he loved harriet miers. >> he probably would've lost to some republicans, when he? >> at. one of them said next time you're going to have to say something and another one was just how did i do and she said that you flunked and senator specter a subset of some of her comments that he sent a questionnaire back and made her redo it like a high school student. so she had a rough time trying to persuade republicans at that point. >> at the end of the eight years, what was the relationship >> it was proper, but by the end, they disagreed on so many things. and it becomes a proxy about the partnership and especially for one last validation for what they had had and he was not willing to give it to him. and not telling the truth according to prosecutors about how he learned about the cia affiliation. he was criminalizing and this is a stain on the reputation and you have to do something about it. and it was very skeptical and he thought that it was special favors of people who had access asking for the special favors and he was inclined to do it. they come back and say that we think the jury had every reason to find what i found. so did untrendy decide and we are leaving him as a good man wounded in the field of this. >> good afternoon. >> afternoon. they give are taking my call. my question is a question. and that is the conflict between them on so many issues in terms of final decision-making. pc that is good or bad? >> that is a really interesting question in the it didn't help the policies they were pursuing and this is one of the things that history will be debating this for a long time. .. what the rest of the world considers right, and are we ever going to get prosecutions for these crimes by cheney? >> well, you know, these are issues we are still debating today obviously. president obama not only kept that program going, he has expanded and believes that it is a useful tool of national security, and he believes it is legal. you know, there is obviously talk about, some people who would like to find prosecution on some of these issues because, as you say, the interrogations' are what people call torture. president obama decided that he was not going to do that. he allowed a real investigation of some of the cia officers. that's a place and then was closed without any additional prosecutions. so i think at the moment there is no -- it does not seem to be a vehicle at the moment that is moving in that direction are trying to investigate those issues, but president obama did sign an order banning what -- the techniques that were included in some of the programs the vice-president cheney and president bush had authorized. >> since the end of the bush administration, how many times have the chaneys and the bushes -- >> not very many. two publications together. president bush broke ground on his library. then again when it opened just this last april. besides that they had, i think, a private dinner at one point, but otherwise it don't really get to and talked. it is not friendly. i asked president cheney about this during one of our interviews. look, we were never buddies. it was a professional relationship. we did not socialize. it was a professional relationship. ♪ what a lot connolly's a rice? what role does she play? >> now that is a very different relationship. her relationship as personal as well as professional. she had dinner at the mansion with the present in the first lady hillary she went to camp david for social occasions on the weekend. she worked with the president and talks more to the present. the second term elevation to secretary of state dementia not only add that personal relationship, but she also had a professional and policy mandate from the president to begin pushing the administration and someone different directions. look, in the first term we a broken china. because of september 11th they had to take decisive action, the notice time to rebuild relationships and make a different change in the second term. and she put it, she ended up fighting with president cheney. you would have liked to continue breaking china. >> days of fire is the buck. next call, you want to call and, you can dial land. 585-3891 if she lived in the mountain and pacific time zone. dick cheney help you change your mind? >> now, he really is not. very consistent and very strong and firm in his views on these things. i asked him about this. he is not offer very many regrets, if any. he thinks that they -- the policies that he has advocated were proven right because the country was not attacked again by the time they left office. and it's interesting. he does not trade in trade offs or if it then that. he does not play the game and some others do saying, look, here is how we way these things. this is how we go. a clear choice. >> from the months after september 11th pushing forward with a mission that ultimately considered. >> yeah. obviously they saw the next up in the war on terrible everywhen they have to understand the atmosphere in which they make this decision. a moment of great uncertainty and fear, appetite for action as one senior official put it to me, i so people today, the reason is because we need to kick somebody's austere. afghanistan was too easy. what he meant is that there was such a fever in the country at that time to do something after such a terrible ordeal and vice-president cheney thought there were threats that were worse than 19 guys with box cutters. seri does come in fact, urged the president to go and. the president does go along with it not because he was convinced but he actually was inclined to do that anyway. obviously we saw what happened. a war for which there are not fully prepared and goes in a direction that they did not expect and cost him politically for the rest of his presidency. ♪ turning to a cheney after september, he tried to enlist his vice-president to help respond to katrina. this time. >> she did. asked to head a task force that would take care of reconstruction and so forth. thought it was a paper tiger and he would not have any genuine authority to do anything. that is worthless if you can actually do anything. he turned and down and said no. one point he said he would go on one trip as a fact-finding mission, but that would be it. i think that is one of the month that they begin to sort of diverge. and number of moments like that that add up to a larger disconnect between the two. >> what was the relationship between staff? >> well, at times it was quite factious. they obviously like each other, work together well, but there was a sense of different genes that times. the staff on e-mails, the security council did not notice coming to them. there was a sense that the staff had these at least into renown things. the counsel's office, david addington, vice presidents, very strong-willed council seem to really be a dominant figure. so at times it was quite dense. >> heritage foundation which has been one of the leading organizations on the government shut down and challenging president obama's health care program. and he is, i think, a leading figure in his efforts. he can't practice law because he did not get the pardon. he had not said in a loss street journal. recently. but he has kept a low profile. >> you cover the white house. you talk about this in your book. >> they all did. it is inevitable. you're surrounded by men with guns, living in this forgers. you have a big boom. everywhere you go is scripted down to the exact moments. it is such an isolating experience. all of them, i think, feel it. ito then tries to come back in his own way through french ships and other means. president obama just to keep a blackberry. hopefully it is guarded against encryption, against surveillance, but he tried to keep in touch that way. each president finds a way to try sent break out of that bubble, but it is our challenge, i think. >> the next call comes from merrill then detroit, michigan. peter becker the new york times. >> yes, mr. baker. >> hello. >> the question i would like to ask, is there a published comments of the soldiers from the war? is there a published. [indiscernible] of the disabled veterans from the war? is there a public accounting of the unpaid dollars of cost to the united states from the war? has that been published? >> thank you. >> well, certainly there is certainly, you know, the names of of the casualties are back on line, published, certainly there have been studies about what caused the country financially. the wars. so i think that information is certainly out there. part of any calculation of americans as stories that they will make about the cost and value. >> if we talk to dick cheney today about the iraqi war, will we say? >> i think he would feel that is the right decision. saddam hussein was a threat. even though the weapons or not there, he argues that he has the capacity to store weapons programs again. as sanctioned regime at the time. this was still the right decision. now, i think if he had it over again to do there might be some different methods. he would have, perhaps, changed course earlier on, but very strong proponent of what they did and does not express second guesses. >> donald rumsfeld. >> i asked him, do you think that the president would have gone in have been known there were no weapons? and he says, no, he thinks it was the right thing to do. but he obviously presided over several years of a strategy that did not work ultimately. and he felt that it was mishandled partly because the chain of command was not properly dyspeptic -- respected. he did not like that gerry bremer was reporting to the president instead of him. it was a disconnect that hurt the effort the first year after the war. he had his own critiques of what went wrong. i think he still stands behind the decision to go and. >> president bush likewise. certainly in public and even in private. second thoughts about going in. even though some of his aides have said that they think he probably would not have gone and at the known that there are no weapons. president bush does not say that. what he does say is you cannot have do averse. but he would have done it differently in terms of the number of troops sent in. earlier. obviously he does say that they did not handle the way that it was done as well as they should have. >> you are talking to dick cheney you are talking to me the president told one republican senator. when dick cheney is talking it is me talking. >> very early on he empowers them. having his influence is because george bush gives in this influence to me in power some. in cheney to is pushing in a direction that bush is inclined to go anyway. is only later that he begins to start whistling elisabeth the notion that cheney is in charge. by the 2004 re-elect he offers a drop off the ticket. and bush thinks about it. he gives it a few weeks and comes up with the name of someone who might take his place . and on other reasons he says he is thinking of doing it is because it will show who is really in charge. you begin to see, he has begun to resent the notion that somehow he, the president, is now really in charge of his own administration. >> nextel sherry in dayton beach -- daytona beach florida. >> hi. november 2001 bush overturned the 1978 presidential records act. he signed an executive order permanently flaunting from the public of presidential documents and tapes going back to the reagan ministration. many in congress called this measure for secrecy unconstitutional. my question is, after bush left office, are those presidential records now available to the public? >> that is a very good question. i will not be able to give you a precise answer because i am not as of today on where that stands i no there are amendments and changes. i know that starting in january of this coming year president bush's library, george w. bush library will begin accepting free of the commission requests for documents from his administration. we will be interesting to see how people begin to explore the wreckage from his administration i think you're right, kept out of the public eye. he thinks it is deemed classified, but it will be interesting for researchers in large part because the first one where e-mail was genuinely used in a significant way, 200 million e-mails were collected and kept and stored. a fascinating record. if we had tapes under the jfk and lbj and nixon administration, e-mails will be the real treasure trove for future researchers. >> why? >> well, i think bush insulted us and the males, but you get a much more real time look at what they were talking about with each other. people are very -- less circumspect e-mails. they ought to be kept her history. so hopefully we will get better sense of who makes what decision when, how they will be, the factors will be going into it, the debates going on. and i think that the research will be a fascinating opportunity. >> when president bush made the executive order decision, then the other former presidents support him? >> my memory of this is sketchy, so i want to be careful. it is not quite as sweeping as we describe it and we still do the papers. think it provides a longer lead time and more discretion for the president to keep them out of the public view. i just don't know that. ♪ you are on with peter baker, chief white house correspondent for the new york times. >> can you hear me? can you hear me? >> we are listening. >> you know what, we are going to move on to lynyrd in boca raton, florida. leonard, please go ahead with your question comment. listening. >> pointed, the republican governor. helms was then head of the -- he will never get a hearing. the constitution. i can't believe that they offered for the congress, promulgated and said that the senate will make its own rules that should supersede the constitution. each one of the senators sworn to uphold the constitution. yet they violate the constitution by not giving earing to people who are nominated for judgeships. and it seems to me, you know, when we have this bottleneck and wrote a letter to the president and said you have to bring a certified action against the head of the congress to bring forth some legislation because he is holding it up in violation of the constitution. i get no response. i notice afterwards that they have now reduced majority of 51 over 49. i really would have liked that discussion on whether or not the rules of the senate supersede the constitution or comply with the constitution. >> right. it is a good question. the rules of the senate don't supercede the constitution but the constitution is ultimately they about what it is the senate can and cannot do. it does not say how they should provide that and vice. that is how the senate sets its own rules within the parameters of the constitution but it does not actually say anything about hearings and what process the senate must go through to consider or not consider as the case may be, nominations. you're right that the rules changed this week. harry reid pushed through a new measure that will eliminate filibuster possibilities for most presidential nominations. instead of being 50 votes, 51, and we will see how that plays out. democrats were on the opposite side of that issue just a few years ago when president bush was frustrated that there were filibustering his nominees and republicans were the ones who first talked about the nuclear option. did not go forward. that will apply to both parties depending upon who in the white house. >> in fact, harry reid was on our program a couple of years ago. ted crews sent out and little clip of that program. saying that he would never hold a nuclear option. >> what is good for you is bad for me. becomes opposite when the majority switches. harry reid and the democrats were vigorously against this nuclear option and thought that it would inhibit their ability to block what they thought were bad a promise from president bush. republicans now are trying to block what they think of that a promise by president obama and it is time to turn the tables. it is done to the point where both parties have made it so difficult for whoever is in the white house support appointments and that the frustration level has risen and it will be interesting weather it changes the dynamic and not. ♪ how long have you covered the white house? >> says 1996 except for four years when you went overseas. and then i came back to go back to the white house when we returned in 2004. >> is there a difference between the different licenses that we have covered? any of them more accessible than the others? >> i think that there is more consistency in the white house regardless of political party that we think, both in terms of the policy option, foreign policy, and even the way they deal with the press. the real political parties in the white house briefing room by the white house and the press, not republican and democrat. all feel the same way. not fair to them that we simply love conflict in scandal and we are not treating them with the seriousness and fairness that they deserve. i have heard that 33 white house is. you know, what has really changed is the nature of the media itself. i started in 1996, i wrote a story, maybe too at the end of the day. that was it. in of course we pile weather stories, blocks, tweets, do a lot more tv and radio, bought gas and so on. ever moving, ever shifting media environment. sped up and makes it harder, i think, to do longer and more thoughtful journalism. * a try very hard to preserve despite the exhilaration. ♪ and now at politico. a longtime editor. >> exactly. political magazine launched last week. it's worth looking at. >> the cover story was a big piece. >> it was call rocking the cabinet. terrific piece. >> important are not important. >> how essentially the white house focuses power in this particular administration and is also reflected the previous ones. , think it is. every white house wants to stay in control and cabinets increase in net like that as equal matters of policy but not necessarily essential to the administration. >> how would you compare it? >> a very good question. when i interviewed by nine before it became vice president he was talking about how he was not going to. the first vice-president ever to come into office saying he would not be as influential as his predecessor. he viewed cheney as a bad model. a good partner to obama, but not pulling the strength in his view. he is a strong partner for president obama, but there are often issues that he has long down on. not on the same side on the afghan surge in the raid into pakistan. and he did -- he took on big projects like the iraqi withdrawal and the stimulus package. he was charged with gun control while they did some executive action. so i think it has been a mixed bag here. >> the next comes from gasol in boca raton right here in florida. go ahead. >> i have a question in my mind with regard to whether or not dick cheney specifically what he and president bush's real opinion on torture was. for instance, i am curious as to whether or not either a both of them thought that water boarding was torture. i know that they had some legal opinions from what i considered to be rather extreme sources, but did they -- did they participate in encouraging those legal opinions? and i am curious about what their thought pattern was with regard to torture in general and specifically whether or not water boarding was really torture. >> well, that is a great question. both of them if there were on this to date swim say they don't think the water boarding his torture. they, as you say, rely on legal opinions. that has been disputed. president bush clearly felt some discomfort in the sense that there was no water boarding. that was the end of waterborne in the administration. as vice-president cheney about this issue limited interview for this book. and i said, you know, explain to me how this works. the view is very much the ticking time bomb view. an existential threat. if you really think they're people out there trying to do grievous time to the country that was even worse than the 3,000 died, then water boarding, you know, three guys who were water board, it seems like a small price to pay. and ashton, the next question, okay. if you believe that and that is a logic, is there any part of you that felt queasy about it? because i think a lot of these things are tough. a lot of the decisions that the president's advisers may have trade-offs. simi 30, 6040. very rarely 100. he had no qualms about it whatsoever. he feels certain in his budget you about it and has not had second thoughts that he is willing to share. >> next call, richard and winter harbor, maine. hello. >> yes. i was wondering whether peter baker was familiar with the book called extreme prejudice by susan and now. she, in fact, was sent over there by the cia as a peacemaker prior to the invasion. when she comes back to try to tell her story she was gagged, was able to speak to small groups all-around, but this is an important thought. i know basically what i would call a coffee historian. he is really going out of milan to be reading this book, but i would like to know whether he has read the act and wants to make any comment about susan landau, extreme prejudice. thank you. >> thank you. >> thanks for the question. appreciated. have not read the book, but it sounds worth reading, for sure. i don't know that i am reading in the buck. he read about 200 different books. some members of the administration and some critical of the administration. so my view was, many different voices, and different points of view possible to try to come up with the best possible history that we could write. >> is there a tendency to on-time -- sometimes to pull punches? >> a great question. obviously that is an issue that you have to grapple with and find the right balance. richard this, they are often -- they don't give us all that much to begin with. at all feel like we lose anything. rival we think and report and stick to the fact based analysis. it would be fine if they punish you as a result, so be it. the truth is as long as your fair and accurate, as long as you are, you know, providing their point of view as well as any other country points of view i think the professionals understand that. those who don't probably were not going to help us anyway. >> clair in boynton beach florida, the last call for peter baker the new york times. >> mr. baker, i am very interested in your findings about the role of colin powell in the lead up to the iraqi war. i always felt he was very reluctant to go before -- i believe he testified about the weapons of mass destruction, at such a. my feeling was that if he had resigned in protest as to what they were doing in that the debt situation things may have been different. >> that's a good question and an important one. in fact, his deputy secretary of state at one point did, we reveal in the book, urge : bell to resign thinking that -- the argument being that the white house is using dollars a cover for policies that otherwise would not get as much public support. secretary paul did not see it that way. he did not resign, obviously. he spent a lifetime in the military and believe in being a good soldier. the truth is, he was reluctant about the iraqi war but never actually said no. he went to the president, brought along was that he had written out a long legal battle of the different possible consequences of work, things that he thought the president ought to consider before going to war. he called it the break even on it, and effect. all different possible negative effects, but when push came to shove and the president came and said it, okay, i'm going to go for it. are you with me. he said, i am with you and the stick with him. he never did our lycee, we should not a war and certainly as you say, resigned in protest. would that have made a difference, possibly, but he did not feel that that was something you wanted or should do at the time. >> the relationship today have the bushes and the pols. >> you know, i don't really think that they speak a lot. i think that they are altogether in april -- april. president bush said nice things about vice president cheney. but cheney was in the audience with the cabinet and the kid. on stage and had a speaking role. yellen to library, videos narrated. portrait of the first lady and pictures of the daughters. and even a statue of the dogs. there really is a not very much in there. he did not like the idea that he was running things other people think that. he was the decider. >> we have been talking with peter becker, chief white house correspondent of the new york times, also the author of this new book days a fire, bush and cheney in the white house. you are watching book tv on c-span2. now, we are live in miami at the 30th annual miami but fair. book tv has been on the air. we have been covering the miami but fair, at least parts of it. a couple hundred thousand people attend this every year. weaker too long up and that chapman halt room of miami-dade college with this festival is always thought. can see the room is getting full . she will be there in just a moment. brenda new bio on woodrow wilson. william howard taft. the golden age of journalism. beginning in just a minute. after that we will be back here on our set in miami for call-in program. susan herman, president of the aclu. there knew book is called taking liberties, the lawn chair. the erosion of american democracy. those of the next two events that are coming up this afternoon. live from miami. this is book tv and c-span2. we will take you now to chapman hall for the beginning of doris kerns goodwin and scott berg. but we are delighted to welcome you here this afternoon, but to hit 30 of miami book fair international. we also want to a knowledge. i see quite a few of you year. we thank you for your support. the end of this session you will have time for questions and answers with the authors and autographing session as well in the green area to the far right of the elevators. i will ask if you could please silencer from. we would very much appreciate if you would silencer found. for those of you coming in, please answer quickly and file. we will be starting the program right now. so i would like to ask dr. alan fein to come forward. once she is done we will hear from arlen hell who will introduce our speakers. please join me in welcoming. >> on behalf of myself and my family here today my sister jill, my nephew, and my partner, i would like to welcome you to the annual literary event sponsored by the lilly in fine memorial literature endowment. the intent of the endowment is author of presentation on the works of literary quality. its goal is to enhance love of literature to the widest audience possible in our generation and for generations to come. three are especially grateful to the devoted friends and students of lillian phineus so generously and treated to the endowment. many of you are here today to pay tribute. year is a little bit of background. she was born in milton, massachusetts, a small town about an hour from boston. in the 1930's she came to new york city to get hurt in a in education at columbia's teachers college. then, along with my father, benjamin fein, former education editor of the new york times and their four daughters, then moved to long island in the early 1950's. in 1971 my parents came to live in key biscayne. she shares her passion for literature with students. she taught at miami-dade college and at the institute for retired professionals before graduating. introduce students to writers of different nationalities and ethnic groups. she opened the door for many. that is why every year we continue to celebrate her spirit and to keep her memory alive. a group ever students even from the study group that gathers tubes discuss literature my mother would have been delighted by such a selection of two pulitzer prize-winning buyer first. down from an oral or two. receiving his pulitzer biography of charles lindbergh. he has also written biographies of max perkins and goldman. we will hear about this latest, well-documented subject, president wilson and the relevance for today's economic and foreign-policy berg cites his famous statements, the world must be made safe for democracy. a scott berg enhanced -- his book is enhanced by the access to new material. only recently uncovered. wilson's private letters to his physician and letters belonging to his daughter could was latest biography, the bully pulpit, theodore roosevelt, william howard taft and the golden age of journalism depicting the complex french of these two men and the competition and their fight for the presidency which weakened the progressive republican party. above all good when observed how roosevelt was the first modern president to have a close relationship with the press. goodwin has also made the profiles of presidents, live in her many compelling biographies of the kennedys, lyndon johnson, and, of course, lincoln's team of rivals which was the basis for steven spielberg's home of lincoln. condition two are biographies goodwin wrote a memoir called wait until next year revealing what it was like to grow up in the 1950's in her home town of rockville center. we are thrilled with this personal connection. she went to the same high school as my sisters and nine. my sister joe was a classmate. i had the same excellent history teaches as she did. the story of her coming of age, her love of baseball that she shared with her father, her close relationships with friends and neighbors also chronicling significant historical events of the fifties. she interviewed both lillian and zero. my mother and sister to document the role that my father benjamin find played in reporting the integration of central high in the rock, ark. she notes on a state -- daily articles became sources of discussion in her history class. so beautifully included our family in her book. we are extremely happy to come full circle by granting heard the lillian fine memorial literature endowment award. we are privileged today to welcome these eminent biographers. >> please give her another round of applause. celebrating 30 years. thirty years of the miami but fair international. >> it is nice. i am closer. we are about to introduce americans treasure biographers. ladies and gentlemen, good one, and the best audience here, raise your hands. let me see it. >> she was the first female journalist in a locker rooms of the boston red sox. you can applaud a little bit louder for that. but we want to take a journey to a part of america's history and a turn-of-the-century, 1901 to 1921. please join us on this journey. already introduced the illustrious history. you will hear little bit more in a little bit. please make sure that you get a coffee -- a copy of her book. the second biographer, another native of new england. a's got bird. please give demand. [applause] >> i must say now an honorary texan and colonel in virginia. she will tell you a little bit more about that. he is going to talk to you about the 27 presidents -- 28 president from woodrow wilson. please welcome. to moderate the discussion, one of our own. sixteen years she served as a miami-dade county commissioner. suez hired to found the good governor's initiative, and she is educating and training the next generation of talented and perfect elected officials. can you believe that? the hon. case sorensen. [applause] >> thank you. thank you for that great introduction. welcome, everyone. now in its 30th year. i mean, let's hear it. mitchell kaplan. doris goodwin and scabbard. it's so wonderful to have you here. welcome to miami. our premier annual cultural event. is good to have the year. in most of the bucks about presidential. and really, it was started by the roosevelt because he is known as teddy. and so how did he start the progressive era jack what propelled him to act? and what were his successes that are still with us today? >> i may, indeed, : teddy. he did not like to be called teddy. he lost that battle with history. teddy roosevelt came into power at a time when the aspects of the industrial age have not been dealt with. there was no compensation. women and children were exported in the factories. huge monopolies. the gap between rich and the poor and grown wider. sounding somewhat familiar to situations today. the digital revolution may have produced a similar kind of economic change. even though he was a conservative when he started in a certain sense and certainly a republican when he started, you realize that the republican party would not be able to continue as a major force in the majority force unless it began to deal with these problems of the industrial age there is so even as governor he tried to introduce reform legislation anger in the political bosses who were tied in with the old order. so they decided there were dumped into the vice presidency where you would have no power and now be the end. of course mckinley is assassinated, and he becomes president. it is not really that he did it on his own. anderson of the only way that he could move is reluctant congress to take the legislation was necessary was to mobilize the country to push them from the outside in, so that is why he defines the word bully pulpit as the president's power to educate and morally move the country forward, but he needed help, and he had help from the press at that time. most remarkable set of relations with the press. they too were progressive. they too have their own agenda, as did the social summit groups, churches. it really was an uprising from the country at large to the something had to happen, but he was at the helm, said his name will forever be identified with the progressive era. i taught a seminar on the in the progressive era four years ago and always wanted to live with them. finally after all these other characters i get a chance to be with his most colorful, exasperated, extraordinary figure. so sometimes i wonder what i am doing spending my life with dead presidents, but would not change it for anything in the world. we're going to get to you, let's continue on chronological order because this came into the picture. is said to include passages in your book as well. how have they become close? 400 letters between. how did they become close and added the rest happened? >> added not really know that much about taft. i needed to follow the progressive movement up to the time when his guy. and i knew, of course, that have succeeded steady and they had run against each other in 1912, you always go back, and i know that scott does a, you want the primary sources, letters and diaries and private journals, the charges for an historian. when i found these 400 letters between the 2i realized they became friends in their early 30's. an odd couple. marching around everywhere during wrestling and boxing, weighing between 250 and 350 is not doing much wrestling and boxing, but they liked each other. almost attracted to research it brings them into his cabinet. becomes the most important person in his cabinet, even though all his life-just wanted to be a judge in never politician perry from a cabinet post his eyes this is the man of want to succeed me. he runs the campaign. he gives him advice at every moment. the only thing he did not give him advice on musses campaign sought him and teddy would have approved. on a raft with taft. yet on a raft with 340 pounds after would not be on a very long. anyway, then he is sure that he will be the lead as a president. guess africa to give his face, caused back and he is told by his progress is attached as become too much in coziness with the old-guard republicans in the congress to train the progress of legacy. it really was not that because he did try to do what he thought he was doing, but he just did not have the skills of public leader. did not know how to deal with the press, give a speech. in such as the decides to run against taft. perot campaign in 1912. of course because there are two republicans running-when spivvy and then, of course, but the parties, when he loses, runs on the bonus third-party campaign opening the door for the democrats win. but what was so emotionally moving for me is the hard break when they broke with much greater than i realized because the french ships had been much stronger. i love writing about these emotional things. allowed to be much more than just destroyed, linear story. >> well, scott berg, woodrow wilson camera into the picture. he was elected. he went back to progressivism. talk about that a little bit. >> she went back to progressivism daytime taking the foundation, roosevelt, not teddy, to woodrow wilson. but really it was built upon. and wilson wanted to commend it is kind of ironic because most people have an image of this very presbyterian minister son. in fact, he was extremely human. he was extremely emotional and very passionate they read what he wanted to do, above all, was to humanize the presidency. so where theodore roosevelt had created this relationship with the press, woodrow wilson really wanted to advance. but he did was start holding press conferences which a president had never done before. everything that he did was toward personalizing the white house. and toward that end wilson came in with really the most aggressive progressive agenda that we had seen. and he brought it about largely through this process of humanization. and he did it by showing up at the congress. wilson had an extremely peculiar view of how the legislative branch and the executive branch should function. he thought being a political scientist at these two branches -- now get ready, you have to work with me on this, he thought they should cooperate. [applause] think of it. think of it. i mean, he fell literally they should cooperate the government. and so wilson did something presidents have not done since john adams in 1800. he showed up in the congress to conduct business. he brought back the president appearing to deliver the state of the union address. woodrow wilson delivered 25 addresses to a joint sessions of the congress. and he actually showed up in a little room that sits in the congress which was designed for presidents to come and work with the congress. now, i think a lot of the presidents have failed to find this room. [laughter] i am not naming names. but i think they have failed to find it because it has a rather tricky name. is called, the president's room. [laughter] >> lbj found it. >> estimated. and really -- and he found it big time. and that is why so much legislation got past. these were guys -- and johnson was in many ways in the los onion tradition of getting in there, rolling up your sleeves, may be cracking a few legs and arms and twisting them. and that is what wilson did. in so with that we immediately sought within the first few months of the wilson administration the lowering of tariffs, the interaction of the modern income tax which and a graduated scale so that the richer paid more. we saw the establishment of the federal reserve system which has been basically the basis of the american economy for the last century. he went into labor, eight hour work days to mull workman compensation and so forth. but the first ones you on the supreme court. all of these things but progressivism for woodrow wilson was about leveling the playing field. he was not anti wealth, not anti-war street, but he was antitrust. he was against unfair confrontation. in any where he side he tried to fight it. >> so you have both alluded to the fact that there are a lot of parallels between today and those times. are we in another gilded age? >> well, i do think that one of the things that produced at great gap between the rich and poor at the turn of the 20th-century was, as i said, the whole economy and shifted to be used to be that if you were living in some country town, the richest person might be a doctor or lawyer in a house on the hill. then suddenly with these massive just swarming in the 1880's and 90's, big railroads fan in the country. oil industry coming, you have these millionaires side by side with the immigrants in attendance. the turn-of-the-century, the pace of life and sped up. because your head telegraphs, typing letters, local wars exploited in the tabloid press and people are saying that there was a lot of nervous disorder because the pace of life had suspect up. think about it today with the pace of life speeding up even more by all the images that we have now. the problem is, yes, we are in some ways in another deal that age. but the progressive era, the mobilization of the country to handle these problems has not emerged. and so as a result -- and i am not even sure the bully pulpit had the power that it did in both wilson and teddy's time when they would give a speech it would become the common conversation in the country and be reported in full, even by the time that fdr when on his fireside chat, you could hear 80% of the people listening to his chat. you know, you could walk down the street on a hot chicago night and not miss a word of what you the same as ever loma sitting in the kitchen and listen to the radio. by the early television you would listen to the whole speech up to reagan really when there were three networks. now the media is divided the way that it was in the 19th century. in national newspapers came along in my time, the 20th-century, even am writing checks right now, 1913 and 20. in national newspapers that emerged in the early 20th-century replacing partisan press. in the old days you would only read your newspaper. if you're republican away good democrat. the republican newspaper, lincoln gave a great speech can carry on the shoulders of his people. the democratic is every fell on the ground and they booed and hissed. and then we get away from them with national newspapers car radio, television. now here we are taught divided media. you may only watch your own favorite cable station, you're a part of the president's speech, the pawn and staring in town of 40 is finished command our attention span has diminished. in the guys that i wrote about, there were given two years. ray baker, william allen rights of white 50,000 word pieces month after month after month. people read them and talked about them. i'm just not sure that that -- that anyone will be given an amount of time by a newspaper or magazine today. and the expense accounts and a camaraderie. in the attention span to talk about it. so i worry about where the country is going in terms of our influence on the government. complied is said there is no one left well less. sometimes i think that is true for us. where are we? we just complain about what is going on in washington. we have not figured out how to do something about the paralysis that is there. >> and i think the fragmentation in the media is only going to continue these people make up there on the media all the time. social media, blocking, and the factory media. i mean, that is happening all over the place. and how is president wilson treated by the media? >> u.s. treated pretty well, especially by the race standard bakers, many of them in debt working. >> i love baker. he is my favorite. >> he really spent his final years not only working for wilson within writing nine volumes. he so adored him. one of the most glorious piece is about wilson was written by qaeda tarbell. in fact, it was so wonderful i find myself not quoting it because i thought it made me look too partisan in wilson's favor. but i think is quite true we have been suggesting about this great actualization of the media because what we have lost the, and you really articulated it. we just don't think as much anymore. we react from the get some much. that is why we flock to that cable station bespeaks what we think we think even though we have not body yet. but i think that is a big factor today. wilson had a very good relationship with the media up to and just into the first world war which wilson ultimately brought us into. and at that point -- is because one of the great ironies in the story, the most progressive president that we had today, not even for getting tiara, but that this president became the most suppressive of the press, which he did during the war, revitalizing the sedition acts which really had been quiet certainly since the days of atoms and someone with lag in they were brought back. factum was news to settling in all the time saying and doing nothing that heated not to bury that is a good cover. >> it is interesting. people ask me, what would roosevelt had done in today's world. i think he would have loved it. his great strength was to reduce complex problems and to short and language. so this square deal. i mean, everything that scott said that while some believe then, the fairness, not going after the rich unless they have accumulated their wealth and unfair means you're really not going after the poor unless they're not taking care of your opportunities. the rock on which the country was founded. in fact, not on his career deal with speak softly and carry a big stake. even gave maxwell house's slogan. it is said that he drank 40 cups of coffee a day. something has to explain the incredible energy of this character. >> that is true. he would have loved twitter because you could not shut him up. >> right. he would -- he loved being in the center of things. this is both the strength and weakness. his daughter said he wants to be the bride at the wedding in the course of the funeral and the baby at the baptism. >> and all of this, of course, may wilson crazy. he thought tiara was just a big blustering caricature of a man. and, in fact, somebody once pointed out so many of the same principles that you believe in. what you attack him every day? and roosevelt said to my think that's true. i guess wilson is just a weaker version of me. .. there he found an exclusive campus he. it he resented it as an undergraduate and came to resent it as a professor there. he then became president of the college. and it was at this time he decided now i have the ability to change what this college is. wilson's predecessor in the presidency of princeton was a man who used to brag he ran the finest country club in america. [laughter] he did. there was no question about it. it was an enclave for the sons of the very, very rich. wilson tried to tear that down. it was in doing that, he began writing about what he was doing and speaking about what he was doing. this is how the most immediate oric rise in american history occurred. people began to look at wilson, who used the princeton campus as a great metaphor for america. he believed higher education should be the great catapult for people. anybody from any class in a country that has no classes but in such a country, anybody who is educate and works hard should be able to leapfrog. it should be able to go up a step a rung or two or the ladder. wilson became famous for this, so much so that some of the political bosses in the democratic party were attracted to him. thinking he was a perfect combination to be their puppet. namely he sounded very progressive and reformist, but also he was a professor he would be very weak. little did they know when he got elected governor of new jersey when he served for about 18 months, the first thing he did as governor was kick out the very machine that put him in office. [laughter] so everybody saw this was no weak college professor. >> well, let's turn to the women in the president's lives. i'm always interested in the woman behind the man. i always wanted my husband to be like nancy reagan, for example, as an elected official. i'm interested in how these women helped these presidents. >> you know, what interested me there are actually three women i'm writing about. roosevelt and tell mely taft, and, ida. they each had choices to make. there were narrower choices for women than today. roosevelt came from a family where her father had been wealthy, lost his shipping business, and became an alcoholic. she lived near teddy when she was a young girl. they had to move to more modest homes. forever after she drew a productive curtain around herself. they loved each other. they were boyfriend and girlfriend through college. they had a fight in his soft more year in college. he fell madly in love with a beautiful young girl from boston. he married alice to the devastation ofth edith. he thought he would never love again. the light had gone out of his life. he married her. it was a strong marriage. all she wanted from the marriage and her first ladyship was to give companionship and strength and a sanction ware to her ever-restless husband. she said when he became first lady she had no intention of being a public person. she wasn't going give her view for the politics. what only mattered is be in the newspaper twice. married and buried. nelly taft had ambition from the time she was an adolescence her sent her brothers to harvard and yale. not she. she decided to start teaching to her mother's dismay. and she decided she might not marry. she meets young will and he adored her. it really respected her independence. and he made her his partner had his whole career. she's partly responsible for him choosing politics eventually instead of the judicial route he was on. she helped with his speeches and strategy. and became an extraordinary first lady in the few months she was there. activist concerned with working women. she brought the charities to washington. she opened the guest list to more people than before. created a public park with free concerts. and incredibly sadly for him. two months after his inauguration, she fell as they were on a presidential yat. collapsing had a devastating stroke. she recovered her power of walking but never to speak connective sentences again. he spent her days to teach her phrases. and this is again, you never know how things alter. it absolutely contributed to his troubles as presidency. and then lastly, ida tar bell growing up in northwestern pennsylvania, watches the frustration of her mother when her own family industry is hurt because her father is an independent oil producer making more money than dreamed. she was a teacher. jd rockefeller comes in and undoes his business. the mother hoped to go on to higher education. has to worry about the family's economic. ida prays she will never take a husband. and she does not ever get married. becomes the most famous journalist of her are a. when she writes her standard oil expose they reported john d. rockefeller was willing to pay anyone to take her on trips around the world. it's so interesting to think today however much trouble we have today the choices are broader than they were. it's interest for me to see. they made a choice that fit their own needs and desires. it's the way women were. they were indispensable to their husbands. those two first ladies in very different ways. it. >> and scott? he has a bunch of women. [laughter] >> i didn't mean it in that way. [laughter] >> no, you certainly did not. [laughter] now i feel as low we on queen for a day, that old show. you have to come up with the most pathetic and most romantic story. woodrow wilson had two wives. not at the same time. [laughter] but the first was a young woman he met in georgia when he was a struggling lawyer in atlanta. he was a minister's son. he met the minister's daughter in a little town called rome, georgia. they fell instantly in love. and he was realizing he didn't really have a career as a lawyer. and so he took up academia at that point. the good news for me, the biographer, she and he began exchanging 3,000 of the most passionate love letters i have ever read. yes, i'm talking woodrow wilson. [laughter] they're almost hard to believe. they are emotional, they are sexual, they are revealing, they -- it's just -- yes, woodrow wilson. [laughter] it's true. it's true. and she gave as good as she got. and -- >> what does that mean? [laughter] >> just -- [laughter] let your conscious -- conscience be your guide. they married. she became a professor's wife, and a college president's wife, she poured a lot of tea. and the interesting thing is she was a very good artist. she painted extremely well, should and could have had a career as an artist. gave it all up to be a proper wife as indeed, you know, the role of women was dictated back then. and she was the most supportive wife there could be all the way to the white house. and one year in to their living in the white house, ellen wilson died. the -- yes, the big awe. and the president was crushed. he could barely get out of bed. he being so religious did not talk about suicide, but he did say more than once he wished somebody would just shoot him. he couldn't deal with it. two things got him out of bed. the first was, the very week she died a war broke out in europe. and now rapping on the door saying, mr. president, there's something happening and we need you here. the second thing that happened over the course of the next few months is, woodrow wilson had a cute meet the way in movies. he was introduced to a young attractive widow who lived in washington, d.c. over the course of the next year, the president went courting. he's having private dinners in the white house, always chap roaned and writing hundreds of the most passionate love letters you have ever read to this one. now the other letters did to ellen. you see that was puppy love. this is a mechanic? -- man in his late 50s having his last stab at romance. he wins her, marries her within a year, and now she became the most supportive presidential wife one could imagine. they never left each other's side. it reached the point where wilson, who often used to walk to other departments of the government just to stop in and have meetings, mrs. wilson would invery belie go with him. she was trained in the memos he was writing. it was almost as though fate was dictating. what happened after the war after wilson came back with the league of nations peace treaty and went around the country to 29 cities to try to convince the american people that they should convince the republican senate to ratify this treaty, which the republicans did not want to do, in the middle of this tour, woodrow wilson collapsed. and he was rushed home to washington from the middle of the country and there a few days later woodrow wilson suffered a stroke. now here is where mrs. wilson comes in. she, and handful of doctors, engaged in which i consider the greatest white house conspiracy in history. because three or four people decided they would never tell anybody the president had suffered a stroke. and so for the last year and a half of the wilson administration, for all intents and purposes, edith became the first female president of the united states. [laughter] yes, yes. [laughter] bring it on. she was making no decisions on her own, she insisted. she said she was merely a steward but nobody saw the president of the thousand of people who want to see him, nobody saw him. the handful only of that without passing through miss wilson. all the documents and things that required signatures, commissions, whatever memorandum. nothing appeared before the president of the united states' eyes until mrs. wilson decided what and when the president would act upon it. so she became a pretty supportive wife. >> i guess so. if i can underscore something scott said which i said earlier but so clear when you talk about letters. i don't know what is going to happen 200 years from now when we don't have handwritten letters as historians to look back on. maybe e-mail will be saved. it's written stay staccato. when people had the only means of communicating through letters. when you find the letters, it's the treasure. there was a military aid named archie butler and in those days the military aid was with the president all the time. teddy loved him like another son. taft adored him. when the break occurred he wrote letters every day to his family which are absolute gold. and he talks the way we know how deep that was for especially for taft. he recounted what taft was feeling as teddy talking about. calling him a fat head. and the relationship was so strong and finally he was supposed to take a trip in the spring of 1912, before the nomination thing began to heat up, and then at the last minute when teddy threw his hat in the ring, i had -- he decided i can't go. i have to stay with taft. he needs me. he didn't want me to know but he tells taft he canceled the shipping order. and he said you have to go. you'll be back. he goes to europe, he goes for about four weeks, and he comes back on the titanic and lost his life. taft was stricken yet again. everywhere he went he felt like he was missing this man. and this man, as the ship titanic was going down, was telling somebody who wrote a letter to taft that he the letters in storage and hoped maybe they would be remembered someday. they have been gold to biographers. >> you are right. >> and anyway. >>. >> all i can say is keep track what you're writing to people. so the biographer who comes along 1200 years from now you'll have stuff. >> take a pen out every now and then. it's different. we have shared in this, the men we have written about -- and women too, for that matter, wrote so beautifully. and when you take the time to write, you compose a thought and this is a nice thing. you put it in lovely language, as was certainly the case with wilson and his wives. >> i'm going ask you one more question and then open it to the audience. if you would like to start coming up to the microphone, we'll hear from you as well. my final question is this: president obama is having such a difficult time right now. so what advice with your presidents give him? [laughter] >> you can go first. [laughter] >> president wilson would say, get to the president's room! [laughter] go there, start a dialogue. now woodrow wilson had a contentious senate in the end. a contentious house of representatives as well. he didn't get everything he wanted. but here is what wilson engaged in. it was a sustained dialogue for eight years that was a lot of consternation. there was a lot of argument, there was a lot of disagreement, but there was an ongoing chat between these two houses -- these two branches of the american government. and i think that is something wilson believed in so strongly. the second thing, and it's related to it, and it's especially ironic because we do have such an image of such a stiff figure. the fact is wilson personalized the presidency. he was not afraid to go down to the congress. he did not just sit in the imperial white house. again, very ivory tower-antiivory tower. he was willing to go there and willing to do anything to open the conversation. at one point he had a foreign relations committee of the united states senate come to meet in the white house. he said, let me open the house to you if that's what tick it is a too get something passed. let's do. he was always keeping the diagnose going. >> i agree with scott. in addition to going to the congress more, it's using the tool of the white house. those congressman want come there. i know, there are been difficulties. i know, the president innovated various republican members not willing to come and not wanting to be seen because the terrible riff. it looks like they're loyal to their base if seen with the president. there's something special coming to the white house. johnson used to have them for breakfast, lunch, dibber. he called them at night. he called at 2:00 a.m. and said i hope you didn't wake you. he said no, i was lying here hoping my president would call. the whole political culture in washington changed. they used to stay around on weekends 50 years before they raced home to make the stupid funds -- campaign finance is the answer, actually. it's absolutely the poison in the system. they used to stay together. their wives knew each other. they drink together, they formed friendship across party lines. when johnson needed to get to dirkson to break the filibuster, they were friends. he could go to him. passenger's side through few friendships at any point. none of them or few have served in the war together. they knew what it was like to have a common mission. you have a common mission. they lost that sense of a common mission, which is our country. and something has to bring that back. and if we can bring teddy and wilson and the lbj and the presidents in there to figure out both sides of the i'm, congress and the presidency, it's time that we are able to start dealing with our problems. [laughter] >> thank you. thank you very much. now it's your turn. yes, ma'am, please introduce yourself. >> my nam is janice, i las live in washington, d.c. i'm a founding member of the national museum of women's art. [inaudible] my question to mr. berg is, in the education that we had in our training, we were asked to read a book called "jailed for freedom." which was a series of essays written by the suffragists who were lawyers, physicians, judges, women who were fighting for the right to vote. and president wilson totally ignored them. and i wondered if you encountered this -- >> i don't think it's exactly right. he totally ignored them. >> sorry. he was quite aware of what was going on. wilson -- [inaudible] wilson believed the women should have the vote. he believed there should not be a 19th amendment for many years. he came around on that. and he rather famously, in 1915 got on a train and went up to new mexico because -- new jersey because it was a states right thing and should happen by state-by-state. there were protests outside the white house. alice paul and her sister suffragists were being arrested, taken to jail. wilson said, let them go. don't put them in jail. just let them go. i know, the issue. i'm not prepared to for fight for a 19th amendment. the whole thing, alice paul could have walked out any time. she clearly wanted to stay. she was fighting for attention and making her point. now, by 1917, wilson was bringing the country in to war, and at this time he had a major shift, and he had been playing to the more conservative wing of the suffragists for years, who believed in state-by-state adoption. beginning in 1917 he was coming around for two reasons. we were fighting in europe for peace and freedom there. he said, how can we not have half the women in this country voting? it seemed to be a huge mistake to him. the second thing he saw during the war, once we were in it, was the role women were playing in the role -- they were leaving the house for work. they were actually doing a lot of just good works for the war movement. so, wilson had an overnight change of heart, and actually began actively campaigning for the 19th amendment. such that even -- by the time he came out for, again, called another session of congress, and told them it was a war measure that is how important it was. we had to have national suffrage, universal suffrage in the united states because of the war, and he thought it would be a good way to get everybody to rally behind it. and within a year it was a done deal, and even alice paul came around to thank woodrow wilson for it. so i would say he was late to the party, but once he got there he had the lamp shade on. [laughter] >> one next question. we are going to move on. >> no -- i'm sorry, madam, we're going the next question. thank you. >> good afternoon. what an honor to hear you be able to ask you a question. mr. berg, you alluded briefly to the answer of this regarding president wilson at princeton. but the three presidents, what was their relationship or perhaps complicated relationship to status and class? we get a sense that tr was with the common man but not much of the common man. he was a harvard man. taft was a yale man. we know t. r. -- >> a princeton man. >> yeah. and we know t. r. was friends with jake brought him down to the lower east side where my great grand parents set upshot 100 years ago. on a specific ♪, did the immigrant lower classes, were they part of the america of these three presidents? what was the class issue? >> it's a great issue. i mean, i think what happened for roosevelt -- when he first went to harvard he thought he was -- he thought he should be dealing with the people of hiss -- his class. underline that attitude he came from a wealthy family, obviously in new york. but his father had been interested in social justice. had become a philanthropist. it worked with young news boys and that instinct was somewhat in teddy. then the real place where he began to shift away from that harvard-class mentality was he became a state legislature right after congress. and at first he went and thought the irish guys guys with with the tobacco and their cigars were of a different class than the ones he wanted to. and he started becoming a histrionic rhetoric guy even in the legislature yelling and screaming about the political bosses. he was always against that. and at the certain point he realized he wasn't getting anything done. he wasn't reaching as cro to the other people. he said he realized he came aa cropper and had to learn how to deal with people of all classes. just as you said, jacob reese became his friend. took him to the tentment. originally he was against regulation of the tenement. he saw it and changed his mind and early on for regulation. then these reporters, we he became police commissioner took him to where people were living in the middle of the night. what helped him he had so many different jobs. when he was in the rough riders he had a group of people with him. and he kept his relationship with these reporters much more involved in the knity gritty than he was. they were able to criticize him rather than become -- my favorite there was a guy mr. duelly a famous chicago bartender in a humorous column. he wrote a review of the rough riders book. and he put himself in the center of the action it was as he was the only person but he should have called it alone in cuba. what did teddy do? he regret to tell you my wife and entire family loved your review of the book. now you owe me one. i want to meet you. through the reporters, through people like jacob and people involved in the settlement houses. he began to see the conditions of life and he later said when he gave his talks that my harvard buddies think my talks too folksy. they are homely. but i know i'm reaching people because i now know those people. and he took train trips months at the time going around the country talking to people in village stations. waiving to people in the trains, he would even stand up in the middle of lunch at one point he said he was waiving so much and the people seemed so indifferent. it turned out it was a herd of cows. i think that's what is -- [laughter] something had to jar him away from that background. just as fdr's polio transformed him. he was aware that fate dealt him an unkind hand. he reached out to other people whom had the same thing happen. >> wilson did not believe in a great class structure in this country. he was from a lower, lower middle class. being a minister's son. what believed; however, was the educate class. it was the class that mattered for him. as i said before, this is a man who spent most of his life in career on a college campus either as a student, professor, or president. this is a man who believed that was the great level leer of all playing field in this country. and so, the interesting thing when wilson became a politician, and it was a really fascinating tool he used. as a politician, he never spoke down the audience. he never got folksy. he used rather elevated language. he spoke invery belie without any notes. he get out there and could deliver an hour, hour and a half speech with a card and five bullets on it and speak in perfect sentences, heightened vocabulary. he could do. the fans loved it. they fund, they felt elevated by it. and wilson, you see, never looked down on them. that was a wonderful thing for them. it was a great tool he used. and as such, i think he was pretty effective in that regard. >> you know, lucky for rose -- roosevelt he spoke with notes. in 1912 when he was campaigning, he had the 50-page speech in his pocket when an assassin shot him in the chest. the bum let re-- bullet remained within him. he delivered got-hour speech. because the 50 pages of the speech in his pocket it went upward rather than probably killed him on the spot. so they each had their own way of talking. and living. >> i'm afraid we only have time for one more question. >> speeches can save lives. [laughter] >> for mr. berg, about wilson about the league of nations, the thought is -- i've heard he was so intransient. not willing to accept some of the reservations that some of the senators wanted. i'm wondered if you can reflect on that. for miss goodwin. thank you. i'm reading it now and it's incredible. >> thank you. >> i was wondering -- it's such a big question that choose whatever part you like. either comparison between tr and fdr, similarlities, disalready similarities. reflections give that yesterday was the 50th anniversary of killing of kennedy. how in the world do we get to campaign finance reform? , ii mean, everyone is so disheartened about the road where we are. what do you see in the future? >> thank you -- thatch. i don't think it was in my job discrepancies to answer that question. i heard something about the league of nations in there somewhere. [laughter] which wilson wanted to have pass so we might have fought the war to end all wars. and wilson was intransigent. i think for a couple of reasons, one of which he was a stubborn guy as a rule. when he was over in paris, and he was there for six months, the president of the united states left the country for six months to negotiate in treaty. during that time, especially toward the end month five and six saying agree, i have a country to get home too. he began to make some comprises. one or two big ones in the end. he came back, and i think when he found this senate that was going to be completely unwilling to accept the treaty with its league, that is the moment, i think, the curtain came down for wilson and he said i'm not giving away another thing. and indeed this congressional battle went on for weeks which is what prompted his tour of the country. even after his stroke, after he had come home. the battle went on in the senate. and wilson even though comprises were presented would not buy them. at the very end his rival in the senate, the dean of the republican party and the head of the foreign relations committee came in with the 11th-hour comprise which was a few sentences and largely sin tactical. and wilson simply would not buy it. so i feel -- he's the stuff of greek tragedy. this is man who didn't shoot himself in the foot. he truly stabbed himent -- himself in the heart. >> and i think what that raises is when we live with these people for so long, you really do end up caring about them so when they disappoint you, when they do things that you wish that they hadn't done, obviously i adored roosevelt and eleanor, and yet wishing roosevelt hope -- opened the door for jewish refugee and not incarcerated the japanese-americans. he was allied leader that ended the threat of hitler. the greatest threat to western civilization. any kids used to hear me franklin be nicer. she loves you. eleanor forget that affair that happened so long ago. and similarly with roosevelt i have such respect for his domestic policy and just his persona, his views on war, i have no respect for. he would say the victory of war were greater thant victory of peace at any moment. he had the are manhattannization of war. i have a son who graduated from harvard college in june of '01 was going to go to law school. september 11th happened. he volunteered for the army next day and later got a bronze star and went back to afghanistan. but importantingly for this substitution, he had written his thesis at harvard on roosevelt and loved him. after he came back from combat he said he could never u understand having been in combat how anybody could are -- but that's part of the glory of being a biographer. all human beings have their strength and weaknesses. it's up to us to really not forget the parts that is weak and bring it up. but at the same time, i could never choose somebody ultimately to write about that i didn't want to be with. i loved with them so long. i could never write about hitler or stalin. luckily i have found people i overwhelm overwhelmingly feel affection for. >> the last word hold on. we have been given a ten minute reprieve. >> those who wanted to ask questions can come back. i want to give those chances to people in line first. enabling i'm the executive producer of "forgotten hollywood." what an inspiration you both are to all authors in the room and to everybody at the fair. [applause] just a very simple question. can you both speak to the importance of eugene in the election of 1912? regarding wilson, taft, and roosevelt? ? thank you. >> go ahead. >> well, -- 900,000 votes. >> he if mighty well. he was extremely important. i think he was more than just paprika in the big stew of that election. which was a really fascinating -- you know, there was an election really of ideas. and there was so much progressivism in the air. it becomes extremely important in wilson's life later on. he's one of the people who will be arrested under the wilson law, the alien and is and sedition laws. he was delivering the speech said i know i'm going to be arrested for this. and now i'll tell you. i have gone through the feature -- speech he gave. i keep looking for the sedition. i can't find it. he was basically telling the people some workers that this was a capitalist war, and that they did not have to be cannoned toker in it. and for that, he was arrested. he was put in jail, he was found guilty and went to the supreme court. they came down against him 9-0. he was in prison. it will tell you a lot about wilson. the war is now over. wilson has had a stroke. in he's in the white house he's about to leave the white house. people in his government, his attorney general who basically had put him in jail came to him and said, mr. president, debs is an old man now. he's sick and served his time. the war is over. he's clearly not a danger any longer. here is the pardon all written. all you have to do is put your signature on it. and where the signature would go wilson wrote "denied ." you didn't cross wilson more than once. it was simply because wilson felt one we had gone to war that sort of speech telling people not to go to war that was sedition to him. and he said long i'm in charge of two million people risking their lives, i cannot let anybody speak out against them. and so that is why he was just intransigent on the subject. >> partly of the question nobody is perfect. no president is perfect. i written a book -- [inaudible] and it deals with eastern progressives and their religious -- [inaudible] you mentioned tr and the rough rider that could easy by will called teddy roosevelt and the buffalo soldiers as many as -- [inaudible] and wilson -- my gosh he said -- >> he had a symbolic gesture he invited booker t. washington to dinner and it produced outrage in the south and other part of the country there was equality of a social relationship that he backed down, i think, he -- but he also held imperialist attitudes. racist attitudes. these people are unfortunately men of their generation. his record on race there was a riot in brownsville and a group of blacks arrested because they couldn't figure out who started it. it was wrong, he was wrong. and these are those moments you're absolutely right, when all you can say is that you have to remember the context in which they're leading. even lincoln, you know, in the 1850s was against, obviously, against intermarriage. against blacks sitting on juries. hef for the black law. you say how could lincoln have done this? the important thing is he grew from the attitudes and eventually allowed the blacks to come in. they were so important as soldiers in the army it changed the whole course of the war in many ways and issued the emancipation proclamation. there's no answering for them except to pave the context in which they are ruling and see if they are way behind the context or in the middle of it or sometimes if you're lucky, the person you're dealing with is ahead of that. >> jo ann. >> i have a question. -- [inaudible] this is such a magnificent high-level conversation. i want to go a moment of history and passion in a different level. and that is, what did it feel to be like in fenway park -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> i tell you, having been a passionate baseball fan all my life and having only experienced one vict i are with the brooklyn dodgers in 195, -- [applause] then obviously i chose another team after the dodgers abandoned and wednesday to california. i went to harvard and choose almost like falling in love again with the boston red sox and he all the years and lost and lower house and almost win. finally in you're and '07. we have the season tickets to the game. so we were at every game, and every playoff. every division. and to be in our town and see them winning and share it with boston, i mean, that's what is so great about baseball. somebody asked me what would you have done if the dodgers had been against the red sox. how would you have dealt with the divided loyalty. i thought about it and my answer was the dodgers were my first love. my father growing up in brooklyn taught me to keep score. that's where my love of history began. when i was able to record for him the history of that afternoon's brooklyn dodger game going over every play. he made he tell i was telling a fabulous love. i had a first love of a boyfriend before i married my husband. but the boston red sox have been my sustaining love for almost 40 years. and my husband i've been married for 38 years. the boston red sox would be my love now. [laughter] [applause] we have time for one more now. >> on that note, i got to tell you some quick thoughts. i didn't know you were having coauthor -- i brought one gift to you. is that baseball, my love for you through your writing and all you have done, and i always feel you're the tim rustin of the "today" show. you couldn't give me a better compliment. i love him so much. >> a couple of weeks ago you were to be speak to us in a way we could understand. i love your energy. on baseball, my wife and i's first date was to a cleveland indians game, which is the boston red sox farm club in the '60s and '70s. >> i know. >> our first date was an indian games. lennie parker pitched a perfect game. >> and you are still married. >> oh. yes. >> hooray. >> we have a great thing every summer and it's called admitted night sun baseball game. it starts at 10:30 at night. my gift to you is to -- [laughter] -- and so -- >> it's beautiful, thank you. couch. an invitation to you if you would like to come a mid night sun baseball game. june 21st, every year. >> i see. summer -- >> we can get you up there it would be so great. >> thank you, thank you. >> and i will happily wear it! [applause] >> okay, any closing comments from our historians? scott?? any last words. >> what a pleasure it was to have this conversation. [laughter] [applause] [laughter] >> thank you. [applause] [laughter] [applause] >> okay, thank you, both, for being with us. it's been a wonderful, wonderful conversation. great moment in miami. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] live coverage from miami book fair international continues. doris kearns goodwin talking with the audience there. and author of wilson talking about the last turn of the century together. by the way, everything you're seeing today on booktv's coverage of miami will reair tonight beginning at midnight. a couple of more hours of coverage today, and we're going to do a couple of call-in programs next. after that, the next event in chatman hall we'll be covering. written about bunker hill. and brenda, "ecstatic nation: confidence, comprise, -- thawl be talking about the development of the united. joining us now on the set is susan. day job president of the aclu. she's the author of this book "taking liberty." susan herman, where do we stand with -- when it comes to patriot act today? >> guest: the status of the patriot act is something i think a lot of people don't understand. because when it was enacted five weeks after 9/11, in october of 2001, congress hasn't had any hearings. they didn't get any idea what was going wrong. they had ideas about what tools to -- [inaudible] so the patriot act, ever since 2000 has been -- [inaudible] given the government all the dragnet tools to do surveillance and all these things. i found when george w. bush left the white house people asiewmented the patriot act had gone away. people were telling me what does the aclu have to do now? couldn't grow out of business and saying mission accomplished? the patriot act is very much with us. the current events i actually one thing i hope we can talk about. i think there might be some prospect for change. >> where? >> guest: one thing that happened. i started writing this weak in the -- book in the middle of barack obama's first term. at that time, people didn't understand that obama continued bush's policy. the surveillance and everything we were doing domestically. and so linda greenhouse referred my book to the wake-up call. people didn't wake up that much. people were not looking to re-examine the decisions that had been made in the fall of 2001 about what our antiterrorism strategies should be. so what i would say is there was a snooze alarm. and the wake-up call came with snowden. when he started releasing documents about what actually is going on behind the curtain and what kind of surveillance there is, i think people did start to pay more attention. i think for good reason. and so, well, i'll tell you i think it matters more than ever people be aware of what is going on and what is happening politically. there's pending in congress right now a bill both a u.s. aid freedom pact. i wonder how many of your viewers know the u.s. aid pact rate act was an ak anymore. if you visualize the letter stand for the name of the bill. which is uniting and strengthening america by providing appropriate tools required to intercept and obstruct terrorism. that's the name of the act. somebody -- [inaudible] so the u.s. aid freedom act all capital letters is something of a -- [inaudible] dragger of that tight. uniting and strengthening america by, you know, having freedom from electronic eves -- eavesdropping. this is something that is pending in congress. it now has over 100 sponsors in the house. i don't remember in the senate. it's the first time that congress has been looking seriously at the idea of rollingback some of the patriot act surveillance provision. >> host: does the aca lo support the u.s. freedom act? >> >> guest: we do. i think one thing that it does is it addresses one of the things we have learned from the snowden documents. the government is doing both collections about information, about the telephone calls that every american. who we call, what numbers we call, what numbers we get called from. the duration of our calls, how often we call, what time of day it is. and so this is just on all americans are collecting all of this information. and to me, the problem here is that what we're doing and i think a lot of people assume we need to give up our liberties in order to be safe. thing are more calls here and fewer benefits than people realize. one of the cost of this phone collection i think it's exactly the kind of massive surveillance that the people who wrote our institution particularly the fourth amendment were trying to prevent. so the fourth amendment is the part of the bill of the rights that protect us against unreasonable search and seizure. we could be secure in our persons, houses, and parents. the reason our founding father wrote this in the bill of right they didn't like the idea that the king's agent might be able to search what they were doing and look in their homes to see if they had sexual sedition locateture. -- literature. the concept there's an important value that the individual should have privacy and that the government not just be able to find out everything you are doing. everything though the fbi think they knew at the time the risk was maybe somebody was committing a exriem in the home. maybe the government wouldn't be able to find out. because they weren't allowed to walk to the home at will. they had to go through a court and process. to me what the patriot act enable -- enacted with the dragnet. it's one reason it's supporting having some limit on the government. no reason to suspect that the person has done anything wrong. >> host: what is the status of the fisa court? is it still active? >> guest: it's very active. so that's one of the things that happens. in the fall of 2001, what the congress did in order to be allow the government more surveillance power they built on a couple of areas there wasn't that much fourth amendment protection. the fisa court, the foreign intelligence surveillance court had been established as part of a comprise in the late '70s when people were very upset about nixon spying on political enemy. there was a church committee, frank church ran the important committee where they did a complete exploration of the american history about intelligence area. and they decided it was not permissible for the government to spy on americans without going through the court. but it was all right to spy on the soviet embassy to see what they were up to. it was the cold war. the idea that mens get constitutional protections foreigners don't. the 2001 legislation, and some legislation we've had since then basically said that even though if the government is targeting somebody who is a foreigner. and it's one end of a cfghts, they can pick up whatever the americans are saying at the other end. one thing that the fisa court authorized is in addition to what has been called the meta data. the telephone numbers you call or which you get called not the content. the government can pick up the content of american's e-mails, telephone calls, skype, whatever. within the foreign intelligence surveillance act as long as there's a foreigner someplace. that was another of the revelation of the snowden documents. but the fisa court has more to do with americans than you might think. >> host: since 2001, has the patriot act, the fisa surveillance, increased or decreased? >> guest: yeah. it's a great question. i think it's actually been increased. when president obama was a candidate, when he was running for office, he said no more national security that spy on americans. but now that he's president i think he sees the power differently. and he felt if he can be trusted with the dragnet powers. it sounds as if the fisa court allowed actually is an expansion and there's more and more material being collected in bulk and that what is being collected under the foreign intelligence surveillance act even though on americans has also increased. i think there's a possibility for another increase. for awhile until 2011, the government was also collecting e-mail addresses, internet dresses that we visit, the fisa court authorized that. and the government actually stopped collecting all of that information in 2011. but they could do it again because they're authorized to do that. this is tremendously broad power. >> and we're talking with susan herman. this is her book. 202-585-3890. time zones dial in if you like to have a discussion about what we're talking about here freedom and surveillance, et, et. cetera. surveillanceyou served as president of the american civil liberty union. she's a professor of law at brooklyn law school as well. edward snowden in that parlor game hero or goat? >> guest: my usual response, peter, when people want to talk about snowden. my first response is to say instead of talking about the messager, should we talk about the problem? and i think snowden has done us a great favor. he said the reason he wanted to start releasing some of the documents so the american people could make the decision about whether they think we have gone too far. or whether they are too many costs? i think that's in fact discussion we're now having. i think his strategy worked. the american people are being informed. because one of the things we learn is not even just that the government was spying in ways i was already describing in my book, but that we had in the fisa court we had secret law. there was law that the court was making that the american people couldn't find out what the law was. to me, it really went too far. >> host: is there anything in the patriot act you agree with? >> guest: there was a lot. there was a collection of amendments to hundreds of previous laws. one of my favorite part of the patriot act which was wonderful at the time. it was a sense of congress resolution. saying we don't want to use 9/11 as an occasion to start discriminating against muslims. up fortunately that was easier to say than to actually effect. >> host: you say sketchy foray in to history suggests that a bipartisan commission may have the best chance of rising above the politics ha hamstring all branches of government and inspiring reflection and perhaps change. >> guest: right. i think what we could use at this point in time is something more like a church committee. i was mentioning before the u.s.a. aid freedom act which is a small fix for some of the things that are wrong with this collection it just goes too far. my book also talked about all sort of other kinds of laws nut to place on -- accept, october, of 2001. and these are expanded criminal laws that, you know, examples i give i chose stores about a person prosecuted farred crime for posting links to controversial speech on a website. a woman who was prosecuted for supporting a foreign terrorist organization, this was an iranian woman imprisoned in iraq for supporting the pro democracy group opposing the laws there now. when she finally got out of prison and got political asylum in the united states we prosecuted her for supporting the same pro democracy group. there are laws that people adopt know enough about. we don't need snowden to tell us those laws. i think if they don't know about abuse nothing happened. i think to have a -- the reason snowden paper give us the occasion to really look back overall at what we have done. i can understand the fall of 2001 we had laws that went too far. because at the time it was premature to figure out what the ante-dote should be when we hadn't yet analyzed the problem. we didn't have the 9/11 commission. we didn't understand what happened had on 9/11. if congress overdo it, i think they did. there was too many -- some of what they allowed is counter productive. but i thought that, you know, ten, 2012 years after that it should be possible to have a better conversation and the better informed the public is, the better the conversation. where congress is just beginning to look at the tip of it. i think it helps. >> host: is susan herman is our guest. cary in connecticut.. >> caller: i have to say that as much as i agree with the thing your organization does, okay. i also believe when it comes to christian rights, for example -- [inaudible] religious symbols, prayer in the schools, where are you there? that's number one. number two, i believe the patriot act -- [inaudible] and because, remember, the -- [inaudible] even though they weren't the radicals they were the ones that caused 9/11. so we are going to scrutinize those people. -- [inaudible] that's all i wanted to say. you have a great holiday season. bye, bye. >> guest: okay. thank you, carrie. two quick answers. on your point about the christians if you go aclu.org we have an entire page about christians. we are in favor of the freedom of religion which is something we support. i think the more information you get the more you find out there are -- [inaudible] myths out there about the aclu -- my book is about people not only terrorists not only about them but us. now peter was asking before about the impact of some of these surveillance provisions and so forth. i was talking about how it gives us less privacy under the fourth amendment. it's not just the fourth amendment. it's also, you know, you talk about freedom of religion. that's about the first amendment. and my concern is that we're losing a lot of first amendment rights in term of freedom of speech, association, and of religion. so the freedom of religion if the government went after muslim charities right after 9/11. there were a lot of charities shut don -- down or doing badly. even though there was no evidence doing anything wrong. this that harms the first amendment. a study publish a week ago -- they did a survey of their members, the journalists and writers members of it. and what they found was that one in six of the people they surveyed said they centered them and no longer writing, speaking, or publishing researching certain subjects because they i were afraid they might attract the government's attention. they censored themselves. an additional one in six said they thought about censoring themselves. we're worried the people are going to call the aclu the government has a record of the phone number and who they called. and i just think it changes who we are as a society. .. it just seems to me, is it just too much of a conflict of interest for them to be overseeing rests? >> i think that we got a point. is this something that the aclu is concerned with, and of the gay concerned with this and that is mostly political question. and that is the checks and and we also have congress and the courts. and i think that this has resulted in in the failure of checks and balances said september 11. the president, if he is asking us to trust him with all the dragnets, congress will prove with this, although we may be able to in the courts have not been involved. one of the things i talk about in my book is about this that the courts have been avoiding common questions that have been raised. the aclu has been challenging them, their legality, constitutionality, and what the courts say about the supreme court confirmed last year. they said that they will not consider you to have standing unless you can prove that you are subject to secret surveillance. episodically a catch-22. they don't play when they are spying on you. and they will have to be proving that spirits of the problem is that we have the constitutional check in all three have been an echo chamber and we assume and i think that that is really unfounded. >> we have richard the main and taking liberties in the name of the book. >> hello, thank you for taking my call. speaking of being censored. i wonder if you're familiar of the book called extreme prejudice. >> richard boucher a little bit earlier, he asked the same question. >> have you heard of a susan landau? >> no. >> at the second time he's called without question. to were going to let him go. next caller. >> caller: hello, i'm concerned about the national defense authorization act you think the representatives would be out on vacation, the president in the and the house and the senate all signed in and would you please comment? >> yes, we were concerned about some of the things about that as well, and one of the things that they did was they authorized future president as well to detain people who are considered enemy combatants, including americans without adequate due process and i think that was a real problem that a lot of this law has never seriously been looked at. and there have been some money off reauthorization come up with a serious look at i think it needs and what you are suggesting is that other laws are coming into this area without really enough public attention and scrutiny and thought and do the people think that we have gone too far? >> has this happened a couple of times in our history similar to what the patriot act is like? >> there have been other times they have been similar. one of the things that i would talk about is around president nixon. and is it okay for the government to be spying on the american people. this includes history of the nsa and so forth and he said with the edwards noted documents every day is christmas in because he is learning about what we are doing now. so he has looked to telecommunications and so forth just turn over information. so we do have a history of spying, but this has gotten worse because the idea if it builds on this theory that the supreme court hacks. you don't have anything with a third party. so you shouldn't have told your banker your financial information and therefore the government can demand the information in the supreme court decided that this was fine, but think about how much more private information you and your viewers are sharing with third parties and what does your internet service provider know about you. everything is on the cloud and that means that if you take this seriously, even though the permission that we gave the government earlier, taking that 25, it's the same thing they did before the implications are greater. because we are talking about the government been being able to find out about their entire lives and we talk about how the patriot act inverts the conditions of democracy and the whole idea is that we are supposed to have a private enclave to think and exercise and decide who speak what in the government is supposed to be transparent to us that we know what they are doing. so what we are living with is that the government is having increasing secrecy and what we are doing is becoming increasingly transparent for the government. it also cuts off the avenues of repair. so you probably remember the librarians and the government cannot find out this. that is not american democracy. so i talk about the library and in the internet service provider to fight back and he was not allowed and he and librarians were not allowed to testify before the congress. this is further than we have gone before allowing them to use powers in this includes the great poet and playwright. i heard him speak a few weeks ago and he said that people thought it couldn't happen and he had come here as a messenger to say be careful what powers you give the government. he was responding to this and a lot of people were to say why should i care what the government goes about me if i'm not doing anything wrong and that would be with disbelief and derision. and i think that there are a lot of reasons that our freedom of speech goes down. >> do you censor yourself these days? electronically or in any form? >> i really try not to. the pan american center says that one in six have been censoring themselves and one additional one in six said that they seriously thought about censoring themselves, people who wanted to write about the middle east are now not doing it. and there was one person interested in writing about this, and i think that civil libertarians are unusually stubborn and unusually stubborn. every time an american has to think twice, before telling their doctor that they have a drug problem within the are googling the world nuclear, we are changing who we are as a society. >> anthony, you are the next caller with susan herman, the author of the book "taking liberties" and the president of the aclu. >> caller: yes, ma'am. i want to say that i was involved in a criminal case and my phone was tapped in the prosecution got that information. how they got that information, but they used that in court. my private phone calls with my attorney. would you comment on that on how far reaches? >> how often you get calls like this? >> well, we get calls a lot, people have a lot of concern about what the government is doing. i want to relate to what anthony was just saying. about the collection of data. because the government lawyer in this case says you don't get to challenge them, but they say it is okay because the government will tell them how they have been spying on what anthony is just describing the many found out it wasn't true. so the department of justice recently changed this they were collecting evidence and then they were not telling the defendants in criminal cases how they obtained the evidence. so it's another big thing as well. >> were you surprised by the edwards noted documents after the bush administration's? >> we already knew how brought these powers were. we already knew that there was a curtain they didn't know what was going on behind the curtain. >> i was just saying that i told you so. >> has there ever been a history when this hasn't been the case? >> i would go back to the beginning with the columnist that were thinking about having an american revolution and they were afraid that this would be the case. where people would have some privacy where the government can do everything. i've been talking about the rights that are at stake in the surveillance programs and another kind of story that i tell we are doing what we need to do and we don't need to give up liberty to be safe. they expect that it's going to be someone else and i see one of the callers who have suggested. the number of people are those who suffered from not and there is an american citizen as well. and this includes the surveillance happening under the foreign surveillance intelligence act even though he is an american. there is a man who lived and worked brooklyn and he was stopped in the subway system 21 times before he got upset and said this is supposed to be random stops. why do they keep picking on me. a statistician calculated that the odds of his having them stopped to him that many times and was one in 165 million. so you ask about history. and we also have a kind of -- some chapters in our history where we decide to go for the dragnets in the lockup of the japanese-americans during world war ii because we couldn't figure out disloyal people were. we need to learn the instance of the founding of the aclu and the attorney general was rounding up people and deporting them because they were foreign and they looked sly and crafty. so i think we should've learned that you have to watch this and what you give the american government and its not a way to keep our constitution. >> we have ed from spring hill, florida. >> hello. >> did you write the book? >> yes, that's interesting. people sometimes say, why did barack obama change his position. and i think that it changed he didn't trust george w. bush and i think when he became president, he felt differently about it and he trusted himself to use it wisely. or the president, i might not want to. but we don't have a chance of changing this as president, i don't know that we will ever have a chance. one thing he does say i don't care what people regional library, i only want to go after terrorists and nobody can really prove the abuses of his power. and number two i think that history shows us that there will be of use. and we have some of this noted documents. in this includes this as well. so i would like to think that i could remember the it is important to the that the constitution and i understand the difficult position. >> the next call for susan herman. margaret from florida, hello, and go ahead with your question or comment. >> hello. >> i'm so glad to hear you on this program and i am such a supportive. for the last 50 years i have watched and listened, but since 9/11 and the patriot act, i have just seen the country changing, and i see it changing and making the individuals less secure. because who can possibly go against the powers of the government and we saw this in germany and we saw this happen and you have this and that end with any other country we would be horrified. so thank goodness for your work and bless you. >> thank you. i very much appreciate your comment. we are trying very hard to keep our rights and democracy. one reason i'm optimistic that we are beginning to get a lot of pushback, particularly germany, as you mentioned, because they know that someone of the things that people are realizing is that the americans have had this over the internet. and one reason it's been so easy is the fiber optic cables and they are turning over information voluntarily or allowing the government to have a lot of access. it was just at a meeting of the white house were there a lot of people from the telecommunications industry who told the president that if we don't have better data protection, we will lose money because people are going to stop trusting the american companies and europeans will create their own ella communications companies and not come through unless they start pushing back and refusing to turn over this and they estimate that i just read as it can cost american businesses $21 billion per year. when you add that to the decimation of our rights and democracy. i keep coming back to that and that's the subtitle of my book. if we allow these things to go unchecked, there will be a next chapter and the next chapter and we could turn into the country of chile. >> you talk about some other countries. but it has been coming out in the press that this information, we spy on ourselves. >> we are guilty of spying a lot of other countries and people have also been saying this as well, but they may be doing the same thing. as well as those saying what have we unleashed here. this is something of an anti-american reaction. because of the american companies that have really been cooperating with the government and allowing it to happen. challenging the restrictions may want to be able to tell their customers that is the marketplace speaking but the people around the world. >> about people from the other side? >> this includes what we can take the information we can do via the information. >> i do think that we should have more restrictions. this includes europe and canada and for years, we are talking about the bottom line and it's been a big problem with multinational corporations and they are required to give this information to government the government and in europe are not allowed here. so to pavlov's dog situation we've been registering for a long time having these data privacy protection laws that would be more consistent with the countries that we consider his peers we do. even if they have this information, it is different for this. >> last call for susan herman. kennesaw, georgia. please go ahead. >> caller: hello, i am a supporter and contributor to your organization and i think you on the front lines of a battle to preserve our liberty. bringing up the point, that is just that people who claim that they don't find the nsa spying because they have nothing to hide in fear areas and that is 70% is being done by private corporations that allen hamilton is owned by cargo, which is really a centerpiece that runs this country in the bushes were part of it and so on. the point is that you'll just have to trust the government, you have to trust the corporations that are implicated oftentimes in polluting the water and the air and so on and so forth. >> okay, i think we got the point. thank you for calling. >> thank you. we have to be concerned about this as well. government doing that in through law so the companies that have this information don't just hand it over at will. the other thing is the role of the individual. so the rule is to dissent is patriotic to talk back to the government and say why are you doing this and this is going too far and i think what we are also discovering is the corporations are going to listen and google is taking a different approach now than they were 10 years ago. >> the book is called "taking liberties." the erosion of american democracy. susan herman is president of the aclu and the author of the book and she has been our guest. thank you for joining us. a couple more hours of coverage from the miami book fair international and this is live on c-span. coming up, you're going to have a chance to talk with lawrence wright. his most recent book is about scientology and hollywood. he is also the author of the looming tower from several years ago and he was a finalist for the national book awards this year for this will go in clear and we will have a chance to talk to him in just a moment. and then the development of the nation. about half a half an hour or so. two well-known historians will be here as well and we will be able to chat with them and talk about their books and now will be live on c-span2 on booktv. but first we want to show you a little bit from wednesday night. george packer on the national book award and i'm going to show you a little bit of his acceptance speech and then we will have a chance to talk with lawrence right here in miami. here he is. [inaudible conversations] >> hello, i spent an hour with brian lamb on our progr> hello,h brian lamb on our program, our "q&a" program. >> just come and that is right. >> you will be live this weekend. the you're one of the finalists in the nonfiction category and is this the first time you have been nominated? >> yes, it has been tremendous and an honor. we all listen to each other from the four categories in the quality was just incredibly high and everyone had about three or four minutes. so we didn't have much time to get across the field and it was impressive and i felt honored to be in that company. >> which story did you tell? >> i read a passage that dean price was thinking about, the landscape of his landscape and what has happened to it recently. and he is listening to these trucks go by and he has some of them are full of chickens that are headed to the slaughterhouses which happens in the dead of night. and he begins to think about where these chickens go and the bojangles where he owns a restaurant and it's an elaborate and kind of dark picture of an economy of imported oil and people getting poorer in his part of the country. >> do you see what is going on in the country today economically as different from other transformations that we have had in our nation? the analogy would be to the early 19 hundreds when we had vast inequality of wealth and we had a handful of individuals at the top consolidating and then we had a lot of new immigrants who were struggling to survive. fifty years of what i call the roosevelt republicans among which middle-class people beginning to get ahead started to come undone in the late 70s and now we are back to something like that vast inequality of the earlier 20th century without some of the protections so it is a repetition butterfields neil and a vision of transformation that led to the new deal back then now everyone feels sort of isolated in their own troubles in trying to line solutions for themselves. and there is a national movement and that is what makes this a more troubling time. >> three out of the five nonfiction finalists. >> i think david is feeling very happy tonight and feeling incredibly impartial. and that is a tribute to what he has done with the magazine and what kind of talent there is across the board, not just the three of us, but really across the board. [inaudible conversations] >> the national book award for nonfiction, i regret now? >> we have eric sundquist who is winner of the james russell lowell prize from the modern language association and the award from phi beta kappa were the best looking humanity and the academic book award. this is a professor of humanities at johns hopkins university and it gives me great pleasure to introduce him. >> good evening and thank you. it is a great pleasure to be here. and let me thank the national book foundation for the privilege of judging this year's nominations in the category of nonfiction. and perhaps against beek for saying that in a lifetime of reading i have not had a more gratifying prizing and educational experience and we've had the pleasure of reviewing hundreds of books, 500 plus to be specific across a wide range of genres and topics. everywhere, and encountering contemporary american writing at its very best. i'm sure all of us at one point or another look back with envy at the 20 are. 1960s through the 1980s won multiple awards recognizing as many as eight different categories of nonfiction were presented. for us, however, all of those categories were crowded into one and as much as we would have loved to present many awards, we have first to know many of us down to a long list of 10 men down to these five finalists. the book of ages, the life and opinions of james franklin published. [applause] [applause] hitler's theories, german women in the killing field by fields by wendy lauer published by harcourt books. and the unwinding, by george packer. and the internal enemy, slavery and warner in virginia, 1772 to 1832 by alan taylor. published by david norton and company. and going clear, scientology and the prison of belief by lawrence wright. this goes to george packer. [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> this is an incredible honor and anyone who was at last night's reading knows that all of the nominees in this category is the great works. and i feel very lucky to be given this award. and thank you to my friends and the rest. you still do it the old-fashioned way, which is still the best way. [applause] >> thank you to the wylie agency for crucial intelligence and thank you to daniel zaleski and david remnick and others for giving me just the right balance of freedom and editorial trilliums. writers both understand as well and my children, charlie and julia, you did make it a lot more fun. thank you for sharing my life and my work and i can't imagine either one without you. and finally, i want to thank dean price and timmy thomas and jeff congleton and other americans who gave me the great guest of allowing in their lives so that i could illuminate some of what has gone wrong in america over the past generation. and in their own lines, some of what has gone right. thank you very much. [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ >> to george packer will be here at the miami book fair tomorrow and you'll you will be able to see an event with him and the entire national book awards and we should show portion of it right there that will re-air at 8:00 p.m. eastern on booktv. and joining us now on our site here is one of the finalists of the national book award, and that is lawrence wright. his most recent book is going clear, scientology and hollywood in the prison of bullies and you might know him as an author of the looming tower. the phrase going clear. where does it come from and what does it mean? >> well, l. ron hubbard invented the concept of dianetics and his concept was either two sides of your brain and one was the analytical side, perfectly reasonable, it's like a perfect computer, nothing wrong with it and remembers everything and can compute perfectly. and the other side is a reactive side that is full of fears and neuroses and the kinds of things that damage your life and if you can purge the emotional power, then your analytical brain will take over and you will be clear and more intelligent then you will be able to not get ill, your whole life will be a lot better and you'll be super human and a superior race of a beating and it's like camp, once you get to be clear, you go up to the spiritual level. >> 's luis l. ron hubbard and where did he come up with this? >> well, is one of the most interesting people that i've ever had the chance to write about and he was born in nebraska in 1911 and raised in the west and his father was a naval officer. and he really did have an interesting life and he had a tendency to try to make it more interesting than it was. he wrote for the magazines in the '30s and 40s when they paid a penny per word and the legend is that he wrote 100,000 words a month. so he wrote so quickly that he perspired and what roland paper into his typewriter and type and without a story and i have to say that this man does have the guinness book of world records title for the number of books published, more than a thousand. but he invented this and then he went broke after making millions of dollars. and he came up with an idea that religion is where the money is and he invented the church of scientology and it really was -- to give him credit than he deserves, one of the very few religions that it survived intact. >> why did he go broke after inventing dianetics and where does that come from? >> well, he didn't really have control over it. it was a self-help type therapy thing and the idea was you and your friend or your spouse can help each other in this set the standard at a time when the whole category was created. and he really formed a and he was a "new york times" bestseller for weeks and weeks and millions of copies as well. he also realized after he lost control of the organizations that he never really had a way of keeping the organization intact. and anyone can pick up this book is part of it and become an auditor, a therapist and to help them for themselves and not left a huge opening for professional organization that was never there. but it came out on the same time as a hula hoop and was about as popular as the dianetics all over america and other countries as well and it is hard to put it in context, but it was part of the community of sciences and they were absolutely puzzled as well. this is, to them, a psychological heads or tails of how this phenomenon came about and what it was based upon. >> was the public person and promoting this? >> yes, he created scientology have a lot more control over the organization. and he would bring people into train and he gave those courses as well. he had a lot of legal pressure, he was driven out of england and so he decided to take it to the high seas which is one place where he would be safe. so it would be a decade that he was there. >> is it a philosophy like other major religions? >> there is a place for god in a higher power. but it's not clearly defined. in scientology he speaks of these dynamics and there is a group in nature and so on and it is sort of a vacant throne in scientology. and it is a little bit difficult because they don't want to think of themselves specifically as a religion except for tax purposes. that is critical that they bill themselves as a technology and it's not a belief system so much as a technology. step-by-step can build yourself up to achieving spiritual enlightenment. >> is it as far as the rs is concerned? >> guesstimate assistant interesting story. and for some reason he decided not to tax on the church of scientology. and they didn't have a billion dollars and so it was an existential moment for the church. they had to get a tax exemption. and was a leader then and they filed 2400 losses against individual agents and detectives to follow them around and irs agents to go out and find who is sleeping around and drinking too much and they would write articles about them and they would, you know, it was very upsetting to the irs. but whatever the merits of the case was that they presented, the facts were that they had agencies and eventually they forgave this and they found a $12 million and allow them to decide for themselves and even the novels of ron hubbard are all considered scripture and tax exempt. so the irs completely caved on this. >> going clear is the title of the book. if you would like to participate in a conversation, please call. if you live in the east and central time zones. those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones, send a comment via twitter at the tv, and that is our twitter handle. was it at all appealing to you at the concept of scientology after spending this time researching it? >> i have written about a lot of things. i suppose i have an interest in religious beliefs. and if you don't find that come you can make up your own as l. ron hubbard dead. but yes, i think what people get out of it, they offer courses and if you were to walk into your local church and say that you're curious to know what they do here, they would say what is ruining your life and keeping you from progressing morally and spiritually and romantically and we can help you. we have a menu of courses and people do get lots of help. he took a communications course and he's not a scientologist, but he credits it and there's a lot of story like that. then there is the therapy and it is done with what is called an eager than there used to be some soup cans with a meter connected dialectical liars and has a current that measures your galvanic responses. one totable lie detector. and it's like being in a therapy session with a lie detector, which changes the relationship and people find a lot of that and they sometimes have mystical experiences. many have it reported to me that since having an out of body experience, it validates it was a true memory and that's very powerful. because of you have this thing saying that this is true, that means that you have life that that really is a family go from one life to another and that's the central message of scientology. >> is difficult in your view? >> i don't call it a cult. there's only one organization makes a distinction that is the irs and everything else is just opinion. the irs decided it was going to record an with the same protections than any other established religion in this country has. and this includes legal inquiries that otherwise might be undertaken. >> why hollywood? >> he knew that there was one thing that americans really worship and that seems to be celebrities. in the capital of celebrity is hollywood. so he set up his church and created this and began cultivating entertainers and movie stars and young people that would beam going into this business. and all the time, they sent out a roster of scientologist and the late bob hope and walt disney and they wanted them in the church. and just like sports stars were on wheaties cereal boxes. they wanted people to advertise the benefits of scientology may have eventually got that. >> gloria swanson, the faded star of silent movies and some others, like elvis presley walked into the church weekly, his widow and daughter are still from the church and prominent members and members of the grateful dead and leonard cohen, a lot of people went in early on. and it wasn't until john travolta came along that they snag someone that was a visible, you know, the biggest star in the world at the time. and then tom cruise who is certainly the most famous scientologist since l. ron hubbard himself. >> is a wealthy organization? >> estimate they have a great deal of this and it would be difficult for the catholic church to cough up a billion dollars in cash right now. who's membership and they are hemorrhaging members. and i think that they are really suffering as long as they have we have a billion dollars to sit upon. >> do think it is one secret from the catholic church? >> is more interesting to compare with the mormons. and they were the most stigmatized religion in the country and there is never -- there's never been a more persecuted set of people than the mormons and they were chased out of one set over the other. and they had a lot of hatred directed at the mormons that was unbelievable and the leader was assassinated and eventually it was something called the utah war, general custer was sent there to try to deal with this and eventually the leader of the church had a revelation that we no longer wanted to be a theocracy and we wanted to be a part of united states and we no longer want to be polygamists. and that's not even an issue. this includes how this organization was. it is one of the fastest going religions seen as an american religion. and i don't know if that will happen in scientology. >> lawrence wright is our guest the book is "going clear." we have a call from west virginia. >> caller: hello. earlier today he spoke in a presentation with some members and suggested that quite a few of us that have talked about this, primarily tom cruise. and perhaps they could bring this to bear on the hierarchy. but i'm wondering of the approval of these leaders to maintain their high profiles in hollywood. and what does not harm their careers? >> thank you, that's a really good question. i want to mention this and these are people that have joined the church and become a part of the clergy and oftentimes as very young children and people. and a sinus for a billion years of service with the idea that life is infinite and so it's not too much to ask. they are paid $50 per week and there is a core benefit of this labor on a number of occasions. they handcrafted a limousine for him and it is the most prized possession. nobody in the church is given the kind of treatment that tom cruise is given. and i am sure that he knows about the abuses that have taken place inside the higher reaches of the church and its cadres. at least 12 people have told me personally that they have been beaten by the leader of the church and they are confined and for years at a time. and the leader of the church as a mormon, by the way, and he has been in this double wide trailer that they have on the headquarters for seven years. so it's not just a weekend stay. and these are serious abuses and i think scientology has to face this what is going on. it is a religion in the courts have held that these are religious practices and there's nothing they can do. there are only two avenues, one is the irs and i don't think that they want to go back to this. the other is some of the celebrity superstars that have been advertising the benefits could turn the microphone around and demand does and no one more so than tom cruise who has benefited inside the church. >> yes, the two-time academy award winner. and tommy davis was the head spokesperson. and he was going through scientology. on a sunday afternoon at 3:00 o'clock he became and that he would agree. you agree to fact checking questions. an archer, tommy davis' mother, and some other prominent members of the church. and tommy agreed to answer these questions in our first round and there was this and tommy davis and his wife came to the new york offices along with these two respond to these questions. i was in heaven. this was, to me, my editor threw me aside and said you know what you've got. and in that sense i was given a lot of operations and then they turn off the spigot and is continued to send backchecking theories and they were very reluctant. but they did respond somewhat. >> his book is "going clear." we have about a minute left with another color. go ahead, david. >> thank you. do you know the book in the name of science, which criticized dianetics in the 1960s. and then the quote that sunlight is the best disinfectant. what are your thoughts? >> i used to be a subscriber and it's really helpful. some like being the best disinfectant, it seems to be the only way to deal with this organization. i ran into an fbi investigation and they were talking to some of the same people and i found out what they were telling the fbi and the fbi was preparing to free all of these people at the headquarters and then a judge in colorado ruled about this, but these are religious practices of the judge was involved in. so they dropped the investigation and the government can't do anything. the only thing that can be done is let people know what is actually happening inside this church. >> good afternoon. sheila? @> caller: hello, i am still >> caller: hello, i am still here. >> hello, this is sheila,. >> caller: there is a location called gilman springs i don't know if this is the organization that you are talking about. but it does seem that people drive by there and they have cameras and they turn the sprinklers on for people to stop by and they don't like people poking in and it's almost like a compound. >> what you are talking about is actually the international headquarters near hemet in southern california. formally an old spot. .. that's the way i interpreted it. i think it's a really wonderful and amazing representation of his influence. >> host: janet in quincy, illinois, i think we have time to get you in. >> caller: thank you. my husband knew him. they worked together in 1958 the glacier park, montana. >> guest: you worked with whom? >> host: janet? janet, i apologize. i'm going interrupt you. janet, i didn't understand who your understand worked with? >> caller: they were working in glacier park in a lodge in 1958. >> host: who? >> caller: hebert. >> guest: okay. >> host: janet, very quickly, go ahead. >> caller: anyway. we wanted to know. you had earlier talked about him being in this compound. has anybody seen him? is he okay? that's my question. >> guest: yes. he came out recently for a funeral of a family member, and apparently talked to his brother. but then his brother told people about what hebert said. i think they cut off communication. but, you know, he's alive and he's healthy, apparently. but he has -- >> host: is he being held prisoner? >> guest: you know, it's hard to say because if you went in -- this is what top-level executives told me. they told the fbi if you were to open the door and say you're free, they would say we're here of our own will. there was a night where david came down with a jam box and played musical chairs, and the idea was the last person sitting can stay. everybody else you're thrown out. you are out of here. husbands and wives are going to be divorced. he had airline tickets printed and u-haul trailer. he was offering them freedom essentially. they were fighting each other, tearing clothes, breaking chairs in order to stay. in my opinion, there is nothing more exsemifie the hold of scientology has. >> host: the church is headquartered here in florida; correct? >> guest: there's the spiritual headquarter is in clear water. >> host: and david, what can you tell us about him? does he go out in public? he active in the local community? >> guest: well, he divides his time between the headquarter in california and also in l.a. and then in the clear water. he essentially is closeted in the church confine for the most part. he's not public. he doesn't, you know, you -- i don't recall seeing him in public in a long time. he's certainly not giving interviews, i can tell you that. and he's not responded to my requests on multiple occasions. so scientology has a huge presence in clear water. a vast number of properties and they have tried to make that community feel a little more at ease with their presence, but it's been difficult because at one point, for instance, they tried to frame the mayor with a false hit-and-run and at one point they did the same thing with him trying to pretended he had an affair with somebody. it was, you know, they have not made themselves welcome there. >> host: lawrence wright. "going clear: scientology." here is the cfer of -- cover of the book. thank you for joining us in miami. >> guest: thank you. >> host: it's always a pleasure. the next panel coming up live from the miami book fair. one on the dwo. -- development of america. two historians will be up here. nathaniel philbrick and brenda wineapple. "ecstatic nation: confidence, crisis, and compromise, 18-48-1877" this is live coverage on booktv as we take you back to chatman auditorium. [inaudible conversations] ♪ ♪ >> good afternoon. hello, everybody. welcome to the 30th miami book fair international and our presentation this afternoon. we're very grateful. i'm diane king. i work here at the school of engineering and technology, and i'm pleased to welcome all of you. and also, to express gratitude for the support of hoh american airlines, and many other generous sponsors. and also, our friends at the book fair, thank you for your support and for being here. at the end of the session, we'll have time for questions and answers. and the authors will be autographing books as well out here on the floor. you can purchase books and have them autographs. at this point, i would normally ask you to turn off your cell phones. right now i'm going ask you to please take them out and to help us keep the fair going for the next 30 years, we're asking for you to text your support to the miami book fair international. and the way you do that is to text to 41444. and text "mbfi "miami book fair international and the amount you would like to donate. then we'll follow up with you. in this way, we can assure that the book fair will go on for another 30 years. it's now my pleasure to introduce to you mr. david lyons who will be -- introdewsing our guest authors and producers. thank you. [applause] good afternoon. i'm sure you have a number of welcomes to the book fair. i'm going give you anyway. we are glad you are here. this is a discussion about two of the most significant periods in american history. the revolutionary war era before america's birth as a nation, and the runup and the aftermath of the civil war. when america experience near-death as a nation. in bunker "bunker hill: a city, a siege, a revolution" nathaniel talks about boston. and the bloodiest battle of the revolution, and the point of no return for the rebellious column nists. he's a native boston and trained journalist. he is recognized authority on the history of man tuck et. he told an interviewer i don't think it's possible to have the death of the island's rich history. he has previous books that include "may flower." the finalist for the pulitzer prize for history. "in the heart of the sea" he won the national book award for fiction. "revenge of the whale." one of the hornbook aware. -- award. he holds a bachelor in english from brown. independent book sellers association. perhaps his passion for the subject can be demonstrated from the july 21st block postin connecticut when he attended the launching of the newly restored charles w. morgan's america's only survivorring 19th century whale ship. the picture he posted was quote taken at the moment of impact as a kristining bottle containing water from all of the seas. next i would like to introduce brenda wine apple. a non-fiction writer. a "new york times" reviewer in august noted that brenda takes the reader on a different road traveled by many other histories of the sifm war. the growing gulf between north and south. and suddenly a multicar pileup the civil war. but instead of that usual ride wrote the reviewer she takes us on a different ride. the monaco grand grand pri x. it's history in real time. the fisa the friendship of emily dickinson and thomas wentworth. "haw thorn." she's a regular contributor to "the new york times" book review and the nation and editor of the selective poetry. in 2009 she received a push cart prize, a glueingen heim fellowship, and two national endowment for the humanities. last year elected a fellow of the american academy of arts and sciences. a former director of the leon center for biography at the graduate school in new york. she teaches in the msa program at the new school university in columbia university school of the art and taught cor are a lawrence college in new york. where she was washington irving professor. please welcome brenda wineapple and nathaniel philbrick. [applause] >> on my way over here, nathaniel, i talked about how both of these subjects are, you know, obviously the most, you know, among the notable eras of american history. how could we characterize, you know, a comparatively between your book and brenda's when it comes to, you know, intensity and relevance, you know, where both in the revolution and with the civil war there wasn't very much of a clear future in any era. >> yeah. well, i was thinking about this question, actually, when i heard about the great opportunity to be paired with brenda. and my "bunker hill" begins and ends with john quincy adams, it begins with him at 7 years old, standing on a hill with his mother then in her early 30s on june 17, 1775 watching the battle of bunker hill from a hill about 12 miles away, and later in his life he would record in his journal it was an experience -- an unforgettable experience. both of them were weeping as they watched the british navy unleash cannon ball on the patriots gathered on bunker hill. what hit him the most was learning a few dais later that their family doctor, dr. joseph warren, had been killed at the battle of "bunker hill" during the last british charge. it was devastating for john quincy, whose father was not spending more and more time away. he was then at the second continental congress 300 miles away in philadelphia, and it was the death of joseph warren that he -- that moved him so deeply for the rest of his life, he would refrain from attending celebrations the battle of bunker hill in charleston. and so my book begins with that, and joseph warren is a major character one i think a lot of us don't know a lot about. we think of the other adams, the john quincy's dad and samueled adams but the bookends with john quincy adams 68 years later on june 17, 1940 -- 1840 the bunker hill monument has been built on bunker him. once again, he refused to attend. yet, he watches yet once again from the family home where he sees the smoke of a cannon go off and it reminds him of that time. at this time in his life, john quincy adams, a president, is now a lowly u.s. congressman who has taken up the fight against slavery. what he realizes is the work that his doctor -- dr. joseph warren and his father worked so hard for is not over. we segue to brenda. >> it's interesting. first of all, it's a pleasure to be here. thank you for the introduction. it's great to be here with nathaniel philbrick and feeling a baton has been passed and the baton passed from bunker hill -- and it's not necessarily a name he's not necessarily a name we con jour with him. you think of i don't know washington and jefferson and madison and later, of course, lincoln, and even later than that grant and going forward. john quincy adams was not really known for his presidency. he was more known for what happens as nathaniel says for his post presidency when he actually goes to the house of representatives. he's known as a man refusal and that word is interesting to me because one of the very last words that he uttered was no. a word of refusal. my particular book starts with the death of john quincy adams standing up and saying no. and the particular issue that was a vote on whether or not to give more medals to mexican war veteran. john quincy adams had been opposed to the war. he was opposed to decorating generals who fought in what he felt was a greedy re blank not look good for the country. here a man who served his country well both as president and then in the house of representatives uttering no and ending his life at that particular moment. for me, that was a water shed moment. not just because of the mexican war, which is ends in 1848. because john quincy adams was the descendent of john adams and founding fathers. we enter a different world now. we are not in the revolutionary era. we can't look back in the same way we are look forward. what we have to look forward to is a series of refusal for good and ill that come to be known as the period before, during, and after the civil war. so it's very interesting. kind of continuity in that particular way. that we see history as also being embodied by humans who have such a direct and powerful response to it. >> -- and the other genre contribute in a way toward your decision to -- >> right. absolutely. haw thorn, i'm interested in the fact that nathaniel haw thorn, a man who died during the civil war in 1864 was also a man -- we often associate with salem in the early witchcraft trials with really, you know, 17th century america not 19th century america. her he was a man who met lincoln. he called him one of the homeliest men he ever met, as a matter of fact. and if that wasn't enough, one of his dearest friends was a president of the united states not one of the ones we conjure one, as i mentioned before, but franklin pierce. we think of the writer, the recluse, salem, hester print and scarlet letter. we don't think of politics. he was involves in politics, actually. it was a very political time. whittier just to finish off. he was at quaker poet from montana. we are both from montana. i grew up in massachusetts where whittier was from. i had whittier rammed down my throat and didn't like him much. when the library of america called me to do the book on whittier, i thought, all right. i reread him and he was marvelous. i was too young for him. besides being a good poet. he was a wonderful man in many ways and was a long time abolitionist. he was more than antislavery. he wanted slavery enended. he didn't the president in a gradual way. i was interested in literary figures whom we know as literary fill your and their history. >> we come to history from a similar literary place. my graduate degree is in american literature, and i live on man tuck et largely because i like mobby dick. [laughter] and he does. >> i wrote a little book about that. and -- >> i'm a fan. and -- like wise. continuing and i was actually named for nathaniel haw thorn. wasn't it said that his biography of franklin piers was the greatest work of fiction he had ever written. >> yeah, it was said that. and he dedicated. when he dedicated a book to franklin piers. raffle -- ralph waldo emmerson took it out. he wrote a poem called "the exile" which describes how thomas macy, who was the founding english settler of nann tuck et -- just down the street from where we live is the house where supposedly he wrote "the exile ." >> that's interesting. nantucket has a long standing quaker community. and frederick douglas before well known lived on nantucket and the american antislavery meetings were held there. i never -- i don't remember. i wasn't there. but i feel like i remember he spoke in nantucket. >> right. we're proud on nantucket that frederick douglass the first time he spoke before a white audience was in nantucket. his wonderful book, the narrative of his life, ends with that scene. on nantucket, we take great pride. >> and credit. >> right. >> yeah. >> looking at some of the figures who are known to people as established players, when the revolution finished and the civil war, you know, was completed, george washington, for example, 1775 seemed to be somewhat of an outlier as a future player of -- can u yo go in to that? >> yeah. it was fascinating. when i came up with the idea of this book, one of my concerns, oh, washington, you know, he's the walking marvel man. and what is he going to really, you know, be a buzz kill once he arrives on the scene after the battle of bunker hill. anything but. it's just fascinating to see washington. a man from virginia, arriving in new england, a couple of weeks after the battle of bunker hill where -- and this is a new england army. these are people whose idea of diversity is, okay, i'm from massachusetts. i'm willing to serve in an army with someone from new hampshire. [laughter] to have this -- plantation owner arrive and he realizes, you know, this is an army that because they have grown up with the new england town meeting, which is, you know, a wonderful form of government in which basically people argue until finally they come to a decision. the soldiers in this army when given an order would say, fine, that's -- we understand that's what you want us to do. we'll discuss it before we agree to do that. and this drove washington crazy. because he arrived with the misplaced hope he was going whip the people to a professional army, and it was -- god bless him, he stuck with it. it was not pretty. but with washington, you see the beginning where this very ingrown group of new englanders begin of think of themselves not just from massachusetts or new hampshire, but begin to realize, wow, you know, we have to think of ourselves as americans. >> and i guess a similar question for a period you cover 1848 to 1877. there were individuals who were kind of out of place, you know, going in -- >> right. >>well, you know, those figures insight, the opposite in some ways of washington, the man of marvel. what are you going with him you come out as a rider? i had lincoln, which is the opposite in the sense he's not a man of marvel. he's headliner in movies. it wasn't the case -- my book was finished. but he certainly was before -- he's known, he's quoted, beloved, and i thought to myself he can't possibly be as good as people make him out to be. i asked the discovery for the book -- there were many for me, one of the discoveries lincoln is bottomless and brilliant, as much a figure of history as a figure of literature because he's a wonderful stylist, and in many ways i think we wouldn't remember certain things in the way we do if it hadn't been for his great literary achievements. at the same time, there were those outlyers, as you're calling them, people who have been forgotten from history in a sense, writers like lydia maria child who was abolitionist for a long time. when i grew up in massachusetts she was known for poem. "over the hill and through the woods to grandmother's house we go." sort of thanksgiving poem, something like that. which was fore said. i wanted to run away from that as possible. i find out not only was she an active abolitionist, but she fought for women's rights, and indian rights. but she actually wanted to go down to harpers ferry to virginia in 1859, and take care of nurse john brown, in fact, and john brown, i think, wisely told her not to come. but what she did was engage in a series of public letters with the wife of the governor of virginia, and they were published, and it was -- these were letters about slavery. they were talking about what john brown had done in virginia and, you know, the woman in the south was saying, you know, how -- you don't care about your workers in the north, but you care about southerners and what, you know, -- aren't you a mother. she wasn't. don't you care about children and lydia maria child say yes, i care about children but we don't sell our children. it went back and forth in this particular way. you find these are people, in some sense, have been lost or sidelined and they're so very, very important. they were so famous in their own day. which is fascinating too. >> umm, the news has obviously been -- the 50th anniversary and the discussion that look back to the kennedy assassination. in 1865, after abraham lincoln was killed, who was it that took us forth in the wake of the assassination to essentially bring forth social policies that take up to the end point of the book 1877. >> well, one couldn't have avoided -- probably didn't want to, the last week of commemorative programs about assassination of john f kennedy, and some of you have probably heard or have read robert's most recent work on johnson, and one of the things he talks about i find very interesting is the transition of power from, of course, kennedy to johnson and the fact that was such a seamless transition, because you have this horrible event and suddenly -- and the government doesn't crumble. and of course, when that's going on, i, who lived in the 19th century, think about the lincoln assassination and the transition at that particular time to another johnson -- andrew johnson from tennessee, who is put on lincoln's ticket in 1864 election. i don't think anyone would have thought or maybe they did -- lincoln was always thinking morbid thoughts understandably, but andrew johnson would be president. there was a great deal of talk he was drunk at the inauguration. so there was a transition, which was right after -- days after, it's hard to imagine days after the war. there were some people in the south and west who were fighting. they didn't want to stop fighting. andrew johnson is the new president. .. >> reemerge in a new way and washington was an incredible leader because he had the unusual ability to realize i have to change course here. i think lincoln could work with that and had a pragmatic sense that this is the right thing. but to achieve it we will have to make it work. and that is so unusual. that you combine a real ideal t idealistic vision and how we use that to make a higher good happen. and those kinds of leaders are so rare. and i think one of the amazing things about american history is they seem to appear when we need them. >> hopefully. one can only hope. but daniel, the wonderful word he uses is useful and that is impr improve and bunker hill and revolutionary era wasn't stable. you don't know what is going to hap pen next. especially during the time of the war, no matter the war, you don't know how it will turn out and you are suddenly left with a whole different political climate perhaps. i was thinking about sherman taking atlantic and in some sense that -- atlanta -- that secured the lincoln's election. and we can go forward and not u negotiate the piece. >> i have a question and i know my books are about iconic things whether it is the mayflower or bunker hill we know how it will work out. but when i am writing the book and in there and a chapter where everything is up for grabs, in that space i am feeling like what is going to happen next. do you get that kind of sense of, you know, i am in there and this could go anywhere? >> yes. first of all that is a great feeling i have when i read your books and mean it because in the sense we know how things come out and hwho won this war and that war and that washington becomes president. so the trick in writing history and write it like you don't know it. and when you are on the ground and that is what i mean about living in the 19th century. i think it is because we tonight think of outcome. we think of process and how tee get to that outcome. so i am fascinated and i sit and i read the congressional globe which is like theater. it is like reading plays because this is thadious here and it ha been clean upped but there were no tape recorders there. and you feel people are thinking on their feet and you forget about the outcome and you are involved in the way people see events in realtime. >> that is completely it. as a writer i was trained as a journalist and what i am finding is for me in journalism we come up with a sense of how life is lived in the presence and my relationship with the past follows that. i'm trying to figure out what happened as best as i can. and given the fact that sources are, you know, not always there and there is also questions of evidence and all of those things, but that is what you are trying to do: get a sense of what it was like when all of this was happening and peel back the sense of destined people and realize it could have gone another way. with each book, i don't come away with this is how we should go in the future, we are as confused as they were then. but the question is what you do when you are in the middle of it. >> and you start to ask difference questions. for example, about a war, for me it was -- i could tell you what happened at bull run, but i am not a military historian and it doesn't move me. but it occurred to me how do people know what happened at various places and who are the journalist on the ground. how did they get stories? how did that dispatch them? were they captured? you know? there were a lot of questions. was the coverage of the south the same as the north. so when you start asking those questions and motive questions you find pathways into the past and as i said you begin and certainly see this and you begin to live there with him >> and so often, we are both writing about well-known topics. what amazes me is how little i know about every topic i begin with. in fact, each book, out of my ignoran ignorance, i want to figure out what happened. you find that testimony and for example on bunker hill, i was describing the day after lexington and concord and everything is going great the patriots, but in the town of boston, everyone is terrified and some people cannot walk literally because of fear. i found the journal of a woman who was there at the time and that was her situation. she and her female friend were terrified and wanted to get away from the british soldiers. her husband took her out and put her in a carriage and off they go. but you been to realize the emotions people were feeling comes as a revelation. it isn't just connecting the dates. you realize the human cost in terms of lives and how traumatic. you look at john quincy adams where he sees the battle at b g bunker. >> we have approached and come upon question time from the audience. if you have any questions go to the microphone. >> we should be astatic to have you here. and across the street we have another author who is brilliant and anyone from the sunshine state should be reading this book. in reading your books, i think there is one constant theme that struck me and that is racism and how deeply rooted it in. for example, in the mayflower and how quickly our forefathers turned against the native americans. i thought it was interesting to see the number of families that owned slaves in boston. i think you to do a great job tracing racism and i think your book will be recognized as a landmark in history because you provide continuity between many things and you did a brilliant job putting it together. it is not only race, but it is the threat of the vote. of extended the right to vote to non-whites and to women. my question is this: do you have any thoughts in terms of what are the root causes of that r racism? and the theme is alive in what we are finding in many states, including ohio in trying to restrict that right to vote. thank you. >> i think you can generate it to intolerance. the pilgrims came to worship as they wanted and wanted to make sure everybody else did. they were bumping heads with the native americans who kept them from dying that first winter. and with bunker hill, you have to look at where america becomes america. it is washington realizing that on november 5, 1775 all of the officers want to celebrate something called poke night. it is an anti-catholic demonstration and in boston the north and south end had carts with the devil and the pope on the other one. and you would steal carts and beat up as many other officers. and washington writes a resolution that says are you kidding? here we are in the midst of this war. we want catholic-france to come in on our side and you have the audacity to pull something like this. and he is saying it is old prejudices that will not work. and slavery is the ultimate one. and american is a process of grinding those down hopefully until we look at each other as human beings >> and creating america is a process of making a nation as natha nathaniel says. you see it in the 19th century and it is more complicated with who is a citizen and when you emancipate the black population in the south, how do you make them citizens? what are the qualifications and if they are extended to black men, what about black awoman -- women -- and white women. i have understand the racism is a sense of a fear of the others. and you see that in nativism. you have the know-nothings and they were based on nativism. and they were anti-catholic party in that sense. so we hope these prejudices are grou grou ground down but the idea of voting rights is something we have been discussing for a long time. and it is being reconsidered and refigured and you see that in the context after the civil war between when black men are pitted against black women and white women about who gets to vote. it is interesting and creepy in a sense that you see the same kind of, you know, faction when clinton was pitted against obama. formula displeased with both of them wanted to see them as adv r advasaries. it is part of our legacy, but any place is being reinvestigated as well. sorry to go on. thank you. >> could you discuss the role or lack there of among political opponents among compromise and how it relates today to political fraction. >> i think you should answer that. >> crisis and compromise is a subtitle of my book. we heard about these compromises but the word was being banded about. and you have people shouting in the senate or house of representatives i will not compromise or william lloyd saying no compromise with slave holders. and the whole issue was con tended in the same tense it is today. because you could argue someone like garrison is taking a morale position. and what about positions that are not absolute? when are you pragmatic? that is when lincoln comes in. he was willing to compromise and that is why people thought he was slow with regard to emancipation but he was working slowly so you could get a real lasting piece and abolish slavery. so it is sometimes pragmatic, sometimes work, sometimes necessary and sometimes so floridflac flac flacid and meaningless. so when you have a contested election, and we have an interesting moment in history where the poplar vote wasn't won but many people in the south were not allowed to vote. so the compromise was to get him into office as long as he pulled out the troops. so we are debating the issues today. and there are no easy answers for them. >> you mentioned lincoln's bottomlessness and i was wondering if you could say little more about that in terms of the evolution on his views of slavery. and given the comment all times are messy when you look at them in the present, what kind of perspective does that give both of you in terms of so many people feeling we have a dysfunctional government and how do we go forward with the perspective you have from generations that looked hopeless as well, what does the future look like? >> i am amazed at the dysfunctionali dysfunctional times we think are resolute knowing where they want to do. but congress didn't know what to do. do we make an army? we don't trust armies but we need them. my only take away and it is dangerous to make close parliament -- parallels -- with the past because the whole sense of reality was different. but you have to be humble about the president and not think there is anything who has it figured out. in terms of leaders, you need to find the people who can do the juggling act of pragmatically achieving things that are for a greater good. it is not, you know, it can't be this standoff i am right/you are wrong. it has to be let's begin a conversation and resolve it as the main aim. and that is the one thing i saw with this revolution. they had to resolve it because they were in the midst of a war and it is a wonderful -- what it does is create and requires people to come up with something oth otherwise it is over. and that is why our two books exist. >> the only thing i would add back to lincoln in that context is one thing he represents and is able to do: he is able to empathize and even hawthorn who wasn't a republican at all found in his brief meeting with lincoln a man of real kindness and people said that often. what that mean was he was able to empathize with people from different walks of life, color and circumstances and be able to see their point of view. and i think that was in large to him and the country. and i think we write history and think about it and we don't have predictions and what is significant is the ability people could -- the better people, the interest in people, the people who made the changes are people who have a capacity to change their minds. and i think one of things that people say about going back to lincoln because you asked about him, was the capacity to grow. and grow means changing your minds and revisiting the points you had earlier and being able to see that perhaps they were time bound or bound by where you were, but you are willing to say i will move in a different direction. and i think that is what we need always. >> well, that ends our time with nathaniel philbrick and brenda wineapple. thank you very much and best wishes to both of you. >> books are available outside for purchasing and across the hall to sign your books. thank you for coming. >> and you are watching live coverage of the 30th annual of miami book fair on the north side of downtown miami. this is booktv and our 15th anniversary and we have been covering this festival for 15 years. you can see the c-span bus is down here. we have big production set here. many call-in opportunities and many authors have been on the call-in show. tomorrow we are live and we will talk two more authors tomorrow. you will hear from many others as well books on the presidential election of 2012. that is a taste of what you can see tomorrow. go to booktv.org to find the full schedule of events. and you can get schedule updates from the festival on twitter. twitter.com/booktv or on facebook at facebook,.com/boofa. it is our 15th anniversary and before the next panel starts. and there is one more on the middle east. they will be speaking in about 15 minutes or so. but since we have been covering the festival for 15 years, 15 anniversary, we want to show you the past coverage and here is a portion of another program we covered in the past. >> today, all around the world, we will put 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the that thin shell of atmosphere surrounding the planet. and all of the global warming pollution is trapping a lot more heat in the earth's atmosphere. 25 million of those tons go into the ocean every single day and they are making the ocean more acidic and corrupting the forming of coral reefs and everything that makes a shell has an osteoperosis now. the co2, which is the principle global solution, along with methane and others, all of that together trap the heat and raises temperatures. the plant has a fever. if you have a young child and they start running a fever, you may think it is a 24-hour bug, usually and often it is. but if it keeps going up will you go to the doctor? and if the doctor says we have done the test here. and the bad news is it isn't a passing bug. we are going to have to take action here. but the good news is if we take action we can fix this. you don't say, well doctor, i was listening to talk radio and i think you are full of hot air. you may want fto get a second opinion. and we have done that. 20 years ago, the united nations set up a body of 3,000 finest scientists in the world specializing in the disciplines that have to be brought to bare this crisis. and now they have issued four reports and the last one showed the evidence was unequivocal and they are shouting from the rooftops saying we have to take action because the temperature continues to rise. and the build-up of the global warming solution threatens catastrophic damage that thre s threats -- threatens -- human civilization itself. it is hard to get our mind around how big the crisis is. and that is partly because we confuse the unpresidezidesideun. this is one of the exceptions and it is unpresidented because what happened in the last hundred years or so is there has been a radical change in the relationship between humanity and the ecololgicgical system. we have quaruplled the population. we are at 6.8 billion people and that new relationship and the surprisingly fragile eco spear of the planet. more importantly the technologies in use an are mill n times more powerful than the ones our grandparents have. whether it is genetic engineering or all of the powerful machines we use. ... >> they are virtually unanimous in saying that this is unequivocal. and it is part of our ability to get our act together and most of these are changes that we should be making for other reasons. and we have an economic crisis, remember and recall that this is a way to we have to get this under control. getting this under control of the foreign dependence on oil per. >> that was al gore in 2009 from the miami book fair. we can see this here on the street in miami if you are in town you can come pick up a book bag. we will be here tomorrow and right now we have one more live panel from chapman halter show you. and that is scott anderson. they will be talking about the middle east. scott anderson's book is the making of the modern middle east and my promised land, the triumph and tragedy of israel, this panel will be starting in just a few minutes and a reminder that we will be live again all day tomorrow, some of the authors include george packard and bill ayers, debbie wasserman schultz, and here is the last panel. >> welcome to all of you for this 30th anniversary session of the 2013 miami book fair international. the book fair is grateful for the support of american airlines and many other generous sponsors out there. and we would also like to acknowledge the friends of the book fair. thank you for your support. at the end of this afternoon session, we will have time for questions and answers in the authors will be available to autograph books and we will have the books for sale enabled be available for you. normally i would ask you to shut off your cell phones and i'm actually going to ask you to take them out, please come and we are going to ask for your support so that we can continue presenting the miami book fair for another 30 years. so the just the way you attack this to a friend, for 1444 and that is 41444 and text that to the miami book fair international and then to the amount that you would like to donate, suggesting that $30 for our 30th anniversary, what whatever amount that you're comfortable with is very much appreciated and will help us to continue offering this book fair to you and now it is my pleasure to introduce mr. allen kluger, who will introduce all of our authors. and we thank you. >> remember to shut them off. >> okay. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good evening, everyone. it is drying up and it's getting nice outside and this is going to be a very interesting to authors that you're going to hear tonight. can you hear me in the back? okay, thank you. scott anderson and i both wrote a book about the middle east and different people at different times, but as you're going to hear from scott anderson and from us, the more that things change, the more that they remain almost exactly the same. and i'm going to introduce both of our authors today and they are each going to speak to you for about 10 minutes, and then i'm going to moderate a conversation with them and take questions from the audience. so write down your questions and when you ask them, directed to the two of them and that is fine if you want to address it to one of them, that is also fine, just let us know. let me first go ahead and introduce to you the author of my promised land. he is an author and a commentator in one of the most powerful voices in this political thought realm today. like many israelis, he started out as a paratrooper and then ended up studying philosophy as a major at hebrew university and that is what living in israel and being this guy is. he is one of 2013 and he has won a polk award. his grandfather came to israel at the end of the 19th century and you'll hear the inflection in his voice of the british still out there all these generations and he was a founding father and his father was a chemist who worked on building israelis alleged nuclear program and from his purge, the land, he has moved, like many of us, he has moved to the political center from the left. he asks in his book, is there anyone to talk to, really, as he goes through each issue. as a friend of ours says, we have a beautiful house in a very bad neighborhood and my promised land is about his personal family story, the history and in the end of the book is his prophecy. and that is also what i'm going to ask him to spend some time talking about with us. his vision of where he sees israel in the future. our other speaker is scott anderson and scott has a book that launched in arabia the making of the modern middle east and it is absolutely fascinating. a story not only of te lawrence, if you didn't read the book but saw the movie. it was a complicated man whose knowledge of military history in the middle east was unprecedented for the time and he grew up in east asia, his father worked in agriculture as an adviser for the american government and he is a novelist and a journalist in a war correspondent in the places that he has corresponded from, lebanon, israel, chechnya and northern ireland, actually went online to see a list of places that the state department says he shouldn't go. [laughter] and those are all the places and the movie triage is based upon his novel and hunting party starring richard gere was based upon his work in bosnia. and what you don't know about him and what you won't read if he is part owner and his partner in the bar is sebastian young, the author of the perfect storm and it is in chelsea which is now a the hottest area of new york and i've asked him how long ago he opened it and he said 14 years. so my grandfather used to say that it is much better than being small. [laughter] >> i would like to introduce as our first speaker. [applause] >> thank you very much. that is such a pleasure in such an honor to be here today. it was worth while writing a book just to come to miami for the first time in my life, and from the moment that i landed, actually thinking of miami, really i felt at home and it was something warm and sensual and passionate here which i recognize and i love and i'm looking forward to getting to know the city a bit, but i already like it very much. and so why did i write my book about the tragedy of israel. well, there have been so many books written about israel and very good books and many of them, most of them, biographies, polemics, histories, but my feeling was that for a long time, a very long time, there has not been a book that was a personal and deep and soul-searching to try to understand what this nation is truly about. where is it coming from and where it is going. and i think that that is no accident. i think that the reason that such a book has not been written for such a long time was because we israelis have lost our narrative. but not only we have lost this narrative, but the people that care and the people talking about it and the people criticizing israel and the people hating israel, they lost the narrative as well. we are bogged down to the details with the everyday tension of the events and we are so much in a sense corrupted by the internal debates and the tribalism and the hatred, all the venom that goes along with a discussion by this country that all of us lost sight of the big picture and my book deals with history but it's not a history book. my book deals with politics, but it is not a political book. my book has repeated insights and it deals with social matters, but i'm no sociologist and though strategists and no general. but i thought needs to be done, to write a story that brings down all the things that we are dealing with back to the human level to enable us all to have a fresh look at what is going so that we have a better understanding of it that is more reasonable and more realistic and also more fair. i think that this kind of situation to quote the individual who wrote about my book, that you have either that israel can do no wrong approach where they can do no right approach and it is ridiculous. it is flawed intellectually and morally as well. and in a sense, i wanted to write a book that takes israel the cliché and makes it into a real entity. the book that enables one to love israel done but in a realistic and critical and more aware. so i will not tell you all that is there and i hope you will read it. i have begun with the arrival of my great-grandfather in april of 1897 coming from london and i basically asked myself why did he come? why leave the prosperous and comfortable victorian london where he was a very successful salesman or and go to the desolate and remote wasteland that palestine was at the time. and in my conclusion, there were three striking features to his journey there. there were two brilliant ideas where that he shared with his friend and other founders as well and what do they understand , what was so remarkable about this endeavor? in 1897, these remarkable individuals realize that the 1940s were going to happen, and they tried and they did not know that they would be in awe schlitz or there would be this. but they realized that europe was going mad and europe was becoming a death threat to jewish population. and when you think about their insight, that we saw a problem that was decades away and they started and they tried to create the most erratic revolution one could ever imagine. but transferring people from one land to another, creating a nation, providing a language, all to save the people there and in an attempt to save the jewish people and they partially succeeded. the real flaw is that they were too late and therefore they did not save most of the european jews. but there adventure was definitely remarkable than the other insight was relevant to american aspirations and world aspirations today and that they realized that post-ghetto and postreligious judaism is at stake and the brilliant jewish idea that worked for 2000 years was to live with an intimate relationship with god within the walls of the ghetto. but once these two great jews were weakening, the relationship with god changed and the laws of the ghetto's cell and is included becoming endangered. so they did not know that there would be a report. but in a sense, they tried to realize that if we wanted to save this civilization, there is a need and in these two ways, these two motivations that brought my great-grandfather to the land, they were remarkable and they created a great successful nation that had to be established and in this a sense, they are endeavor was a heroic one and in many ways ingenious. but there was a flaw. the flaw was that my great-grandfather and his peers and colleagues did not see that there was another people there as well. they do not see a half million palestinians who live on the land. and i am a zionist and i believe in our right to the ancient homeland and this is no colonial project. but it was our obligation to see the people who are occupying the land and in need of my great-grandfather and his friends in that land was so deep that they did not see it. and that blindness that began with that very first moment when he and his friend set foot in palestine, it was with us to this day. so what you see are these two pillars of israeli existence and on the one hand, the brilliance, the need, the justice to create the nation, and then on the other hand, the tragedy that is built into that project. it is not only a conflict and education, it is not just about something that happened yesterday. the conflict is built in because of that tragic flaw but is there from the very beginning. fast forward and the goal through all the developments of over 100 years by telling the dramatic and amazing stories of individuals who made that journey and the great drama that evolved in every decade of every generation and because time is running short, when we look at what we see today at the outcome, my last chapter, which i like very much, is a journey that i am taking in the footsteps of my great-grandfather. and i go throughout the country and look at what was achieved and what did we create and so what i see is on the one hand a nation that is threatened like no other nation is threatened. and i plead and i ask all the critics of israel and its government and its policies who have a lot of justified criticism always to remember the context of the existence of that country and our nation. and we are intimidated because many muslims do not accept the existence of a jewish state and we are intimidated because many arabs problem that we are having in non-arab nations with that treaty and intimidated because many palestinians did not acknowledge that we have a right to be there. we have been intimidated and so many internal threat, so it's not only iran that is talked about, which is a major threat, but there is an element in the life of constant danger that is built into the basic israeli condition and on the other hand, and this i want to stress more than i do the first time. within that semi-tragic situation, and not endangered nation, what you see is a remarkable and vibrant society and if there is something to be very proud of what was achieved and, is that while the original hope for a perfect utopia and a society, that was not achieved. but what was achieved is the building of a robust and vital society that is probably one of the most vital ones that i have ever known. israel is so vital in so many ways and economically, technologically, scientifically, the arts and culture, we have more babies than any other country. tel aviv is one of the best cities in the world. it is a passionate and when you take all of this into perspective and you think of the people that either survived before the holocaust or after the holocaust, some of them, the people who are the ultimate victims of the 20th century, those who did not become suicide bombers and who did not go into a kind of violent revenge of any kind. those who did not adopt hate as their way of life, but turned her life into their greatest revenge, they turn to the celebration of life as their greatest victory and this is what you see there. this is what makes israel so completely unique. because it is a nation on the edge. it is a people that lives dangerously but this life on the edge did not bring about pessimism and passivity in this whining approach life in the country. it is rated as one of the most amazing spectacles and then you see the people that have come in are surrounded by the threats of death, celebrating life in such an intensive way and i think that there is much to be admired and i am so proud to be one of the nation that is so criticized and so -- bringing out these feelings are so many people. my one hope is that we will bring israel's criticisms in every way needed and that we will see it and i do hope that the result of reading the book will create a new kind of conversation with israel that is both loving and caring and critical and moral and realistic. i thank you very much. [applause] [applause] >> thank you very much. our next speaker is the author of the modern east, scott anderson. [applause] >> thank you so much. i have been covering war around the world for a very long time, about 25 years. and when you cover it in the modern era, you spend a lot of time in the middle east. so from a time very early on, i discovered that whenever i have a serious conversation with someone about the problems of the region, it doesn't matter your political background, but invariably people trace the roots of their problems back to the piece that was imposed on the region at the end of world war i and it was always in my mind at some point that i would like to get out of the streets long enough to explore that time in history. and that desire was piqued further by knowing that this individual played it is role at this time. i was very enamored of this individual and i knew that there was a great deal of controversy of what his story was true and what was a legend, so i resolved with warrants to explore that period of history. and as soon as i made that decision. an obstacle immediately presented itself, which is what you say that is new about this, there have been 70 or 80 biographies written on hemp, three movies, one is considered a classic and what could i say that wasn't just a repeat of what everyone else had done. the answer came to me by pondering by what i feel is the central romantic riddle of warrants, which is essentially how did he do it? how did a 5-foot 428-year-old oxford scholar without a single day of training, how did that guy at go off to arabia and become a battlefield commander of not just a rebel, but a muslim rebel army? and the answer came to me, obviously, something a bit less dramatic and it really came down to, no one was really paying much attention and this was a period in the midst of world war i and certainly for the british and the french, 95, 90% of their treasure was focused on the western front. so this eccentric oxford scholar could go cause problems for the turks, well, okay. so when i had that kind of realization about warrants, i thought, well if that's true about britain, which was by far the biggest interior player at the time, it must be true about the other powers as well. and what i found after quite a bit of digging was a small cast of characters, three other men with resumes very similar to warrants. actually, the only american field intelligence officer in the middle east in his late 20s, a man that was also secretly on the payroll of standard oil and some things never change. [applause] and a jewish settler from romania who settled with his family who is perhaps the greatest agronomist of his time and at the beginning of the war he worked for the turkish regime and he came to the realization that the only salvation for the jewish settlers in palestine was at the british took over, so he set up to aspire with two dozen jewish settlers throughout palestine with information in egypt and finally a german scholar two years older and he was 30 years old when the war started, and he came back to the region and became the chief counterintelligence agent for germany during this time in the war. but within this small consolation of characters, once was still at the center stage and i think for a very good reason in the british were by far the biggest players in the region during this war and they also dictated the peace. so going into what happened at the end of world war i and the peace that was created, is really truly is the root of so much that was to come later on. between the british and the french at the peace conference in paris, the balfour declaration and 30 years on, of the british trying to walk away from this declaration, eventually it led to the creation of the state of israel. and warrants, as an official in cairo, was privy to both the secret between the british and french of the region and leading up to the balfour declaration as well. at the same time, he was aware of the promises that the british have made to the arab rebels, and those promises were for sweeping through the middle east and a few enclaves put into the reserve. and as he was fighting in the battlefield, he increasingly fell this tremendous divided loyalty and he was an officer of the british crown in it he also felt the loyalty that the man that he was recruiting were fighting and dying alongside of him for a promise that he increasingly new as the war went on was almost certain to be betrayed in the end. and so while you have this cast of characters, that are so remarkable for the minimal resumes that they have at the time, it also indicates the consideration that the european powers were giving to this region and what is going to come after, the british foreign office, the officials during this war referred to the ottoman empire as the great blue because what they imagine they were going to do, they would have a great carving up of the region. and i think that warrants was aware of this and constantly trying to subvert what his own government was doing, it is the essential tragedy of his life and i'm often asked about this, what he would say if he came back today almost 100 years later. and the answer that always occurs to me is that he would say i told you so. because he was it was incredibly pressing about so many things in his warnings about what was coming in the middle east with the british and the french and those powers trying to impose their will and i think that what we are seeing today in the region is something along the lines of what he was hoping for 100 years ago, it was a united arab nation and i think instead what we are seeing is the exact opposite of that. i don't even know if i would have felt as safe even six months ago, but it's clear to me now that what we are seeing playing out in the middle east is a disintegration back to the borders that existed under the ottoman empire and we are seeing a final collapse of the colonial borders that were imposed and libya today is essentially three countries. no one will admit it, but it is essentially true and those three countries and borders, those many states, almost exactly follow the lines that existed under the ottoman empire of mesopotamia that existed at the time and libya as well as now rapidly becoming three countries. so again, they existed under the ottomans. so i think ultimately that my story is sort of the story of what happened in london. and it is a prelude as they work together in some way. and i thank you. [applause] [applause] >> i was going to have a conversation with the two authors, but i think that your questions will be better than mine are. so if you want to line up at the microphone and we can start to take the questions, i would really like to hear from people in the audience. >> thank you both. could you say something contrasting your perception of criticism of israel on the one hand and the state or nature of anti-semitism on the other and how those things overlap and the distinguished and then also what is your vision going forward? is it just a status quo in terms of israel and the west bank and all the rest? and what would be eventually possible? >> well, this is really incredible is a coincidence. because you know the agronomist that you're talking about, was my other individual, and it was torn over this ring. so it's quite an astonishing ordeal. and quite an astonishing coincidence and also a my great uncle worked with the british intelligence. by the way, it was fascinating and definitely that was fascinating and the fact that in many ways, something in defense of israel, for many years the claim was that zionism was an artificial movement creating an artificial state and the arab national movement was supposed to be authentic and real and we were like the western construction of the area and what you see right now, the arab nation states that were actually created, they are collapsing and it's actually disappearing. probably the only one that will remain as we know it is the job that has like a deep-rooted identity. but all of the other arab nation states, there are no syrians, as you very well know. there are no syrians. there are sunnis, there are no lebanese. there are christians and muslims, and the libyans, as you just said. so the irony in this sense, when you look at it, you see that the movement that was betrayed as an artificial western movement, when you look you see that there was a need to do this thing exists and is kicking an and alive with all the difficult circumstances after this time in such a way, it is no mistake. these people needed this place and the huge terminations around, some of them are so wealthy are disintegrating and so i say it with sadness because i want peace with our neighbors but ironically right now, we are becoming very very close and never were we so close to a sunni and jewish alliance as we are in these days. but there's something troubling about the fact that while the entire world is moving forward, everywhere, south america, east asia, large parts of africa, everyone is moving forward, and this stretch of land is bogged down old tribalism and fanaticism and i have no explanation for it. but it saddens me so much. and quickly to the question, it is very convenient for israelis and jews to attribute it to anti-semitism. being israeli born, i must say that one of the advantages are many advantages is that you are a bit free of this complex. we are so sure of our identity, that we do not live in constant friction with others in this way and in a sense for many years i was naïve about it, and late in life i discovered how serious anti-semitism is even in britain, that i love and i go back there all the time. yet i suggest not overplaying this because i think that there are deeper reasons and i think israel is treated unfairly in a very short way. israel should not be doing a lot of the things that it is, so they are playing into the hands of its enemies and there is this thing with the jews, i would not call it anti-semitism, but there is an expectation that the jews should be saints and if they are not saints, they are demons in that kind of thing, holding israel up to this, when we were doing this, we were nearly drawing that. and that was fine. and so there is some unfairness in that respect. but i think that there is a deeper reason and that is that much of the western world, including europe and parts of america, the conclusion, people came out of auschwitz with the new human rights religion and peace above everything, individual rights, human rights, that was the big conclusion and we came out of auschwitz with the determination not to be powerless again. because we were so righteous for centuries and we had no power and we abused nobody and we only cared about morality and we ended up going up in smoke. and so our deep conclusion is in contrast with the conclusion that europe drew from world war ii. so the tension there is a fascinating one. but i would not reduce it down to simplistic anti-semitism. i'm trying to answer the questions, but i definitely don't support the status quo of the west bank. were dealing with that. >> thank you. i would like to ask you about another division in israel that we happen to have a daughter that lives there and we have nine grandchildren. and so we go to israel a lot in over the last 20 years, and i am very disturbed about the deep division between the secular jews and the orthodox jews and there is a sexist tel aviv and as, it was getting maybe a little bit easier for israel, given the way that all the air of enemies are fighting amongst themselves, what about these five internal animosity that is caused by this? >> you are absolutely right. i relate to that in the book and i didn't have the time to deal with us now, but the internal challenges facing israel, there are a number of them. one of the most important ones is the growing ultra-orthodox and i am a secular person, but i am, on the other hand, i am not an orthodox hater and i see it among some of my friends and peers where they have some sort of complex with jewish history and background and my grandfather, his religion was so beautiful and romantic and humane and moral that all that i got from judaism from him was beautiful and i have no wisdom resentment and i try not to have a resentment in general. but what troubles me is that israeli politics work in a bipolar way. we either surrender to the orthodox or reheat it or both. and i think that we should develop a different approach. basically the challenge is very simple. and as the minority is growing, we have to be, on the one hand we have to offer the opening of our hearts and minds to accept that as individuals and they should be equal and they should have full rights and we should recognize their special needs as a community and a minority within israel, but there are two things that we should not allow. and that is we should not allow them to impose their values on our state and society and we wanted the progressive democratic israel, we cannot accept anything like segregation of women or anything or anything disgusting like that. so on these issues, we must fight really hard with no compromises whatsoever in the other issue is to genuinely let them join our society, taking political responsibility and we have to offer them a kind of deal, you have grown up and you're much too big now and you have to live and work and pay taxes and we have to do it in a gradual process not to push them. beyond being fair and right for israel. because my main concern, you talk a lot about iran and houston. and i think that iran is very dramatic and i think that palestinian has to be like this. but the third is an existential challenge for israel ended is the relationship between you and many of you in the audience who happen to be jewish. there is the gap between the american jewish communities, especially the progressive parts of the community, and especially the younger part of the community and israel is, in my mind, an existential threat to the jewish people, both here and there. so if israel is to survive and succeed, it needs the help of american jews and it needs young american jews to like it and love it. if they are embarrassed by it, if they see it as some dark theological entity that is embarrassing them, if we lose them, you will lose them and we will be in jeopardy. but on the other hand, we have to create, israel has to become attracted to this. this is one of my hopes as i publish the book and i began talking. the book will be a kind of launching pad not only in a new conversation as i described. but i would like a new fresh discussion with young american jews and i would like to tell them his real story that they have not heard and i see it as my duty as a journalist and a citizen to fight any darker side of the israeli life and it is our duty for our own liberal society to maintain his relationship with a liberal and vital part of this situation. [applause] [applause] >> before you ask any questions, i would like you and i would like to hear from the both of you on that. i would like to know what your ancestors would think. and i would really like to know what lawrence once would think about three things. number one, syria and the whole nationalism issue and a ron and also the fact that israel is a democracy and we spoke about this in the middle east and some have attorneys and others do not. and so do the vibrant democracy is israel and i would like to know historically whether that would be a surprise. >> i don't know if it would be a surprise to warrants. he had an interesting take on israel and it was in early 1916 declaration came a year and half later and so when he first started hearing of this declaration was coming, he just felt like this was a double whammy of sorts. but first the arabs would have to reconcile themselves or fight against it, that they would be divided up by the colonial powers, and then second is part of this as well. and what he said was, when he first heard about this declaration, he said that the jewish presence in palestine, he didn't stay say a state, the jewish control of palestine can only ever be achieved by force of arms and be maintained by the force of arms. and yet, as the law progress, certainly what he saw as the existential threat to the middle east was the french and british colonial rule and he also recognized the declaration was a feat accomplished. so what he did on the eve of this paris peace conference, he was talking about the main error delegate at the peace conference and he got the guys together and they made the faisal agreement and that agreement was in return for a very large jewish immigration and ultimately control of palestine, being the zionists and the jews that recognize the arab dominion in syria. until lawrence was very kind of -- he was a tactician and he recognize that palestine was a feat accomplished. so let's turn that for the control of syria. so it didn't work, obviously. but i think that if once today, looking at syria, i don't know if he would be very surprised. what he was always very aware of, he really understood the plan and the tribal structure as well as any western european of the time and this was always his clearing call of the warning to the imperial powers that you cannot go into this area and carve them up and cut across these tribal and ethnic lines. as you have done in africa, for example. so i think that he probably look at syria today and say that this was kind of guaranteed to come. and iraq is a great example and the british impose a rule in 1920 and once predicted almost a month of 1919 when the full scale revolt would break out their and he was off by just a couple of months. but it was very relevant and i think that having -- i think what you're seeing now is actually playing this out, as was said. the region is falling back into these sectarian and tribal clan affiliations and i think what once was always trying to do is figure out, is there some way that it's not a european nation concept, but is there a way that you create a state where these areas have a great deal of autonomy but it is a larger kind of cohesive whole. and i think that any chance for that was destroyed with it after the war. >> i don't quite know about my great-grandfather, but my family, all of my grandfather and great uncles, they are all peacemakers of different kinds. and many of them very cultural figures in different ways, from british sides, they spoke arabic and in many respects, they were naïve because basically what happened because of that blindness of the earlier generation that we described, the result afterwards was that it was the people on the extreme right and extreme left who still reality it is. because the ones on the extreme right saw that they were not afraid of it and they did not endanger their values and the people on the left hoped there would be peace. and they were fine. they had an intricate contradiction because they could not -- there was a contradiction between their progressive and moral values and the brutal reality and there was a need for it this, that it was going on for a long time. but you mentioned this and don't tell anyone, but this is one of my next topics. because it's very important. because now within this mess, with an the chaos of the middle east, there is unprecedented opportunity, and i really hope that the people navigating the policy in washington and elsewhere will please look at this. in my mind, the old ways of trying to make peace have failed and gone god for bid will fail in the future. but they are great opportunities to make different kinds of peace and the fact that the sunnis now see that the iranians are a threat and they see the islamic brotherhood and the extremist sunnis see this as well, and their disappointment, justified or not, about american and european leadership of support, it leads them to a kind of intimate relationship with israel but we have never known in the past and if we would work wisely with that, i think that we can go back to the agreement that never materialized and i think there is actually opportunity, but you have to understand what that means, there's no way that that saudi king can agree to a division of jerusalem or to make all kinds of ideological or theological concessions with a jewish state with designs. it doesn't have the legitimacy to do that or the internal strength to do that and he will make a thousand under the table deals. so i think that if we approach an under the table piece, it might actually be a much more sound piece than some of the declared pieces that we have tried with and failed. we have been for years, from 1970s to 1994, 24 years, we have had these purposes, the best possible and i think that we can go into that kind of relationship with the egyptians and definitely with the jordanians and many others in the regions and ironically, my grandfathers and grandparents, they were naïve, and i think that the kind of peacemaking that we are listening to might actually succeed within the regional director that we receive at this time. >> my question is you have mentioned where this came from and from my extensive study in judaism, my question is that this nation has composed, people are becoming a nation in egypt and that is my first question and my second question is that you mention the flawed intellectual and moral people and i am asking whether this is the reason why from what i have studied, six powers have taken these people that are deemed chosen, captive and then the u.s. is about to turn in the affinity is becoming weaker. >> my question is why would these people taken captive by this power and now they have gotten deeper in the u.s. and this nation is composing this in egypt. >> can you repeat the question? [laughter] >> you asked where this nation came from. is this nation composed of egypt? >> at the nation with a very long history. >> written in the bible. >> yes, initially. and at this moment, the affinity with israel is becoming weaker with the u.s. power now. >> ma'am, it's a question and answer and let him answer your question because there are people behind you and just go ahead and let him answer. also, i want to tell everybody that this session is supposed to end at 6:00 p.m. and it is on c-span2. they are going to cut it at 6:00 o'clock, but both of the authors have agreed to continue to answer the questions if you would like to stay. >> if you want to be able to get your books autographed, we will have to cut it off in about another 10 minutes just to let you know. thank you. >> okay, this question is about the secular population amongst the arabs is decreasing as time goes on, which is the opposite is what is going on elsewhere. and most of the people that are part of this, the fact that the secular population amongst the arabs is decreasing and it has been replaced by a more zealot populations? >> okay, so what is the question? >> if it's a concern to you and the leaders of israel to try to come to a peace agreement as soon as possible, because the people will be dealing with will be less willing to come to an agreement with you because of religion, i guess their main concern is opposed to the secular people that exist in the leadership now. that religion is not an important thing to them. >> i think that we should always be realistic, but also do the right thing in and the middle east is the land of the unexpected and when things are going very well, people worry because something unpleasant is going to happen in one things seem desperate, don't get desperate because there could be a positive surprise and i just described on a few minutes ago. so i don't think being worried about what will happen like in 10 years in that sense should really be looked at, we should just look at things as they are in do the right thing. [applause] >> i have always been a great liberal, but i am also very realistic that most of the arab world are not friends of the israeli people and not all have blinders on of that kind of sanctification of the palestinians. but just from a realistic point of view, i don't understand for the last 20 years, and it's been harder for me to defend sometimes the actions of israel to my jewish or non-jewish friends. i don't understand with a few exceptions. ..
there he found an exclusive campus he. it he resented it as an undergraduate and came to resent it as a professor there. he then became president of the college. and it was at this time he decided now i have the ability to change what this college is. wilson's predecessor in the presidency of princeton was a man who used to brag he ran the finest country club in america. [laughter] he did. there was no question about it. it was an enclave for the sons of the very, very rich. wilson tried to tear that down. it was in doing that, he began writing about what he was doing and speaking about what he was doing. this is how the most immediate oric rise in american history occurred. people began to look at wilson, who used the princeton campus as a great metaphor for america. he believed higher education should be the great catapult for people. anybody from any class in a country that has no classes but in such a country, anybody who is educate and works hard should be able to leapfrog. it should be able to go up a step a rung or two or the ladder. wilson became famous for this, so much so that some of the political bosses in the democratic party were attracted to him. thinking he was a perfect combination to be their puppet. namely he sounded very progressive and reformist, but also he was a professor he would be very weak. little did they know when he got elected governor of new jersey when he served for about 18 months, the first thing he did as governor was kick out the very machine that put him in office. [laughter] so everybody saw this was no weak college professor. >> well, let's turn to the women in the president's lives. i'm always interested in the woman behind the man. i always wanted my husband to be like nancy reagan, for example, as an elected official. i'm interested in how these women helped these presidents. >> you know, what interested me there are actually three women i'm writing about. roosevelt and tell mely taft, and, ida. they each had choices to make. there were narrower choices for women than today. roosevelt came from a family where her father had been wealthy, lost his shipping business, and became an alcoholic. she lived near teddy when she was a young girl. they had to move to more modest homes. forever after she drew a productive curtain around herself. they loved each other. they were boyfriend and girlfriend through college. they had a fight in his soft more year in college. he fell madly in love with a beautiful young girl from boston. he married alice to the devastation ofth edith. he thought he would never love again. the light had gone out of his life. he married her. it was a strong marriage. all she wanted from the marriage and her first ladyship was to give companionship and strength and a sanction ware to her ever-restless husband. she said when he became first lady she had no intention of being a public person. she wasn't going give her view for the politics. what only mattered is be in the newspaper twice. married and buried. nelly taft had ambition from the time she was an adolescence her sent her brothers to harvard and yale. not she. she decided to start teaching to her mother's dismay. and she decided she might not marry. she meets young will and he adored her. it really respected her independence. and he made her his partner had his whole career. she's partly responsible for him choosing politics eventually instead of the judicial route he was on. she helped with his speeches and strategy. and became an extraordinary first lady in the few months she was there. activist concerned with working women. she brought the charities to washington. she opened the guest list to more people than before. created a public park with free concerts. and incredibly sadly for him. two months after his inauguration, she fell as they were on a presidential yat. collapsing had a devastating stroke. she recovered her power of walking but never to speak connective sentences again. he spent her days to teach her phrases. and this is again, you never know how things alter. it absolutely contributed to his troubles as presidency. and then lastly, ida tar bell growing up in northwestern pennsylvania, watches the frustration of her mother when her own family industry is hurt because her father is an independent oil producer making more money than dreamed. she was a teacher. jd rockefeller comes in and undoes his business. the mother hoped to go on to higher education. has to worry about the family's economic. ida prays she will never take a husband. and she does not ever get married. becomes the most famous journalist of her are a. when she writes her standard oil expose they reported john d. rockefeller was willing to pay anyone to take her on trips around the world. it's so interesting to think today however much trouble we have today the choices are broader than they were. it's interest for me to see. they made a choice that fit their own needs and desires. it's the way women were. they were indispensable to their husbands. those two first ladies in very different ways. it. >> and scott? he has a bunch of women. [laughter] >> i didn't mean it in that way. [laughter] >> no, you certainly did not. [laughter] now i feel as low we on queen for a day, that old show. you have to come up with the most pathetic and most romantic story. woodrow wilson had two wives. not at the same time. [laughter] but the first was a young woman he met in georgia when he was a struggling lawyer in atlanta. he was a minister's son. he met the minister's daughter in a little town called rome, georgia. they fell instantly in love. and he was realizing he didn't really have a career as a lawyer. and so he took up academia at that point. the good news for me, the biographer, she and he began exchanging 3,000 of the most passionate love letters i have ever read. yes, i'm talking woodrow wilson. [laughter] they're almost hard to believe. they are emotional, they are sexual, they are revealing, they -- it's just -- yes, woodrow wilson. [laughter] it's true. it's true. and she gave as good as she got. and -- >> what does that mean? [laughter] >> just -- [laughter] let your conscious -- conscience be your guide. they married. she became a professor's wife, and a college president's wife, she poured a lot of tea. and the interesting thing is she was a very good artist. she painted extremely well, should and could have had a career as an artist. gave it all up to be a proper wife as indeed, you know, the role of women was dictated back then. and she was the most supportive wife there could be all the way to the white house. and one year in to their living in the white house, ellen wilson died. the -- yes, the big awe. and the president was crushed. he could barely get out of bed. he being so religious did not talk about suicide, but he did say more than once he wished somebody would just shoot him. he couldn't deal with it. two things got him out of bed. the first was, the very week she died a war broke out in europe. and now rapping on the door saying, mr. president, there's something happening and we need you here. the second thing that happened over the course of the next few months is, woodrow wilson had a cute meet the way in movies. he was introduced to a young attractive widow who lived in washington, d.c. over the course of the next year, the president went courting. he's having private dinners in the white house, always chap roaned and writing hundreds of the most passionate love letters you have ever read to this one. now the other letters did to ellen. you see that was puppy love. this is a mechanic? -- man in his late 50s having his last stab at romance. he wins her, marries her within a year, and now she became the most supportive presidential wife one could imagine. they never left each other's side. it reached the point where wilson, who often used to walk to other departments of the government just to stop in and have meetings, mrs. wilson would invery belie go with him. she was trained in the memos he was writing. it was almost as though fate was dictating. what happened after the war after wilson came back with the league of nations peace treaty and went around the country to 29 cities to try to convince the american people that they should convince the republican senate to ratify this treaty, which the republicans did not want to do, in the middle of this tour, woodrow wilson collapsed. and he was rushed home to washington from the middle of the country and there a few days later woodrow wilson suffered a stroke. now here is where mrs. wilson comes in. she, and handful of doctors, engaged in which i consider the greatest white house conspiracy in history. because three or four people decided they would never tell anybody the president had suffered a stroke. and so for the last year and a half of the wilson administration, for all intents and purposes, edith became the first female president of the united states. [laughter] yes, yes. [laughter] bring it on. she was making no decisions on her own, she insisted. she said she was merely a steward but nobody saw the president of the thousand of people who want to see him, nobody saw him. the handful only of that without passing through miss wilson. all the documents and things that required signatures, commissions, whatever memorandum. nothing appeared before the president of the united states' eyes until mrs. wilson decided what and when the president would act upon it. so she became a pretty supportive wife. >> i guess so. if i can underscore something scott said which i said earlier but so clear when you talk about letters. i don't know what is going to happen 200 years from now when we don't have handwritten letters as historians to look back on. maybe e-mail will be saved. it's written stay staccato. when people had the only means of communicating through letters. when you find the letters, it's the treasure. there was a military aid named archie butler and in those days the military aid was with the president all the time. teddy loved him like another son. taft adored him. when the break occurred he wrote letters every day to his family which are absolute gold. and he talks the way we know how deep that was for especially for taft. he recounted what taft was feeling as teddy talking about. calling him a fat head. and the relationship was so strong and finally he was supposed to take a trip in the spring of 1912, before the nomination thing began to heat up, and then at the last minute when teddy threw his hat in the ring, i had -- he decided i can't go. i have to stay with taft. he needs me. he didn't want me to know but he tells taft he canceled the shipping order. and he said you have to go. you'll be back. he goes to europe, he goes for about four weeks, and he comes back on the titanic and lost his life. taft was stricken yet again. everywhere he went he felt like he was missing this man. and this man, as the ship titanic was going down, was telling somebody who wrote a letter to taft that he the letters in storage and hoped maybe they would be remembered someday. they have been gold to biographers. >> you are right. >> and anyway. >>. >> all i can say is keep track what you're writing to people. so the biographer who comes along 1200 years from now you'll have stuff. >> take a pen out every now and then. it's different. we have shared in this, the men we have written about -- and women too, for that matter, wrote so beautifully. and when you take the time to write, you compose a thought and this is a nice thing. you put it in lovely language, as was certainly the case with wilson and his wives. >> i'm going ask you one more question and then open it to the audience. if you would like to start coming up to the microphone, we'll hear from you as well. my final question is this: president obama is having such a difficult time right now. so what advice with your presidents give him? [laughter] >> you can go first. [laughter] >> president wilson would say, get to the president's room! [laughter] go there, start a dialogue. now woodrow wilson had a contentious senate in the end. a contentious house of representatives as well. he didn't get everything he wanted. but here is what wilson engaged in. it was a sustained dialogue for eight years that was a lot of consternation. there was a lot of argument, there was a lot of disagreement, but there was an ongoing chat between these two houses -- these two branches of the american government. and i think that is something wilson believed in so strongly. the second thing, and it's related to it, and it's especially ironic because we do have such an image of such a stiff figure. the fact is wilson personalized the presidency. he was not afraid to go down to the congress. he did not just sit in the imperial white house. again, very ivory tower-antiivory tower. he was willing to go there and willing to do anything to open the conversation. at one point he had a foreign relations committee of the united states senate come to meet in the white house. he said, let me open the house to you if that's what tick it is a too get something passed. let's do. he was always keeping the diagnose going. >> i agree with scott. in addition to going to the congress more, it's using the tool of the white house. those congressman want come there. i know, there are been difficulties. i know, the president innovated various republican members not willing to come and not wanting to be seen because the terrible riff. it looks like they're loyal to their base if seen with the president. there's something special coming to the white house. johnson used to have them for breakfast, lunch, dibber. he called them at night. he called at 2:00 a.m. and said i hope you didn't wake you. he said no, i was lying here hoping my president would call. the whole political culture in washington changed. they used to stay around on weekends 50 years before they raced home to make the stupid funds -- campaign finance is the answer, actually. it's absolutely the poison in the system. they used to stay together. their wives knew each other. they drink together, they formed friendship across party lines. when johnson needed to get to dirkson to break the filibuster, they were friends. he could go to him. passenger's side through few friendships at any point. none of them or few have served in the war together. they knew what it was like to have a common mission. you have a common mission. they lost that sense of a common mission, which is our country. and something has to bring that back. and if we can bring teddy and wilson and the lbj and the presidents in there to figure out both sides of the i'm, congress and the presidency, it's time that we are able to start dealing with our problems. [laughter] >> thank you. thank you very much. now it's your turn. yes, ma'am, please introduce yourself. >> my nam is janice, i las live in washington, d.c. i'm a founding member of the national museum of women's art. [inaudible] my question to mr. berg is, in the education that we had in our training, we were asked to read a book called "jailed for freedom." which was a series of essays written by the suffragists who were lawyers, physicians, judges, women who were fighting for the right to vote. and president wilson totally ignored them. and i wondered if you encountered this -- >> i don't think it's exactly right. he totally ignored them. >> sorry. he was quite aware of what was going on. wilson -- [inaudible] wilson believed the women should have the vote. he believed there should not be a 19th amendment for many years. he came around on that. and he rather famously, in 1915 got on a train and went up to new mexico because -- new jersey because it was a states right thing and should happen by state-by-state. there were protests outside the white house. alice paul and her sister suffragists were being arrested, taken to jail. wilson said, let them go. don't put them in jail. just let them go. i know, the issue. i'm not prepared to for fight for a 19th amendment. the whole thing, alice paul could have walked out any time. she clearly wanted to stay. she was fighting for attention and making her point. now, by 1917, wilson was bringing the country in to war, and at this time he had a major shift, and he had been playing to the more conservative wing of the suffragists for years, who believed in state-by-state adoption. beginning in 1917 he was coming around for two reasons. we were fighting in europe for peace and freedom there. he said, how can we not have half the women in this country voting? it seemed to be a huge mistake to him. the second thing he saw during the war, once we were in it, was the role women were playing in the role -- they were leaving the house for work. they were actually doing a lot of just good works for the war movement. so, wilson had an overnight change of heart, and actually began actively campaigning for the 19th amendment. such that even -- by the time he came out for, again, called another session of congress, and told them it was a war measure that is how important it was. we had to have national suffrage, universal suffrage in the united states because of the war, and he thought it would be a good way to get everybody to rally behind it. and within a year it was a done deal, and even alice paul came around to thank woodrow wilson for it. so i would say he was late to the party, but once he got there he had the lamp shade on. [laughter] >> one next question. we are going to move on. >> no -- i'm sorry, madam, we're going the next question. thank you. >> good afternoon. what an honor to hear you be able to ask you a question. mr. berg, you alluded briefly to the answer of this regarding president wilson at princeton. but the three presidents, what was their relationship or perhaps complicated relationship to status and class? we get a sense that tr was with the common man but not much of the common man. he was a harvard man. taft was a yale man. we know t. r. -- >> a princeton man. >> yeah. and we know t. r. was friends with jake brought him down to the lower east side where my great grand parents set upshot 100 years ago. on a specific ♪, did the immigrant lower classes, were they part of the america of these three presidents? what was the class issue? >> it's a great issue. i mean, i think what happened for roosevelt -- when he first went to harvard he thought he was -- he thought he should be dealing with the people of hiss -- his class. underline that attitude he came from a wealthy family, obviously in new york. but his father had been interested in social justice. had become a philanthropist. it worked with young news boys and that instinct was somewhat in teddy. then the real place where he began to shift away from that harvard-class mentality was he became a state legislature right after congress. and at first he went and thought the irish guys guys with with the tobacco and their cigars were of a different class than the ones he wanted to. and he started becoming a histrionic rhetoric guy even in the legislature yelling and screaming about the political bosses. he was always against that. and at the certain point he realized he wasn't getting anything done. he wasn't reaching as cro to the other people. he said he realized he came aa cropper and had to learn how to deal with people of all classes. just as you said, jacob reese became his friend. took him to the tentment. originally he was against regulation of the tenement. he saw it and changed his mind and early on for regulation. then these reporters, we he became police commissioner took him to where people were living in the middle of the night. what helped him he had so many different jobs. when he was in the rough riders he had a group of people with him. and he kept his relationship with these reporters much more involved in the knity gritty than he was. they were able to criticize him rather than become -- my favorite there was a guy mr. duelly a famous chicago bartender in a humorous column. he wrote a review of the rough riders book. and he put himself in the center of the action it was as he was the only person but he should have called it alone in cuba. what did teddy do? he regret to tell you my wife and entire family loved your review of the book. now you owe me one. i want to meet you. through the reporters, through people like jacob and people involved in the settlement houses. he began to see the conditions of life and he later said when he gave his talks that my harvard buddies think my talks too folksy. they are homely. but i know i'm reaching people because i now know those people. and he took train trips months at the time going around the country talking to people in village stations. waiving to people in the trains, he would even stand up in the middle of lunch at one point he said he was waiving so much and the people seemed so indifferent. it turned out it was a herd of cows. i think that's what is -- [laughter] something had to jar him away from that background. just as fdr's polio transformed him. he was aware that fate dealt him an unkind hand. he reached out to other people whom had the same thing happen. >> wilson did not believe in a great class structure in this country. he was from a lower, lower middle class. being a minister's son. what believed; however, was the educate class. it was the class that mattered for him. as i said before, this is a man who spent most of his life in career on a college campus either as a student, professor, or president. this is a man who believed that was the great level leer of all playing field in this country. and so, the interesting thing when wilson became a politician, and it was a really fascinating tool he used. as a politician, he never spoke down the audience. he never got folksy. he used rather elevated language. he spoke invery belie without any notes. he get out there and could deliver an hour, hour and a half speech with a card and five bullets on it and speak in perfect sentences, heightened vocabulary. he could do. the fans loved it. they fund, they felt elevated by it. and wilson, you see, never looked down on them. that was a wonderful thing for them. it was a great tool he used. and as such, i think he was pretty effective in that regard. >> you know, lucky for rose -- roosevelt he spoke with notes. in 1912 when he was campaigning, he had the 50-page speech in his pocket when an assassin shot him in the chest. the bum let re-- bullet remained within him. he delivered got-hour speech. because the 50 pages of the speech in his pocket it went upward rather than probably killed him on the spot. so they each had their own way of talking. and living. >> i'm afraid we only have time for one more question. >> speeches can save lives. [laughter] >> for mr. berg, about wilson about the league of nations, the thought is -- i've heard he was so intransient. not willing to accept some of the reservations that some of the senators wanted. i'm wondered if you can reflect on that. for miss goodwin. thank you. i'm reading it now and it's incredible. >> thank you. >> i was wondering -- it's such a big question that choose whatever part you like. either comparison between tr and fdr, similarlities, disalready similarities. reflections give that yesterday was the 50th anniversary of killing of kennedy. how in the world do we get to campaign finance reform? , ii mean, everyone is so disheartened about the road where we are. what do you see in the future? >> thank you -- thatch. i don't think it was in my job discrepancies to answer that question. i heard something about the league of nations in there somewhere. [laughter] which wilson wanted to have pass so we might have fought the war to end all wars. and wilson was intransigent. i think for a couple of reasons, one of which he was a stubborn guy as a rule. when he was over in paris, and he was there for six months, the president of the united states left the country for six months to negotiate in treaty. during that time, especially toward the end month five and six saying agree, i have a country to get home too. he began to make some comprises. one or two big ones in the end. he came back, and i think when he found this senate that was going to be completely unwilling to accept the treaty with its league, that is the moment, i think, the curtain came down for wilson and he said i'm not giving away another thing. and indeed this congressional battle went on for weeks which is what prompted his tour of the country. even after his stroke, after he had come home. the battle went on in the senate. and wilson even though comprises were presented would not buy them. at the very end his rival in the senate, the dean of the republican party and the head of the foreign relations committee came in with the 11th-hour comprise which was a few sentences and largely sin tactical. and wilson simply would not buy it. so i feel -- he's the stuff of greek tragedy. this is man who didn't shoot himself in the foot. he truly stabbed himent -- himself in the heart. >> and i think what that raises is when we live with these people for so long, you really do end up caring about them so when they disappoint you, when they do things that you wish that they hadn't done, obviously i adored roosevelt and eleanor, and yet wishing roosevelt hope -- opened the door for jewish refugee and not incarcerated the japanese-americans. he was allied leader that ended the threat of hitler. the greatest threat to western civilization. any kids used to hear me franklin be nicer. she loves you. eleanor forget that affair that happened so long ago. and similarly with roosevelt i have such respect for his domestic policy and just his persona, his views on war, i have no respect for. he would say the victory of war were greater thant victory of peace at any moment. he had the are manhattannization of war. i have a son who graduated from harvard college in june of '01 was going to go to law school. september 11th happened. he volunteered for the army next day and later got a bronze star and went back to afghanistan. but importantingly for this substitution, he had written his thesis at harvard on roosevelt and loved him. after he came back from combat he said he could never u understand having been in combat how anybody could are -- but that's part of the glory of being a biographer. all human beings have their strength and weaknesses. it's up to us to really not forget the parts that is weak and bring it up. but at the same time, i could never choose somebody ultimately to write about that i didn't want to be with. i loved with them so long. i could never write about hitler or stalin. luckily i have found people i overwhelm overwhelmingly feel affection for. >> the last word hold on. we have been given a ten minute reprieve. >> those who wanted to ask questions can come back. i want to give those chances to people in line first. enabling i'm the executive producer of "forgotten hollywood." what an inspiration you both are to all authors in the room and to everybody at the fair. [applause] just a very simple question. can you both speak to the importance of eugene in the election of 1912? regarding wilson, taft, and roosevelt? ? thank you. >> go ahead. >> well, -- 900,000 votes. >> he if mighty well. he was extremely important. i think he was more than just paprika in the big stew of that election. which was a really fascinating -- you know, there was an election really of ideas. and there was so much progressivism in the air. it becomes extremely important in wilson's life later on. he's one of the people who will be arrested under the wilson law, the alien and is and sedition laws. he was delivering the speech said i know i'm going to be arrested for this. and now i'll tell you. i have gone through the feature -- speech he gave. i keep looking for the sedition. i can't find it. he was basically telling the people some workers that this was a capitalist war, and that they did not have to be cannoned toker in it. and for that, he was arrested. he was put in jail, he was found guilty and went to the supreme court. they came down against him 9-0. he was in prison. it will tell you a lot about wilson. the war is now over. wilson has had a stroke. in he's in the white house he's about to leave the white house. people in his government, his attorney general who basically had put him in jail came to him and said, mr. president, debs is an old man now. he's sick and served his time. the war is over. he's clearly not a danger any longer. here is the pardon all written. all you have to do is put your signature on it. and where the signature would go wilson wrote "denied ." you didn't cross wilson more than once. it was simply because wilson felt one we had gone to war that sort of speech telling people not to go to war that was sedition to him. and he said long i'm in charge of two million people risking their lives, i cannot let anybody speak out against them. and so that is why he was just intransigent on the subject. >> partly of the question nobody is perfect. no president is perfect. i written a book -- [inaudible] and it deals with eastern progressives and their religious -- [inaudible] you mentioned tr and the rough rider that could easy by will called teddy roosevelt and the buffalo soldiers as many as -- [inaudible] and wilson -- my gosh he said -- >> he had a symbolic gesture he invited booker t. washington to dinner and it produced outrage in the south and other part of the country there was equality of a social relationship that he backed down, i think, he -- but he also held imperialist attitudes. racist attitudes. these people are unfortunately men of their generation. his record on race there was a riot in brownsville and a group of blacks arrested because they couldn't figure out who started it. it was wrong, he was wrong. and these are those moments you're absolutely right, when all you can say is that you have to remember the context in which they're leading. even lincoln, you know, in the 1850s was against, obviously, against intermarriage. against blacks sitting on juries. hef for the black law. you say how could lincoln have done this? the important thing is he grew from the attitudes and eventually allowed the blacks to come in. they were so important as soldiers in the army it changed the whole course of the war in many ways and issued the emancipation proclamation. there's no answering for them except to pave the context in which they are ruling and see if they are way behind the context or in the middle of it or sometimes if you're lucky, the person you're dealing with is ahead of that. >> jo ann. >> i have a question. -- [inaudible] this is such a magnificent high-level conversation. i want to go a moment of history and passion in a different level. and that is, what did it feel to be like in fenway park -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> i tell you, having been a passionate baseball fan all my life and having only experienced one vict i are with the brooklyn dodgers in 195, -- [applause] then obviously i chose another team after the dodgers abandoned and wednesday to california. i went to harvard and choose almost like falling in love again with the boston red sox and he all the years and lost and lower house and almost win. finally in you're and '07. we have the season tickets to the game. so we were at every game, and every playoff. every division. and to be in our town and see them winning and share it with boston, i mean, that's what is so great about baseball. somebody asked me what would you have done if the dodgers had been against the red sox. how would you have dealt with the divided loyalty. i thought about it and my answer was the dodgers were my first love. my father growing up in brooklyn taught me to keep score. that's where my love of history began. when i was able to record for him the history of that afternoon's brooklyn dodger game going over every play. he made he tell i was telling a fabulous love. i had a first love of a boyfriend before i married my husband. but the boston red sox have been my sustaining love for almost 40 years. and my husband i've been married for 38 years. the boston red sox would be my love now. [laughter] [applause] we have time for one more now. >> on that note, i got to tell you some quick thoughts. i didn't know you were having coauthor -- i brought one gift to you. is that baseball, my love for you through your writing and all you have done, and i always feel you're the tim rustin of the "today" show. you couldn't give me a better compliment. i love him so much. >> a couple of weeks ago you were to be speak to us in a way we could understand. i love your energy. on baseball, my wife and i's first date was to a cleveland indians game, which is the boston red sox farm club in the '60s and '70s. >> i know. >> our first date was an indian games. lennie parker pitched a perfect game. >> and you are still married. >> oh. yes. >> hooray. >> we have a great thing every summer and it's called admitted night sun baseball game. it starts at 10:30 at night. my gift to you is to -- [laughter] -- and so -- >> it's beautiful, thank you. couch. an invitation to you if you would like to come a mid night sun baseball game. june 21st, every year. >> i see. summer -- >> we can get you up there it would be so great. >> thank you, thank you. >> and i will happily wear it! [applause] >> okay, any closing comments from our historians? scott?? any last words. >> what a pleasure it was to have this conversation. [laughter] [applause] [laughter] >> thank you. [applause] [laughter] [applause] >> okay, thank you, both, for being with us. it's been a wonderful, wonderful conversation. great moment in miami. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] live coverage from miami book fair international continues. doris kearns goodwin talking with the audience there. and author of wilson talking about the last turn of the century together. by the way, everything you're seeing today on booktv's coverage of miami will reair tonight beginning at midnight. a couple of more hours of coverage today, and we're going to do a couple of call-in programs next. after that, the next event in chatman hall we'll be covering. written about bunker hill. and brenda, "ecstatic nation: confidence, comprise, -- thawl be talking about the development of the united. joining us now on the set is susan. day job president of the aclu. she's the author of this book "taking liberty." susan herman, where do we stand with -- when it comes to patriot act today? >> guest: the status of the patriot act is something i think a lot of people don't understand. because when it was enacted five weeks after 9/11, in october of 2001, congress hasn't had any hearings. they didn't get any idea what was going wrong. they had ideas about what tools to -- [inaudible] so the patriot act, ever since 2000 has been -- [inaudible] given the government all the dragnet tools to do surveillance and all these things. i found when george w. bush left the white house people asiewmented the patriot act had gone away. people were telling me what does the aclu have to do now? couldn't grow out of business and saying mission accomplished? the patriot act is very much with us. the current events i actually one thing i hope we can talk about. i think there might be some prospect for change. >> where? >> guest: one thing that happened. i started writing this weak in the -- book in the middle of barack obama's first term. at that time, people didn't understand that obama continued bush's policy. the surveillance and everything we were doing domestically. and so linda greenhouse referred my book to the wake-up call. people didn't wake up that much. people were not looking to re-examine the decisions that had been made in the fall of 2001 about what our antiterrorism strategies should be. so what i would say is there was a snooze alarm. and the wake-up call came with snowden. when he started releasing documents about what actually is going on behind the curtain and what kind of surveillance there is, i think people did start to pay more attention. i think for good reason. and so, well, i'll tell you i think it matters more than ever people be aware of what is going on and what is happening politically. there's pending in congress right now a bill both a u.s. aid freedom pact. i wonder how many of your viewers know the u.s. aid pact rate act was an ak anymore. if you visualize the letter stand for the name of the bill. which is uniting and strengthening america by providing appropriate tools required to intercept and obstruct terrorism. that's the name of the act. somebody -- [inaudible] so the u.s. aid freedom act all capital letters is something of a -- [inaudible] dragger of that tight. uniting and strengthening america by, you know, having freedom from electronic eves -- eavesdropping. this is something that is pending in congress. it now has over 100 sponsors in the house. i don't remember in the senate. it's the first time that congress has been looking seriously at the idea of rollingback some of the patriot act surveillance provision. >> host: does the aca lo support the u.s. freedom act? >> >> guest: we do. i think one thing that it does is it addresses one of the things we have learned from the snowden documents. the government is doing both collections about information, about the telephone calls that every american. who we call, what numbers we call, what numbers we get called from. the duration of our calls, how often we call, what time of day it is. and so this is just on all americans are collecting all of this information. and to me, the problem here is that what we're doing and i think a lot of people assume we need to give up our liberties in order to be safe. thing are more calls here and fewer benefits than people realize. one of the cost of this phone collection i think it's exactly the kind of massive surveillance that the people who wrote our institution particularly the fourth amendment were trying to prevent. so the fourth amendment is the part of the bill of the rights that protect us against unreasonable search and seizure. we could be secure in our persons, houses, and parents. the reason our founding father wrote this in the bill of right they didn't like the idea that the king's agent might be able to search what they were doing and look in their homes to see if they had sexual sedition locateture. -- literature. the concept there's an important value that the individual should have privacy and that the government not just be able to find out everything you are doing. everything though the fbi think they knew at the time the risk was maybe somebody was committing a exriem in the home. maybe the government wouldn't be able to find out. because they weren't allowed to walk to the home at will. they had to go through a court and process. to me what the patriot act enable -- enacted with the dragnet. it's one reason it's supporting having some limit on the government. no reason to suspect that the person has done anything wrong. >> host: what is the status of the fisa court? is it still active? >> guest: it's very active. so that's one of the things that happens. in the fall of 2001, what the congress did in order to be allow the government more surveillance power they built on a couple of areas there wasn't that much fourth amendment protection. the fisa court, the foreign intelligence surveillance court had been established as part of a comprise in the late '70s when people were very upset about nixon spying on political enemy. there was a church committee, frank church ran the important committee where they did a complete exploration of the american history about intelligence area. and they decided it was not permissible for the government to spy on americans without going through the court. but it was all right to spy on the soviet embassy to see what they were up to. it was the cold war. the idea that mens get constitutional protections foreigners don't. the 2001 legislation, and some legislation we've had since then basically said that even though if the government is targeting somebody who is a foreigner. and it's one end of a cfghts, they can pick up whatever the americans are saying at the other end. one thing that the fisa court authorized is in addition to what has been called the meta data. the telephone numbers you call or which you get called not the content. the government can pick up the content of american's e-mails, telephone calls, skype, whatever. within the foreign intelligence surveillance act as long as there's a foreigner someplace. that was another of the revelation of the snowden documents. but the fisa court has more to do with americans than you might think. >> host: since 2001, has the patriot act, the fisa surveillance, increased or decreased? >> guest: yeah. it's a great question. i think it's actually been increased. when president obama was a candidate, when he was running for office, he said no more national security that spy on americans. but now that he's president i think he sees the power differently. and he felt if he can be trusted with the dragnet powers. it sounds as if the fisa court allowed actually is an expansion and there's more and more material being collected in bulk and that what is being collected under the foreign intelligence surveillance act even though on americans has also increased. i think there's a possibility for another increase. for awhile until 2011, the government was also collecting e-mail addresses, internet dresses that we visit, the fisa court authorized that. and the government actually stopped collecting all of that information in 2011. but they could do it again because they're authorized to do that. this is tremendously broad power. >> and we're talking with susan herman. this is her book. 202-585-3890. time zones dial in if you like to have a discussion about what we're talking about here freedom and surveillance, et, et. cetera. surveillanceyou served as president of the american civil liberty union. she's a professor of law at brooklyn law school as well. edward snowden in that parlor game hero or goat? >> guest: my usual response, peter, when people want to talk about snowden. my first response is to say instead of talking about the messager, should we talk about the problem? and i think snowden has done us a great favor. he said the reason he wanted to start releasing some of the documents so the american people could make the decision about whether they think we have gone too far. or whether they are too many costs? i think that's in fact discussion we're now having. i think his strategy worked. the american people are being informed. because one of the things we learn is not even just that the government was spying in ways i was already describing in my book, but that we had in the fisa court we had secret law. there was law that the court was making that the american people couldn't find out what the law was. to me, it really went too far. >> host: is there anything in the patriot act you agree with? >> guest: there was a lot. there was a collection of amendments to hundreds of previous laws. one of my favorite part of the patriot act which was wonderful at the time. it was a sense of congress resolution. saying we don't want to use 9/11 as an occasion to start discriminating against muslims. up fortunately that was easier to say than to actually effect. >> host: you say sketchy foray in to history suggests that a bipartisan commission may have the best chance of rising above the politics ha hamstring all branches of government and inspiring reflection and perhaps change. >> guest: right. i think what we could use at this point in time is something more like a church committee. i was mentioning before the u.s.a. aid freedom act which is a small fix for some of the things that are wrong with this collection it just goes too far. my book also talked about all sort of other kinds of laws nut to place on -- accept, october, of 2001. and these are expanded criminal laws that, you know, examples i give i chose stores about a person prosecuted farred crime for posting links to controversial speech on a website. a woman who was prosecuted for supporting a foreign terrorist organization, this was an iranian woman imprisoned in iraq for supporting the pro democracy group opposing the laws there now. when she finally got out of prison and got political asylum in the united states we prosecuted her for supporting the same pro democracy group. there are laws that people adopt know enough about. we don't need snowden to tell us those laws. i think if they don't know about abuse nothing happened. i think to have a -- the reason snowden paper give us the occasion to really look back overall at what we have done. i can understand the fall of 2001 we had laws that went too far. because at the time it was premature to figure out what the ante-dote should be when we hadn't yet analyzed the problem. we didn't have the 9/11 commission. we didn't understand what happened had on 9/11. if congress overdo it, i think they did. there was too many -- some of what they allowed is counter productive. but i thought that, you know, ten, 2012 years after that it should be possible to have a better conversation and the better informed the public is, the better the conversation. where congress is just beginning to look at the tip of it. i think it helps. >> host: is susan herman is our guest. cary in connecticut.. >> caller: i have to say that as much as i agree with the thing your organization does, okay. i also believe when it comes to christian rights, for example -- [inaudible] religious symbols, prayer in the schools, where are you there? that's number one. number two, i believe the patriot act -- [inaudible] and because, remember, the -- [inaudible] even though they weren't the radicals they were the ones that caused 9/11. so we are going to scrutinize those people. -- [inaudible] that's all i wanted to say. you have a great holiday season. bye, bye. >> guest: okay. thank you, carrie. two quick answers. on your point about the christians if you go aclu.org we have an entire page about christians. we are in favor of the freedom of religion which is something we support. i think the more information you get the more you find out there are -- [inaudible] myths out there about the aclu -- my book is about people not only terrorists not only about them but us. now peter was asking before about the impact of some of these surveillance provisions and so forth. i was talking about how it gives us less privacy under the fourth amendment. it's not just the fourth amendment. it's also, you know, you talk about freedom of religion. that's about the first amendment. and my concern is that we're losing a lot of first amendment rights in term of freedom of speech, association, and of religion. so the freedom of religion if the government went after muslim charities right after 9/11. there were a lot of charities shut don -- down or doing badly. even though there was no evidence doing anything wrong. this that harms the first amendment. a study publish a week ago -- they did a survey of their members, the journalists and writers members of it. and what they found was that one in six of the people they surveyed said they centered them and no longer writing, speaking, or publishing researching certain subjects because they i were afraid they might attract the government's attention. they censored themselves. an additional one in six said they thought about censoring themselves. we're worried the people are going to call the aclu the government has a record of the phone number and who they called. and i just think it changes who we are as a society. .. it just seems to me, is it just too much of a conflict of interest for them to be overseeing rests? >> i think that we got a point. is this something that the aclu is concerned with, and of the gay concerned with this and that is mostly political question. and that is the checks and and we also have congress and the courts. and i think that this has resulted in in the failure of checks and balances said september 11. the president, if he is asking us to trust him with all the dragnets, congress will prove with this, although we may be able to in the courts have not been involved. one of the things i talk about in my book is about this that the courts have been avoiding common questions that have been raised. the aclu has been challenging them, their legality, constitutionality, and what the courts say about the supreme court confirmed last year. they said that they will not consider you to have standing unless you can prove that you are subject to secret surveillance. episodically a catch-22. they don't play when they are spying on you. and they will have to be proving that spirits of the problem is that we have the constitutional check in all three have been an echo chamber and we assume and i think that that is really unfounded. >> we have richard the main and taking liberties in the name of the book. >> hello, thank you for taking my call. speaking of being censored. i wonder if you're familiar of the book called extreme prejudice. >> richard boucher a little bit earlier, he asked the same question. >> have you heard of a susan landau? >> no. >> at the second time he's called without question. to were going to let him go. next caller. >> caller: hello, i'm concerned about the national defense authorization act you think the representatives would be out on vacation, the president in the and the house and the senate all signed in and would you please comment? >> yes, we were concerned about some of the things about that as well, and one of the things that they did was they authorized future president as well to detain people who are considered enemy combatants, including americans without adequate due process and i think that was a real problem that a lot of this law has never seriously been looked at. and there have been some money off reauthorization come up with a serious look at i think it needs and what you are suggesting is that other laws are coming into this area without really enough public attention and scrutiny and thought and do the people think that we have gone too far? >> has this happened a couple of times in our history similar to what the patriot act is like? >> there have been other times they have been similar. one of the things that i would talk about is around president nixon. and is it okay for the government to be spying on the american people. this includes history of the nsa and so forth and he said with the edwards noted documents every day is christmas in because he is learning about what we are doing now. so he has looked to telecommunications and so forth just turn over information. so we do have a history of spying, but this has gotten worse because the idea if it builds on this theory that the supreme court hacks. you don't have anything with a third party. so you shouldn't have told your banker your financial information and therefore the government can demand the information in the supreme court decided that this was fine, but think about how much more private information you and your viewers are sharing with third parties and what does your internet service provider know about you. everything is on the cloud and that means that if you take this seriously, even though the permission that we gave the government earlier, taking that 25, it's the same thing they did before the implications are greater. because we are talking about the government been being able to find out about their entire lives and we talk about how the patriot act inverts the conditions of democracy and the whole idea is that we are supposed to have a private enclave to think and exercise and decide who speak what in the government is supposed to be transparent to us that we know what they are doing. so what we are living with is that the government is having increasing secrecy and what we are doing is becoming increasingly transparent for the government. it also cuts off the avenues of repair. so you probably remember the librarians and the government cannot find out this. that is not american democracy. so i talk about the library and in the internet service provider to fight back and he was not allowed and he and librarians were not allowed to testify before the congress. this is further than we have gone before allowing them to use powers in this includes the great poet and playwright. i heard him speak a few weeks ago and he said that people thought it couldn't happen and he had come here as a messenger to say be careful what powers you give the government. he was responding to this and a lot of people were to say why should i care what the government goes about me if i'm not doing anything wrong and that would be with disbelief and derision. and i think that there are a lot of reasons that our freedom of speech goes down. >> do you censor yourself these days? electronically or in any form? >> i really try not to. the pan american center says that one in six have been censoring themselves and one additional one in six said that they seriously thought about censoring themselves, people who wanted to write about the middle east are now not doing it. and there was one person interested in writing about this, and i think that civil libertarians are unusually stubborn and unusually stubborn. every time an american has to think twice, before telling their doctor that they have a drug problem within the are googling the world nuclear, we are changing who we are as a society. >> anthony, you are the next caller with susan herman, the author of the book "taking liberties" and the president of the aclu. >> caller: yes, ma'am. i want to say that i was involved in a criminal case and my phone was tapped in the prosecution got that information. how they got that information, but they used that in court. my private phone calls with my attorney. would you comment on that on how far reaches? >> how often you get calls like this? >> well, we get calls a lot, people have a lot of concern about what the government is doing. i want to relate to what anthony was just saying. about the collection of data. because the government lawyer in this case says you don't get to challenge them, but they say it is okay because the government will tell them how they have been spying on what anthony is just describing the many found out it wasn't true. so the department of justice recently changed this they were collecting evidence and then they were not telling the defendants in criminal cases how they obtained the evidence. so it's another big thing as well. >> were you surprised by the edwards noted documents after the bush administration's? >> we already knew how brought these powers were. we already knew that there was a curtain they didn't know what was going on behind the curtain. >> i was just saying that i told you so. >> has there ever been a history when this hasn't been the case? >> i would go back to the beginning with the columnist that were thinking about having an american revolution and they were afraid that this would be the case. where people would have some privacy where the government can do everything. i've been talking about the rights that are at stake in the surveillance programs and another kind of story that i tell we are doing what we need to do and we don't need to give up liberty to be safe. they expect that it's going to be someone else and i see one of the callers who have suggested. the number of people are those who suffered from not and there is an american citizen as well. and this includes the surveillance happening under the foreign surveillance intelligence act even though he is an american. there is a man who lived and worked brooklyn and he was stopped in the subway system 21 times before he got upset and said this is supposed to be random stops. why do they keep picking on me. a statistician calculated that the odds of his having them stopped to him that many times and was one in 165 million. so you ask about history. and we also have a kind of -- some chapters in our history where we decide to go for the dragnets in the lockup of the japanese-americans during world war ii because we couldn't figure out disloyal people were. we need to learn the instance of the founding of the aclu and the attorney general was rounding up people and deporting them because they were foreign and they looked sly and crafty. so i think we should've learned that you have to watch this and what you give the american government and its not a way to keep our constitution. >> we have ed from spring hill, florida. >> hello. >> did you write the book? >> yes, that's interesting. people sometimes say, why did barack obama change his position. and i think that it changed he didn't trust george w. bush and i think when he became president, he felt differently about it and he trusted himself to use it wisely. or the president, i might not want to. but we don't have a chance of changing this as president, i don't know that we will ever have a chance. one thing he does say i don't care what people regional library, i only want to go after terrorists and nobody can really prove the abuses of his power. and number two i think that history shows us that there will be of use. and we have some of this noted documents. in this includes this as well. so i would like to think that i could remember the it is important to the that the constitution and i understand the difficult position. >> the next call for susan herman. margaret from florida, hello, and go ahead with your question or comment. >> hello. >> i'm so glad to hear you on this program and i am such a supportive. for the last 50 years i have watched and listened, but since 9/11 and the patriot act, i have just seen the country changing, and i see it changing and making the individuals less secure. because who can possibly go against the powers of the government and we saw this in germany and we saw this happen and you have this and that end with any other country we would be horrified. so thank goodness for your work and bless you. >> thank you. i very much appreciate your comment. we are trying very hard to keep our rights and democracy. one reason i'm optimistic that we are beginning to get a lot of pushback, particularly germany, as you mentioned, because they know that someone of the things that people are realizing is that the americans have had this over the internet. and one reason it's been so easy is the fiber optic cables and they are turning over information voluntarily or allowing the government to have a lot of access. it was just at a meeting of the white house were there a lot of people from the telecommunications industry who told the president that if we don't have better data protection, we will lose money because people are going to stop trusting the american companies and europeans will create their own ella communications companies and not come through unless they start pushing back and refusing to turn over this and they estimate that i just read as it can cost american businesses $21 billion per year. when you add that to the decimation of our rights and democracy. i keep coming back to that and that's the subtitle of my book. if we allow these things to go unchecked, there will be a next chapter and the next chapter and we could turn into the country of chile. >> you talk about some other countries. but it has been coming out in the press that this information, we spy on ourselves. >> we are guilty of spying a lot of other countries and people have also been saying this as well, but they may be doing the same thing. as well as those saying what have we unleashed here. this is something of an anti-american reaction. because of the american companies that have really been cooperating with the government and allowing it to happen. challenging the restrictions may want to be able to tell their customers that is the marketplace speaking but the people around the world. >> about people from the other side? >> this includes what we can take the information we can do via the information. >> i do think that we should have more restrictions. this includes europe and canada and for years, we are talking about the bottom line and it's been a big problem with multinational corporations and they are required to give this information to government the government and in europe are not allowed here. so to pavlov's dog situation we've been registering for a long time having these data privacy protection laws that would be more consistent with the countries that we consider his peers we do. even if they have this information, it is different for this. >> last call for susan herman. kennesaw, georgia. please go ahead. >> caller: hello, i am a supporter and contributor to your organization and i think you on the front lines of a battle to preserve our liberty. bringing up the point, that is just that people who claim that they don't find the nsa spying because they have nothing to hide in fear areas and that is 70% is being done by private corporations that allen hamilton is owned by cargo, which is really a centerpiece that runs this country in the bushes were part of it and so on. the point is that you'll just have to trust the government, you have to trust the corporations that are implicated oftentimes in polluting the water and the air and so on and so forth. >> okay, i think we got the point. thank you for calling. >> thank you. we have to be concerned about this as well. government doing that in through law so the companies that have this information don't just hand it over at will. the other thing is the role of the individual. so the rule is to dissent is patriotic to talk back to the government and say why are you doing this and this is going too far and i think what we are also discovering is the corporations are going to listen and google is taking a different approach now than they were 10 years ago. >> the book is called "taking liberties." the erosion of american democracy. susan herman is president of the aclu and the author of the book and she has been our guest. thank you for joining us. a couple more hours of coverage from the miami book fair international and this is live on c-span. coming up, you're going to have a chance to talk with lawrence wright. his most recent book is about scientology and hollywood. he is also the author of the looming tower from several years ago and he was a finalist for the national book awards this year for this will go in clear and we will have a chance to talk to him in just a moment. and then the development of the nation. about half a half an hour or so. two well-known historians will be here as well and we will be able to chat with them and talk about their books and now will be live on c-span2 on booktv. but first we want to show you a little bit from wednesday night. george packer on the national book award and i'm going to show you a little bit of his acceptance speech and then we will have a chance to talk with lawrence right here in miami. here he is. [inaudible conversations] >> hello, i spent an hour with brian lamb on our progr> hello,h brian lamb on our program, our "q&a" program. >> just come and that is right. >> you will be live this weekend. the you're one of the finalists in the nonfiction category and is this the first time you have been nominated? >> yes, it has been tremendous and an honor. we all listen to each other from the four categories in the quality was just incredibly high and everyone had about three or four minutes. so we didn't have much time to get across the field and it was impressive and i felt honored to be in that company. >> which story did you tell? >> i read a passage that dean price was thinking about, the landscape of his landscape and what has happened to it recently. and he is listening to these trucks go by and he has some of them are full of chickens that are headed to the slaughterhouses which happens in the dead of night. and he begins to think about where these chickens go and the bojangles where he owns a restaurant and it's an elaborate and kind of dark picture of an economy of imported oil and people getting poorer in his part of the country. >> do you see what is going on in the country today economically as different from other transformations that we have had in our nation? the analogy would be to the early 19 hundreds when we had vast inequality of wealth and we had a handful of individuals at the top consolidating and then we had a lot of new immigrants who were struggling to survive. fifty years of what i call the roosevelt republicans among which middle-class people beginning to get ahead started to come undone in the late 70s and now we are back to something like that vast inequality of the earlier 20th century without some of the protections so it is a repetition butterfields neil and a vision of transformation that led to the new deal back then now everyone feels sort of isolated in their own troubles in trying to line solutions for themselves. and there is a national movement and that is what makes this a more troubling time. >> three out of the five nonfiction finalists. >> i think david is feeling very happy tonight and feeling incredibly impartial. and that is a tribute to what he has done with the magazine and what kind of talent there is across the board, not just the three of us, but really across the board. [inaudible conversations] >> the national book award for nonfiction, i regret now? >> we have eric sundquist who is winner of the james russell lowell prize from the modern language association and the award from phi beta kappa were the best looking humanity and the academic book award. this is a professor of humanities at johns hopkins university and it gives me great pleasure to introduce him. >> good evening and thank you. it is a great pleasure to be here. and let me thank the national book foundation for the privilege of judging this year's nominations in the category of nonfiction. and perhaps against beek for saying that in a lifetime of reading i have not had a more gratifying prizing and educational experience and we've had the pleasure of reviewing hundreds of books, 500 plus to be specific across a wide range of genres and topics. everywhere, and encountering contemporary american writing at its very best. i'm sure all of us at one point or another look back with envy at the 20 are. 1960s through the 1980s won multiple awards recognizing as many as eight different categories of nonfiction were presented. for us, however, all of those categories were crowded into one and as much as we would have loved to present many awards, we have first to know many of us down to a long list of 10 men down to these five finalists. the book of ages, the life and opinions of james franklin published. [applause] [applause] hitler's theories, german women in the killing field by fields by wendy lauer published by harcourt books. and the unwinding, by george packer. and the internal enemy, slavery and warner in virginia, 1772 to 1832 by alan taylor. published by david norton and company. and going clear, scientology and the prison of belief by lawrence wright. this goes to george packer. [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> this is an incredible honor and anyone who was at last night's reading knows that all of the nominees in this category is the great works. and i feel very lucky to be given this award. and thank you to my friends and the rest. you still do it the old-fashioned way, which is still the best way. [applause] >> thank you to the wylie agency for crucial intelligence and thank you to daniel zaleski and david remnick and others for giving me just the right balance of freedom and editorial trilliums. writers both understand as well and my children, charlie and julia, you did make it a lot more fun. thank you for sharing my life and my work and i can't imagine either one without you. and finally, i want to thank dean price and timmy thomas and jeff congleton and other americans who gave me the great guest of allowing in their lives so that i could illuminate some of what has gone wrong in america over the past generation. and in their own lines, some of what has gon much. [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ >> to george packer will be here at the miami book fair tomorrow and you'll you will be able to see an event with him and the entire national book awards and we should show portion of it right there that will re-air at 8:00 p.m. eastern on booktv. and joining us now on our site here is one of the finalists of the national book award, and that is lawrence wright. his most recent book is going clear, scientology and hollywood in the prison of bullies and you might know him as an author of the looming tower. the phrase going clear. where does it come from and what does it mean? >> well, l. ron hubbard invented the concept of dianetics and his concept was either two sides of your brain and one was the analytical side, perfectly reasonable, it's like a perfect computer, nothing wrong with it and remembers everything and can compute perfectly. and the other side is a reactive side that is full of fears and neuroses and the kinds of things that damage your life and if you can purge the emotional power, then your analytical brain will take over and you will be clear and more intelligent then you will be able to not get ill, your whole life will be a lot better and you'll be super human and a superior race of a beating and it's like camp, once you get to be clear, you go up to the spiritual level. >> 's luis l. ron hubbard and where did he come up with this? >> well, is one of the most interesting people that i've ever had the chance to write about and he was born in nebraska in 1911 and raised in the west and his father was a naval officer. and he really did have an interesting life and he had a tendency to try to make it more interesting than it was. he wrote for the magazines in the '30s and 40s when they paid a penny per word and the legend is that he wrote 100,000 words a month. so he wrote so quickly that he perspired and what roland paper into his typewriter and type and without a story and i have to say that this man does have the guinness book of world records title for the number of books published, more than a thousand. but he invented this and then he went broke after making millions of dollars. and he came up with an idea that religion is where the money is and he invented the church of scientology and it really was -- to give him credit than he deserves, one of the very few religions that it survived intact. >> why did he go broke after inventing dianetics and where does that come from? >> well, he didn't really have control over it. it was a self-help type therapy thing and the idea was you and your friend or your spouse can help each other in this set the standard at a time when the whole category was created. and he really formed a and he was a "new york times" bestseller for weeks and weeks and millions of copies as well. he also realized after he lost control of the organizations that he never really had a way of keeping the organization intact. and anyone can pick up this book is part of it and become an auditor, a therapist and to help them for themselves and not left a huge opening for professional organization that was never there. but it came out on the same time as a hula hoop and was about as popular as the dianetics all over america and other countries as well and it is hard to put it in context, but it was part of the community of sciences and they were absolutely puzzled as well. this is, to them, a psychological heads or tails of how this phenomenon came about and what it was based upon. >> was the public person and promoting this? >> yes, he created scientology have a lot more control over the organization. and he would bring people into train and he gave those courses as well. he had a lot of legal pressure, he was driven out of england and so he decided to take it to the high seas which is one place where he would be safe. so it would be a decade that he was there. >> is it a philosophy like other major religions? >> there is a place for god in a higher power. but it's not clearly defined. in scientology he speaks of these dynamics and there is a group in nature and so on and it is sort of a vacant throne in scientology. and it is a little bit difficult because they don't want to think of themselves specifically as a religion except for tax purposes. that is critical that they bill themselves as a technology and it's not a belief system so much as a technology. step-by-step can build yourself up to achieving spiritual enlightenment. >> is it as far as the rs is concerned? >> guesstimate assistant interesting story. and for some reason he decided not to tax on the church of scientology. and they didn't have a billion dollars and so it was an existential moment for the church. they had to get a tax exemption. and was a leader then and they filed 2400 losses against individual agents and detectives to follow them around and irs agents to go out and find who is sleeping around and drinking too much and they would write articles about them and they would, you know, it was very upsetting to the irs. but whatever the merits of the case was that they presented, the facts were that they had agencies and eventually they forgave this and they found a $12 million and allow them to decide for themselves and even the novels of ron hubbard are all considered scripture and tax exempt. so the irs completely caved on this. >> going clear is the title of the book. if you would like to participate in a conversation, please call. if you live in the east and central time zones. those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones, send a comment via twitter at the tv, and that is our twitter handle. was it at all appealing to you at the concept of scientology after spending this time researching it? >> i have written about a lot of things. i suppose i have an interest in religious beliefs. and if you don't find that come you can make up your own as l. ron hubbard dead. but yes, i think what people get out of it, they offer courses and if you were to walk into your local church and say that you're curious to know what they do here, they would say what is ruining your life and keeping you from progressing morally and spiritually and romantically and we can help you. we have a menu of courses and people do get lots of help. he took a communications course and he's not a scientologist, but he credits it and there's a lot of story like that. then there is the therapy and it is done with what is called an eager than there used to be some soup cans with a meter connected dialectical liars and has a current that measures your galvanic responses. one totable lie detector. and it's like being in a therapy session with a lie detector, which changes the relationship and people find a lot of that and they sometimes have mystical experiences. many have it reported to me that since having an out of body experience, it validates it was a true memory and that's very powerful. because of you have this thing saying that this is true, that means that you have life that that really is a family go from one life to another and that's the central message of scientology. >> is difficult in your view? >> i don't call it a cult. there's only one organization makes a distinction that is the irs and everything else is just opinion. the irs decided it was going to record an with the same protections than any other established religion in this country has. and this includes legal inquiries that otherwise might be undertaken. >> why hollywood? >> he knew that there was one thing that americans really worship and that seems to be celebrities. in the capital of celebrity is hollywood. so he set up his church and created this and began cultivating entertainers and movie stars and young people that would beam going into this business. and all the time, they sent out a roster of scientologist and the late bob hope and walt disney and they wanted them in the church. and just like sports stars were on wheaties cereal boxes. they wanted people to advertise the benefits of scientology may have eventually got that. >> gloria swanson, the faded star of silent movies and some others, like elvis presley walked into the church weekly, his widow and daughter are still from the church and prominent members and members of the grateful dead and leonard cohen, a lot of people went in early on. and it wasn't until john travolta came along that they snag someone that was a visible, you know, the biggest star in the world at the time. and then tom cruise who is certainly the most famous scientologist since l. ron hubbard himself. >> is a wealthy organization? >> estimate they have a great deal of this and it would be difficult for the catholic church to cough up a billion dollars in cash right now. who's membership and they are hemorrhaging members. and i think that they are really suffering as long as they have we have a billion dollars to sit upon. >> do think it is one secret from the catholic church? >> is more interesting to compare with the mormons. and they were the most stigmatized religion in the country and there is never -- there's never been a more persecuted set of people than the mormons and they were chased out of one set over the other. and they had a lot of hatred directed at the mormons that was unbelievable and the leader was assassinated and eventually it was something called the utah war, general custer was sent there to try to deal with this and eventually the leader of the church had a revelation that we no longer wanted to be a theocracy and we wanted to be a part of united states and we no longer want to be polygamists. and that's not even an issue. this includes how this organization was. it is one of the fastest going religions seen as an american religion. and i don't know if that will happen in scientology. >> lawrence wright is our guest the book is "going clear." we have a call from west virginia. >> caller: hello. earlier today he spoke in a presentation with some members and suggested that quite a few of us that have talked about this, primarily tom cruise. and perhaps they could bring this to bear on the hierarchy. but i'm wondering of the approval of these leaders to maintain their high profiles in hollywood. and what does not harm their careers? >> thank you, that's a really good question. i want to mention this and these are people that have joined the church and become a part of the clergy and oftentimes as very young children and people. and a sinus for a billion years of service with the idea that life is infinite and so it's not too much to ask. they are paid $50 per week and there is a core benefit of this labor on a number of occasions. they handcrafted a limousine for him and it is the most prized possession. nobody in the church is given the kind of treatment that tom cruise is given. and i am sure that he knows about the abuses that have taken place inside the higher reaches of the church and its cadres. at least 12 people have told me personally that they have been beaten by the leader of the church and they are confined and for years at a time. and the leader of the church as a mormon, by the way, and he has been in this double wide trailer that they have on the headquarters for seven years. so it's not just a weekend stay. and these are serious abuses and i think scientology has to face this what is going on. it is a religion in the courts have held that these are religious practices and there's nothing they can do. there are only two avenues, one is the irs and i don't think that they want to go back to this. the other is some of the celebrity superstars that have been advertising the benefits could turn the microphone around and demand does and no one more so than tom cruise who has benefited inside the church. >> yes, the two-time academy award winner. and tommy davis was the head spokesperson. and he was going through scientology. on a sunday afternoon at 3:00 o'clock he became and that he would agree. you agree to fact checking questions. an archer, tommy davis' mother, and some other prominent members of the church. and tommy agreed to answer these questions in our first round and there was this and tommy davis and his wife came to the new york offices along with these two respond to these questions. i was in heaven. this was, to me, my editor threw me aside and said you know what you've got. and in that sense i was given a lot of operations and then they turn off the spigot and is continued to send backchecking theories and they were very reluctant. but they did respond somewhat. >> his book is "going clear." we have about a minute left with another color. go ahead, david. >> thank you. do you know the book in the name of science, which criticized dianetics in the 1960s. and then the quote that sunlight is the best disinfectant. what are your thoughts? >> i used to be a subscriber and it's really helpful. some like being the best disinfectant, it seems to be the only way to deal with this organization. i ran into an fbi investigation and they were talking to some of the same people and i found out what they were telling the fbi and the fbi was preparing to free all of these people at the headquarters and then a judge in colorado ruled about this, but these are religious practices of the judge was involved in. so they dropped the investigation and the government can't do anything. the only thing that can be done is let people know what is actually happening inside this church. >> good afternoon. sheila? @> caller: hello, i am still >> caller: hello, i am still here. >> hello, this is sheila,. >> caller: there is a location called gilman springs i don't know if this is the organization that you are talking about. but it does seem that people drive by there and they have cameras and they turn the sprinklers on for people to stop by and they don't like people poking in and it's almost like a compound. >> what you are talking about is actually the international headquarters near hemet in southern california. formally an old spot.
has been described as the most important civil rights leader not everyone has heard of. and this holiday special, we hear dr. harding in his own words and plan excerpt of martin luther king historic speech against the war in vietnam, which vincent harding wrote. >> we must move past indecision. we must find new ways to speak for peace in vietnam and justice throughout the developing world. on our doors.ders if we do not act, we shall long, be dragged down the dark, and shameful corridors of time. and for those for power without compassion, might without morality and strength without sight. >> vincent harding and martin luther king for the hour. all of that and more coming up. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. today we spend the hour remembering the pioneering historian, theologian, and peace activist dr. vincent harding. he died may 19 at the age of 82. he was a close adviser to dr. martin luther king and wrote king's famous antiwar speech "beyond vietnam." king delivered the address at riverside church here in new , 1960 seven, exactly one year to the day before he was assassinated in memphis, tennessee. harding was involved in numerous civil rights groups including the southern christian ship conference, the student nonviolent court in committee and racial equality. after king was assassinated, harding became the first director of the martin luther king jr. memorial center and of the institute of the black world. you later became a professor at iowa school of theology in denver. professor described him as "the most importance overrides leader not everyone has heard of. i interviewed vincent harding in our firehouse studio unable first, 2008. it was three days before the 30th anniversary of king's assassination. it was in the middle of barack obama's historic run for president. i began by asking dr. harding to talk about where he was when he learned that dr. king had been killed april 4, 1968. >> i was sitting with my wife and a friend from new york. wilfred cartey, at the famous paschal's motel and restaurant in atlanta, and the three of us were having dinner that evening. and the owner of paschal's came over to me, whispered in my ear the first word that had come about martin being shot. and that's where i was, and that's where i will never forget being. >> and your thoughts at that time? you didn't even know he was dead at that point. >> no, no. but i was very worried that that is what might be taking place. and my wife and freddy and i just began to talk about the significance of it. i don't remember anything about what we said. i do remember the jolt that it was to me at the time, and then as the word began to go around the restaurant, it was clear that there was something passing through all of us who were in that restaurant at the time. >> you had known dr. king for 10 years. >> yes. >> you met him in '58? >> yes. >> how did you meet him? >> oh, it's a long, long story, amy. but let me see if i can be unusual and say that five of us who were members of an interracial church in chicago, on the south side of chicago, woodlawn mennonite church, had decided that we wanted to really test out our own convictions about brotherhood, as we termed it then-three white, two black -- got into an old station wagon and started out in little rock, arkansas, to drive across the south to pledge to each other that we would not allow ourselves to be separated, because we believed deeply that we were brothers in some god-given way. and as we were driving, we came into alabama, and it was clear to us that we shouldn't be in alabama without seeing martin king. and so, in those days of non-cellphones, non-computers, non-anything, we simply called his house and told coretta, who we had not met, that this crazy bunch of folks were driving through, and we wondered if we could come and see him. >> in montgomery. >> in montgomery. >> when he was head of the dexter avenue church. >> and more than that, he was recuperating at that time from the wound that he had sustained here in new york city, and he was in bed. coretta told him that these five guys were there and wanted to know if they could come and see him. and martin, in his wonderfully gracious way, said, "why now? sure, come on in." and when he heard that we were an interracial group and that we were driving through the south, he was just eager to encourage us. and so, we went in to meet him then, and he was in his pajamas in his bed, and we took about an hour or so of his time, and we had a great time. and -- >> this was a few years after the -- >> montgomery bus boycott, yes. >> montgomery bus boycott, rosa parks sitting down -- >> yes. >> on the bus, and he led the montgomery improvement association. so when you went to see him, just recovering from a bullet, he addressed that -- >> not a bullet, a letter opener, as a matter of fact. he had been stabbed at that time. >> ah, right. >> while he was on a book-signing tour. >> and said, if he had sneezed. >> yes. that was later that he put that together, but that was the "if i had sneezed" situation, yes, that he would have been gone at that point. >> what did you talk about? >> i'll tell you what i remember, amy, and that was that just as we were about to leave, he said to the other black guy and me -- the other guy's name was george edgar riddick, ed riddick, he said, "you guys especially, you know as a result of being in this peace church, you understand what we're trying to do with nonviolence down here. you guys ought to come down here and help us," and said that especially to ed and myself. and i never forgot that. and three years later, my wife and i were down there in the south working in the movement and being next-door neighbors and friends with martin and coretta. but i also remember, without the details, that he was joking about the fact that we were really asking for trouble driving through the south with three of the five of us like that. he had a marvelous sense of humor, always teasing people. and that was one thing that i recall. the conversation, i don't think was full of gravitas, it was full of appreciation for each other and encouragement of each other. and as i said, his call to us, not to stay away, but to come back south. >> dr. harding, can you talk about the movements that he spearheaded, was a part of, was inspired by and then inspired, and how it changed, how he evolved in those 10 years from '58 to '68? >> amy, i am very glad that you put it that way, because that is precisely the way that i see the historical development. martin had originally gone to montgomery with an image, a vision, perhaps, of being pastor of that relatively small dexter avenue baptist church, very middle-class church, and then perhaps to be a dean at the black college there in montgomery. and it was the action of the people, particularly sparked off by rosa parks, which in a deep sense helped him to revision what he was about, why he was there. out of that, he developed a new sense of himself and at the same moment helped the people to develop a new sense of their selves. and so, this dialectic between him and the community led to an opening that became an opening for the whole country, and eventually, in many ways, for many parts of the world. >> can you talk about what happened in birmingham, how he ended up in jail there, how he ended up writing his letter? the position he took, it was not only against the white authorities, it was not only against those in governance, but also those even in the black community who felt he was going too far. >> birmingham 1963 seems light years away now, but that is the fact, that martin had been invited to come to birmingham by that magnificent madman, fred shuttlesworth, who had carried on almost a single-handed struggle to break the segregation -- the violent, terrorist segregation -- of that city of birmingham, and then invited martin and sclc to come in. many, many people in that city took the position that many people take in similar situations -- this is terrible, but if we try to do something about it, it's going to be more terrible, so why don't we just let things lay as they are? and king and shuttlesworth were quite convinced that this needed to change and that that city needed to be challenged. and the apathy of so many of the people also needed to be challenged. and i had the good fortune, with my wife rosemarie, to be asked by martin to come to birmingham and to help in that situation, particularly to help in the work of finding the white people in that situation who wanted to try to take the chance to work for change. king came especially to our attention there in birmingham because there was a whole development in which many of the protesters were young people, and in some cases children, who came to play a crucial role in leading the struggle against segregation, partly because many of the adults were afraid to, couldn't afford to, were worried about what would happen to them and their livelihoods if they did it. and the children took the role. they were arrested, after the dogs and the firehoses. they were put in jail. they were not able, after a while -- sclc wasn't able to get all of the bond money that was needed to get everyone out. and king, i remember very much, one friday afternoon, in his motel room, simply said, "i don't know what i can do to get the money to get these folks out, young and old, but i do know that what i can do is to go in there with them." and so, he then led a march that was against the law at the time, and he was arrested and put into jail. it was in that context that he took the opportunity to work on that now -- famous "letter from birmingham jail," in which he was responding to people who would, in this day, be considered moderate christian, white christian leaders, essentially saying, "king ought not to come. king is an outsider. king is stirring up trouble. why is he doing this?" and king tried, in that letter, to speak to those men-they were all men-trying to help them to understand what it meant for black people to live in the midst of a segregated society. and to those christian men, he tried to make it very clear that he saw the way in which black people had been forced to live was clearly against the will of any loving god. and he was raising questions as to whether or not those who were leaders in the communities of god ought to be standing against change, or whether they ought to be in the forefront of change. so that letter was what came out of him in that birmingham situation. >> dr. vincent harding. 82. died at the age of we will be back with my interview in a moment. ♪ [music break] >> this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we remember today the life of historian, theologian and civil rights activist dr. vincent harding. he died may 19 at the age of 82. he was a close aide to dr. martin luther king and wrote his beyondic antiwar speech, " vietnam" in 1967. i spoke to vincent harding in april 2008 and asked him to talk about the lead up to the 1963 march on washington for jobs and freedom. i asked him what martin luther king was fighting for at the time. amy, that martin saw very clearly that this country could never achieve its best possibilities as long as it continued either to embrace segregation as a way of life or to make believe that segregation didn't exist and try to ignore it. and so, martin was trying to do everything that he possibly could to lift up the reality of what segregation in america meant both to those of us who suffered most directly under segregation, but what it meant as a contradiction to the claims of the country itself. and what he was trying to do in as many ways as possible was to dramatize what segregation was about, to dramatize the struggles against segregation. and he was trying -- and this was part of what led up to 1963 and the march -- he was trying to encourage the hundreds of thousands of people all over the south who were carrying on campaigns like the birmingham campaign to struggle against segregation. and he was trying to call attention, as i said, saying to the country, "look, this is your country. this is our country. we cannot ignore what's going on here," and at the same moment, saying to the people who were fighting against segregation, "this is a holy battle, and you are doing exactly what you should do. do not give up. do not be despairing. we are able to overcome what is against us." >> yet, you had people like the activist john lewis, now congressman, from atlanta, georgia, whose speech was toned down. >>yes. >> why? at 1963. he wasn't allowed to give the address he wanted to give. >> john was trying to speak very clearly about the fact that, even though the kennedy administration had given the impression, in many ways, that they were on the side of the movement against segregation, they were not ready to take the risks, the chances, that a political organization needed to take in order to stand with the movement to break down segregation. and john wanted to be very clear that, as he put it, those were not the allies that they claimed to be. he wanted to make it very clear that it was necessary to bring even more pressure by being even more radical in the action that was to go on in the south. and he was taking a very radicalized position, and many of the people who were on the platform there with him simply said, "we don't want to be identified with that. we want things to be pleasant and generally acceptable to the kennedys and to the world. and if you start talking like that, we cannot be associated with you." and so there was some calming down of the position that he was taking at the time. >> what about dr. king's relationship with the kennedys? president kennedy would be assassinated a few months later. >> i think we could say that martin was helping those men to get an education about what their country was really about. he was helping them to see what their role was, as leaders of the country, to bring about change. and he was certainly challenging them to ask whether or not they could continue to talk about being leaders of the free world and having a major section of the population of this country denied something as simple and as necessary as the right to vote. so king was educating them. king was challenging them. and at the same moment, king was depending upon their help and assistance and the opening of their eyes to bring in the kind of federal assistance that was needed to make possible the continued movement of the people who were struggling to change the country. it was a tough kind of situation. they respected him. they realized that he was a part of a movement that was opening the country in new ways. but they were also worried about what would happen if this got out of hand. king, on the other hand, recognized that they were learning, but he knew that they were learning too slowly, and he knew that they were learning as politicians --always watching the edges from where they could be attacked and lose their own power and constituency. so it was quite a dance that was going on between and among them. >> dr. harding, you -- he worked -- dr. king worked with lyndon johnson on the civil rights act of '64, the voting rights act of '65, but then he turns on him around the issue of the vietnam war. >> king insists that johnson recognize what great damage the war is doing, both to the people of vietnam and to the poor people of the united states. so he -- in a sense, he says to johnson, "you must turn and see what is going on." he does not turn on johnson. he is trying to enlighten johnson as to what the war is doing to devastate the hopes of the poor here and the hopes of the poor abroad. >> so talk about dr. king's evolution in being willing to speak out publicly around the war in vietnam. how much risk was he taking? >> let's talk about a risk that he was very aware of from the outset. and he would put it in these terms -- he was at great risk of damaging his own soul and spirit if he did not speak out against what he knew was terrible. king was, in the deepest part of his being, a pastor, caring for those who were beaten up, caring for those who were in need, and, in the great traditional ways of the christian faith, caring for the most outcast and those who were considered poor and needy. king was always attuned to that. had he not spoken on behalf of what the war was doing to those people in this country and overseas, he would not have been able to live with himself. what he did was to then realize that a struggle was going on within himself and outside of himself. johnson had, in a sense, made this his war and was determined to carry it on as long as seemed necessary. in addition to that, before the antiwar movement really built up, there were all kinds of wonderful, liberal people, mostly white but also some black, who really were with johnson on the war. so king knew that if he -- as he stood up against the war, he would be going against not only johnson, but against a lot of people within the civil rights community and a lot of the people who gave money to the civil rights community. people said to him that it was absolutely dangerous to run the risk of moving against those kinds of people. but king, on the other hand, said that if he really loved this country, he had to speak about what this country was doing to the vietnamese, doing to its own people, what this country in a sense was doing to itself. and as pastor, as patriot, as lover of the country, he had no other choice but to speak out very clearly and make it plain that what was going on in vietnam was wrong from every point of view. and he knew that that was a risk. he knew that that would anger johnson. he knew that that would cause him to lose support from many people in the liberal communities, both black and white. but that was what he knew he had to do. >> april 4th is not only the anniversary of the assassination of dr. king in 1968, but the anniversary of the speech he gave at riverside church here in new york, april 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was killed. do you think there's a connection? >> amy, i have long felt, and i continue to feel, that it is impossible to understand martin's assassination by only understanding a white segregationist man who killed martin by himself. i am deeply convinced that martin's two actions -- one, of trying to organize the poor to challenge this government in washington, d.c., in the poor people's campaign; and martin's determination not just to speak out against the vietnam, but to speak out against the entire imperialist and militarist direction of the country -- all of that has to be understood when we try to understand martin's assassination. so, yes, i see a connection. >> talk about your collaboration with dr. king on this speech. when did you start to talk about it with him? >> in a way, amy, as long as martin and i knew each other, we were talking about the kinds of things that were involved in that speech. we were talking about the tremendous damage that war does to those who participate in it, to those who are the victims of it, to those who lose tremendous possibilities in their own lives because of it. and we were always talking about what it might mean to try to find creative, nonviolent alternatives to the terrible old-fashionness of war as a way of solving problems. and then, when vietnam began to develop on all of our screens in the 1960s, we talked a great deal about our country's role and a great deal about the role of those of us who were believers in the way of nonviolent struggle for change and what our responsibility was both as nonviolent believers and as followers of the teachings and the ways of jesus the christ. so when martin was clear with himself that he had to make a major public address on this subject, as fully as he could possibly do it, he was looking for a setting in which that could be done on the grounds of his religious stance particularly. and when clergy and laity against the war in vietnam invited him to do that at riverside for the occasion of their gathering in april 1967, it was clear to him that that was the place that he really ought to make the speech or take the stand in the most public way possible. at the same moment, he was deeply involved in running all across the country again and again, trying to raise money for the work that was going on in the south and in the north, and he didn't have the time to put together the kind of speech that he would want to give on that kind of occasion. and because we knew each other's feelings, thoughts, commitments, convictions about this, he asked me if i would draft this-in a way, draft it for us, because it was our joint convictions that were being spoken. and i did the drafting, and that draft essentially became the speech, sermon, call, cry of the heart that he put forward in april 1967. >> where did you write it? >> mostly in the basement of the house that our family was living in, in atlanta on the corner of ashby and fair, not far from the morehouse campus, not far from the spelman campus, where i was teaching at the time. my family had gone up to chicago to be with the larger family over the christmas break. i was alone, working at the house, having the time just to do nothing but work on that. and that was what caught me up and engaged me for those weeks during that christmas break. >> did you have discussions with him about it before he delivered it april 4th? >> no. he actually vetted it with several other people who might not be as crazy as i was, to see what their kinds of responses were. there were some suggestions of some toning down of some things. but i was very glad that, in a sense, he was saying, in most cases, "this is me, and i want to stand with this." and so, we did not talk, really, about it after that process had begun. all of our talking and thinking and hoping had been done before. >> historian, theologian, civil rights activist dr. vincent harding. he died on may 19 in philadelphia at the age of 82. we will be back with my interview in a moment. ♪ [music break] >> this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we are remembering the life of historian, theologian and civil rights activist dr. vincent harding. he died may 19 at the age of 82. he was a close aide to dr. martin luther king, wrote his historic antiwar "beyond vietnam" speech. before we return to my interview, i want to turn to the part of dr. martin luther's king speech when he was at riverside church. it is april 4, 1967. >> we can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation for the oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever rising tides of hate. history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. as arnold toynbee says, love is the ultimate force that makes the saving choice of life and good against the damming choice of death and evil. therefore, the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word. we are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. we are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. in this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. procrastination is still the thief of time. life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and ejected with a lost opportunity. the tide in the affairs of men does not remain have fled -- it eggs. we make right out desperately pause and or passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. and the bleached bones jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words "too late." there is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. and moving finger writes, having writ moves on." we still have a choice today. nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. we must move past indecision to action. we must find new ways to speak for peace in vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, our world that borders on our doors. if we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion , might without morality, and strength without sight. now let us begin. now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for new world. this is the calling of the sons of god, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. shall we say the odds are two great? shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? will our message be that the forces of american life from military against their rival is full men, and we send our deepest regrets? or will there be another message of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? the choice is ours. and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose and his crucial moment of human history. as a noble bard of yesterday, james russell lowell, eloquently stated, "once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide in the strife of truth and falsehood, for the good or evil side. some great cause, god's new messiah offering each the bloom or blight, and the choice goes by forever twixt that darkness and the light. though the cause of evil prosper, yet tis truth alone is strong though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim . within thedeth shadows, keeping watch above his own. and if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. if we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over america and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. [applause] king on april 4, 1967. a year to the day before he was assassinated in memphis. the speech was written by dr. vincent harding who died may 19 this year at the age of 82. we now go back to my 2008 interview with dr. vincent harding who joined us in our firehouse studio. it was april 1, 2008, three days before the 40th anniversary of dr. king's assassination. it was in the middle of barack obama's first historic run for president. dr. king's own organization, which you worked with also, the southern christian leadership conference, voted after this speech, the board of directors, not to back dr. king in his opposition to the war. what effect did that have? >> you know, amy, i do not remember it as direct as that. and i will take you on that. what i do know was that there was major opposition within the organization, within the board, as i said, within the civil rights leadership community. martin, i think, in the face of all of that, from those various points, was clearly disappointed that people were not as ready as he felt they should be to take such a clear stand, which he saw very deeply connected to the that people were not as ready as he felt they should be to take such a clear stand, which he saw very deeply connected to the work that we were doing here on behalf of the poor. and he was disappointed, but he knew that that had to be expected, when you step out, and he was determined to keep stepping out. and that, i think, is the best that i can say about that. >> so let's talk about that last year and memphis. when had you spoken with him last? >> i'm not sure that i can tie that down, amy. i know that one of my major memories of that last year, 1968, was seeing martin in ralph abernathy's church at a gathering of people who had come in from across the country to talk about the poor people's campaign. and there were poor white from appalachia. there were native americans from various parts of the country. there were chicanos, mexicanos from the southwest primarily. there were blacks from both north and south. and i was just struck by the way in which i saw, i felt, in the faces of so many of the people there the question of "are we really ready to go this far to bring a major challenge across these lines into the face of the face of the nation itself?" but that was the last memory that i have of that year, and i did not speak to him directly before he went to memphis, but i knew that he was going in, and i knew that he was going, because he was deeply committed to what the struggle of the garbage workers meant to them and meant to the country. >> there is a lot of commentary now about ministers speaking out, like jeremiah wright, barack obama's minister in chicago, quoting him saying things like "god damn america." and i was thinking back to dr. king and what he was saying at the time, for example, saying that the united states is the greatest purveyor of violence on earth today. what about what he had to say and how he was seen at the time? >> by 1968, it was very clear to martin and to those who were close to him that that pastoral role that he had taken on all of his life was always matched by a prophetic role, in which he had to stand up and speak truth to power and to say what he really saw was going on that was against what he understood to be the will of god for human beings and, certainly, for this country. and martin, in that speech, for instance, was trying to say, in a variety of ways, that this country was going very wrong, doing very wrong, and doing it against the best interest of the weakest people in the world. and king had no hesitation about doing this, because king loved this country and understood that that kind of love demanded that kind of truth and that kind of honesty. and he also knew that, for a lot of people, there was no understanding of america in the way that he had come to understand america, both by being black and by being with those who were underneath america. and i should say, at this point, by listening with a very clear and understanding ear to someone who spoke that way all the time, malcolm x, martin, by the time malcolm was assassinated, was really recognizing that malcolm, in many, many cases, was speaking deep truth about the kinds of pathways that this country was taking that were negative pathways, that were not helpful pathways, and that were pathways that needed to change. so king had that in his tradition. as you probably know, being a follower of the -- what we call the judeo-christian tradition, the role of the prophet is very clear -- the prophet stands to face the rulers with what is wrong, not to sing patriotic songs, but their great responsibility is to say, "this is what god requires. this is what you are doing. you're in trouble, because you are going against what it is god requires." >> what are your thoughts on reverend wright? >> i am very glad that we have had reverend wrights all through our history in this country. i think it has been good for black people. and for those whites who would listen, it has been good for them, as well. i know jeremiah wright just a bit, and i appreciate him a great deal. i choose very specifically not to judge him by sound bites, but by the fullness of his life, which i have seen, from the chicago that i know, as being a life full of service to that community, full of service in such a way that he was building people in every possible way that he could. and i respect him a great deal. one of the small things that always comes to my mind is that when my first major book "there is a river," was published back in 1980, 1981, jeremiah wright was one of the few pastors who, as pastor, said, "i want this book to be read by everybody in my congregation. you come here from wherever you are, vincent, and you speak to my congregation about this book, because it is absolutely necessary that our people understand their history. you teach it to us, please." that was striking to me, a pastor who wanted to be a teacher and who wanted to help others learn from every teacher that they could. so i have a very warm place in my heart for jeremiah wright. >> did you go? >> oh, yes, and i had a wonderful time with his congregation, and they actually read it in preparation for the discussion that i had with them. >> and your main thesis in the book? >> it was that the struggle for freedom in this country, as carried on by african americans and our allies, has been a struggle that started from the beginning of the country and goes on throughout the life of the country, and that the country's life is made richer and better by that struggle and by the direction in which that struggle pushes us to go. >> one of the last actions in the last years of dr. king was to work in chicago. did he know jeremiah wright? >> it would be impossible to do anything with religion in chicago and not know jeremiah wright. that's for sure. i can't say for certain, but i would be strongly suspicious that he did and that they were friends, because they were walking along very similar pathways of critiquing for the good of the life of the country. >> the poor people's campaign that dr. king was building is not talked about very much. we know the "i have a dream" speech. and of course his last speech. just explain that to us, as we come to the end of dr. king's life. >> martin always understood that race and class were intricately involved in the life of this country. he also understood that the issues of poverty were issues that affected not only black people, but all kinds of other people, including white people. and he knew that if there were to be, as he hoped there would be, an opportunity for the building of this country into its best possible development, then somehow the issue of poverty had to be addressed, and because he was a person of both words and actions, he knew that poverty could not really be addressed unless the poor themselves took action to challenge a country that would not take action on their behalf. and so, martin was, towards the end of his life, you may remember, by the last years of his life, he was saying that america had to deal with three --what he called triple evils: the evil of racism, the evil of materialism and the evils of militarism. and he saw those three very much connected to each other. and by organizing the poor, he saw that -- especially organizing across racial lines, he saw that as addressing those evils in a way that had to be done by somebody. and he was in a position by 1968 to probably be the only person who could have called those groups of people together and said, "let us make a common ground to create a new america." that was his hope. that was what he was working for when he was killed. he was among the poor and calling upon the country to look and see the condition of the poor in order that we might see the possibilities of a new america. >> dr. harding, any last thoughts? >> i think that i am fascinated by the fact that 40 years after martin's assassination there should come on the scene someone who, when he's at his best, is making his theme "let us create a more perfect union." that, for me, was the essential message of king: let us work together against all the things that keep us from creating a more perfect union. i think that if my friend and brother, obama, can keep in our mind and keep in his mind the thing that we need most is to have a vision of the possibilities of a new america for us all, if that can happen, then we are on our way to something that martin king would be very, very glad to see: the pathway to a truly new america. >> the historian, diligent, civil rights activist vincent harding, speaking april 1, two thousand eight. he died in philadelphia this year may 19 at the age of 82. he lived in denver, but was in pennsylvania teaching at a quaker retreat outside philadelphia. visit democracynow.org to watch all of our interviews with vincent harding. that does it for our show. democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. e-mail your comments to outreach@democracynow.org or mail them to democracy now! p.o. box 693 new york, new york 10013. democracy now! [captioning made possible by democracy now!] w
has been described as the most important civil rights leader not everyone has heard of. and this holiday special, we hear dr. harding in his own words and plan excerpt of martin luther king historic speech against the war in vietnam, which vincent harding wrote. >> we must move past indecision. we must find new ways to speak for peace in vietnam and justice throughout the developing world. on our doors.ders if we do not act, we shall long, be dragged down the dark, and shameful corridors of time. and for those for power without compassion, might without morality and strength without sight. >> vincent harding and martin luther king for the hour. all of that and more coming up. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. today we spend the hour remembering the pioneering historian, theologian, and peace activist dr. vincent harding. he died may 19 at the age of 82. he was a close adviser to dr. martin luther king and wrote king's famous antiwar speech "beyond vietnam." king delivered the address at riverside church here in new , 1960 seven, exactly one year to the day before he was assassinated in memphis, tennessee. harding was involved in numerous civil rights groups including the southern christian ship conference, the student nonviolent court in committee and racial equality. after king was assassinated, harding became the first director of the martin luther king jr. memorial center and of the institute of the black world. you later became a professor at iowa school of theology in denver. professor described him as "the most importance overrides leader not everyone has heard of. i interviewed vincent harding in our firehouse studio unable first, 2008. it was three days before the 30th anniversary of king's assassination. it was in the middle of barack obama's historic run for president. i began by asking dr. harding to talk about where he was when he learned that dr. king had been killed april 4, 1968. >> i was sitting with my wife and a friend from new york. wilfred cartey, at the famous paschal's motel and restaurant in atlanta, and the three of us were having dinner that evening. and the owner of paschal's came over to me, whispered in my ear the first word that had come about martin being shot. and that's where i was, and that's where i will never forget being. >> and your thoughts at that time? you didn't even know he was dead at that point. >> no, no. but i was very worried that that is what might be taking place. and my wife and freddy and i just began to talk about the significance of it. i don't remember anything about what we said. i do remember the jolt that it was to me at the time, and then as the word began to go around the restaurant, it was clear that there was something passing through all of us who were in that restaurant at the time. >> you had known dr. king for 10 years. >> yes. >> you met him in '58? >> yes. >> how did you meet him? >> oh, it's a long, long story, amy. but let me see if i can be unusual and say that five of us who were members of an interracial church in chicago, on the south side of chicago, woodlawn mennonite church, had decided that we wanted to really test out our own convictions about brotherhood, as we termed it then-three white, two black -- got into an old station wagon and started out in little rock, arkansas, to drive across the south to pledge to each other that we would not allow ourselves to be separated, because we believed deeply that we were brothers in some god-given way. and as we were driving, we came into alabama, and it was clear to us that we shouldn't be in alabama without seeing martin king. and so, in those days of non-cellphones, non-computers, non-anything, we simply called his house and told coretta, who we had not met, that this crazy bunch of folks were driving through, and we wondered if we could come and see him. >> in montgomery. >> in montgomery. >> when he was head of the dexter avenue church. >> and more than that, he was recuperating at that time from the wound that he had sustained here in new york city, and he was in bed. coretta told him that these five guys were there and wanted to know if they could come and see him. and martin, in his wonderfully gracious way, said, "why now? sure, come on in." and when he heard that we were an interracial group and that we were driving through the south, he was just eager to encourage us. and so, we went in to meet him then, and he was in his pajamas in his bed, and we took about an hour or so of his time, and we had a great time. and -- >> this was a few years after the -- >> montgomery bus boycott, yes. >> montgomery bus boycott, rosa parks sitting down -- >> yes. >> on the bus, and he led the montgomery improvement association. so when you went to see him, just recovering from a bullet, he addressed that -- >> not a bullet, a letter opener, as a matter of fact. he had been stabbed at that time. >> ah, right. >> while he was on a book-signing tour. >> and said, if he had sneezed. >> yes. that was later that he put that together, but that was the "if i had sneezed" situation, yes, that he would have been gone at that point. >> what did you talk about? >> i'll tell you what i remember, amy, and that was that just as we were about to leave, he said to the other black guy and me -- the other guy's name was george edgar riddick, ed riddick, he said, "you guys especially, you know as a result of being in this peace church, you understand what we're trying to do with nonviolence down here. you guys ought to come down here and help us," and said that especially to ed and myself. and i never forgot that. and three years later, my wife and i were down there in the south working in the movement and being next-door neighbors and friends with martin and coretta. but i also remember, without the details, that he was joking about the fact that we were really asking for trouble driving through the south with three of the five of us like that. he had a marvelous sense of humor, always teasing people. and that was one thing that i recall. the conversation, i don't think was full of gravitas, it was full of appreciation for each other and encouragement of each other. and as i said, his call to us, not to stay away, but to come back south. >> dr. harding, can you talk about the movements that he spearheaded, was a part of, was inspired by and then inspired, and how it changed, how he evolved in those 10 years from '58 to '68? >> amy, i am very glad that you put it that way, because that is precisely the way that i see the historical development. martin had originally gone to montgomery with an image, a vision, perhaps, of being pastor of that relatively small dexter avenue baptist church, very middle-class church, and then perhaps to be a dean at the black college there in montgomery. and it was the action of the people, particularly sparked off by rosa parks, which in a deep sense helped him to revision what he was about, why he was there. out of that, he developed a new sense of himself and at the same moment helped the people to develop a new sense of their selves. and so, this dialectic between him and the community led to an opening that became an opening for the whole country, and eventually, in many ways, for many parts of the world. >> can you talk about what happened in birmingham, how he ended up in jail there, how he ended up writing his letter? the position he took, it was not only against the white authorities, it was not only against those in governance, but also those even in the black community who felt he was going too far. >> birmingham 1963 seems light years away now, but that is the fact, that martin had been invited to come to birmingham by that magnificent madman, fred shuttlesworth, who had carried on almost a single-handed struggle to break the segregation -- the violent, terrorist segregation -- of that city of birmingham, and then invited martin and sclc to come in. many, many people in that city took the position that many people take in similar situations -- this is terrible, but if we try to do something about it, it's going to be more terrible, so why don't we just let things lay as they are? and king and shuttlesworth were quite convinced that this needed to change and that that city needed to be challenged. and the apathy of so many of the people also needed to be challenged. and i had the good fortune, with my wife rosemarie, to be asked by martin to come to birmingham and to help in that situation, particularly to help in the work of finding the white people in that situation who wanted to try to take the chance to work for change. king came especially to our attention there in birmingham because there was a whole development in which many of the protesters were young people, and in some cases children, who came to play a crucial role in leading the struggle against segregation, partly because many of the adults were afraid to, couldn't afford to, were worried about what would happen to them and their livelihoods if they did it. and the children took the role. they were arrested, after the dogs and the firehoses. they were put in jail. they were not able, after a while -- sclc wasn't able to get all of the bond money that was needed to get everyone out. and king, i remember very much, one friday afternoon, in his motel room, simply said, "i don't know what i can do to get the money to get these folks out, young and old, but i do know that what i can do is to go in there with them." and so, he then led a march that was against the law at the time, and he was arrested and put into jail. it was in that context that he took the opportunity to work on that now -- famous "letter from birmingham jail," in which he was responding to people who would, in this day, be considered moderate christian, white christian leaders, essentially saying, "king ought not to come. king is an outsider. king is stirring up trouble. why is he doing this?" and king tried, in that letter, to speak to those men-they were all men-trying to help them to understand what it meant for black people to live in the midst of a segregated society. and to those christian men, he tried to make it very clear that he saw the way in which black people had been forced to live was clearly against the will of any loving god. and he was raising questions as to whether or not those who were leaders in the communities of god ought to be standing against change, or whether they ought to be in the forefront of change. so that letter was what came out of him in that birmingham situation. >> dr. vincent harding. 82. died at the age of we will be back with my interview in a moment. ♪ [music break] >> this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we remember today the life of historian, theologian and civil rights activist dr. vincent harding. he died may 19 at the age of 82. he was a close aide to dr. martin luther king and wrote his beyondic antiwar speech, " vietnam" in 1967. i spoke to vincent harding in april 2008 and asked him to talk about the lead up to the 1963 march on washington for jobs and freedom. i asked him what martin luther king was fighting for at the time. amy, that martin saw very clearly that this country could never achieve its best possibilities as long as it continued either to embrace segregation as a way of life or to make believe that segregation didn't exist and try to ignore it. and so, martin was trying to do everything that he possibly could to lift up the reality of what segregation in america meant both to those of us who suffered most directly under segregation, but what it meant as a contradiction to the claims of the country itself. and what he was trying to do in as many ways as possible was to dramatize what segregation was about, to dramatize the struggles against segregation. and he was trying -- and this was part of what led up to 1963 and the march -- he was trying to encourage the hundreds of thousands of people all over the south who were carrying on campaigns like the birmingham campaign to struggle against segregation. and he was trying to call attention, as i said, saying to the country, "look, this is your country. this is our country. we cannot ignore what's going on here," and at the same moment, saying to the people who were fighting against segregation, "this is a holy battle, and you are doing exactly what you should do. do not give up. do not be despairing. we are able to overcome what is against us." >> yet, you had people like the activist john lewis, now congressman, from atlanta, georgia, whose speech was toned down. >>yes. >> why? at 1963. he wasn't allowed to give the address he wanted to give. >> john was trying to speak very clearly about the fact that, even though the kennedy administration had given the impression, in many ways, that they were on the side of the movement against segregation, they were not ready to take the risks, the chances, that a political organization needed to take in order to stand with the movement to break down segregation. and john wanted to be very clear that, as he put it, those were not the allies that they claimed to be. he wanted to make it very clear that it was necessary to bring even more pressure by being even more radical in the action that was to go on in the south. and he was taking a very radicalized position, and many of the people who were on the platform there with him simply said, "we don't want to be identified with that. we want things to be pleasant and generally acceptable to the kennedys and to the world. and if you start talking like that, we cannot be associated with you." and so there was some calming down of the position that he was taking at the time. >> what about dr. king's relationship with the kennedys? president kennedy would be assassinated a few months later. >> i think we could say that martin was helping those men to get an education about what their country was really about. he was helping them to see what their role was, as leaders of the country, to bring about change. and he was certainly challenging them to ask whether or not they could continue to talk about being leaders of the free world and having a major section of the population of this country denied something as simple and as necessary as the right to vote. so king was educating them. king was challenging them. and at the same moment, king was depending upon their help and assistance and the opening of their eyes to bring in the kind of federal assistance that was needed to make possible the continued movement of the people who were struggling to change the country. it was a tough kind of situation. they respected him. they realized that he was a part of a movement that was opening the country in new ways. but they were also worried about what would happen if this got out of hand. king, on the other hand, recognized that they were learning, but he knew that they were learning too slowly, and he knew that they were learning as politicians --always watching the edges from where they could be attacked and lose their own power and constituency. so it was quite a dance that was going on between and among them. >> dr. harding, you -- he worked -- dr. king worked with lyndon johnson on the civil rights act of '64, the voting rights act of '65, but then he turns on him around the issue of the vietnam war. >> king insists that johnson recognize what great damage the war is doing, both to the people of vietnam and to the poor people of the united states. so he -- in a sense, he says to johnson, "you must turn and see what is going on." he does not turn on johnson. he is trying to enlighten johnson as to what the war is doing to devastate the hopes of the poor here and the hopes of the poor abroad. >> so talk about dr. king's evolution in being willing to speak out publicly around the war in vietnam. how much risk was he taking? >> let's talk about a risk that he was very aware of from the outset. and he would put it in these terms -- he was at great risk of damaging his own soul and spirit if he did not speak out against what he knew was terrible. king was, in the deepest part of his being, a pastor, caring for those who were beaten up, caring for those who were in need, and, in the great traditional ways of the christian faith, caring for the most outcast and those who were considered poor and needy. king was always attuned to that. had he not spoken on behalf of what the war was doing to those people in this country and overseas, he would not have been able to live with himself. what he did was to then realize that a struggle was going on within himself and outside of himself. johnson had, in a sense, made this his war and was determined to carry it on as long as seemed necessary. in addition to that, before the antiwar movement really built up, there were all kinds of wonderful, liberal people, mostly white but also some black, who really were with johnson on the war. so king knew that if he -- as he stood up against the war, he would be going against not only johnson, but against a lot of people within the civil rights community and a lot of the people who gave money to the civil rights community. people said to him that it was absolutely dangerous to run the risk of moving against those kinds of people. but king, on the other hand, said that if he really loved this country, he had to speak about what this country was doing to the vietnamese, doing to its own people, what this country in a sense was doing to itself. and as pastor, as patriot, as lover of the country, he had no other choice but to speak out very clearly and make it plain that what was going on in vietnam was wrong from every point of view. and he knew that that was a risk. he knew that that would anger johnson. he knew that that would cause him to lose support from many people in the liberal communities, both black and white. but that was what he knew he had to do. >> april 4th is not only the anniversary of the assassination of dr. king in 1968, but the anniversary of the speech he gave at riverside church here in new york, april 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was killed. do you think there's a connection? >> amy, i have long felt, and i continue to feel, that it is impossible to understand martin's assassination by only understanding a white segregationist man who killed martin by himself. i am deeply convinced that martin's two actions -- one, of trying to organize the poor to challenge this government in washington, d.c., in the poor people's campaign; and martin's determination not just to speak out against the vietnam, but to speak out against the entire imperialist and militarist direction of the country -- all of that has to be understood when we try to understand martin's assassination. so, yes, i see a connection. >> talk about your collaboration with dr. king on this speech. when did you start to talk about it with him? >> in a way, amy, as long as martin and i knew each other, we were talking about the kinds of things that were involved in that speech. we were talking about the tremendous damage that war does to those who participate in it, to those who are the victims of it, to those who lose tremendous possibilities in their own lives because of it. and we were always talking about what it might mean to try to find creative, nonviolent alternatives to the terrible old-fashionness of war as a way of solving problems. and then, when vietnam began to develop on all of our screens in the 1960s, we talked a great deal about our country's role and a great deal about the role of those of us who were believers in the way of nonviolent struggle for change and what our responsibility was both as nonviolent believers and as followers of the teachings and the ways of jesus the christ. so when martin was clear with himself that he had to make a major public address on this subject, as fully as he could possibly do it, he was looking for a setting in which that could be done on the grounds of his religious stance particularly. and when clergy and laity against the war in vietnam invited him to do that at riverside for the occasion of their gathering in april 1967, it was clear to him that that was the place that he really ought to make the speech or take the stand in the most public way possible. at the same moment, he was deeply involved in running all across the country again and again, trying to raise money for the work that was going on in the south and in the north, and he didn't have the time to put together the kind of speech that he would want to give on that kind of occasion. and because we knew each other's feelings, thoughts, commitments, convictions about this, he asked me if i would draft this-in a way, draft it for us, because it was our joint convictions that were being spoken. and i did the drafting, and that draft essentially became the speech, sermon, call, cry of the heart that he put forward in april 1967. >> where did you write it? >> mostly in the basement of the house that our family was living in, in atlanta on the corner of ashby and fair, not far from the morehouse campus, not far from the spelman campus, where i was teaching at the time. my family had gone up to chicago to be with the larger family over the christmas break. i was alone, working at the house, having the time just to do nothing but work on that. and that was what caught me up and engaged me for those weeks during that christmas break. >> did you have discussions with him about it before he delivered it april 4th? >> no. he actually vetted it with several other people who might not be as crazy as i was, to see what their kinds of responses were. there were some suggestions of some toning down of some things. but i was very glad that, in a sense, he was saying, in most cases, "this is me, and i want to stand with this." and so, we did not talk, really, about it after that process had begun. all of our talking and thinking and hoping had been done before. >> historian, theologian, civil rights activist dr. vincent harding. he died on may 19 in philadelphia at the age of 82. we will be back with my interview in a moment. ♪ [music break] >> this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we are remembering the life of historian, theologian and civil rights activist dr. vincent harding. he died may 19 at the age of 82. he was a close aide to dr. martin luther king, wrote his historic antiwar "beyond vietnam" speech. before we return to my interview, i want to turn to the part of dr. martin luther's king speech when he was at riverside church. it is april 4, 1967. >> we can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation for the oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever rising tides of hate. history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. as arnold toynbee says, love is the ultimate force that makes the saving choice of life and good against the damming choice of death and evil. therefore, the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word. we are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. we are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. in this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. procrastination is still the thief of time. life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and ejected with a lost opportunity. the tide in the affairs of men does not remain have fled -- it eggs. we make right out desperately pause and or passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. and the bleached bones jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words "too late." there is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. and moving finger writes, having writ moves on." we still have a choice today. nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. we must move past indecision to action. we must find new ways to speak for peace in vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, our world that borders on our doors. if we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion , might without morality, and strength without sight. now let us begin. now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for new world. this is the calling of the sons of god, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. shall we say the odds are two great? shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? will our message be that the forces of american life from military against their rival is full men, and we send our deepest regrets? or will there be another message of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? the choice is ours. and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose and his crucial moment of human history. as a noble bard of yesterday, james russell lowell, eloquently stated, "once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide in the strife of truth and falsehood, for the good or evil side. some great cause, god's new messiah offering each the bloom or blight, and the choice goes by forever twixt that darkness and the light. though the cause of evil prosper, yet tis truth alone is strong though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim . within thedeth shadows, keeping watch above his own. and if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. if we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over america and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. [applause] king on april 4, 1967. a year to the day before he was assassinated in memphis. the speech was written by dr. vincent harding who died may 19 this year at the age of 82. we now go back to my 2008 interview with dr. vincent harding who joined us in our firehouse studio. it was april 1, 2008, three days before the 40th anniversary of dr. king's assassination. it was in the middle of barack obama's first historic run for president. dr. king's own organization, which you worked with also, the southern christian leadership conference, voted after this speech, the board of directors, not to back dr. king in his opposition to the war. what effect did that have? >> you know, amy, i do not remember it as direct as that. and i will take you on that. what i do know was that there was major opposition within the organization, within the board, as i said, within the civil rights leadership community. martin, i think, in the face of all of that, from those various points, was clearly disappointed that people were not as ready as he felt they should be to take such a clear stand, which he saw very deeply connected to the that people were not as ready as he felt they should be to take such a clear stand, which he saw very deeply connected to the work that we were doing here on behalf of the poor. and he was disappointed, but he knew that that had to be expected, when you step out, and he was determined to keep stepping out. and that, i think, is the best that i can say about that. >> so let's talk about that last year and memphis. when had you spoken with him last? >> i'm not sure that i can tie that down, amy. i know that one of my major memories of that last year, 1968, was seeing martin in ralph abernathy's church at a gathering of people who had come in from across the country to talk about the poor people's campaign. and there were poor white from appalachia. there were native americans from various parts of the country. there were chicanos, mexicanos from the southwest primarily. there were blacks from both north and south. and i was just struck by the way in which i saw, i felt, in the faces of so many of the people there the question of "are we really ready to go this far to bring a major challenge across these lines into the face of the face of the nation itself?" but that was the last memory that i have of that year, and i did not speak to him directly before he went to memphis, but i knew that he was going in, and i knew that he was going, because he was deeply committed to what the struggle of the garbage workers meant to them and meant to the country. >> there is a lot of commentary now about ministers speaking out, like jeremiah wright, barack obama's minister in chicago, quoting him saying things like "god damn america." and i was thinking back to dr. king and what he was saying at the time, for example, saying that the united states is the greatest purveyor of violence on earth today. what about what he had to say and how he was seen at the time? >> by 1968, it was very clear to martin and to those who were close to him that that pastoral role that he had taken on all of his life was always matched by a prophetic role, in which he had to stand up and speak truth to power and to say what he really saw was going on that was against what he understood to be the will of god for human beings and, certainly, for this country. and martin, in that speech, for instance, was trying to say, in a variety of ways, that this country was going very wrong, doing very wrong, and doing it against the best interest of the weakest people in the world. and king had no hesitation about doing this, because king loved this country and understood that that kind of love demanded that kind of truth and that kind of honesty. and he also knew that, for a lot of people, there was no understanding of america in the way that he had come to understand america, both by being black and by being with those who were underneath america. and i should say, at this point, by listening with a very clear and understanding ear to someone who spoke that way all the time, malcolm x, martin, by the time malcolm was assassinated, was really recognizing that malcolm, in many, many cases, was speaking deep truth about the kinds of pathways that this country was taking that were negative pathways, that were not helpful pathways, and that were pathways that needed to change. so king had that in his tradition. as you probably know, being a follower of the -- what we call the judeo-christian tradition, the role of the prophet is very clear -- the prophet stands to face the rulers with what is wrong, not to sing patriotic songs, but their great responsibility is to say, "this is what god requires. this is what you are doing. you're in trouble, because you are going against what it is god requires." >> what are your thoughts on reverend wright? >> i am very glad that we have had reverend wrights all through our history in this country. i think it has been good for black people. and for those whites who would listen, it has been good for them, as well. i know jeremiah wright just a bit, and i appreciate him a great deal. i choose very specifically not to judge him by sound bites, but by the fullness of his life, which i have seen, from the chicago that i know, as being a life full of service to that community, full of service in such a way that he was building people in every possible way that he could. and i respect him a great deal. one of the small things that always comes to my mind is that when my first major book "there is a river," was published back in 1980, 1981, jeremiah wright was one of the few pastors who, as pastor, said, "i want this book to be read by everybody in my congregation. you come here from wherever you are, vincent, and you speak to my congregation about this book, because it is absolutely necessary that our people understand their history. you teach it to us, please." that was striking to me, a pastor who wanted to be a teacher and who wanted to help others learn from every teacher that they could. so i have a very warm place in my heart for jeremiah wright. >> did you go? >> oh, yes, and i had a wonderful time with his congregation, and they actually read it in preparation for the discussion that i had with them. >> and your main thesis in the book? >> it was that the struggle for freedom in this country, as carried on by african americans and our allies, has been a struggle that started from the beginning of the country and goes on throughout the life of the country, and that the country's life is made richer and better by that struggle and by the direction in which that struggle pushes us to go. >> one of the last actions in the last years of dr. king was to work in chicago. did he know jeremiah wright? >> it would be impossible to do anything with religion in chicago and not know jeremiah wright. that's for sure. i can't say for certain, but i would be strongly suspicious that he did and that they were friends, because they were walking along very similar pathways of critiquing for the good of the life of the country. >> the poor people's campaign that dr. king was building is not talked about very much. we know the "i have a dream" speech. and of course his last speech. just explain that to us, as we come to the end of dr. king's life. >> martin always understood that race and class were intricately involved in the life of this country. he also understood that the issues of poverty were issues that affected not only black people, but all kinds of other people, including white people. and he knew that if there were to be, as he hoped there would be, an opportunity for the building of this country into its best possible development, then somehow the issue of poverty had to be addressed, and because he was a person of both words and actions, he knew that poverty could not really be addressed unless the poor themselves took action to challenge a country that would not take action on their behalf. and so, martin was, towards the end of his life, you may remember, by the last years of his life, he was saying that america had to deal with three --what he called triple evils: the evil of racism, the evil of materialism and the evils of militarism. and he saw those three very much connected to each other. and by organizing the poor, he saw that -- especially organizing across racial lines, he saw that as addressing those evils in a way that had to be done by somebody. and he was in a position by 1968 to probably be the only person who could have called those groups of people together and said, "let us make a common ground to create a new america." that was his hope. that was what he was working for when he was killed. he was among the poor and calling upon the country to look and see the condition of the poor in order that we might see the possibilities of a new america. >> dr. harding, any last thoughts? >> i think that i am fascinated by the fact that 40 years after martin's assassination there should come on the scene someone who, when he's at his best, is making his theme "let us create a more perfect union." that, for me, was the essential message of king: let us work together against all the things that keep us from creating a more perfect union. i think that if my friend and brother, obama, can keep in our mind and keep in his mind the thing that we need most is to have a vision of the possibilities of a new america for us all, if that can happen, then we are on our way to something that martin king would be very, very glad to see: the pathway to a truly new america. >> the historian, diligent, civil rights activist vincent harding, speaking april 1, two thousand eight. he died in philadelphia this year may 19 at the age of 82. he lived in denver, but was in pennsylvania teaching at a quaker retreat outside philadelphia. visit democracynow.org to watch all of our interviews with vincent harding. that does it for our show. democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. e-mail your comments to outreach@democracynow.org or mail them to democracy now! p.o. box 693 new york, new york 10013. democracy now! [captioning made possible by democracy now!] wag
presiding is not john roberts, because they're not trying the president of the united states. perhaps the gold standard of the meaning of the constitution, commentary when the constitution was signed, said you cannot impeach a former official. >> john: hold on there for a second. >> sandra: the senate has now come to order. let's dip in and listen. >> the words of the new england poet james russell lowell, to provide our senate jurors with just one perspective. lowell wrote, once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide. in the strife of truth with falsehood for the good or evil side. mighty god, could it really be that simple? could it really be that truth, strives falsehood and good striving against evil? powerful redeemer, have mercy on our beloved land. we pray in your magnificent name, amen. >> please join me in the pledge of allegiance. [ pledge of allegiance ] >> morning business is closed, and the senate will convene as a court of impeachment. i ask senators to be seated. if there is no objection, the proceedings of the trial are approved to date. i'd ask the sergeant in arms, make the proclamation. >> hear ye, hear ye. all persons are commanded to keep silent on pain of imprisonment of the senate of the united states as sitting for the trial of the article of impeachment exhibited by the house of representatives against donald john trump, former president of the united states. >> i note the presence in the senate chamber, managers of part of the house of representatives and counsel for the former president of the united states. majority leader is recognized. >> mr. president, in a moment, i will call up a resolution to govern the structure, the second impeachment trial of donald john trump. it's been agreed to by the house managers, the former president's counsel and is co-sponsored by the republican leader. it is bipartisan. it is our solemn constitutional duty to conduct a fair and honest impeachment trial of the charges against former president trump. the gravest charges ever brought against a president of the united states tphf american history. this resolution provides for a fair trial, and i urge the senate to adopt it. mr. president, i send a resolution to the desk on my behalf and that of the republican leader for the organizing of the next phases of this trial. >> senate resolution 47 to provide for related procedures concerning the article of impeachment against donald john trump, former president of the united states. >> i asked for yays and nays. >> is there a sufficient second? there is a sufficient second. [ roll call ] mr. blunt? mr. blunt aye. mr. bozeman? mr. bozeman aye. mr. braun, aye. mr. brown. mr. brown, aye. mr. birdwell. yeah. mrs. capitell. aye. mr. casey. mr. casey. aye. miss collins aye. mr. cornen -- >> sandra: our congressional correspondent standing by. >> this is the first aspect in this senate trial. what you have to have laid out here is a resolution established the frame work, the parameters. we thought this might be what we call voice vote. this is where the loudest side wins. people say yay and nay. that's where all 100 senators agree. what they decided was to call a poll call vote through the entire senate roll, all 100 senators and then approve this frame work. the frame work today calls for a debate on the constitutionality of the trial and then later in the week the managers will present their case, the president's defense counsel will present their case. there will be a time, presumably over the weekend or early next week. that's when senators will be able to ask questions. sometime next week you would have a vote on whether or not to have witnesses in this trial. now, a vote later today would bring an end to the trial. they're going to consider the constitutionality here. a senate no vote on this, on the constitution of the trial, that pretty much ends the trial right there. it stops rather abruptly. five senate republicans voted with democrats saying the trial was constitutional. that may not be a lot but it's dissension, more than we saw with president trump's impeachment trial last year. here are the five to watch later today and in the coming weeks. mitt romney of utah, susan collins of maine, lisa murkowski of alaska, pat toomey of pennsylvania and ben sash of nebraska. that's a far cry of getting to 67 votes to convict the former president. also look at other senators who are retiring, maybe rob portman of ohio, mitch mcconnell is not retiring but could influence republican senators in this process. others to watch in the coming days who may be carefully weighing the evidence, todd young of indiana, bill cassidy of louisiana, richard shelby of alabama, he is retiring. dan sullivan of alaska and deb fisher of nebraska. you have pretty much 38 to 40 republican senators who have made up their mind about the trial. again, what this does, this establishes a frame work for the trial. they've submitted a couple versions of this resolution, a new one a few minutes ago, sandra. >> sandra: it appears everything is going as planned and naturally we would see the house impeachment managers make their arguments. that could be next? >> that's right. watch to see just how nimble the house impeachment managers may be. some of the impeachment managers at this time, they angle to be impeachment managers in their last try. this is their consolation prize. >> sandra: thank you, john. >> john: the question today is whether or not this trial can go ahead, whether it is constitutional or not constitutional. judgment in cases of impeachment should not extend further than removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the united states, which led republican attorney charles cooper to write, a vote for the senate to disqualify can be taken only after the officer has been moved and is by definition a former officer given the constitution admits permanent disqualification on former office holders. it -- cooper is arguing here that it's right and proper for the senate to be doing this because, again, article 1, section 3 of the constitution said impeachment is two parts here and you can't have the second part without the first part actually happening. bret? >> bret: yeah. compelling argument. we're going to see that play out on the senate floor. it is worth noting that this is history. republicans say you don't have to go down this road and it shouldn't be being done, but it's historic. it's the second time this president will have been impeached. i will say the beginning of this, all persons are commanded to be silent on pain of imprisonment is a great way to start a meeting. you can make sure the people are pretty quiet and we remember it from the first impeachment trial. i think, you know, if you just look at the numbers, john, they're not there as of yet, as they lay out this evidence. i think the constitutionality question will move forward probably with a few defections with republicans. >> john: if you've got 45 republican senators who are saying this is unconstitutional you're not going to get to 67 to convict. >> martha: no. we heard chad roll off the list of potential votes against the president. this goes back to how political this process is. especially for republicans as that wall street journal editorial pointed out. it can be seen to identify them and stake their claim and hold to it in future elections. >> sandra: so we have been, as chad just described to us, watching this senate vote on approving the resolution which as you clearly described establishes the frame work of the trial. so we are awaiting the results of that to come in. as they do, bret, i want to throw to sal weissenberg. he spoke last hour with harris. he made it clear what the crucial question is. >> it doesn't look like they're going to be able to show, you know, foreknowledge by the president of the specific storming of the capitol that happened. >> harris: ah. >> again, that doesn't end the question. the real political question here on impeachment is, as liz cheney said, did he summon the crowd, assemble the crowd and light the fuse? >> sandra: and we are about to hear how they will make the case for just that. bret? >> bret: it is one article, just one. there were possibilities of opening up all kinds of questions and other articles. but this is one article. they have to prove it, as just noted. the events of january 6th were horrific. we are likely going to see videotape. not testimony. witnesses have not been accepted yet. but a video of all of this. >> sandra: we are hearing the resolution. it was agreed to 89 yays. >> -- on the question of whether donald john trump is subject to the jurisdiction of impeachment for acts while committed as president of the united states not withstanding the expiration of the term in that office. mr. manager, are you a proponent or opponent of this question? >> i'm a proponent. >> mr. castor, are you a proponent or opponent of this question? >> an opponent. >> thank you. mr. manager, your party may proceed. first to be able to reserve time, if you wish. mr. raskin, you're recognized. >> thank you very much, mr. president, distinguished members of the senate. good afternoon. my name is jamie raskin. it is my honor to represent the people in the 8th district in the house and also to serve as the lead house manager. we will indeed reserve time for rebuttal. thank you. i have been practicing constitutional law for three decades, i know there are people dreading endless lectures about the federalist papers. please breathe easy. i remember well hw autumn's line that a professor is someone who speaks while other people are sleeping. you will not be hearing extended lectures from me. our case is based on cold hard facts. it's all about the facts. president trump sent his lawyers here today to try to stop the senate from hearing the facts of this case. they want to trial the call over before any evidence is even introduced. their argument is that if you commit an impeachable offense in your last two weeks in office, you do it with constitutional impunity. you get away with it. in other words, conduct that would be a high crime and misdemeanor your first year as president, in your second year as president, in your third year as president and for the vast majority of your fourth year of president, you can do so without facing any constitutional accountability as all. this would create a brand new january exception to the constitution of the united states of america. a january exception. and everyone can see immediately why this is so dangerous. it's an invitation of the president to take his best shot at anything he may want to do on his way out the door including using violent means to lock that door. to hang on to the oval office at all costs and to block the peaceful transfer of power. in other words, the january exception is an invitation to our founders' worst nightmare. and if we buy this radical argument that president trump's lawyers advance, we risk allowing january 6th to become our future. and what will that mean for america? think about it. what will the january exception mean to future generations if you want it? i'll show you. >> we will stop the steal. today i will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election and we won it by a landslide. this was not a close election. after this, we're gonna walk down -- and i'll be there with you. we're gonna walk down, we're gonna walk down to the capitol. to the capitol. >> we are going to the capitol, where our problems are. it's that direction. [ inaudible shouting ] >> thousands of folks came here. where did they come from? [ inaudible shouting ] >> madam speaker, the vice president and the united states senate [ applause ] [ shouting ] >> the constitution says you have to protect our country and you have to protect our constitution. you can't vote on fraud. and fraud breaks up everything, doesn't it? when you have somebody in the fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules. so i hope mike has the courage to do what he has to do. we might. we fight like hell. if you don't fight like hell, you aren't going to have a country anymore. we're going to walk down pennsylvania avenue. i love pennsylvania avenue. and we're going to the capitol. we're going to try and give our republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don't need any of our help. we're going to try to give them the kind of pride and boldness they need to take back our country. >> majority leader, we're debating a step that has never been taken in american history. president trump claims the election was stolen. the assertions range from specific local allegations to constitutional arguments, to sweeping conspiracy theories. [ crowd chanting usa ] >> but, my colleagues, nothing before us proves illegalalty anywhere near the massive scale, the massive scale that would have tipped the entire election. >> our house! our house! [ shouting ] >> my challenge today is not about the good people of arizona. >> we will stand in recess until the call of the chair. >> thank you. [ crowd shouting ] >> mr. speaker, can i have or in the chamber. >> the house will be in order. >> the house will be in order. >> freedom! freedom! freedom! [ crowd shouting ] [ crowd shouting ] [ crowd shouting ] >> fight for trump! fight for trump! >> there's never been a time like this, where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us. from me, from you, from our country. this was a fraudulent election. but we can't play into the hands of these people. we have to have peace. go home. we love you. you're very special. you've seen what happens. you see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. i know how you feel. but go home and go home in peace. [ crowd shouting ] >> we'll take down every one of you! >> senators, the president was impeached by the u.s. house of representatives on january 13th for doing that. you ask what a high crime and misdemeanor is under our constitution? that's a high crime and misdemeanor. if that's not an impeachable offense, then there is no such thing. the president's arguments for a january exception are up held, even if everyone agrees he's culable for these events, even if the evidence proves, as we think it does, that the president incited a violent insurrection on the day congress met to finalize the presidential election, he would have you believe there is absolutely nothing the senate can do about it. no trial. no facts. he wants you to decide that the senate is powerless at that point. that can't be right. transition of power is always the most dangerous moment for democracy. every historian will tell you that. we just saw it in the most astonishing way. we lived through it. and do you know what? the framers of our constitution knew it. that's why they created a constitution with an oath written into it that binds the president from his very first day in office until his very last day in office and every day in between. under that constitution, and under that oath, the president of the united states is forbidden to commit high crimes and misdemeanors against the people at any point that he's in office. indeed, that's one specific reason the impeachment, conviction and disqualification powers exist. to protect us against presidents who try to overrun the power of the people in their elections and replace the rule of law with the rule of mobs. these powers must apply even if the president commits his offenses in his final weeks in office. in fact, that's precisely when we need them the most because that's when elections get attacked. everything that we know about the language of the constitution, the framers original understanding and intents, prior practice and commonsense confirms this rule. let's start with the text of the constitution. article 1, section 2 gives the house the sole power of impeachment when the president commits high crimes and misdemeanors. we exercised that power on january 13th. the president, it is undisputed, committed his offense while he was president. and it is indisputed that we impeached him while he was president. there can be no doubt that this is a valid impeachment and there can be no doubt that the senate has the power to try this impeachment. we know this because article 1, section 3 gives the senate the sole power to try all impeachments. the senate has the power, the sole power, to try all impeachments. all means all. there are no exceptions to the rule. because the senate has jurisdiction to try all impeachments, it most certainly has jurisdiction to try this one. the vast majority of constitutional scholars who study the question and weighed in on the proposition being advanced by the president this january exception heretofore unknown, agree with us. this includes the most prominent conservative legal scholars including michael mcconnell former 10th circuit judge. co-founder of the federalist society. ronald reagan solicitor general charles freed. luminary washington lawyer charles cooper, among hundreds of constitutional professors. i commend the people i named their recent writings to you in the newspapers over the last several days. all of the key precedents, along with detailed explanation of the constitutional history and technical analysis appear in the trial brief we filed last week and the reply brief we made this morning. i want to highlight a few key points that strike me as compelling in foreclosen president trump's argument that there's a secret january exception hidden away in the constitution. first point comes from english history which matters because hamilton where england provided the model that the idea of this institution has been borrowed. it would have been obvious to flinn familiar that history that former officials could be held accountable for their abuses while in office. every single impeachment of a government official that occurred during the framers lifetime concerned a former official. a former official. indeed, the most famous of these impeachments occurred while the framers gathered in philadelphia to write the constitution. it was the impeachment of warren hastings, the former governor-general of the british colony of bengal. the framers knew all about it and they strongly supported the impeachment. the hastings case was invoked by name at the convention. it was the only specific impeachment case that they discussed at the convention. it played a key role in their adoption of the standard. everyone knew hastings left office two years before his impeachment trial began. not a single framer, not one, raised a concern when virginian george mason held up the hastings impeachment as a model for us in the writing of our constitution. the early state constitutions supported the idea, too. every single state constitution in the 1780s either specifically said that former officials could be impeached or were entirely consistent with the idea. in contrast, not a single state constitution prohibited trials of former officials. as a result, there was an overwhelming presumption in favor of allowing legislatures to hold former officials accountable in this way. any departure from that norm would have been a big deal and yet there's no sign anywhere that that ever happened. some states, including delaware, even confined impeachment only to officials who had already left office. this confirms that removal was never seen as the exclusive purpose of impeachment in america. the goal was always accountability, protecting society and deterring official corruption. it matters for another reason. writing about impeachment in those papers, hamilton explained that the president of america would stand upon no better ground than a governor of new york and upon worst ground than the governors of maryland and delaware. he emphasized that the president is even more accountable than officials in delaware where as i noted the constitution clearly allowed impeachment of former officials. and nobody involved in the convention ever said the framers meant to reject this widely accepted deeply rooted understanding of the world peachment when they wrote it into our constitution. the convention debates instead confirm this spwerp station there while discussing impeachment the framers returned to the threat of presidential corruption aimed direction at elections. the heart of self-government. almost perfectly anticipating president trump, william davey of north carolina explained impeachment was for a president who spared, quote, no effort or means whatever to get himself re-elected. hamilton and federalist one said the greatest danger to republicans and the liberties of the people comes from political opportunists who begin as demigods and end as tyrants. the people who are encouraged to follow them. president trump may not know a lot about the framers but they knew a lot about him. given the framers' intense focus on danger to elections and the peaceful transfer of power, it is inconceivable that they designed impeachment to be a dead letter in the final days in office, when opportunities to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power would be most tempting and most dangerous as we just saw. that's a matter of history and original understanding. there's no merit to president trump's claim that he can incite an insurrection and then say the senate lacks the power to even hear evidence at a trial, to even hold a trial. the true rule was stated by former president john quincy adams when he categorically declared i hold myself so long as i have the breath of life in my body, amenable to impeachment by the house for everything i did during the time i held any public office. when he comes up in a minute, my colleague from colorado, will further pursue the relevant senate precedents to explain why this body's practice has been supported by the next of the constitution. and mr. cicilini of rhode island will talk about the fallacies presented by the president's counsel. after they speak, i will return to discuss the fundamental importance of the senate rejecting president trump's argument for the preservation of democratic self-government and the rule of law in the united states of america. i now will turn it over to my colleague from colorado. >> mr. president, distinguished senators, i represent colorado's 2nd congressional district in the united states congress. like many of you, i'm an attorney. i practiced law before i came to congress. tried a lot of different cases, some more unique than others. certainly never a case as important as this one, nor a case with such a heavy and weighty constitutional question for you all the decide. thankfully, as lead manager raskin so thoroughly explained, the framers have answered that question for you, for us. you don't need to be a constitutional scholar to know if the argument president trump asks you to adopt is not just wrong, it's dangerous. you don't have to take my word for it. this body, the world's greatest deliberating body, the united states senate, has reached that same conclusion in one form or another over the past 200 years. multiple occasions that we'll go through. over 150 constitutional scholars, experts, judges, conservative, liberal, you name it. they overwhelmingly have reached the same conclusion that, of course, you can try, convict and disqualify a former president. and that makes sense because the text of the constitution makes clear there is no january exception to the impeachment power. that presidents can't commit grave offenses in their final days and escape any congressional response. that's not how our constitution works. let's start with the precedent with what happened in this chamber. i'd like to focus on two cases. one of them is the nation's very first impeachment case, which actually was of a former official. in 1797, about a decade after our country had ratified our constitution, there was a greater from tennessee, william blunt, who was caught conspireing with the british to try to sell florida and louisiana. ultimately, president adams caught him. he turned over the evidence to congress. four days later, the house of representatives impeached him. a day after that, this body, the united states senate, expelled him from office. so he was very much a former official. despite that, the house went forward with its impeachment proceeding in order to disqualify him from ever again holding federal office. so the senate proceeded with the trial, with none other than thomas jefferson providing. blount argued the senate couldn't proceed because he had already been expelled. here's the interesting thing. he expressly disavowed any claim that former officials can't ever be impeached. unlike president trump, he was very clear that he respected and understood that he could not even try to argue that ridiculous position. even impeached senator blount recognized the inherent absurdity of that view. here's what he said. i certainly never shall contend that an officer may first commit an offense and afterwards avoid by resigning his office. that's the point. and there was no doubt because the founders were around to confirm that that was their intent and the obvious meaning of what is in the constitution. fast forward 80 years later. arguably the most important precedent that this body has to consider. the trial of former secretary of war, william bell. i'm not going into all the details but in short 1876 the house discovered that he was involved in a massive kick back scheme. hours before the house committee had discovered this conduct released its report documenting the scheme, he literally rushed to the white house to resign, tender his resignation to president grant, to avoid any further inquiry into his conduct. and to avoid being disqualified from holding federal office in the future. well, later that day, aware of resignation, what did the house do? the house moved forward and unanimously impeached him, making clear its power to impeach a former official. when his case reached the senate, this body, belknap made the same argument president trump is making today. that you all lack jurisdiction, any power to try him, because he's a former official. now, many senators at that time when they heard that argument, they were sitting in the same chair you all are sitting in today. they were outreached by that argument. you with read their comments in the record. they knew it was a dangerous, dangerous argument with dangerous implications. it would literally mean that a president could betray their country, leave office and avoid impeachment and disqualification entirely. that's why, in the end, the united states senate decisively voted that the constitution required them to proceed with the trial. that bell kap moved to a full consideration. he ultimately was not convicted, but only after a thorough public inquiry into his misconduct which created a record of his wrongdoing. it ensured his accountability and deferred anyone else from considering such corruption, by making sure that it was intolerable. the trial served important constitutional purposes. now, given that precedent that i have described to you, you can imagine my surprise when we were reviewing the the trial brief filed by the president in which his counsel insists the senate didn't decide anything in the belkap case. they said it cannot be read as foreclosing an argument that they never dealt with. never dealt with? the senate didn't debate this question for two hours. the senate debated this very question for two weeks. the senate spent an additional two weeks deliberating on the jurisdictional question. and at the end of those deliberations, they decided decisively that the senate has jurisdiction and that it could proceed, that it must proceed, to a full trial. unlike belkap, president trump was not impeached for run of the mill corruption, misconduct. he was impeached for inciting a violent insurrection. an insurrection where people died in this building. an insurrection that desecrated our seat of government. and if congress were just to stand completely aside in the face of such an extraordinary crime against this, it would let future presidents use their power without any fear of accountability. and none of us -- i know us. no matter our party or our politics wants that. now, we've gone through the highlights of the precedent. i think it's important that you know, as lead manager raskin mentioned, they have all come to the same conclusion. that the senate must hear this case. let's go through just a few short examples. to start, all of us i know are familiar with the federalist society. some of you may know steven calabrese personally. he was the chairman of the board in 2019. he was the first president of the yale federalist society chapter board, a position that i understand senator hawley later held. here is what mr. calabrese has to say. he issued a public letter stating our carefully considered views of the law lead all of us to agree that the constitution permits the impeachment, conviction and disqualification of former officers including presidents. he's not the only one. president reagan's former solicitor general, among many other. another prominent scholar known to many of you again personally is former 10th circuit court of appeals judge, judge michael mcconnell. he was nominated by president george w. bush. he was confirmed by this body unanimously. senator hatch, many of you served with, he had this to say about judge mcconnell. he's an honest man. he calls it as he sees it. he's beholden to no one and no group. what does judge mcconnell have to say about the question you're debating this afternoon? he said the following. given the peachment of mr. trump was legitimate the next takes here that the senate has power to try that impeachment. you heard senator raskin mention another man. he issued an editorial two days ago very powerful observing that scholarship and this question has matured substantially and that ultimately the arguments that president trump was championing are beset by serious weaknesses. i'll finish on this one. there's another scholar that i know some of you know and some of you have spoken with recently. up until just a few weeks ago, he was a recognized champion, champion of the view that the constitution authorizes the impeachment of former officials. that is professor jonathan turley. let me show you what i mean. these are his words. first in a very detailed thorough study, he explained that, quote, the resignation from office does not prevent trial on articles of impeachment. that's professor turley's words. same piece. he celebrated the belkap trial. he survived it as a legitimacy. this was 146 page study. very detailed. in that study he said the question significants in belknap was correct that impeachment historically extended to former officials such as warren hastings, who you heard lead manager raskin describe. as you can see, professor turley argued the house could have impeached and the senate could have tried richard nixon after he resigned. his quote on this very telling. future presidents could not assume that a mere resignation would avoid a trial of their conduct in the united states senate. finally, last quote from professor turley, that no man in no circumstance can escape the account which he owes to the laws of his country. not my words. professor jonathan turley's words. i agree with him because he's exactly right. a question one might reasonably ask after going through all those quotes from such noted jurorists and scholars why is there such agreement on this topic? the reason is pretty simple. it's what the constitution says. i want to walk you through three provisions of the constitution that make clear that the senate must try this case. first let's start with what the constitution says about congress power in article 1. you heard lead manager raskin make this point. it's worth under scoring. it gives the house sole power of impeachment. article 1, section 3, gives the senate the sole power to try impeachments. one would think that language includes caveats, exceptions, but it doesn't. it doesn't say impeachment of current civil officers are. it doesn't say impeachment of those still in office. they provided express, unqualified to the house to peach and the senate to try all impeachments. not such all. former judge mcconnell, judge that he talked about earlier, he provides analysis of this provision. you can see it up here on the slide. he says, i'll quote, this is judge mcconnell. given the impeachment of mr. trump was legitimate, it makes clear the senate has power to try that impeachment. here is what -- pretty interesting. when we presented this argument in our trial brief, which we filed over a week ago, but we laid it out step by step so that you could consider it, answer it, opposing council could keurt as well. we received president trump's response yesterday. the trial brief offers no rebuttal to this point. none. in fairness, i can't think of any convincing response. the constitution is exceptionally clear on this point. perhaps they would have something to say about it today. they did not yesterday. there's been a lot of confusion about it. i'm going to try to clear this up. up on the screen article 1, section 3, clause 7. with that in mind the language said if the senate convicts the judgment shall not extend further than removal and disqualify kaeugs. that's it. the meaning is clear. the senate has the power to force removal. it has the power to impose disqualification. it doesn't have power to go any further than that. as i understand president trump's argument, they believe this language somehow says that disqualification can only follow removal of a current officer. but it doesn't. that interpretation rewrites the constitution. it adds words that aren't there. after all, the constitution does not say removal from office and then disqualification. it doesn't say removal from office followed by disqualification. it simply says the senate can't do more than two possible sentences, removal and disqualification. this, by the way, is not the first time this direct question has been debated in this chamber. 146 years ago during the belknap trial, senator george edmonds of vermont, one of the most prestigious republican senators at this time. he sat right where senator grassley sits today. he zeroed in on this point during the belknap trial. a prohibition against doing more than two things cannot be turned into a command to do both or neither. and just imagine the constitutions of such an absurd interpretation of the constitution. if president trump were right about that language, officials could commit the most extraordinary destructive offenses against american people, high crimes and misdemeanors . they'd have questions whether they could be impeached and whether the senate can try the case. if they want to escape public inquiry or the risk of disqualification, it's simple. they can just resign one minute before the house impeaches or even one minute before the senate trial. they could resign during the senate trial if it's not looking so well. that would effectively erase disqualification from the constitution. it would put wrongdoers in charge of whether the senate can try them. provision 1 of the article of the constitution. the constitution twice describes the accused in an impeachment trial. here's what i want you to focus on. the interesting thing, notice the words. it refers to a person and a party being impeached. now, again, we know the framers gave a lot of thought to the words they chose. they even had a style committee during the constitutional convention. they could have written civil officers here. they did that elsewhere in the constitution. that would have ultimately limited impeachment trials to current officials. but instead, they used broader language to describe who could be tried by the united states senate. who could be put on trial other than civil officers? there's only one possible answer. former officers. again, that actually might explain why during the belknap trial, senator thomas baird of delaware, later became secretary of state of the united states. he found this point so compelling that he felt compelled to speak out about it. he concluded the constitution must allow the impeachment and trial of people and parties who are not civil officers. the only group that could encompass was former officials like belknap and here like president trump. just so we're clear in full disclosure, this is another argument that was not addressed by president trump in his rebuttal. we know why they didn't. because their argument doesn't square with the plain tech of the constitution. there is one provision president trump relies on almost exclusively. article 2, section 4. i'm sure you'll see it when they present their argument. it prevents you from holding its trial, by making removal from office an absolute requirement. again, where does the language say that? where does it say anything in that provision about your jurisdiction. in fact, this provision isn't even in the part of the constitution that addresses your authority. article 2, not article 1. it says nothing about former officials. president trump's interpretation doesn't square with history, originalism, textualism. in fact, even chuck cooper, the famous conservative lawyer i mentioned earlier with clients like the house minority leader. he has concluded that this provision of the constitution that president trump relies on cuts against his position, his words. that's because article 2 section 4 says what it says. the second half describes what happens when civil officers of the united states, including a sit lg president, are convicted. removal from office. that's it. in cooper's words, it simply establishes what is known in criminal law as a mandatory minimum punishment. it says nothing about officials. nothing at all. given all of that, it is not surprising that in president trump's legal trial brief, they struggled to find any professors to support their position. they did find one professor. an expert in this field. who they claim agreed with them that the only purpose of impeachment is removal. professor cult's position, which they had to have known because it's in the article that they cite in the brief, is that removal is, quote, not the sole end of impeachment. in that same article, he describes the view advocated by president trump's lawyers as having deep flaws. you do not have to take my word for it. you can take the professor they cited in their brief filed yesterday. he tweeted about it on the screen here, this is what he had to say. president trump's brief cites my article on impeachment a lot but in several places they misrepresent what i wrote quite badly. there are multiple examples of such flat out misrepresentations. they didn't have to be disingenuous and misleading like this. this key constitutional scholar relied on president trump saying it right. i have explained in great detail many reasons why the argument that president trump advocates for here today is wrong. i just want to close with a note about why it's dangerous. lead manager raskin explained that impeachment exists to protect the american people from officials who abuse their power. it exists for a case just like this one. honestly, it is har hard to imagine a clearer way that a president could abuse his power while seeking to remain in power after losing an election. sitting back and watching it unfold. we all know the consequences. like every one of you, i was in the capitol on january 6th. i was on the floor with lead manager raskin. like every one of you, i was evacuated as this violent mob stormed the capitol. what you experienced that day, what we experienced that day, what our country experienced that day is the framers' worst nightmare come to life. presidents can't enflame insurrection in their final weeks and then walk away like nothing happened. and yet that is the rule that president trump asks you to adopt. i urge you, we urge you to decline his request, to vindicate the constitution, to let us try this case. >> mr. president, my name is david sisilini. as i hope is now clear from the arguments of mr. raskin and mr. lageuse, impeachment is not about removing someone from office. fundamentally impeachment exists to protect our constitutional system, to keep each of us safe, to uphold our freedom, to safe guard our democracy. it achieves that by deterring abuse of its extraordinary power that we entrust to our presidents from the very first day in office to the very last day. it also ensures accountability for presidents who harm us or our government. the after math of a tragedy, it allows us to come back, reaffirming our constitutional principles. it authorizes this body and this body alone to disqualify from our political system anybody whose conduct in office proves that they present a danger to the republic. but impeachment would fail to achieve these purposes if you created, for the first time ever, despite the words of the framers and the constitution, a january exception as mr. raskin explained. i was a former defense lawyer for many years. i can understand why president trump and his lawyers don't want you to hear this case. why they don't want you to see the evidence. but the argument that you lack jurisdiction rests on a purely fictional loophole. designed to allow the former president to escape former culpability for conduct reprehensible. you saw the consequences of his actions on the video we played. i want to show you that the former president thinks you have no power whatsoever to adjudicate. while spreading lies about the election outcome and against the will of the american people, he incited an armed angry mob to riot. not just anywhere, but hear in the seat of our government, in the capital during a joint session of congress when the vice president presided while he carried out peaceful transfer of power which was interrupted for the first time in our history. this was a disaster of historic proportion. it was also an unforgivable betrayal of the oath of office of president trump, an oath he swore, an oath he sullied to advance his own personal interest. make no mistake about it. as you think ant that day, things could have been much worse. as one senator said, they could have killed all of us. it was only the bravery and sacrifice of the police who suffered deaths and injuries as a result of president trump's actions that prevented greater tragedy. at trial, we will prove, that president trump is singularly and directly responsible for inciting the assault on the capitol. we will also prove that his dereliction of duty, his desire to seek personal advantage from the mayhem and his decision to issue tweets further inciting the mob, attacking the vice president, all compounded the already enormous damage. virtually every american who saw those events unfold on television was absolutely horrified by the events of january 6th. we also know how president trump himself felt about the attack. he told us. here's what he tweeted at 6:01 as the capitol was in shambles and as dozens of police officers and other law enforcement officers lay battered and bruised and bloodied. here's what he said. these are the things and events that happen when a sacred land slide election victory is so viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long. go home with love and in peace. remember this day forever. every time i read that tweet, it chills me to the core. the president of the united states sided with the insurrectionists. he celebrated their cause. he validated their attack. he told them, remember this day forever hours after they marched through these halls looking to assassinate vice president pence, the speaker of the house and any of us they could kwaoeupbd. he would rather talk about that rather than what happened january 6th. make no mistake, his arguments are dead wrong. they're a distraction from what really mattered. the senate can and should require president trump to stand trial. i'd like to cover the remainder then address the issues of the trial. president trump insists that he cannot face trial in the senate because he is merely a private citizen. he references here the retainer clause. but the constitution defers to it as a person and party. certainly he counts as one of those. let's also apply some commonsense. there's no reason that he now insists on being called the 45th president of the united states. rather than citizen trump. he isn't a grandly celebritied private citizen. he's a former officer of the united states government. he's a former of the united states of america. he's treated differently under a law called the former president's act. for four years we trusted him with more power than anyone else on earth. as a former president, who promised on a bible to use his power faithfully, he can and should answer for whether he kept that promise while bound by it in office. his insistence otherwise is wrong. so is this claim that there's a slippery slope to impeaching private citizens, if you proceed. the trial of a former official for choosing an official for an impeachment that occurred while he was an official poses no risk whatsoever of subjecting a private citizen to impeachment for their private conduct. they emphasize the point. president trump was impeached while he was in office for conduct in office. period. the alternative once again is this january session which our most powerful officials commit the most terrible abuses, then resign and leave office and then claim they're a private citizen who can't be held accountable at all. in the same vain, president trump and his lawyers argue that he shouldn't be impeached because it will set a bad precedent for impeaching others. but that slippery slope argument is also in crisis. for centuries the prevailing views that been that former officials are subject to impeachment. you just heard a full discussion of that. the house has repeatedly acknowledged that fact. vast majority of cases the house has the right to recognize an official's resignation or departure makes the impeachment unnecessary and maybe even unwise. as house manager rightly explains in the belknap case, there is no likelihood we should ever unlimber the ordinance to take aim at which all danger has gone by, unquote. president trump's case, though, is different. the danger has not gone by. his threat to democracy makes any prior abuse by any government official pale in comparison. moreover, allowing his conduct to pass without the most decisive response with himself creates an extraordinary danger to the nation. inviting further use of power and congress of the united states is unable or unwilling to respond to insurrection incited by the president. think about that. to paraphrase robert jackson, who said that that precedent, if i just described, would lie about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any future president who decided in his final months to make a play for unlimited power. think of the danger. here is the rare case in which love of the constitution and commitment to our democracy required the house to impeach. for the same reason the senate can and must try this case. next, president trump will assert that he is somehow significant or it matters, the chief justice who is presiding over this trial. let me state this very plainly. it does not matter. it is not significant. under article 1 section 3 when the president of the united states is tried the chief justice shall preside. there is only one person who is president of the united states at a time. right now joseph r. biden jr. is the 46th president of the united states. as a result, the requirement that the chief justice preside isn't triggered. instead the normal rules of any impeachment of anyone other than a sitting president apply. the president protem can preside. this makes perfect sense. the chief justice presides when the current president is on trial. it would be inconsistent if there was a submission. so you can't have that concern when you have a former president on trial or when you have anyone on trial other than the current president, which is why the chief justice presides only in that single case. it is exactly the presiding officer, constitution and senate rules require. president trump and his lawyers argue he should have prepassed on inciting an insurrection and endangering congress because as he would put it this impeachment is unconstitutional. as far as it understand it from reading the pleadings in this case, this defense involves coddling together a bunch of meritless legal arguments all of them attempting to focus on judgment and saying these kitchen sink objections lead the senate to not try the case. since they may these points at this juncture, i feel obliged to address them. he may argue, for example, that he didn't receive enough process in the house. even though the house proceedings are more like a grand jury action which is followed later by trial in the senate. even though the evidence of his high crimes is overwhelming and supported by the huge public record, even though he ear going to put this evidence before you at this trial. and he will have an opportunity to respond to it. others have already been charged for their role in attacks that the president incited. even though we invited him, voluntary come here and testify and tell his story, a request that his lawyers immediately refused, presumably because they understood what would happen if he would accept the plan under oat. recordless, president trump's process arguments are not only wrong on their own terms, but they're also completely irrelevant. so the question of whether you should hold this trial. that question is answered by the constitution and the answer is yes. in addition, separate from his due process of complaints, president trump and his council have repeatedly boasted on tv that the undisputed evidence of what happened in this case, you'll see video clips. they'll show video clips of other politicians, including democratic politicians, using what they consider incideary language. it will show in contrast that president trump's comments weren't so bad. like so much of what president trump's lawyers might say today, that's a gift meant to enflame partisan hostility and play on our division. president trump was not impeached because of the words he used. plenty of other politicians have used strong language. but donald j. trump was president of the united states. he sought to overturn a presidential election that had been upheld by every single court to consider it. he spent months insisting to his base that the only way he could use was a conspiracy against them and america itself. he attempted to persuade his followers, that the peaceful transfer of power that was taking place in the capitol was an abomination that had to be stopped at all costs. he flirted with groups like the proud boys who stand back and stand by while endorsing violence and sparking death threats to his opponents. he summoned an armed angry and dangerous crowd that wanted to keep him in power and was widely reported to be poised on a share trigger for violence at his direction. he then made circumstances when it was clear, where it was foreseeable that those statements fought extraordinary imminent violence. he then failed to defend the capitol, the congress, and the vice president during the insurrection, engaging in extraordinary dereliction of duty and desertion of duty that was only possible but a of the high office he held. he issued statements during the insurrection targeting the vice president and reiterating the very same lies about the election that had launched the violence personally. in addition to the tweets, five hours after the capitol was sacked in which he sided with the bad guys, we all know context matters. office and meaning and intent and consequences matter. simply put, it matters when and where and how we speak. the oath we've sworn and the power we have matters. president trump was not impeached because he used words that the house decided were forbidden or unpopular. he was impeached for inciting armed violence against the government of the united states of america. this leads me to a few final thoughts. president trump's lawyers will say i expect that you should dismiss this case so that the country can move on. they'll assert this impeachment is partisan and bipartisan cooperation requires you to drop the case and march forward in unity. with all due respect, every premise and every conclusion of that argument is wrong. just weeks ago, weeks ago, the president of the united states literally incited an armed attack on the capitol while seeking to retain power by subverting an election he lost, then celebrated the attack. people died. people were brutally injured. president trump's actions endangered every single member of congress. his own vice president. thousands of congressional staffers and our own capitol police and other law enforcement. this was a disaster for america's standing in the world. and president trump singularly is responsible for inciting it. as we will approve the attack on the capitol was not solely the work of extremists lurking in the shadows. indeed, if anyone in this chamber honestly believes that, but for the conduct of president trump, that the charge of impeachment, that that capitol occurred. does anybody believe that? now his lawyers will come before you and insist, even as the capitol is surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers, that we just move on. allow president trump to walk away without any consequences. that cannot be right. that is not unity. that's a path to fear what future presidents could do. so there's a good reason why this article of impeachment passed the house with bipartisan support. the principles at stake belong to all americans, all walks of life. making clear there are lines nobody can cross, especially the president of the united states. so, we share an interest in this trial where the truth can be shown and where president trump can be called to account for his offenses. william faulkner wrote the past is never did. this just happened. it's still happening. look around you as you come to the capitol and come to work. i do not believe that our attention span is so short that our sense of duty so frail, our factions so all consuming that the president can provoke an attack and get away with it just but a it occurred near the end of his term. after a betrayal like this, that cannot be unity without accountability. this is exactly what the constitution called for. the framers original understanding. this chamber's own president. they all confirm, indespitably, that president trump must stand trial for high crimes and misdemeanors against the american people. we must not, we cannot continue down the path of partnership that has turned the capitol into an armed fortress. senators it would falls to you by holding this trial, once all the evidence is before you, by delivering justice. thank you. >> david cicilline making a case. now another one of the impeachment managers coming up. >> to close i want to say something personal about the stakes of this decision, whether president trump can stand trial and be held accountable for inciting insurrection against us. it is personal indeed for every senator, for every member of the house, every manager, all of our staff, the capitol police, the washington, d.c. metropolitan police, the national guard, maintenance and custodial crews, print journalists and tv people who were here and all of our families and friends. i hope this trial reminds america how personal democracy is. and how personal is the loss of democracy, too. my youngest daughter was there with me wednesday, january 6th. it was the day after we buried her brother, our son tommy. the saddest day of our lives. also there was my son-in-law hank who is married to our oldest daughter hannah. i considered him a son, too, even though he eloped with my daughter and didn't tell us what they were going to do. but it was in the middle of covid-19. but the reason they came with me that wednesday, january 6th, was because they wanted to be together with me in the middle of a devastating week for our family. i told them i had to go back to work because we were counting electoral votes that day, on january 6th. it was our constitutional duty. i invited them instead to come with me to witness this historic event, the peaceful transfer of power in america. they said they heard that president trump was calling on his followers to come to washington to protest. they asked me directly, would it be safe? would it be safe? and i told them, of course it should be safe. this is the capitol. our majority leader offered me his office on the house floor because i was one of the managers that day. tabitha and hank were with me in that office as colleagues came by to console us about the loss of our middle child, tommy, our beloved tommy. mr. cicilline and legeuse came to see me that day. lots of republicans, democrats came to see me. i felt a sense of being, let's get out of here. i won't forget their tenderness. i was working on a speech when we would all be together in joint session. i wanted to focus on unity when we met in the house. i quoted abraham lincoln's famous 1838 speech where he said that division and destruction, if they ever come to america, it won't come from abroad. it will come from within. in that same speech lincoln passionately deplored mob violence. this was right after the murder of elijah lovejoy lincoln abhorred mob rule. that was a speech i gave that day after the house graciously warmed me back. hank and tabitha watched. after that, they went back to the office off the house floor. they didn't know the house had been breached yet and that an insurrection, or a riot or a coup had come to congress. and by the time we learned about it, about what was going on, it was too late. i couldn't get out there to be with them. people were calling their loved ones to say good-bye. members of congress and the house, they were removing their congressional pins so they wouldn't be identified by the mob if they tried to escape the violence. our new chaplain got up and said a prayer for us and we were told to put our gas masks on. then there was a sound i will never forget. a sound of pounding on the door like a battering ram. the most haunting sound i ever heard and i will never forget it. my chief of staff was barricaded in that office, kids under the office, placing what they thought were their final texts and saying their final good-byes. they thought they were going to die. my son-in-law had never even been to the capitol before. when they were finally rescued over an hour by capitol officers and we were together, i hugged them and i apologized and i told my daughter tabitha, who is 24 and a beautiful teacher. i told her how sorry i was. i promised her that it would not be like this again the next time she came back to the capitol. and do you know what she said? she said, dad, i don't want to come back to the capitol, ever. of all the terrible things i saw and heard on that day and since then, that one hit me the hardest. that and watching someone use an american flag pole, the flag still on it, to spear and pummel one of our police officers, ruthlessly, tortured by a pole with a flag on it that he was defending with his very life. people died that day. officers ended up with back damage, brain damage, people's eyes were gouged. officers had a heart tact. an officer lost three fingers that day. two officers have taken their own lives. senators, this cannot be our future. this cannot be the future of america. we cannot have presidents do this because they refuse to accept the will of the people of the constitution of the united states. much less can we create a new january exception in our precious beloved constitution that prior generations have died for and fought for so that corrupt presidents have several weeks to get away with whatever it is they want to do. history does not support a january exception in any way, so why would we in this one for the future? we close, mr. president. >> an emotional presentation from jamie raskin, wrapping up the house manager's case as to why this is constitutional and should go forward to trial in the senate. let's bring in chris wallace as we await the presentation from the president's legal team. your thoughts so far, chris? >> you're certainly right. that was an enormously emotional close by the lead impeachment manager, jamie raskin. for those who may not know, when he talked about burying his son, tommy was a 25-year-old law student who was wrought with terrible depression and committed suicide on new year's eve. in the midst of all of this, first the insurrection on january 6th and him leading the call for impeachment, now leading the trial, he has had to deal with the enormous grief of his son tommy and burying him. i thought it was a very powerful opening. it had a lot of substance to it. the video of the events of january 6th. the historical precedent. the strict legal argument, i thought the congressman from colorado may have a particularly strong argument. what he did, he took a conservative legal philosophy, originalism, textualism, read the constitution exactly how it was written, using that against the president. if you look at what they were article i, section 3, it provides exactly for this kind of trial of a president who has left office. i thought his close was very strong. what happened on january 6th he said the framers' worst nightmare come to life and that a president can't enflame insurrection and run away. you are going to hear this. a january exception. that a president can commit crimes, allegedly, and then leave office and he's thereby off the hook. i will say one last thing as someone who has covered a lot of trials. you hear one side's argument and how could there be any argument on the other side. the defense will take two hours to present reasons why this trial shouldn't be held. i'm sure they will make a lot of good points, too. let's just wait and listen. >> sandra: we will tkpwelt to jonathan turley. his name was invoked in all of this. you look at that video that they led off with and the reaction we've seen from that. very gripping. there was a tweet for republicans not to turn away. how that really riveted, people watched that and just couldn't look away. it was profanity laced, obviously, difficult to watch at times. you saw the police overrun by those protesters there. this all began, of course, as a vote on the parameters of the trial, constitutionality of it. rand paul, another republican, mark rubio, they were named both on that. just some of the republicans that voted no on that. i'm just curious your thoughts as this continues, the political impact this will have on those republicans who have argued against moving forward with this? >> i thought it was a very interesting decision by the impeachment managers to begin with. first of all, they had commissioned a law firm to put this all together, videos are used. they wanted a professional law firm to put together that video. it doesn't have anything to do with this. very beginning of the trial, that's when there will be a lot of eyeballs watching this. you want to make the strongest and maybe perhaps your most emotional case. you're right. showing that video of what the president said and did and tweets he sent. then what happened at the capitol, it is the strongest case that could be made, in terms of his political impact. i have to say i wonder. the events of the day are terrible. we're going to make a big deal out of it as we cover this trial about those events of the day. but we're going to move on. you've been back to just last year and as has been pointed out, so many people were talking about the explosive force of the first impeachment trial of donald trump and by the summer and the two conventions, it was kind of a nonentity and it didn't matter at all. i think this is going to grip the country for the next few days or week and then we're going to move on to covid and covid relief and president biden's agenda. however people vote, i don't know if it will have much impact. i will say for a republican who votes to convict a president, it could have a lot of impact because there's a strong trump base. >> john: let's go back to our legal analyst jonathan turley. there were three names brought up. blount, belknap and yours. the belknap case, they said he was acquitted because senators thought it was okay to hold the trial. he did not mention the trial was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. you're featured prominently in this, your writings after somebody had left official office. >> i was not impeached. i don't know those gentlemen. the only reason i know this, apparently according to the house managers, only a couple weeks ago this was my position on retroactive trials. what they're citing is an article from 21 years ago. i said it could be cited to have retroactive trials. where removal was not one of the options. they were there to achieve other things like the condemnation of officials, like disqualification. those are all worthy. i still believe that. what i have changed in the last three decades, i have become more textual. it's been well over 30 years. all of us agree this is a close question. i tend to keep up more with the text. i think better argument, the narrower argument, you don't have room for retroactive trials on the text. that's the position of justice joseph story wrote his commentaries on. probably the most cited authority on what the constitution meant. it was written not long after the cons taoug was signed. this is the difference between us and the framers. you cannot try former officials. it's interesting they talked about the hastings trial, but story, yeah, that's different. we don't use that in the united states under this standard. so i think in the end, you have a very interesting, unresolved issue. i have evolved in my view of the text. i agree what i said in the new article, there's value to retroactive trials. we have to balance them. >> sandra: what has struck you as you have listened to the house impeachment managers make their case after watching the video against the president? >> i thought it was a very good performance by the managers. i thought he was very, very good. i think chris is write, they began with this video, which was remarkably depatched from the issue facing the senate. everyone agrees what happened on january 6th was horrible. but that doesn't go to this question of whether we should open this door to retroactive trials. legeuse said i'd like to talk about two cases and made it sound like there were others. there were only two case. the outcomes do not support this. one they dismissed it. and in belknap, they believed it was unconstitutional and went on to acquit him. >> sandra: thank you. >> john: let's go to our chief legal correspondent. this question of constitutionality is one that's being debated in these sometimes dramatic emotional presentations that we're seeing on the senate floor, but there doesn't seem to be any question as to whether or not this question will proceed tomorrow. >> yes, we have jurors. they are the u.s. senators that are sitting there and watching and listening. one of the first things you learn as a law student, and as a young attorney, you want to make an emotional connection with your jurors. watching the events of that day play out put together as they were, this expert video that was playing for everybody sitting there. these people lived through those moments. you're going to connect with them. this is no regular jury. as you're making those arguments to these jurors, you don't have to tug on their emotions very hard because they were there and lived through this. many probably already know how they're going to vote ultimately. but also on this first one, talking about whether or not this is constitutional, this proceeding, this trial, for a president who's already left office, that debate will go on. as we talked about, they've already begun making a bigger case, the larger case that goes past that. whether or not the president incited violence and what we saw happen at the capitol. there is a letter, a lengthy letter that comes from the u.s. capitol police chief, the one that was asked to step down the day after this happened. he did resign. he wrote an eight page letter outlining all kinds of things that went wrong to make sure this doesn't happen again. the president's legal team will point to one sentence that says what occurred on january 6th has not been considered under any circumstances a protest, a rally or civil disobedience. this was a well planned, coordinated insurrection at the u.s. capitol. his team is going to want to point to the fact that this was not about the words on that day. he'll say the words were patriotic and peaceful. he'll also talk about a number of democratic lawmakers who have talked about confronting people in public, creating a crowd, making people uncomfortable. you're going to see all this for the defense. we get past this first vote, if it goes to the trial, and get to the rest of the arguments. >> sandra: we are about a minute out from this brief break they are taking. we do expect video from the trump defense team. yesterday i remember hearing from one of the trump defense lawyers that if you see my eyes are red when we're presenting it's because i have been poring over video of democrats and things that they said when they were not condemning violence that was happening in some of our american cities. >> this is the conversation you're always going to have in washington. if you apply this when you're the party in power, how are you going to feel when you're the minority party? all of the democrats have to think about the standards they are setting, going after lawmakers after they've left office, over the use of words. there are a number of people including chuck shumer, speaking on the steps of the u.s. supreme court that were viewed as a threat against a couple specific justices. the chief justice john roberts, who didn't want to get involved in this trial, put out a statement saying we will not be bullied and harassed. we will do our business. you're going to hear those statements, i bet, in short order. >> sandra: thank you for joining us. bret, they will probably resume in a few moment. your thoughts? >> bret: that closing argument by jamie raskin tapping into his personal loss, the tragedy and suicide of his son, and that moment on january 6th. the video was very compelling. it's not this argument. this argument is about the constitutionality. the trump attorneys will say peaceful protests, they will run their own videos. reliving january 6th has its own moment. not only on television, but from senators in that room. >> john: just to echo something shannon was saying, they do point to this saying it was preplanned, the fbi confirmed it was planned several days in advance. capitol police, fbi, all had prior warnings that there was going to be a riot at the capitol. we saw the people breaching the capitol repeating what president trump said in his rally, we will stop the steal. then that one fellow who said, we are listening to trump. he's your boss, when they were confronting the capitol police officers. there would seem to be some degree of link. >> bret: we know from interviews from some of the people who have been arrested and charged, they point back to the president's speech and being cited by democrats. expect the trump attorneys to come forceful about the constitutionality question first and then to make the case that this was not incitement by the president. we'll see. i think that this day, obviously looking at that video, is painful for our nation just to look back at it. >> sandra: appears they might be back under way shortly on capitol hill. bret, in the back drop of all of this, you've got the president, vice president, talking about the great american recovery that they're working on, the rescue plan for the american people who have been going through this pandemic. lot of folks are saying this is a lot of distraction for these senators who have a lot of work to do for the american people, as we try to come out of this pandemic. >> bret: president biden has been asked about the impeachment. he's not weighing in. neither is the white house. that's kind of an interesting statement. they're just taking a stand back, letting the senate do their thing. you see senator grassley walking in. the other thing is, is that they are walking and chewing gum. they're still doing these committee hearings and moving forward with the covid relief package, including trying to get the minimum wage increase in. that seems like it's going to be put in there, $15 an hour over four years. >> john: bret, we thank you for being with us. we know you'll be staying with the channel all afternoon. sandra, i saw something interesting today. cbs news did a poll whether or not the senate should convict president trump or not. they found 56% of people think he should be convicted, 44% think not convicted. probably falls along the lines of the senate vote. but don't forget, it takes 67 senators, 66, if pat leahy does not participate in the voting. 56% of public opinion saying that he should be convicted. that number would need to be 66%, 67% in order to be convicted. >> sandra: yes. remarkable day, john, when you have them starting off this impeachment trial with that video. and now knowing the trump defense team is going to plan a video of their own. we'll see where all of this goes. as i just mentioned to bret, the backdrop, you had a white house briefing happening, a covid briefing earlier in the day. got the president meeting with business leaders trying to figure out this great economic recovery. there's a lot of work these lawmakers have to do on capitol hill while this impeachment trial continues. this is going to occupy a large chunk of a very busy week in washington, as it looks like it is about to begin any moment now. >> john: president biden saying he doesn't plan on watching any of this impeachment trial. that he plans to stick with the business that he's doing as president. but here's where we -- this is why republicans are saying, what's the benefit of this? we know the outcome is pretty much predetermined. you're not going to get 17 republican senators to vote in favor of conviction. president trump looks like he'll be acquitted, which means, should he choose, he could run for office in 2024. democrats say, look, we've got to go through this process. if there's no punishment at the end, is he really being held to account? and is it worth it to go down the road, all of this divisive talk and rhetoric that we've seen and what happened on january 6th, just to come up with acquittal? >> sandra: yes. wall street journal say publicly democrats say one thing, to stop another president from doing this, but the wall street journal said ultimately, the acquittal would lead to vindication for the president, had they just stayed quiet. >> john: we'll get to hear what the president's attorneys have to say over their next two hours. thanks for being with us on "america reports." we have our continuing coverage. good afternoon. i'm martha maccallum. thanks for being with us today. as we wait for the proceedings to get back underway, the big question is being addressed today, is this a constitutional process. we heard an interesting argument laid out on the prosecution side. basically this trial cannot go forward unless a majority of the senate says yes. these are some of the
and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than 8,000 miles away from its shores. at this point, i should make it clear that while i have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," i am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else, for it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. we are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after the short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. before long, they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor. somehow this madness must cease. we must stop now. i speak as a child of god and brother to the suffering poor of vietnam. i speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. i speak for the poor of america, who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in vietnam. i speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. i speak as one who loves america, to the leaders of our own nation: the great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours. this is the message of the great buddhist leaders of vietnam. recently one of them wrote these words, and i quote: "each day the war goes on, the hatred increases in the heart of the vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. the americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. it is curious that the americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. the image of america will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism," unquote. if we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in vietnam. if we do not stop our war against the people of vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play. the world now demands a maturity of america that we may not be able to achieve. it demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the vietnamese people. the situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. in order to atone for our sins and errors in vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war and set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from vietnam in accordance with the 1954 geneva agreement. [applause] part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any vietnamese who fears for his life under the new regime, which included the liberation front. then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. we must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary. [applause] meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task: while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment, we must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in vietnam. we must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible. these are the times for real choices and not false ones. we are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. now, there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in vietnam. i say we must enter that struggle, but i wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. the war in vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the american spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality -- and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. they will be concerned about guatemala and peru. they will be concerned about thailand and cambodia. they will be concerned about mozambique and south africa. we will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in american life and policy. [applause] so such thoughts take us beyond vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living god. in 1957, a sensitive american official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. during the past 10 years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression, which has now justified the presence of u.s. military "advisers" in venezuela. this need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of american forces in guatemala. it tells why american helicopters are being used against guerrillas in cambodia and why american napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in peru. it is with such activity in mind that the words of the late john f. kennedy come back to haunt us. five years ago, he said, "those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." [applause] increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. i am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. we must rapidly begin we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered. a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. on the one hand, we are called to play the good samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. one day we must come to see that the whole jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. [applause] a true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the west investing huge sums of money in asia, africa and south america, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "this is not just." it will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of south america and say, "this is not just." the western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. a true revolution of values will lay a hand on the world order and say of war, "this way of settling differences is not just." this business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. [applause] america, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. there is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. >> dr. martin luther king, april 4th, 1967 at riverside church in new york, explaining why he opposed the war in vietnam. we'll come back to this speech and then play another. you can get a copy of our show at democracynow.org. today, dr. martin luther king, in his own words. back in a minute. ♪ [music break] >> mahalia jackson, "take my hand, precious lord," dr. king's favorite song. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman, as we return to dr. martin luther king's speech "beyond vietnam." it was april 4th, 1967 at riverside church in new york. >> these are revolutionary times. all over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. the shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." we in the west must support these revolutions. it is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. this has driven many to feel that only marxism has a revolutionary spirit. therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism. with this powerful commitment, we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain." a genuine revolution of values means, in the final analysis, that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. this call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all- embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. this oft-misunderstood, this oft-misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. when i speak of love, i am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response, i am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. i'm speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. this hindu-muslim-christian- jewish-buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of saint john: "let us love one another; for love is god and everyone that loveth is born of god and knoweth god. he that loveth not knoweth not god; for god is love. if we love one another god dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us." let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. we can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. the oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. as arnold toynbee says, "love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word," unquote. we are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. we are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. in this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. procrastination is still the thief of time. life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. the "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. we may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "too late." there is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. omar khayyam writes, "the moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." we still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co- annihilation. we must move past indecision to action. we must find new ways to speak for peace in vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. if we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. now, let us begin. now, let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter but beautiful struggle for a new world. this is the calling of the sons of god, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. shall we say the odds are too great? shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? will our message be that the forces of american life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? the choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. as that noble bard of yesterday, james russell lowell, eloquently stated: once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, in the strife of truth and falsehood, for the good or evil side; some great cause, god's new messiah, off'ring each the bloom or blight, and the choice goes by forever twixt that darkness and that light. though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong; though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong: yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown, standeth god within the shadow keeping watch above his own. and if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. if we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. if we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over america and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. [applause] >> dr. martin luther king, jr., april 4th, 1967, at riverside church in new york, explaining why he opposed the war in vietnam, the speech delivered exactly a year to the day before he was assassinated at the lorraine motel in memphis, tennessee on april 4th, 1968. the night before he died, dr. king delivered his last major address. he was in memphis to support striking sanitation workers as he built momentum for a poor people's march on washington. this is some of dr. king's last speech, "i have been to the mountain top." >> and you know, if i were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the almighty said to me, "martin luther king, which age would you like to live in? "i would take my mental flight by egypt and i would watch god's children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of egypt through or rather across the red sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. and in spite of its magnificence, i wouldn't stop there. i would move on by greece and take my mind to mount olympus. and i would see plato, aristotle, socrates, euripides and aristophanes assembled around the parthenon. and i would watch them around the parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. but i wouldn't stop there. i would go on, even to the great heyday of the roman empire, and i would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. but i wouldn't stop there. i would even come up to the day of the renaissance and get a quick picture of all that the renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. but i wouldn't stop there. i would even go by the way that the man for whom i am named had his habitat. and i would watch martin luther as he tacked his 95 theses on the door at the church of wittenberg. but i wouldn't stop there. i would come on up even to 1863 and watch a vacillating president by the name of abraham lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the emancipation proclamation. but i wouldn't stop there. i would even come up to the early '30s and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation and come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. but i wouldn't stop there. strangely enough, i would turn to the almighty and say, "if you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, i will be happy." [applause] now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. the nation is sick. trouble is in the land; confusion all around. that's a strange statement. but i know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. and i see god working in this period of the 20th century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding. something is happening in our world. the masses of people are rising up. and wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in johannesburg, south africa; nairobi, kenya; accra, ghana; new york city; atlanta, georgia; jackson, mississippi; or memphis, tennessee, the cry is always the same: "we want to be free!" [applause] and another reason that i'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. survival demands that we grapple with them. men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. but now, no longer can they just talk about it. it is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. that is where we are today. [applause] and also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. [applause] now, i'm just happy that god has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding. and i'm happy that he's allowed me to be in memphis. i can remember -- [applause] i can remember when negroes were just going around, as ralph has said, so often scratching where they didn't itch and laughing when they were not tickled. [applause] but that day is all over. [applause] we mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in god's world. [applause] and that's all this whole thing is about. we aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. we are saying that we are determined to be men. we are determined to be people. we are saying -- [applause] we are saying that we are god's children. and if we are god's children, we don't have to live like we are forced to live. now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? it means that we've got to stay together. we've got to stay together and maintain unity. you know, whenever pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. what was that? he kept the slaves fighting among themselves. [applause] but whenever the slaves get together, something happens in pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. when the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. >> dr. martin luther king, april 3rd, 1968, the night before he was assassinated. we'll come back to this speech in memphis, tennessee in a minute. ♪ [music break] >> nina simone singing "why? (the king of love is dead)" this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman, as we continue with dr.king's speech the night before he was assassinated, april 3rd, 1968. it was a rainy night in memphis, tennessee. >> we aren't going to let any mace stop us. we are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do. i've seen them so often. i remember in birmingham, alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there, we would move out of the 16th street baptist church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. and bull connor would tell them to send the dogs forth, and they did come. but we just went before the dogs singing, "ain't gonna let nobody turn me around." [applause] bull connor next would say, "turn the fire hoses on." and as i said to you the other night, bull connor didn't know history. he knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. and that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. and we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. if we were baptist or some other denominations, we had been immersed. if we were methodist and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water. that couldn't stop us. and we just went on before the dogs, and we would look at them; and we'd go on before the water hoses, and we would look at it. and we'd just go on singing, "over my head i see freedom in the air." and then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. and they would throw us in, and old bull would say, "take 'em off," and they did. and we would just go on in the paddy wagon singing, "we shall overcome." and every now and then we'd get in jail, and we'd see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers and being moved by our words and our songs. and there was a power there which bull connor couldn't adjust to, and so we ended up transforming bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in birmingham. now, let me say, as i move to my conclusion, that we've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in memphis. we've got to see it through. and when we have our march, you need to be there. if it means leaving work, if it means leaving school, be there. be concerned about your brother. you may not be on strike. but either we go up together, or we go down together. let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. one day a man came to jesus, and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters of life. at points he wanted to trick jesus and show him that he knew a little more than jesus knew and throw him off base. now, that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. but jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air and placed it on the dangerous curve between jerusalem and jericho. and he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. you remember that a levite and a priest passed by on the other side. they didn't stop to help him. and finally a man of another race came by. he got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. but he got down with him, administered first aid and helped the man in need. jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the "i" into the "thou" and to be concerned about his brother. now, you know we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the levite didn't stop. at times we say they were busy going to a church meeting, an ecclesiastical gathering, and they had to get on down to jerusalem so they wouldn't be late for their meeting. at other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that "one who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body 24 hours before the ceremony." and every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to jerusalem or down to jericho, rather, to improvement association. that's a possibility. maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effect. but i'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. it's possible that those men were afraid. you see, the jericho road is a dangerous road. i remember when mrs. king and i were first in jerusalem. we rented a car and drove from jerusalem down to jericho. and as soon as we got on that road, i said to my wife, "i can see why jesus used this as the setting for his parable." it's a winding, meandering road. it's really conducive for ambushing. you start out in jerusalem, which is about 1,200 miles or rather 1,200 feet above sea level. and by the time you get down to jericho, 15 or 20 minutes later, you're about 2,200 feet below sea level. that's a dangerous road. in the days of jesus it came to be known as the "bloody pass." and you know, it's possible that the priest and the levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking, and he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. and so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the levite asked was, "if i stop to help this man, what will happen to me? "but then the good samaritan came by. and he reversed the question: "if i do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" that's the question before you tonight, not: "if i stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job? "not: "if i stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that i usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor? "the question is not: "if i stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me? "the question is: "if i do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them? "that's the question. you know, several years ago, i was in new york city autographing the first book that i had written. and while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. the only question i heard from her was: "are you martin luther king? "and i was looking down writing, and i said, "yes." and the next minute i felt something beating on my chest. before i knew it, i had been stabbed by this demented woman. i was rushed to harlem hospital. it was a dark saturday afternoon. and that blade had gone through, and the x-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. and once that's punctured, you're drowned in your own blood; that's the end of you. it came out in the new york times the next morning, that if i had merely sneezed, i would have died. well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheelchair in the hospital. they allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. i read a few, but one of them i will never forget. i had received one from the president and the vice president. i've forgotten what those telegrams said. i'd received a visit and a letter from the governor of new york, but i've forgotten what that letter said. but there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the white plains high school. and i looked at that letter, and i'll never forget it. it said simply, "dear dr. king, i am a ninth-grade student at the white plains high school." and she said, "while it should not matter, i would like to mention that i'm a white girl. i read in the paper of your misfortune and of your suffering. and i read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. and i'm simply writing you to say that i'm so happy that you didn't sneeze." [applause] and i want to say tonight i want to say tonight that i too am happy that i didn't sneeze, because if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the south started sitting in at lunch counters. and i knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the american dream and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the declaration of independence and the constitution. if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in inter-state travel. if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been around here in 1962, when negroes in albany, georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. and whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent. if i had sneezed -- [applause] if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of birmingham, alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation and brought into being the civil rights bill. if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in august, to try to tell america about a dream that i had had. if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been down in selma, alabama, to see the great movement there. if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been in memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. i'm so happy that i didn't sneeze. and they were telling me now, it doesn't matter now. it really doesn't matter what happens now. i left atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. the pilot said over the public address system, "we are sorry for the delay, but we have dr. martin luther king on the plane. and to be sure that all of the bags were checked and to be sure that nothing would be wrong on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully, and we've had the plane protected and guarded all night." and then i got into memphis. and some began to say the threats or talk about the threats that were out, of what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers. well, i don't know what will happen now. we've got some difficult days ahead. but it really doesn't matter with me now, because i've been to the mountaintop. and i don't mind. like anybody, i would like to live a long life. longevity has its place. but i'm not concerned about that now. i just want to do god's will. and he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. and i've looked over. and i've seen the promised land. i may not get there with you. but i want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! and so i'm happy tonight. i'm not worried about anything. i'm not fearing any man! mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord! >> dr. martin luther king. within 24 hours, he would be dead, assassinated on the balcony of the lorraine motel april 4th, 1968. today is the federal holiday that honors him. and that does it for today's program. if you would like to get a copy, you can go to democracynow.org. democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. e-mail your comments to outreach@democracynow.org or mail them to democracy now! p.o. box 693 new york, new york 10013. [captioning made possible by democracy now!]
and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than 8,000 miles away from its shores. at this point, i should make it clear that while i have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," i am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else, for it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. we are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after the short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. before long, they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor. somehow this madness must cease. we must stop now. i speak as a child of god and brother to the suffering poor of vietnam. i speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. i speak for the poor of america, who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in vietnam. i speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. i speak as one who loves america, to the leaders of our own nation: the great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours. this is the message of the great buddhist leaders of vietnam. recently one of them wrote these words, and i quote: "each day the war goes on, the hatred increases in the heart of the vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. the americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. it is curious that the americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. the image of america will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism," unquote. if we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in vietnam. if we do not stop our war against the people of vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play. the world now demands a maturity of america that we may not be able to achieve. it demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the vietnamese people. the situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. in order to atone for our sins and errors in vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war and set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from vietnam in accordance with the 1954 geneva agreement. [applause] part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any vietnamese who fears for his life under the new regime, which included the liberation front. then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. we must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary. [applause] meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task: while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment, we must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in vietnam. we must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible. these are the times for real choices and not false ones. we are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. now, there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in vietnam. i say we must enter that struggle, but i wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. the war in vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the american spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality -- and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. they will be concerned about guatemala and peru. they will be concerned about thailand and cambodia. they will be concerned about mozambique and south africa. we will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in american life and policy. [applause] so such thoughts take us beyond vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living god. in 1957, a sensitive american official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. during the past 10 years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression, which has now justified the presence of u.s. military "advisers" in venezuela. this need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of american forces in guatemala. it tells why american helicopters are being used against guerrillas in cambodia and why american napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in peru. it is with such activity in mind that the words of the late john f. kennedy come back to haunt us. five years ago, he said, "those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." [applause] increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. i am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. we must rapidly begin we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered. a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. on the one hand, we are called to play the good samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. one day we must come to see that the whole jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. [applause] a true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the west investing huge sums of money in asia, africa and south america, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "this is not just." it will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of south america and say, "this is not just." the western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. a true revolution of values will lay a hand on the world order and say of war, "this way of settling differences is not just." this business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. [applause] america, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. there is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. >> dr. martin luther king, april 4th, 1967 at riverside church in new york, explaining why he opposed the war in vietnam. we'll come back to this speech and then play another. you can get a copy of our show at democracynow.org. today, dr. martin luther king, in his own words. back in a minute. ♪ [music break] >> mahalia jackson, "take my hand, precious lord," dr. king's favorite song. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman, as we return to dr. martin luther king's speech "beyond vietnam." it was april 4th, 1967 at riverside church in new york. >> these are revolutionary times. all over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. the shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." we in the west must support these revolutions. it is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. this has driven many to feel that only marxism has a revolutionary spirit. therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism. with this powerful commitment, we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain." a genuine revolution of values means, in the final analysis, that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. this call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all- embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. this oft-misunderstood, this oft-misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. when i speak of love, i am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response, i am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. i'm speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. this hindu-muslim-christian- jewish-buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of saint john: "let us love one another; for love is god and everyone that loveth is born of god and knoweth god. he that loveth not knoweth not god; for god is love. if we love one another god dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us." let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. we can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. the oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. as arnold toynbee says, "love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word," unquote. we are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. we are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. in this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. procrastination is still the thief of time. life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. the "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. we may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "too late." there is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. omar khayyam writes, "the moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." we still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co- annihilation. we must move past indecision to action. we must find new ways to speak for peace in vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. if we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. now, let us begin. now, let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter but beautiful struggle for a new world. this is the calling of the sons of god, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. shall we say the odds are too great? shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? will our message be that the forces of american life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? the choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. as that noble bard of yesterday, james russell lowell, eloquently stated: once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, in the strife of truth and falsehood, for the good or evil side; some great cause, god's new messiah, off'ring each the bloom or blight, and the choice goes by forever twixt that darkness and that light. though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong; though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong: yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown, standeth god within the shadow keeping watch above his own. and if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. if we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. if we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over america and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. [applause] >> dr. martin luther king, jr., april 4th, 1967, at riverside church in new york, explaining why he opposed the war in vietnam, the speech delivered exactly a year to the day before he was assassinated at the lorraine motel in memphis, tennessee on april 4th, 1968. the night before he died, dr. king delivered his last major address. he was in memphis to support striking sanitation workers as he built momentum for a poor people's march on washington. this is some of dr. king's last speech, "i have been to the mountain top." >> and you know, if i were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the almighty said to me, "martin luther king, which age would you like to live in? "i would take my mental flight by egypt and i would watch god's children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of egypt through or rather across the red sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. and in spite of its magnificence, i wouldn't stop there. i would move on by greece and take my mind to mount olympus. and i would see plato, aristotle, socrates, euripides and aristophanes assembled around the parthenon. and i would watch them around the parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. but i wouldn't stop there. i would go on, even to the great heyday of the roman empire, and i would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. but i wouldn't stop there. i would even come up to the day of the renaissance and get a quick picture of all that the renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. but i wouldn't stop there. i would even go by the way that the man for whom i am named had his habitat. and i would watch martin luther as he tacked his 95 theses on the door at the church of wittenberg. but i wouldn't stop there. i would come on up even to 1863 and watch a vacillating president by the name of abraham lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the emancipation proclamation. but i wouldn't stop there. i would even come up to the early '30s and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation and come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. but i wouldn't stop there. strangely enough, i would turn to the almighty and say, "if you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, i will be happy." [applause] now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. the nation is sick. trouble is in the land; confusion all around. that's a strange statement. but i know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. and i see god working in this period of the 20th century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding. something is happening in our world. the masses of people are rising up. and wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in johannesburg, south africa; nairobi, kenya; accra, ghana; new york city; atlanta, georgia; jackson, mississippi; or memphis, tennessee, the cry is always the same: "we want to be free!" [applause] and another reason that i'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. survival demands that we grapple with them. men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. but now, no longer can they just talk about it. it is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. that is where we are today. [applause] and also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. [applause] now, i'm just happy that god has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding. and i'm happy that he's allowed me to be in memphis. i can remember -- [applause] i can remember when negroes were just going around, as ralph has said, so often scratching where they didn't itch and laughing when they were not tickled. [applause] but that day is all over. [applause] we mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in god's world. [applause] and that's all this whole thing is about. we aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. we are saying that we are determined to be men. we are determined to be people. we are saying -- [applause] we are saying that we are god's children. and if we are god's children, we don't have to live like we are forced to live. now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? it means that we've got to stay together. we've got to stay together and maintain unity. you know, whenever pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. what was that? he kept the slaves fighting among themselves. [applause] but whenever the slaves get together, something happens in pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. when the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. >> dr. martin luther king, april 3rd, 1968, the night before he was assassinated. we'll come back to this speech in memphis, tennessee in a minute. ♪ [music break] >> nina simone singing "why? (the king of love is dead)" this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman, as we continue with dr.king's speech the night before he was assassinated, april 3rd, 1968. it was a rainy night in memphis, tennessee. >> we aren't going to let any mace stop us. we are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do. i've seen them so often. i remember in birmingham, alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there, we would move out of the 16th street baptist church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. and bull connor would tell them to send the dogs forth, and they did come. but we just went before the dogs singing, "ain't gonna let nobody turn me around." [applause] bull connor next would say, "turn the fire hoses on." and as i said to you the other night, bull connor didn't know history. he knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. and that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. and we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. if we were baptist or some other denominations, we had been immersed. if we were methodist and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water. that couldn't stop us. and we just went on before the dogs, and we would look at them; and we'd go on before the water hoses, and we would look at it. and we'd just go on singing, "over my head i see freedom in the air." and then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. and they would throw us in, and old bull would say, "take 'em off," and they did. and we would just go on in the paddy wagon singing, "we shall overcome." and every now and then we'd get in jail, and we'd see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers and being moved by our words and our songs. and there was a power there which bull connor couldn't adjust to, and so we ended up transforming bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in birmingham. now, let me say, as i move to my conclusion, that we've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in memphis. we've got to see it through. and when we have our march, you need to be there. if it means leaving work, if it means leaving school, be there. be concerned about your brother. you may not be on strike. but either we go up together, or we go down together. let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. one day a man came to jesus, and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters of life. at points he wanted to trick jesus and show him that he knew a little more than jesus knew and throw him off base. now, that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. but jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air and placed it on the dangerous curve between jerusalem and jericho. and he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. you remember that a levite and a priest passed by on the other side. they didn't stop to help him. and finally a man of another race came by. he got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. but he got down with him, administered first aid and helped the man in need. jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the "i" into the "thou" and to be concerned about his brother. now, you know we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the levite didn't stop. at times we say they were busy going to a church meeting, an ecclesiastical gathering, and they had to get on down to jerusalem so they wouldn't be late for their meeting. at other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that "one who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body 24 hours before the ceremony." and every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to jerusalem or down to jericho, rather, to improvement association. that's a possibility. maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effect. but i'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. it's possible that those men were afraid. you see, the jericho road is a dangerous road. i remember when mrs. king and i were first in jerusalem. we rented a car and drove from jerusalem down to jericho. and as soon as we got on that road, i said to my wife, "i can see why jesus used this as the setting for his parable." it's a winding, meandering road. it's really conducive for ambushing. you start out in jerusalem, which is about 1,200 miles or rather 1,200 feet above sea level. and by the time you get down to jericho, 15 or 20 minutes later, you're about 2,200 feet below sea level. that's a dangerous road. in the days of jesus it came to be known as the "bloody pass." and you know, it's possible that the priest and the levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking, and he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. and so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the levite asked was, "if i stop to help this man, what will happen to me? "but then the good samaritan came by. and he reversed the question: "if i do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" that's the question before you tonight, not: "if i stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job? "not: "if i stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that i usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor? "the question is not: "if i stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me? "the question is: "if i do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them? "that's the question. you know, several years ago, i was in new york city autographing the first book that i had written. and while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. the only question i heard from her was: "are you martin luther king? "and i was looking down writing, and i said, "yes." and the next minute i felt something beating on my chest. before i knew it, i had been stabbed by this demented woman. i was rushed to harlem hospital. it was a dark saturday afternoon. and that blade had gone through, and the x-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. and once that's punctured, you're drowned in your own blood; that's the end of you. it came out in the new york times the next morning, that if i had merely sneezed, i would have died. well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheelchair in the hospital. they allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. i read a few, but one of them i will never forget. i had received one from the president and the vice president. i've forgotten what those telegrams said. i'd received a visit and a letter from the governor of new york, but i've forgotten what that letter said. but there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the white plains high school. and i looked at that letter, and i'll never forget it. it said simply, "dear dr. king, i am a ninth-grade student at the white plains high school." and she said, "while it should not matter, i would like to mention that i'm a white girl. i read in the paper of your misfortune and of your suffering. and i read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. and i'm simply writing you to say that i'm so happy that you didn't sneeze." [applause] and i want to say tonight i want to say tonight that i too am happy that i didn't sneeze, because if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the south started sitting in at lunch counters. and i knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the american dream and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the declaration of independence and the constitution. if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in inter-state travel. if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been around here in 1962, when negroes in albany, georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. and whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent. if i had sneezed -- [applause] if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of birmingham, alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation and brought into being the civil rights bill. if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in august, to try to tell america about a dream that i had had. if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been down in selma, alabama, to see the great movement there. if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been in memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. i'm so happy that i didn't sneeze. and they were telling me now, it doesn't matter now. it really doesn't matter what happens now. i left atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. the pilot said over the public address system, "we are sorry for the delay, but we have dr. martin luther king on the plane. and to be sure that all of the bags were checked and to be sure that nothing would be wrong on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully, and we've had the plane protected and guarded all night." and then i got into memphis. and some began to say the threats or talk about the threats that were out, of what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers. well, i don't know what will happen now. we've got some difficult days ahead. but it really doesn't matter with me now, because i've been to the mountaintop. and i don't mind. like anybody, i would like to live a long life. longevity has its place. but i'm not concerned about that now. i just want to do god's will. and he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. and i've looked over. and i've seen the promised land. i may not get there with you. but i want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! and so i'm happy tonight. i'm not worried about anything. i'm not fearing any man! mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord! >> dr. martin luther king. within 24 hours, he would be dead, assassinated on the balcony of the lorraine motel april 4th, 1968. today is the federal holiday that honors him. and that does it for today's program. if you would like to get a copy, you can go to democracynow.org. democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. e-mail your comments to outreach@democracynow.org or mail them to democracy now! p.o. box 693 new york, new york 10013. [captioning made possible by democracy now!]
>> four years after making history by becoming the first african-american president, barack obama kicks off the second term on martin luther king day. today and inauguration day special. we will air highlights from last ides' peace ball including naacp president benjamin jealous. >> the challenge for our country is never to see the day when a person of color would be president, nor the challenge for our country was to ensure that it would be safe for it to i hae -- happen again and again. >> we'll also hear from the legendary poet son the sanchez, ralph nader, sweet honey and the rock, and angela davis. >> let me say this time around we cannot subordinate our aspirations and our hopes to presidential agenda. >> we will look at big money behind the inauguration. four years ago president obama refused to accept corporate donations, but this year exxonmobil, at&t, christoph are among the biggest backers of today's festivities. -- microsoft are among the biggest backers of today's festivities. this is "democracy now!," democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. the teenage gunman is in custody after allegedly killing five members of his family in new mexico on saturday night. police say the 15-year-old killed his parents and three siblings, each suffering multiple gunshot wounds. the suspect was armed with several weapons, including an assault rifle. it was the deadliest mass shooting in the u.s. since the newtown massacre over a month ago. the shooting came on the same day opponents of gun control held rallies across the country to oppose the white house effort to reform the nation's gun laws. at demonstrations in pennsylvania and ohio, gun owners pilloried calls for stricter gun control. >> no law put on law abiding citizens has ever deterred crime. they're going to take my gun so i can get shot. >> my thoughts is, tell the leftwing liberal idiots in washington to leave our guns alone. we're not hurting anything. it is the criminals. deal with the criminals, not the law abiding citizens. >> the pro-gun rallies also coincided with a series of nationwide gun shows where at least five people were wounded when their firearms accidentally went off. in north carolina, three people were injured when a shotgun accidentally fired as its owner removed it from its case. another gun owner accidentally shot himself in indianapolis, while an ohio a gun show attendee was injured by stray bullet. president obama is set to publicly take the oath of office today at his second term inauguration in washington. obama gathered with his family sunday in the blue room of the white house to privately recite the 35-word oath read to him by supreme court chief justice john roberts. >> please raise your right hand and repeat after me. i, barack hussein obama do solemnly swear. >> i barack hussein obama do solemnly swear that i will faithfully execute the office of president of the united states and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the united states, so help me god. >> congratulations, mr. president. >> 3 activist groups have received permission to protest president obama along the route of the nrk parade. the anti-war group answers says it expects -- we will have more on the inauguration after headlines. alice four people have been killed in u.s. drone strike inside yemen. yemeni government says the attack of four militants but the claim has not been independently verified. the attack comes one day after those of anger of the drone attacks blocked a main road linking the targeted town with the capital. the obama administration meanwhile reportedly has decided to exclude cia drone strikes in pakistan from new legal oversight for targeted killings overseas. the washington post reports counter-terrorism adviser and cia-nominee john brennan has signed off on a plan to exempt the drone attacks in pakistan from a list of operations that would be covered under newly enacted rules. areas covered in the so-called play book include the process for adding names to kill lists, the principles for killing u.s. citizens abroad, and the command chain for authorizing cia or u.s. military strikes outside war zones. the exemption of drone strikes in pakistan would allow the cia to continue carrying them without -- tearing them without a legal framework for a to two years. the hostage standoff in a jury of his ended in the deaths of dozens of people, including up to 48 of the captured workers. algerian forces say they recovered at least 25 bodies after storming the militant held gas complex saturday, bringing the confirmed death toll to least 80. witnesses say the hostages were brutally executed. the toll could have been worse as hundreds of hostages had earlier managed to escape. a will on islamist fighter has claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the al qaeda. the militants who took the complex claimed there were doing so to seek an end to the french military intervention in neighboring mali. the french army continues to advance on no. rally in its effort to wrest control from islamist rebels. earlier today, french forces into the key town on the ground after a week of air strikes. the rebels apparently fled the town after vowing stiff resistance. at the united nations, a spokesperson for the u.n. refugee agency said the fighting in mali continues to this place up to 700,000 people. >> we believe there could be in the nearuture up to 300,000 people additionally displaced inside mali and over 400,000 additionally displaced in the neighboring countries. many also fear the strict application of sharia law. their report having witnessed executions, amputations, and say that large amounts of money are being offered to civilians to fight against the malian army and its supporters. disturbingly, also, we're hearing accounts there are children among the rebel fighters. >> fighting erupted in afghanistan's capital earlier today after suicide bombers attacked the headquarters of the afghan traffic police. at least eight people were killed, including three officers and five militants. it was the second attack on an afghan government building in kabul in five days. a new u.n. report says the torture prisoners in afghanistan is not only continuing, that may be on the rise. investigators say they've uncovered ongoing abuses in afghan prisons including the beating of detainees with cables and hanging them by their wrists. more than half of prisoners interviewed said they had been tortured, higher than the previous rate of 24% in 2011. the report also cites an unnamed afghan official confirming prisoners are being held as a pretension sides to avoid international scrutiny. last week, the u.s. military said it had halted the transfer detainees to some afghan prisons over ongoing torture. the israeli military has forced -- forcibly removed another palestinian protest encampment in the path of the expanding settlement. palestinian residents of the village had set up three tents and a mobil building on friday to stop israel from seizing parts of their land. the demonstrators named their site bab al-karama. the activists said they tore up the order in the faces of its release soldiers. the in camera was raided and dismantle by its release soldiers earlier today. another palestinian encampment was removed earlier this month. rebels in colombia have announced an end to a two-month unilateral ceasefire declared peace talks with the government. revolutionary armed forces, or fork, said they would have extended the truce had the government and willing to sign an accord. a columbia rejected the pact saying farc did its ceasefire pledges multiple times. military attacks against the far can continue even after rebels and the colombian government began meeting for peace talks in cuba late last year. back in the u.s., the interior department has again delayed a regulation that would require the disclosure of chemicals used in the oil drilling process of hydraulic fracturing known as fracking. it is the second time the rule's implementation has been delayed since it was first proposed in may. in a bid to draw attention to the environmental impact of fracking, the musician and activist yoko ono has joined with her son, musician sean lennon, for a tour of impacted areas in northeastern states. the actor and activist susan sarandon joined yoko ono and sean lennon for a part of their trip. >> fracking is such a major, major decision because it is forever. you cannot undo the damage. all of that stuff is still emitting even after they leave. >> fracking is dirty. there is no way to make it clean. the industry knows it is dirty and that is why they're spending so much money on the pr campaign to spread the information and tell people it is going to save their economy, when actually it devastates local communities. >> hundreds of people gathered in new york city on saturday for a public memorial service honoring and schwartz, the internet freedom activist who took his own life earlier this month. he was weeks before trial date for downloading millions of articles provided by the nonprofit research service jstor at mit. swartz was facing 35 years in prison, a penalty supporters called excessively harsh. at the memorial, aaron swartz's partner, taren stinebrickner- kauffman, called for prosecutors to be held accountable. >> on last friday he face the prospect of yet another three months of uncertainty of ups and downs of being forced by the government to spend every fiber of his being on this damnable, since this trial. with no guarantee could exonerate himself at the end of it. he was so scared and so frustrated and so desperate and more than anything, just so weary. i think he just could not take it another day. aarib would have loved to have been here because of the last week, phoenix's are already rising from his ashes. the best possible legacy for him is for all of us to go out from here today and do everything we can to make the world a better place. a thousand flowers are blooming in his name already. some of the most important and will be fighting, david siegel, and many others, are organizing around u.s. attorney's office that must be held accountable for its actions. >> taren stinebrickner-kauffman speaking at the public memorial for aaron swartz. "democracy now!" livestreamed the memorial. you can go to democracynow.org to watch it in full as well as our interview with taren. this is "democracy now!," democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we are broadcasting from washington, d.c., today, where president barack obama is set to publicly take the oath of office for a second term after becoming the first african-american u.s. president four years ago. as many as 800,000 people are expected to attend this year's celebration -- smaller than the nearly 2 million people who crammed into washington to witness his 2009 inauguration, but still the largest second inauguration in history. president obama first gathered with his family sunday in the blue room of the white house to privately recite the 35-word oath that was read to him by supreme court chief justice john roberts. >> please raise your right hand and repeat after me. i, barack hussein obama, do solemnly swear -- 9 >> i barack obama and do solemnly swear that i will execute the office of the president of the united states and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the united states, so help me god. >> congratulations, mr. president. >> thank you so much. >> president obama being sworn in sunday by supreme court justice john roberts during a ceremony at the white house. he will repeat those words when he raises his right hand at today's public inauguration, while laying his left hand on two bibles -- one owned by abraham lincoln and the other owned by dr. martin luther king, jr. afterward, obama will deliver a speech laying out his plans for the next four years. the nro ceremony will include music from singers james taylor, beyoncé, and others which will carry live during our extended five-our inauguration special. after our regular broadcast ends, we will continue to bring you coverage until 1:00 p.m. eastern standard time, including the swearing in ceremony. some stations will run the whole five our special, for others you can go to democracynow.org. this year, the inauguration also comes on the federal holiday in honor of dr. martin luther king, jr., who delivered his "i have a dream" speech 50 years ago, not far from here at the lincoln memorial. later in our special coverage, we will air excerpts of some of dr. king's less often played speeches, including "beyond vietnam." why he opposed the war in vietnam. but first, we turn to some of the voices of hope and resistance from sunday night's piece ball. not affiliated with any political party, the celebration at the mead center for american theater paid tribute to the continuing struggle for peace and justice here in the united states and throughout the world. we begin with naacp president benjamin jealous. >> this is the place to be tonight. the challenge for our country was never to see the day when a person of color would be president, know the challenge for our country was to ensure that it would be safe for it to happen again and again. we knew it could be condoleezza rice. it could be colin powell. but we got barack obama. we got a man who was a product of a progressive movement. as we stand here tonight ever so humble, reminiscing about ancestors who did not see this day, about people like medgar evers who gave their lives so we would see this day, let us walk out of here tonight talking to our children as members of a movement that is triumphant. i want you not to forget what happened last year or two years ago when they said we could never be where we are right now. when they tried to teach our children that the tea party was not a group of people who started the war for democracy against the king, but rather a group of people who started the war against democracy for would- be kings. and they said that we organized people would be run over by organized money. they said that we cannot organize people, would never turn out like we did in 2008. they said that they could attack women's rights, lgbt rights, students' rights, workers' rights, voting rights, and we would vulcanize. and then something funny happened on their way to victory. we came together like we have never come together before. [applause] they said that we could not pass marriage equality in one state on the ballot, and we won victories in all four states. [applause] they said that we could never say comprehensive immigration reform, and now sean hannity says that he supports it. they said that they were going to steal our democracy from us, and we took it back. so here is the challenge. the challenge to us is to remember what we learned when we first entered this movement, that you never elect someone to make change happen for you. you elect somebody to make it a little easier for your movement to keep on making change after. and so, brothers and sisters, i implore you tonight, have a good time, party caressed well, then get right back on the battlefield tuesday morning because we took our democracy back and we ain't giving it up to nobody. thank you and god bless. fire it up. fire it up. fire it up! god bless you all. >> that was president of the naacp, benjamin jealous, speaking at the peace ball, voices of hope and resistance come here in washington, d.c. on sunday night. we will be back with more from the peace ball couldn't angela davis, sonia sanchez and others in a moment. ♪ [music break] >> sweet honey in the rock performing at the peace ball last night. this is "democracy now!," democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we are broadcasting from washington, d.c., bringing you special coverage of today's inauguration as hundreds of thousands gathered here in the capital. as many as 800,000 people are expected to attend the celebration -- smaller than merely to lead people who crammed into washington to witness the 2009 inauguration, but still the largest second inauguration in history. the first, by the way, four years ago was the largest event ever to take place in washington, d.c. after our regular program ends, we will continue to bring you coverage until 1:00 p.m. eastern time, including the swearing in ceremony. this year the inauguration also comes on january 21, the federal holiday in honor of dr. martin luther king, jr. later in our special coverage, we will air excerpts of some of his less often heard speeches. but now we return to some of the voices from the peace ball last night, voices of hope and resistance. at the arena stage of the mead center for american theater, a cultural center here in washington. this is renowned author, educator and political activist angela davis who spoke last night, founder of the group critical resistance, a grassroots effort to in the prison industrial complex. davis voiced support for president obama, the said much work needs to be done. >> let me say this time around we cannot subordinate our aspirations and our hopes to presidential the agendas. our passionate support for president barack obama and it is wonderful that we can say for the second time, president barack obama, and we support him and are passionate about that support. but that support should also be expressed in our determination to raise issues that have largely been ignored or not appropriately addressed by the administration. and let me say that we are aware that we should be celebrating, critically celebrating the 150th anniversary of the emancipation proclamation. [applause] there should be massive celebrations this year. what has happened other than the film "lincoln"? and of course with 2.5 million people behind bars today, the prison system, the immigrant detention system are terrible remainders and reminders of slavery. mass incarceration has devastated our communities. it is a false solution to problems that have persisted since the era of slavery. we should be addressing the fate of our schools, the continuing crisis of over incarceration, over punishment. we should be addressing the part played by private prison corporations in pushing for repressive legislation designed to incarcerate ever increasing numbers of immigrants. last year, some 500,000 -- half a million immigrants were detained. that of course is the largest number ever. the past still haunts us. it goes strides the echoes of our lives. to overcome poverty, to overcome racism, we must also overcome the xenophobia, homophobia, justice for african americans is organically linked to justice for palestinians. the struggle goes on. as in june at jordan said, we are the ones we have been waiting for. thank you. >> the renowned author, educator, founder of the critical resistance movement angela davis speaking at the peace ball, voices of hope and resistance sunday night. here in washington, d.c., just before heading to the peace ball, i ran into rev. ben chavis, member of the wilmington 10, former assistant to dr. martin luther king, jr., former executive director of the naacp. when we last spoke on "democracy now!" it was in december when he and others for making a last- ditch push for the north carolina governor bev perdue to pardon him and nine others known as the wilmington 10. it was 1971, the city of clinton was in the midst of a civil rights struggle. after what and restored a black neighborhood was firebombed, police officers and firefighters arrived to extinguish the flames but came under gunfire. an african-american teen was killed by police that night, a white man was shot and killed the next day. the national guard moved in. nine black men and one white woman were rounded up, hustled off to jail for their alleged involvement. the young defendants, the majority just high school age, were collectively sentenced to a total of more than 280 years in prison. rev. ben chavis served more than five years in prison. shortly after he appeared on "democracy now!" last month, governor perdue issued pardons of innocence for the wilmington 10. the move came after newly surfaced documents revealed the prosecutor in the case made racially biased notes next to potential jurors, writing comments like "kkk good." i asked rev. chavis last night what it felt like to be attending president of the inauguration on dr. martin luther king day, after finally being pardoned. >> this is a 40-year case of injustice. 40 years. better late than never. and i want to thank the movement. this would not have been possible without millions of people weighing in. here to celebrate the second inauguration of president barack obama, also an occasion of martin luther king, jr.'s birthday. we feel so happy to be finally vindicated. but we must reaffirm our support for the continuation of the movement for freedom, justice, equality throughout the world. >> in this exoneration the government published governor issued, what most affected you in what she said? what most affected as was a quote "a case of naked racism." southern governor, democratic governor, a female governor to make that statement on her last day of office shows how powerful the movement of freedom can be when elected officials in southern states say, we must right the wrongs. >> have you spoken with the other survivors? >> yes, we had a big celebration. when i finally got the piece of paper with the governor's signature on it, i said, this paper feels very heavy. it is 40 years of weight. >> how long did you serve in prison? rex five and a half years. >> how you get those years back? >> i cannot get those years back, but i'm going use what time i spend in prison to rededicate ourselves. it is hard to restore the years you've taken away, but we will wear them as a badge of honor and pride and encourage young people to learn from the civil rights movement so we don't have to go back and repeat history. >> why do you say this was a movement victory as opposed to a governor just changing -- >> the governor responded to the movement of the people. keep in mind, we went to prison because of the movement, and the movement also set us free. >> benjamin chavis, member of the wilmington 10, former assistant to dr. martin luther king, jr. and former executive director of the naacp. we were speaking just before i headed off to the -- cover the peace ball in washington, d.c. he was headed off to a hip-hop ball. next at the peace ball, voices of hope and resistance. we turn to put an activist s onia sanchez reading a poem called "morning song andnd eveng walk for martin luther king." >>and god i move imperfect through this ancient city. quiet. no one hears no one feels the tears of multitudes. the silence thickens i have lost the shore of your kind seasons who will hear my voice nasal against distinguished actors. o i am tired of voices without sound i will rest on this ground full of mass hymns. you have been here since i can remember martin from selma to montgomery from watts to chicago from nobel peace prize to memphis, tennessee. unmoved along the angles and rnrners of aristocratic confusion. it was a time to be born forced forward a time to wander inside drums the good times with eyes like stars and soldiers without medals or weapons but honor, yes. and you told us: the storm is rising against the privileged minority of the earth, from which there is no shelter in isolation or armament and you told us: the storm will not abate until a just distribution of the fruits of the earth enables men (and women) everywhere to live in dignity and human decency. all summerlong it has rained and the water rises in our throats and all that we sing is rumored forgotten. whom shall we call when this song comes of age? and they came into the city carrying their fastings in their eyes and the young 9- year-old sudanese boy said, "i want something to eat at nite a place to sleep." and they came into the city hands salivating guns, and the young 9-year-old words snapped red with vowels: mama mama auntie auntie i dead i dead i deaddddd. in our city of lost alphabets where only our eyes strengthen the children you spoke like peter like john you fisherman of tongues untangling our wings you inaugurated iron for our masks exiled no one with your touch and we felt the thunder in your hands. we are soldiers in the army we have to fight, although we have to cry. we have to hold up the freedom banners we have to hold it up until we die. and you said we must keep going and we became small miracles, pushed the wind down, entered the slow bloodstream of america surrounded streets and "reconcentradas," tuned our legs against olympic politicians elaborate cadavers growing fat underneath western hats. and we scraped the rust from old lawsol went floor by floor window by window and clean faces rose from the dust became new brides and bridegrooms among change men and women coming for their inheritance. and you challenged us to catch up with our own breaths to breathe in latinos asians native americans whites blacks gays lesbians muslims and jews, to gather up our rainbow-colored skins in peace and racial justice as we try to answer your long- ago question: is there a nonviolent peacemaking army that can shut down the pentagon? and you challenged us to breathe in bernard haring's words: the materialistic growth--mania for more and more production and more and more markets for selling unnecessary and even damaging products is a sin against the generation to come what shall we leave to them: rubbish, atomic weapons numerous enough to make the earth uninhabitable, a poisoned atmosphere, polluted water? "love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams," said a russian writer. now i know at great cost martin that as we burn something moves out of the flames (call it spirit or apparition) till no fire or body or ash remain we breathe out and smell the world again aye-aye-aye ayo-ayo-ayo ayeee- ayeee-ayeee amen men men men awoman woman woman woman men men men woman woman woman men men woman woman men woman womanmen. the earth has tilted, tear martin, as the wicked each morning to an internal alarm clock called hope, i count the morning stars, the air so sweet anointing the day, hope comes on warning sales and we fault ourselves in the millet -- men mourning.of remember the thirst of your eyes, the hands confessing peace, peace and racial justice. we are the now, the history that you talked about to make on this honored walk ways. this day as the precision of your dreams. in the four corners of this country, we live inside your breath and love and try to answer the most important question of the 21st century, what does it mean to be human? what does it mean to be human? and as we try to answer that question, we cannot break across the sound of your words, not symbols and posturing, not lesions with this new president, dear martin, we hope, we hope we are inaugurating a new day come a time for all americans, we can operate like new men and women should, coming out of themselves toward peace and justice and freedom, so, come. come with yourselves and your life, live, live, singing eyes, and hands. we have come to celebrate life until we become seen men and women again. come come come come in number in any way of breathing for the world, a new way of peace and justice for the world. come and look at better. ebay ebayeeeeee ebay ebayeeeee ebayeeeee yeee yeeee yeee ye ye ye thank you. >> poet, sonia sanchez reading from her poem "mornings on an evening walk for martin luther king." she read that poem last sat at the piece of honoring voices of hope and resistance. this is "democracy now!," democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we will be back in a moment. ♪ [music break] >> this is "democracy now!," democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. there are many protests that are planned for today -- three activist groups have received permission to protest president obama along the route of the inaugural parade including the anti-war group answer, which says it expects thousands. another group is called the park and justice coalition that estimates about 400 protesters will gather in a park close to the white house and march toward the parade route during the ceremony, objecting to the use of drones in military operations and social injustice. last night, another of the people who spoke at the peace ball, voices of hope and resistance, was medea benjamin, co-founder of codepink. she recently returned from pakistan where she traveled with families of drone victims. >> just remember, the drone policy is one where the u.s. is telling the world we can go anywhere in the world we want, kill anyone we want on the basis of secret information. it is a policy that is inhumane. it is a policy that is counterproductive. it is a policy that is totally illegal according to international law, and it is something that must be stopped. [applause] so we were recently in pakistan, a group of 34 very brave americans, not only from codepink but groups like the veterans for peace, that went to say to the pakistanis, we do not support the drone program and we care about you and your lives. your lives are as precious as our lives. and when we were in a meeting with hundreds and hundreds of postion men, one of them stood up and said, "if you have come here to win our hearts and minds, you have done so." and it showed us that if we go around the world showing we care about other people's lives, if we go around the world spreading compassion and kindness, we will get love back in return. so let's go out spreading a lot of love, and let's make sure that we force our congress and our president to represent the policies of kindness and compassion that we as americans hold dear. >> medea benjamin speaking last night at the peace ball. last week when the national rifle association held its first news conference after the newtown massacre, she was there holding a sign saying "the nra has blood on its hands." she was taken out by security as one of the heads of the nra spoke. this is "democracy now!," democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. the piece ball, which was held at the mead center for american theater, was thought affiliated with any party. thousands came out. the number of official balls celebrating open as an operation is down from 10 in 2009 to just two this year. this time obama agreed to except unlimited corporate funding. donors have been offered a number of sponsorship options including the top tier of $1 million for institutions, $250,000 for individuals. in contrast, corporate lobbyists and political action committee donors were banned in 2009. individual contributions were capped at $50,000. several of the nation's best powerful corporate lobbying forces are bankrolling this year's festivities including at&t, microsoft, southern co. which have collectively spent almost $160 million on lobbying since obama first took office. today's ceremony falls on the third anniversary of one of the supreme court citizens united decisions, allowing unlimited outside spending on political campaigns. for more we're joined here in washington, d.c. by liz bartolomeo, communications manager for the sun life foundation, which is tracking money and influence at the inauguration. they have a website called political party time that tracks all of the informal celebrations taking place in addition to the two official balls. it also features a map that shows who's fundraising and where. liz bartolomeo, we welcome you back to "democracy now!" tell us what is happening today in these officials balls for the >> you'll see the pomp and circumstance. you'll see the president and first lady have a dance, lots of people and ball gowns and tuxedos. at the convention center in d.c. the will have the commander in chief ball as well as the lovely titled "inaugural ball." the salut foundation is tracking some of these unofficial parties. some are like the peace ball, which are people gathering together to celebrate democracy, celebrate the cause, and lead to a celebrating inauguration. other events might be a dance party at a popular nightclub, there might be a fundraiser as well as a celebration for those groups, or they may be more corporate-funded, lobbyist- funded defense. tell us about the two official balls. >> shortridge the two official balls are with the taxpayers do, as well as a presidential inaugural committee. it is a private group that has been set up by the obama ministration and they're collecting and upwards of $50 million to throw these events. there's the commander in chief of for military families. those in the service. the in our robo is going to be -- the nro ball, there was a ticketmaster situation that not everybody got their tickets, but they will be popular events. >> what is the black tie event. black tie in boots is what the texas state society had this weekend. it is a very popular event. it was definitely one had to go to during the bush administration, him being from texas, but the texas society headed across the potomac river at the national harbour and it features some members of congress, country music and also corporate sponsors. the blue shield of texas, which give an upwards of one quarter million dollars to sponsor it. >> and what is blueshield question of how significant is that? >> a big insurance company. health care reform is definitely on the minds of members of congress, on the minds of the public. they have to be a big get their name out their front and center to the hundreds of people. >> explain what it is pushing for in terms of health care, for example, the individual mandate. >> and not that familiar with what blueshield of texas was pushing, but a lot of stuff that is happening now in 2013 with the health care reform will be coming up. this is just the first of many of healthcare industries that will be pushing their agenda in washington. >> the other companies involved with this one? >> chevron, exxon mobil, the oil industry being something definitely deep in the heart of texas, so to speak, also some airlines gave money. southwest airlines, united, they have a few hubs in the state as well. they gave it upwards of $50,000. still, for one night for a few hours customer spending $50,000, $250,000 just to get in front of a small group of people? what's georgia state society? >> celebrating the peach staea. they had gladys knight as one of the honorees. they have a lot of local businesses set in the state like coca-cola, home depot, kia motors as well as ups. why them? ups is active here in washington. they have a town house on capitol hill where they do a lot of fund-raisers. they're not a surprising to see. >> talk about the presidential inauguration committee. >> pic is the acronym, is a private group. they fundraiser to help support the official inaugural balls, the parade itself. it is not inexpensive to do. what you mentioned what they're doing this year, they're saying yes to unlimited money in this post citizens-united age. they are reaching out to corporations, unions -- no lobbyists or political action committees, but last year in 2009, rather, this group raised about $53 million. this year they're not saying how much they're raising. we will not know until april. all they have on line is about 1000 names including members of congress, unions, some bundlers and a number of corporations. >> what about disclosure around the voluntary pro-inaugural disclosure of donors? >> it is weak this year, to be honest. what happened in 2009, the inaugural committee, about two months before they posted the names of their donors, how much they gave, where they were from, who the employers were. it was a great way to see real- time online disclosure of who is funding these inaugural events read this year all we see is a very, very long list of names. we will not know until april what they actually gave. >> which way are we going? >> we seem to be slowly but surely to steps toward, one step back. when president obama was first elected office, he promised to be the most transparent administration. there has been a lot of gain. there has been just some not while moving toward. it is the 30th anniversary dollar-third anniversary of citizens united. we still have unlimited corporate and union spending, unlimited personal spending in our elections. soft money is on the rise. there is no disclose act. the president has been fairly silent on this topic. we're curious to see how this new c4 -- the former campaign organizing for america, how they have promised online disclosure of who their finders are. we will see if they live up to that promise. >> liz bartolomeo, thank you for enlightening us. we turned back to historical voices, another of the speakers last night was julian bond, the leading civil rights activist, former chair of the board of the naacp, helped found the student nonviolent coordinating committee, was the first president of the southern poverty law center, a state legislator in georgia for over 20 years. he spoke about the effects of obama's election victory. >> we are gathered here to celebrate the reelection of president obama and in a commencement arguably astounding, if not more so, then the first. we're here celebrating the best news, the president is acting as if he won. [applause] and when he didn't, and every state that was part of the -- and when he did, every state the was part of the confederacy, including almost 90% in both alabama and mississippi. similarly in this cycle, romney won the presidency of the confederate states of america, a caring nine of the 11 rebel states. he achieved his high share of the white vote in the state with the largest percentage of black voters, mississippi. indeed, romney's strong national showing among white voters was almost exclusively driven by a stark support from southern voters. george w. bush got 62 million votes in the 2004 election and conservatives said he had a mandate. barack obama got 62 million votes in the two -- 2012 election, and conservatives started a secessionist movement. but the obama campaign took it to them and made a difference in the end. they helped create a new electorate, a coalition of concerned and they turned it out on election day. our two political parties are separate and not equal. the percentage of republicans who are white has remained fairly steady since 2000 at about 87%. the percentage of democrats who are white in contrast has dropped from 64% in 2000 to 55% now. independents have gone from 79% to 67% white since 2000. the depth of republican dependence on white voters explains a lot about the recent election. not least about its outcome. republican efforts to suppress minority voters back fired big time. [applause] in florida alone, 266,000 more hispanics voted than in 2008. similarly in ohio, 209,000 more blacks voted than in 2008. overall, while romney received 59% of the white vote, all hot -- obama -- omaha? obama got 93% of the black vote and 73% of hispanic and asian votes respectively. almost 90% of bronner's voters were white. obama carried 55% of women's votes. >> julian bond, civil rights leader. we end today on this year of obama's inauguration coming on the federal holiday in honor of dr. martin luther king, jr., who delivered his "i have a dream" speech half a century ago, not far from here at the lincoln memorial. coming up in our coverage, we will be playing in the five- hours of coverage, whether your station broadcasts it or not, we will be on democracynow.org. we end today with the words of dr. king himself. >> that if we are to get on the right side of the war revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. we must rapidly begin from a theme oriented society wind machines and computers, profit motors and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered. a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. on the one hand, we are called to play the good samaritan on life's roadside that will be only an initial act, one day we must come to see the whole jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make that journey on life's highway. true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. [applause] a true revolution of values will send look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth, with the righteous indignation it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the west investing huge sums of money in asia, africa, and south america, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the country's, and say, "this is not just." it will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of south american said, "this is not just." the western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from is not just. a true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "this way of settling differences is not just." this business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nationr's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. [applause] america, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. there is nothing except a tragic death wish to ravenna us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. >> dr. martin luther king, jr., speaking at 04, 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated in memphis. this is "democracy now!," democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. e-mail your comments to outreach@democracynow.org or mail them to democracy now! p.o. box 693 new york, new york 10013. [captioning made possible by democracy now!] for those staying with us, we will continue our broadcast for four more hours including the inauguration. if your station is not running as, you can go to democracynow.org. >> from pacifica, this is democracy now! this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. as we continue with our expanded coverage of the second inauguration of president barack obama. as many as 800,000 people are expected to attend this year's celebration, smaller than the nearly 2 million people that crammed into washington, d.c. to witness this 2009 inauguration, but still, the largest second inauguration in history. this is all taking place on the federal holiday that honors dr. martin luther king jr.. dr. king was born january 15 1929. he was assassinated april 4th, 1968, at the lorraine motel in memphis, tennessee. he was just 29 -- 39 years old. while dr. king is primarily remembered as a suave rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the poor people's campaign, to address issues of economic justice. dr. king was a fierce critic of foreign policy in the vietnam war. in his beyond vietnam speech, which he delivered at the york's riverside church, 1967, a year before the day he was assassinated, dr. king calledll the united states the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. "time" magazine called the speech demagogic slander that sounded like a script for radio hanoi. today, we let you decide. we play an excerpt of dr. king's speech, beyond vietnam. >> after 1954, they watched us conspire to prevent elections which could have surely brought ho chi minh to power over the united vietnam and they realized they had been did -- betrayed again. when we asked why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. also it must be clear that the leaders of hanoi considered the presence of american troops in support of the diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the geneva agreements concerning foreign troops. and they remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies, and to the south, until american forces had moved into the tens of thousands. hanoi remembers how leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier north vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed they had not existed when they had clearly been made. " she man has watched as america spoke of peace and built up its forces. now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of american plans for an invasion of the north. he knows a bombing and shelling and mining, we are doing a part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. perhaps only his sense of humor and irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than 8,000 miles away from its shores. at this point, i should make it clear that while i have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in vietnam's, and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, i am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. for it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. we are adding cynicism to the promise of death, for they must know after the short period there, that none of the things we claim to be fighting for really involve. before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among vietnamese, and the moree sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure, while recreate a hail for the poor. somehow, this madness must cease. we must stop. i speak as a child of god and brother to the suffering poor of vietnam. i speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose coach is being subverted. i speak for the port of america, who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in vietnam. i speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. i speak as one who loves america, to the leaders of our own nation, the great initiative in this war is ours. the initiative to stop it must be ours. this is a message of the great buddhist leaders of vietnam. recently one of them wrote these words, "each day the war goes on, the hatred increases in the heart of the vietnamese, and in the hearts of those humanitarian instincts, the americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. it is curious that the americans who calculate so carefully on the possibility of military victory do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. the image of america will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism. if we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in vietnam. if we do not stop our war against the people of vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. the world now demands a maturity of america that we may not be able to achieve. it demands that we admit we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the vietnamese people. the situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. in order to atone for our sins and errors in vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. i would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do to begin part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to ratify them to any vietnamese who fears for his life under the new regime which included the liberation front. then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. we must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary. meanwhile [applause], meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. we must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in vietnam. we must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible. these are the times for real choices and not false ones. we are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. every man of humane convictions must decide on the protests that best suits his convictions but we must all protest. now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in vietnam. i say we must enter that struggle, but i wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. the war in vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the american spirits, and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing concerned committees for the next generation. they will be concerned about guatemala and peru. they will be concerned about thailand and cambodia. they will be concerned about mozambique and south africa. we will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in american life and policy. [applause] [sustained applause] so such thoughts take us beyond vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living god. in 1957 a sensitive american official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. during the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of u.s. military advisors in venezuela. this need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of american forces in guatemala. it tells why american helicopters are being used against guerrillas in cambodia and why american napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in peru. it is with such activity that the words of the late john f. kennedy come back to haunt us. five years ago he said, "those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." [applause] increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. i am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. we must rapidly begin [applause], we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing- oriented society to a person- oriented society. when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. on the one hand we are called to play the good samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. one day we must come to see that the whole jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. it comes to see than an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. [applause] a true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. with righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the west investing huge sums of money in asia, africa, and south america, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "this is not just." it will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of south america and say, "this is not just." the western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. a true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "this way of settling differences is not just." this business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. [sustained applause] america, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. there is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. >> dr. martin luther king speaking april 4th, 1967, in new york, explaining why he opposed the war in vietnam. we will come back to the speech after the break. [♪] >> mahlia jackson singing "take my hand." this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. as we return to dr. martin luther king's speech. some call it beyond vietnam, others, why i oppose the war in vietnam. it will 4th, 1967 at riverside church in new york. >> these are revolutionary times. all over the globe, men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born the shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before, the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. we in the west must support these revolutions. it is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, or morbid fear of communism, and our approach is to adjust to injustice. the western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti revolutionary. this has driven many to feel that only marxism has a revolutionary spirit. therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. with this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low [audience:] (yes); the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain." a genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. this call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. this oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. when i speak of love i am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. i'm not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. i am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. this hindu-muslim-christian- jewish-buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of saint john: "let us love one another (yes), for love is god. (yes) and every one that loveth is born of god and knoweth god. he that loveth not knoweth not god, for god is love. if we love one another, god dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. we can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. the oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. as arnold toynbee says: "love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word." unquote. we are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. we are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. in this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. procrastination is still the thief of time. life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. the tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood-it ebbs. we may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "too late." there is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. omar khayyam is right: "the moving finger writes, and having writ moves on." we still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. we must move past indecision to action. we must find new ways to speak for peace in vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. if we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. now let us begin. now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. this is the calling of the sons of god, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. shall we say the odds are too great? shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? will our message be that the forces of american life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? or will there be another message-of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? the choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. as that noble bard of yesterday, james russell lowell, eloquently stated: once to every man and nation comes a moment do decide, in the strife of truth and falsehood, for the good or evil side; some great cause, god's new messiah offering each the bloom or blight, and the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light. though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown standeth god within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. and if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. if we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. if we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over america and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. [applause] >> dr. martin luther king delivering his speech "beyond vietnam, new york's riverside church, 1967. a year to the day before he was assassinated. he would have been 84 years old this past week. his birthday, on january 15, 1929. we are broadcasting today on the second inauguration day of president obama, that is taking place on the federal holiday marking dr. king's birthday. right now, here in washington, d.c., the mall is filling up with people, hundreds of thousands have come to watch the inauguration. in 2009, close to 2 million people came. it was not only the largest inauguration in u.s. history, but the largest event ever held in the nation's capital. it was absolutely freezing them. people had water bottles, the water had froze. this time around, it is still freezing but not quite as cold, around 34 degrees, but people who are especially on the western front of the capital, who are sitting in the stand where president obama will once again take the oath of office, they had to gather at 5:30 this morning. in this hour, as we continue our five-hour special broadcast on this inauguration day, we continue with the speeches of dr. king. the speech you have just heard, why i oppose the war in vietnam, april 4th, 1967, a year before the day he was assassinated. the night before he died, dr. king delivered his last major address. he was in memphis to support striking sanitation workers as he built momentum for a poor people's march on washington. they were trying to organize a local, local 1707. this is some of his last speech, i have been to the mountaintop. >> you know if i was standing at the beginning of time with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the almighty said to me, martin luther king, which age would you like to live in? i would pick my mental flight by egypt and i would watch dog's the children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of egypt across the red sea, through the wilderness, on to the promised land, and in spite of its magnificence, i would not stop there. i would move on by grief and take m mind to mount olympus and i would see plato, aristotle, saugerties, euripides, and aristophanes, the symbols of on the parthenon. and i would watch them around the parthenon as they discussed the grade and internal issues of reality, but i would not stop there. i would go on even to the great heyday of the roman empires. and i would see developments around there, through various members and leaders, but i would not stop there. . i would even come up to the day of the renaissance and get a quick picture of all that the renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man, but i would not stop there. i would even go by the way that the man for whom i am named had his habitat. and i wouldn't watch martin luther as he attacked his 95 theses on the door of the church of would member, i would not stop there. i would come up even to 1863 and watch a vacillating president by the name of abraham lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the emancipation proclamation, but i would not stop there. i would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man the bankruptcy of his nation. and come with an eloquent cry that fear itself. but i wouldn't stop there. strangely enough, i would turn to the almighty, and say, "if you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, i will be happy." [applause] now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. the nation is sick. trouble is in the land; confusion all around. that's a strange statement. but i know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. and i see god working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding something is happening in our world. the masses of people are rising up. and wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in johannesburg, south africa; nairobi, kenya; accra, ghana; new york city; atlanta, georgia; jackson, mississippi; or memphis, tennessee the cry is always the same "we want to be free." [applause] and another reason that i'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we're going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demand didn't force them to do it. survival demands that we grapple with them. men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. but now, no longer can they just talk about it. it is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence! [applause] that is where we are today. and also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. [applause] now, i'm just happy that god has allowed me to live in this period, to see what is unfolding. allowedhappy that he's me to be in memphis. [applause] i can remember, i can remember when negroes were just going around as ralph has said, so often, scratching where they didn't itch, and laughing when they were not tickled. but that day is all over. we mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in god's world. [applause] and that's all this whole thing is about. we aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. we are saying that we are determined to be men. we are determined to be people. [applause] we are saying that we are god's children. livehat we don't have to like we are forced to live. now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? it means that we've got to stay together. we've got to stay together and maintain unity. you know, whenever pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. what was that? he kept the slaves fighting among themselves. but whenever the slaves get together, something happens in pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. when the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. >> dr. martin luther king cover april 4th, 1968, the night before he was assassinated. we will come back to the speech in memphis, tennessee. in the next hour, we will be speaking with ralph nader. when dr. martin luther king was in memphis, he was there building momentum for a poor people's march. consumer advocate, three-time presidential candidate ralph nader is right now beating the drums around increasing the minimum wage. we will also be joined by clarence lusane, author of "the black history of the white house." we will find out exactly who built the white house. from pacifica, this is democracy now! if you want a copy of our annual tribute to dr. king, with his vietnam, and this speech you are listening to now, you could go to our website at democracynow.org. we will come back to this last address, in a moment. [♪] >> nina simone. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. as we return to dr. king's last speech, given the night before he was assassinated, april 3, 1968, a rainy night in memphis, tennessee. >> we are not going to let any mays stopped us. we are masters in our nonviolent movement, in disarming police forces, they do not know what to do. i have seen them so often. i remember, in birmingham, alabama, when we were in the majestic struggle there, we would move out of the 15th street baptist church day after day. by the 100th, we would move out and bull connor would tell them to sell the dollar forand bull connor would tell them to send the dogs forth, and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, "ain't gonna let nobody turn me around." bull connor next would say, "turn the fire hoses on." and as i said to you the other night, bull connor didn't know history. he knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. and that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. and we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. if we were baptist or some other denomination, we had been immersed. if we were methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water. that couldn't stop us. and we just went on before the dogs and we would look at them; and we'd go on before the water hoses and we would look at it, and we'd just go on singing, "over my head i see freedom in the air." and then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. and they would throw us in, and old bull would say, "take them off," and they did; and we would just go on in the paddy wagon singing, "we shall overcome." and every now and then we'd get in the jail, and we'd see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers, and being moved by our words and our songs. and there was a power there which bull connor couldn't adjust to; and so we ended up transforming bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in birmingham. [applause] now we've got to go on in memphis just like that. the half to give our struggles to the end. nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in memphis. we have got to see it through. when we have our march, you need to be there. if it means leaving work, if it means leaving school, be there. be concerned about your brother. you may not be on strike, but neither we go up together, or we go down together.ge let us develop a kind of dangerous on selfishness one day a man came to jesus; and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters in life. at points, he wanted to trick jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than jesus knew, and throw him off base. now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical andheological debate. but jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between jerusalem and jericho. and he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. you remember that a levite and a priest passed by on the other side. they didn't stop to help him. and finally a man of another race came by. he got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. but he got down with him, administering first aid, and helped the man in need. jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the "i" into the "thou," and to be concerned about his brother. now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the levite didn't stop. at times we say they were busy going to a church meeting an ecclesiastical gathering and they had to get on down to jerusalem so they meeting. at other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that "one who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty- four hours before the ceremony." and every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to jerusalem, or down to jericho, rather to organize a "jericho road improvement association." that's a possibility. maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effort. but i'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. it's possible that those men were afraid. you see, the jericho road is a dangerous road. i remember when mrs. king and i were first in jerusalem. we rented a car and drove from jerusalem down to jericho. and as soon as we got on that road, i said to my wife, "i can see why jesus used this as the setting for his parable." it's a winding, meandering road. it's really conducive for ambushing. you start out in jerusalem, which is about 1,200 miles, or rather 1,200 feet, above sea level. and by the time you get down to jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about 2,200 feet below sea level. that's a dangerous road. in the days of jesus it came to be known as the "bloody pass." and you know, it's possible that the priest and the levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. and he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. and so the first question that the levite asked was, "if i stop to help this man, what will happen to me? " but then the good samaritan came by. and he reversed the question: "if i do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" that's the question before you tonight. not, "if i stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job? " not, "if i stop to help the sanitation workers what will happen to all of the hours that i usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor? " the question is not, "if i stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me? " the question is, "if i do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them? " that's the question. [applause] several years ago, i was in new york city. autographing the first book and i had written. and while sitting down autographing books, a demented black woman came up. the only question i heard from her was, are you martin luther king? i'm looking down riding and i said yes. the next minute i felt something beating on my chest. before i knew it, i had been stabbed by this demented woman. i was rushed to harlem hospital. it was a dark saturday afternoon. and that blade had gone through, and the x-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. and once that's punctured, you drown in your own blood that's the end of you. it came out in the new york times the next morning, that if i had merely sneezed, i would have died. well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheelchair in the hospital. they allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. i read a few, but one of them i will never forget. i had received one from the president and the vice president. i've forgotten what those telegrams said. i'd received a visit and a letter from the governor of new york, but i've forgotten what the letter said. but there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the white plains high school. and i looked at that letter, and i'll never forget it. it said simply, "dear dr. king: i am a ninth-grade student at the white plains high school." she said, "while it should not matter, i would like to mention that i am a white girl. i read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. and i read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. and i'm simply writing you to say that i'm so happy that you didn't sneeze." [applause] and i want to say tonight, i want to say that i too am happy that i didn't sneeze. because if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the south started sitting-in at lunch counters. and i knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the american dream. and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the declaration of constitution. if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been around here in 1961 when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in interstate travel. if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been around here in 1962, when negroes in albany, georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. and whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent! [applause] if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of birmingham, alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the civil rights bill. if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in august, to try to tell america about a dream that i had had. if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been down in selma, alabama, to see the great movement there. if i had sneezed, i wouldn't have been in memphis to see the community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. i'm so happy that i didn't sneeze. [applause] and they were telling me, now it doesn't matter now. it really doesn't matter what happens now. i left atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us, the pilot said over the public address system, "we are sorry for the delay, but we have dr. martin luther king on the plane. and to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. and we've had the plane protected and guarded all night." and then i got to memphis. and some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? well, i don't know what will happen now. we've got some difficult days ahead. but it really doesn't matter with me now. because i've been to the mountaintop. [applause] and i don't mind. like anybody, i would like to live a long life. longevity has its place. but i'm not concerned about that now. i just want to do god's will. to he's allowed me to go up the mountain. and i've looked over. and i've seen the promised land. i may not get there with you. but i want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! so i'm happy, tonight. i'm not worried about anything. i'm not fearing any man. mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord! >> dr. martin luther king, april 3, 1968, within 24 hours, he would be dead, assassinated on the balcony of the lorraine motel april 4, 1968. today is the federal holiday that honors him and the second inauguration of president obama. this is "democracy now!," democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we are broadcasting from washington, d.c., today, where president barack obama is set to publicly take the oath of office for his second term after become the first african-american u.s. president four years ago. the inauguration ceremony is expected to begin in an hour- and-a-half and we will be bringing it to you in full. as many as 800,000 people are expected to attend this year's celebration, smaller than the nearly 2 million people who crammed into washington dc to witness his 2009 inauguration, but still the largest second inauguration in history. the mall is filling up as we speak. the bands are playing. it is very cold outside, but still hundreds of thousands of people are coming. the first inauguration of president obama, about 2 million people can, was the largest event in washington, d.c. history. it is also the holiday that honors the birth of dr. martin luther king, born january 15, 1929. last week he would have turned 84 years84ld. it was a hard-fought victory to achieve a federal holiday honoring dr. king. in the background, you can hear the band's playing today for president barack obama. dr. king died in memphis, tennessee, where he was assassinated. there to march with sanitation workers. there to build the poor people's march on washington, which is why in this hour, we are turning to look at the economy today, one of president obama's unfulfilled campaign promises. many economists and more jobs to be greeted by generating more consumer demand. a bill introduced last year by the illinois democratic congress member jesse jackson, jr. and to do that by increasing the minimum wage for the first time since 2007. the bill was called "catching up to 1968 act of 2012." one prominent supporter of increasing the minimum wage has been longtime consumer advocate, former president to candidate a number of times, ralph nader, the author of several books including "b-17 solutions: new ideas for our american future." -- "the 17 solutions: the new ideas for american future." we welcome you back. the return to 1968 act, that was the year that we were just listening to dr. king did that last address. >> for most of the american people, it is backwards into the future. 80% of the people in this country make less than their predecessors made in 1968, adjusted for inflation. all of those beautiful words by martin luther king, which ended st. "this is unjust, this is unjust" they are worse now. mr. obama, the first african- american president, it does not echo the sentiments or the revolution of values articulated by martin luther king in 1968. the empire is worse than when martin luther king warned about the vietnam and spreading war in east asia. there are more drones, more killings of innocent people, more violations of national sovereignties by the obama military. of course the military budget swallows half of the discretionary budget, over $800 billion not counting other sub budgets and a permanent energy. domestically, we have a much higher unemployment rate in 1968. we have more poverty absolutely and relatively and 1968. we certainly have more home foreclosures and more consumer debt. of course, 30 million workers are making today less than the workers made in 1968 adjusted for inflation. that is why we're launching this national drive to overpower congress and split the republicans in congress, organized and what the democrats, so tens of billions of dollars are poured into the community, into the long deserved pockets of these people, many of whom have children and they don't have health insurance or paid sick leave or big vacations. but they deserve $10.50 minimum wage, which is what it would be in 1968. no big deal. >> explain how that would work, how does an increase in the minimum wage actually work? >> 1, congress can pass it for all of the states. there is no competition between the states that way in terms of wage levels, no competition between businesses, etc. everyone would have to pay the same minimum wage. the other way is what has been happening slowly, san jose passed a higher minimum wage. california has a minimum wage of about $1 more than the $7.25. connecticut has a higher minimum wage, alaska has it. santa fe i think has at least $9.50 minimum wage for a number of years. >> who fights against it? let's first of all, big business. two-thirds of the low-income workers are employed by walmart, barking, etc.. there are fighting it. even though the heads of these companies are making almost a million dollars a month and the head of walmart makes $11,000 an hour, eight hours every day, not counting benefits and perks. you cannot even find a medieval analogy. maybe king cat in terms of wealth inequality. the small businesses, and some are defined as having people with 500 employees, small businesses employ one-third of the low-income workers. they have been given 18 tax breaks by mr. obama, as he keeps telling us, so they've got theirs. big businesses are mimicking profit, wallowing in bonuses. they can pay the minimum wage. i just read -- wrote a letter to the head of walmart is that, "look, you grows over $300 billion in u.s.. this will cost you less than $2 billion to take a million or so of your workers up to $10.50. he would get less turnover and more productivity and will sleep better at night." >> how does wal-mart's wages here compared to wages elsewhere, worldwide? >> in western europe, for example, walmart has stores, employees. they have to give them a paid vacation. they're often -- they all have health care because it is universal, government health care. they have to give them paid sick leave, including family sick leave. they have better benefits because they are required to do it. so why is walmart treating european workers, and in some respect canadian workers -- in ontario, the minimum wage is $10.25, not $7.25 here in the u.s. why is walmart to the workers in foreign countries so better than the workers in this country who built walmart right out of bentonville, arkansas? what you think walmart and companies like it would fight for universal health care. beyond that, would fight for the public auction -- public option, medicare for all, because they're not responsible for paying for it. >> the president of general motors, before that he came to detroit and said, what is going on here? we spend more on health care than steel. he was asked, what about the canadian system? he said, it works pretty well. they do not want to take on the giant health industry and drug industry. there is an unwritten rule in big business that you do not take on each other's turf because then they can snap back on you. otherwise, your implication of your point is true. if we had big business, to say, look, we would be more competitive with other countries. other countries have universal health insurance. they could get it through congress. >> as mr. -- has mr. duke responded to you? >> i just sent it. we samet with the rats of walmat last year to make this case. -- the reps of what last year to make this case. rick santorum has been forked inflation-adjusted minimum wage and for years so was mitt romney until he waffled during the primaries last year. australia has a 5.3% unemployment rate and they pay workers 20 years or older $15.96 an hour. the australian dollar is worth more than the u.s. dollar, by a couple of pennies, so they get along pretty well. france is about $11. germany is even higher. we are right at the bottom, right? american exceptionalism. >> i want to play a clip for you. in november, one of the groups organizing the protests and strikes against walmart was called our walmart. this is an advocacy video that they put out. walmart workers explaining what they walked out. a >> we got together. we are stronger together than we are alone. >> make a difference for those who are too scared to come forward. >> stand up, live better. >> that was the advocacy video they put together. >> in my letter to the ceo mike duke of wal-mart, i said, "you are a billionaire or two from being unionized." the unions do not have the right strategy. if he had a couple of billionaires to say, ok, here is $200 million and here is the strategy -- by the way, i outlined in my political fiction book "only the super rich can save us." how to unionize walmart, it would be done. i don't think many billionaires' may watch this program, but if they want to have a legacy in history -- if you union as walmart, you completely change the direction of worker power in this country. and billions of dollars will go in and jereis this low-wage economy, this race to the bottom where we are becoming an advanced third world country. that is what we are, and advanced third world country. we're leading in science and technology, but not for the people. mass of a literary power. if you look at the condition that 85% of the country, it is terrible. >> i'm looking right now at those who are walking to their seats. timothy geithner, the outgoing treasury secretary. eric holder, the attorney general. their seats on the west front of the capital, about to witness the second inauguration of president obama. jenna napolitano's, the former governor of arizona, the secretary of homeland security. eric holder, the attorney general. comet, for example, on timothy geithner are. not only timothy geithner, but jack lew, who has been nominated by president obama to be the next secretary treasurer, and how that fits into the issue you're so deeply concerned about right now with minimum wage. >> a lot of liberal democrats filled with extraordinary help think, well, clinton's second term he does not have to worry. obama doesn't have to worry about re-election so it can be different. it is not one to be different. unless the people wake up in this country and exert a tiny bit of effort in the millions, focusing 0 focus on congress, because that is the fault point, to get minimum wage billed through, jack lew is wall street certified. he is a typical central casting secretary, ok? he is smart, experienced, obedient to wall street, and certified by wall street. so it is one of a seamless transition. then you have the regulatory chiefs. who is one to do with climate change to be the head of the epa? it has to be someone who will support his decision to approve the xl pipeline. >> what happened lisa jackson? >> he totally mistreated her. he basically said to her in the election year last year, he shut her down, virtually, except for one or two pollution standards. he shut her down. he told her in the white house and the meeting, you are not going to do this. she just left. she cannot take it anymore. i don't blame her. dr. michaels who heads osha, a 58,000 americans die from workplace related diseases and trauma. just think of that. in three weeks, more than 9/11, every three weeks. he told dr. michaels, you will not issue these longstanding supported health standards for workers. he shut them down. there is no evidence he is going to do anything else. the empire continues. the drones have expanded since he was elected. look at the destruction in yemen. he is in danger in this country because in effect he is a recruitment president for the spread of this kind of fighting, al qaeda-related. general kasich testified was under george w. bush that our presence in iraq is a recruit a device for more and more fighters to comment. this is what is happening with the obama military policy. he is spreading the disaster all over the world. mali is occurring because of libya. we went to libya with the europeans, drove the tribesmen with all their weapons into northern mali. and so it spreads. so it spreads. basically, we have got to wake up as citizens frederick douglass said, power concedes nothing without a demand. what are we doing around the country, watching all of these violent television programs and playing video games and be willing our powerlessness and finding excuses for ourselves when it is a lot easier than we think? i said in this book many long overdue reforme tax reform, wall street speculation, living wage, full medicare for all, things other countries have, that it is much easier than we think. what we're going to try to prove on the minimum wage is that a few million people spending a few hours on the members of congress, given the polls and the arguments, we can get it. the website is timeforaraise .org. we have to wake up the democrats and wake up the afl-cio and trumka, who was muzzled in charlotte, and had this speech before all these people of the national convention and the democrats never mentioned it. >> what you mean, muzzle? >> shut up that obama does not move first. you know who tell me that? senator reid's people. trumka, he has got it all over his website let's get a good minimum wage. he will not make a major move with its resources. they're all waiting for obama. it is a highly sensitized -- centralized party. obama never really ran with the democrats in the house. he never gave them the money they wanted from his billion dollar trove. he never campaigned with them the way clinton even did. there is a lot of resentment by the democrats. they have expressed it to me, no less for the >> and a million more people voting for democrats in the house than the republicans and yet the republicans took the house by scores of seats because of gerrymandering. >> that is the excuse for it gerrymandering on both sides. the house democratic caucus put out a list of 60 dangers republican votes, they called it, that pass through the house but anti-women, anti-consumer, anti-environment, pro-empire, pro-corporate welfare, right? the democrats should have land slighted them. they did not use those 60. they did not use them in each congressional district. it was all about trace the middle-class, forget the poor, never mention the word for a minimum wage. it was all about raising money. they should have a landslided. when i went to the house in march of last year, leading democrats had already conceded to defeat to boehner and cantor. i would say this of people who were in there for 30 years, how many seats do think the democrats are going to win? they never went higher than 50 and needed 25 seats. they ended up with seven. so what are we doing with the democratic party that cannot defend the country against the most ravaging the ignorant, cruel, vicious, anti-people and hire promoting republican party? what what happened to the bill? then we will talk about we think are the best strategy is to push a florida. jesse jackson is no longer in congress. he was the one, jesse jackson, jr. from illinois, introduced it. what happened there? >> he had about 21 sponsors. then the democrats decided sense of and did not want to make minimum wage an issue, they had george miller put in a bill -- >> the congressman from california critics to whom all democrats differ to on labor issues. they had a hundred or so democrats signed on. it was designed to go nowhere. it was $9.80 minimum wage by 2014. >> by the way, for our viewers and listeners right now, the obama family is coming to the west front of the white house. they are just getting out of their cars in a few moments. i see supreme court chief justice roberts getting out of his car. >> he did not have a press conference to highlight it with labor, hispanic, black groups. he did not have that. it was just there to decoy away from congressman jesse jackson, jr. and his hard-core progress of supporters in the house. in the senate, it was worse because senator harkin introduces a similar bill, a three-stage bill. introduced in april of last year. he did not have a hearing. there is no filibuster against a democratic committee chair. they could have had a great hearing but did not. i have written senator harkin and said, are you going to have a hearing now? we will see. it is not one happen except back home when some of those 30 million workers are going to take time off from their low- paying jobs after they were and have to surround the way occupy wall street did around the country, surround the congressional offices of the senators and representatives to start the ball rolling. >> do you think it has to just be the low-paid workers? >> no. we're going to have organizers on this and make a major drive. there are various nonprofit groups to have been working on this for many years that have the data, have the materials. we will start getting some union leaders like roseanne tomorrow from the nurses is on board, the electrical workers are on board. we just have to reach richard trumka and that marbled white building right next to the white house. >> i mention the white house predicament the west front of the capital or the inauguration is taking place. you wrote a piece, ralph, saying "compare the 1912 elections with the 2012 elections." >> it is like night and day. in 1912, that president william howard taft, teddy roosevelt in the progressive bull moose party, and woodrow wilson. tap was a republican, wilson was the democrat. they were competing as to who is going to be more progressive. president taft wanted federal charting the list chartering of a national corporations for which we still have today. they are chartered and permissive jurisdictions. the streets were seething with workers organizing, rallying. immigrants were demonstrating for justice. the women's movement was putting. for the women's suffrage. the women were leading the consumer movement. it is complete night and day. of course, eugene debs was running. he got the equivalent of 5 million votes today. he was talking to audiences an open air fields up to 200,000 people, workers with their families. fast-forward to 2012. it is like desolation. it is a advocation. it is apathy. it is to choice is between wall street choice won and lost rejoice too. two choices between your voice -- your version of empire. those bailing out corporate crooks, refusing to put in full medicare for all, which would say 45,000 american lives a year according to harvard medical school research. and i think that comparison shows the decay of our democratic institutions, the weakness of the labor movement, top heavy labor movement, and the section of our energy and money into wars and invasions and drone strikes overseas at the expense of repairing america back,. >> hold that thought. we are broadcasting today in this five-hour "democracy now!" inauguration special from washington, d.c., from -- not far from the capital where the inauguration will take place in just about an hour and 10 minutes. we will bring you the full inaugural ceremony. we're going to take a break. we're talking to ralph nader, longtime consumer advocate. he also spoke last night at the peace ball, of voices of hope and resistance. stay with us. ♪ [music break] >> that was sweet honey in the rocks, singing last that at the peace ball, unaffiliated with any political party, a celebration of the voices of hope and resistance. sweet honey in the rock singing to thousands of people at the mead center for american theater at the arena stage. ralph nader also spoke there, longtime consumer advocate, former presidential candidate. he is author of many books including his latest "the 17 solutions: new ideas for our american features." the inauguration is about to take place in just over an hour. people are gathering in the west front of the capital. just saw eleanor holmes norton making her way. the congresswoman from washington, d.c., though not quite full congress person because d.c. does not have those rights. velazquez of new york, rahm emanuel i see taking his seat, the former chief of staff of president obama and now mayor of chicago. yes, the washington establishment is making their way to re-and not break president obama, but so are hundreds of thousands of people have come to the capital. the second-largest inauguration history, the first was his first inauguration, the largest event ever in the nation's capital, 2 million people turned out. ralph nader, you have attempted to become president of this country. do you have anything positive to say about president obama? what you think he has done well? what i think he has done well on the student loans for the not as well as a lot of people wanted in this area, but he has given millions of students the opportunity to get loans from the department of education instead of corporations with their gouging interest rates. it is a remarkably disappointing. we all hope for him to be a great president, but character and personality count far more in the presidency. he does not like to take on powerful forces. his worst trait is turning his back on his supporters. if you probably talk to members of the black caucus in congress, they are bitterly disappointed with him. one of them said they would be marching on the white house if he was a white president. i think we ought to focus -- stop focusing so much on the white house and focus on ourselves. that is why this minimum wage battle is so important it is to be the first victory in the victory for justice. it is doable. we have a website called tim eforaraise.org. go to it, look at it, sign up. we want people in every city to press firsts city ordinances,- press for city ordinances as other cities have done. we're going to be pushing at the congressional level. remember, president obama came out for $9.50 minimum wage by 2011. that was in his 2008 campaign. he never set it again. why a strike because we did not put organized demands on him. we settled for least worst and settled for letting our leaders not lead. >> what is your assessment of president obama, a pushing for gun control? you see him talking about congressmembers getting paid by the nra and people should challenge that, saying he'll introduce an assault weapons ban. in number of executive orders to challenge the nra. take that in a big way. if he is beginning his second presidential campaign with bad, we expect he will talk about that in his inauguration speech, perhaps, today. >> that is a good start. as we all know, he will be blocked by republicans in congress with which party should defeat it in a landslide. it all goes back to the election and the emergence once again of john boehner and eric cantor and their ability to block anything that he tries to get through congress. >> john boehner, who is just making his way right now to his seat at the inauguration ceremony. >> t know what percentage of vote he got to re-elect him? 100%. you know why? unlike newt gingrich who topple democratic speaker jim wright and tom foley, the democrats did not even field a candidate. in ohio, against john boehner, speaker of the house, his principal nemesis. then we wonder why he is so aggressive? see, this is where the problem is. what we need to focus on is, how we organize demands on president obama and the members of congress back home? there are only 536 of them. 650,000, men, women, and children in each congressional district. it is a fraction of those numbers, 1000, 2000, getting behind the kind of long overdue solutions in this country can begin to make it happen. you know what my motto is these days? we have got to realize it is a lot easier than we think. if we exaggerate the opposition as a reflection of our own self- imposed powerlessness, we will be powerless. >> we're talking to ralph nader, longtime consumer advocate and presidential candidate. now talking about minimum wage. talking for a minute about foreign policy. your assessment of president obama is nominee to the secretary of state, john kerry, and chuck hagel, which he has gone a lot of flak for it, to the secretary of defense? >> those are promising choices. john kerry may finally liberate himself with a push from chuck a goal. they are going to have to take on the military-industrial complex and reduce those mass of weapons systems that were designed for a soviet-peristyle hostility like the f-22 and nuclear subs. they're going have to cut the military budget down from its $800 billion, and get out of afghanistan and iraq. and whether they have the chemistry and the political fortitude to do so, it remains to be seen. but i think they are a better choice than their predecessors. i think john kerry will be better than hillary clinton, who had to be macho all the time. and panetta, chuck hagel will be better than panetta, who was kind of a fill in. and spent weekends back in california where he really wants to retire. there is a little promise there. but again, it requires the resurgence of mass demonstrations in washington this spring to develop a convergent policy from the militarization of foreign-policy in our society to the public works and infrastructure. good thing jobs in every community cannot be exported. it will take activity back home. it comes down to self-respect. anybody watching this program the cesta themselves, who might? i am nobody. what if 25 million people individually say, who might? i don't have any power, and nobody. guess what? 25 million people don't have any power. that is done a credible possibility with a constitution that starts out with "we the people." >> you cosign a letter about the anti-torture was a blower who spoke out against torture because he believed it violated his oath and constitution. he never tortured anyone, yet he is the only individual prosecuted related to the torture program in the past decade. this is january 21, the day of 's second obama is not ratione inauguration. he will have to serve 30 months in prison, john kiriakou. he worked for the cia. >> the torture is that away with it. nobody is prosecuting them. they're violating the army field manual, the constitution, federal statutes, international treaty. the man who pointed out, and interrogator, the men carry up to, who pointed out as a cia agent, this was torture and he was not going to engage in it and blew the whistle is going to jail. the justice department, mr. holder on behalf of mr. obama, had five counts against him read it dropped four counts. in return, he agreed the fifth count he would plead guilty to because he did not want to be put away for 10, 20 years. he's got five kids. he lost his job, his pension. his wife lost her job. they are in serious straits. what did the plead guilty to? that he told a reporter the name of a man he did not think was undercover. the reporter did not even report it. it was never made public until last october. so this is an example of where president obama went beyond president bush and actually has invited more courageous federal officials for reporting crimes. some of them have been on your program. they are reporting crimes and they are law-abiding people. they're trying to hold up their oath of office, civil service oath of office. they're the ones being prosecuted. when history is written about attorney general holder, it is not in the one that is very nobbling to his pretensions. >> ralph nader, thank you for being withins. ralph nader, longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate, author of many books. his latest is "the 17 solutions: new ideas for our american future." the first family is set to come outsisw on the steps of the capital of less than an hour, and about 44 minutes, the inaugural ceremony will begin. among those who will speak, merlee evers, the widow of medgar evers. we will talk about her, talked about the civil rights history. we will talk about the black history of the white house next, joined by professor clarence lusane was written a book by that title. we will take a walking tour of washington, d.c. who built it? stay with us. ♪ [music break] >> that was ps22 chorus from staten island, new york, performing in the pre- inauguration ceremony. performing "home." they performed at the academy awards and their youtube videos have been seen by more than 50 million viewers. this is "democracy now!," democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we are usually in new york when we broadcast, not far from staten island, but today we're broadcasting from the nation's capital. tomorrow we will be broadcasting from park city, utah, from the sundance film festival, the 10th anniversary of the sundance documentary film track. we will be joined by jeremy scahill. his film has just a bit at the film festival colorado "dirty wars." it has created quite a buzz about the secret wars, particularly under the obama administration. we will talk about drones and targeted killings. but right now, we are in washington, d.c., the inauguration ceremony will begin in some 50 minutes. we're joined now by professor clarence lusane who is going to take us on a walking tour to washington, d.c., and through history. his book is called, "the black history of the white house." president obama made history four years ago when he became the first african-american president the history of african-americans in the white house did not begin with president obama. the first person of african descent to enter the presidential home was most likely a slave. washington, d.c. once hosted markets were human beings were sold for profit. the products of that system include some of the city's most famous landmarks. today president obama will recite the oath of office on the steps of the building that was built at least in part by the labor of enslaved people. one of the two bibles with which he will take his oath was also used by president abraham lincoln, who signed the emancipation proclamation 150 years ago this month, declaring free the slaves in confederate states that were rebelling against the union. the racial history of d.c. and the presidency is unveiled in a book clarence lusane by clarence. let's talk about the black history of the white house. thank you for having me here. president obama said he stands on the shoulders of people who have been in the white house. president lincoln, kennedy, johnson. the asa stands on the shoulders of the black people who experienced it in the white house. as you noted in your intro, this goes from thosroindividuals who worked to build the white house when washington, d.c., when the country first came into existence, washington dc did not exist. it literally had to be built and it took 10 years. much of that labour from clearing the land, moving the trees and rocks came from african americans and slave labor. the iconic buildings that we know, the capital, the white house, both were built not only by unskilled black labor, people who did just sort of the hard work, but still black labor like carpenters, or african- americans. the first african-american who had engaged in the president's residence whether it was the white house we know now in washington or in the residence of the president george washington when he first went to new york and then when he moved from new york to the president's residence in philadelphia, and both of those residences, washington took a number of his slaves. black people's history relationship to where the president has lived goes all the way back to the very founding of the country. more importantly, it is back to the contradictions are around race, slavery and all of that history and the nature of the country. president obama is inviting all of that as well when he stands and is commemorated has been the first african-american president. i think for many around the country, the idea of an african- american in the white house was something new, something unknown. if you had been here in washington, d.c., you knew history in part, a lot of fun in members have worked at the white house, in some instances, for generations. >> talk about the title and the title photograph of this book. >> the photograph comes from the late 1800's. taken by very famous photographer johnson who took pictures of everyone from booker t. washington to the president. it is a picture of the easter egg hunt that took place on the grounds of the white house in 1897. the backdrop to that had been up until summer in the 1880's or 89's, the easter egg hunt had been on capitol hill. it pretty much had been open, but congress members were complaining children were tearing up the lawn. so they moved it to the white house. by the time this picture was taken in the late 1987 -- 1897, it was ... in washington, d.c. that was not segregated. the only place to that black children and want to a plan togeth. this happens after 1896 classes to be ferguson decision which after the end of reconstruction, the institution of segregation and black coats, it said the loan nationally to allow segregation to exist pretty much of what up until the mid 1960's. it is really significant that we were able to find this picture because it's really kind of captures how the white house sometimes could be the only place where there could be some degree of integration, but in other times, it also reflected segregation in the country. >> clarence lusane, your book is called, "the black history of the white house." it opens with the statement "more than one in four u.s. presidents were involved in human trafficking and slavery." more than one in four. >> one-quarter of the president's in the u.s. essentially 12 of the first 16 so presidents, not only owned slaves, but many had slaves in the white house. this was not a history we were taught. in fact, not a history that is taught when we think about the history of the united states and presidents. this is critical because it explains why president after president after president all the way up until the civil war either reified and furthered slavery or even those who said they were against slavery, did very little to address the issue. it became impossible for slavery to end until the country reached the point where civil war recognize the only with the the country could go forward, the only way the union could exist was that slavery had to end. >> if you ask most people by president lincoln, won the civil war happen, there was said because president lincoln wanted to end slavery. >> and that simply was not the deal. i would argue president lincoln devolved. he started off anti-slavery, but was not crummel abolition. he ended up pro abolition, but not necessarily pro-the quality. that transition was never completed if you look back at his words and actions in any given ways. i think a lot of that is what is missing from the film "lincoln." >> let's go to a clip of that film "lincoln," directed by steven spielberg, about president abraham lincoln. let me say again, president obama will be putting his hand on two bibles, one is the bubble of dr. martin luther king, his traveling bible, and one is the bible of president lincoln. in this clip, you first hear abraham lincoln, played by daniel day lewis, followed by the voices of thaddeus stevens -- the congress member from pennsylvania -- and mary todd lincoln, the first lady. >> step down upon the world's stage now critics the fate of human dignity and our hands. >> blood has been spilt to afford as this moment critics now, now, now. >> abraham lincoln has asked us to work with him to accomplish the death of slavery. >> no one has ever been loved so much by the people. don't ways that power. >> "lincoln." clarence lusane? >> an number of important historians have pointed out the passage of the 13th amendment did not just happen to the nationalization and the efforts of lincoln, it also happened as a result of what was happening below, the rebellions that happened, the organizing that african-americans, the engagement of free blacks in the lobbying process, the meetings that took place literally around the country pushing and advocating for the 13th amendment. all of that is left -- missing from the film. what comes across is the modern notion that policy is made by negotiations between democrats and republicans and between the white house and the capital. but in fact, it really is, and what happened around the 13th amendment, it really was a process of the activism on the part of people who really wanted slavery to end, including free blacks, as african-americans who were still enslaved, and radical republicans, those who were part of the other side of lincoln who was really pushing for the end of slavery even before the civil war started. >> i want to play a clip of actress gloria reuben who plays a real historical figure named elizabeth keckley in the film "lincoln." let's hear a clip of reuben describing her character and then i want ask you to talk about elizabeth keckley and her significance. >> i played an extraordinary woman named elizabeth keckley. she was a woman who was born into slavery and at the age of 39, she ended up buying her own freedom for $1,200. she was highly gifted in the art and craft of dressmaking, since a young girl. she learned as a young grow from her mother. eventually, into that building her own clientele of high society women and political lives in st. louis before she moved to washington, d.c., the friends mary todd lincoln the first day of the first inauguration and is hired by mary todd lincoln to be her personal seamstress. and there's something about the way this woman, from what i had read, in a short amount i had read about her, her incredible fortitude and strength and the way she was able to survive extraordinary things that really i felt connected to emotionally. >> that was gloria reuben talking about elizabeth keckley. talk about elizabeth keckley to talk about in the book, clarence lusane, in "the black history of the white house." >> what was disturbing to me about "lincoln" is that elizabeth keckley, the butler and the woman associated with bette stephens, their histories were really not there. in some ways, it was the story -- many people who i've spoken to that watched the film came out of the film believing that elizabeth keckley was a maid in the white house. gloria reuben points out, she was an independent businesswoman who had a very clients relationship with me mary lincoln. what is really missing that is important is that elizabeth keckley was also an activist. when the civil war started, people began to leave the plantations and after lincoln is use the emancipation proclamation in 1863, people begin to leave in the tens of thousands and not knowing where to go, they came to washington, d.c. they flooded into the city. they created camps. they were called contraband because there been referred to as property. but these were people who came that had virtually the clothes on their back. there were issues of feeding them, education, sanitation elizabeth keckley organized the first association of these individuals to make sure they were able to be taken care of. indeed, she travel not only around the u.s., but she even went to europe. we're talking tens of thousands of people or howard university is located here in washington, was one of the major contraband cans was something like 5000 people. she was not just a businesswoman, as someone who was actively engaged in the issues of for time. for example, she was critical in between sojourner truth and president lincoln meetings. she had links with many of the activists from frederick douglass -- elizabeth keckley newt many individuals. in her own right, she was a very activist person. >> talk about who's sojourner truth was in her meeting with lincoln. i should say, as we're talking right now, the first lady michelle obama, is making her way to the entrance of the west front of the capital, also looking at sunny sotomayor who is about to take her seat among the supreme court justices -- son is sotomayor who is about to takers among the supreme court justices. i c clarence thomas as well. we're having this conversation about 35 minutes before the inauguration ceremonies began. michelle obama herself is a descendant of slaves from the carolinas. >> that is right. sojourner truth was a black woman activist in the 1840's, 1850's and going forward. he raised issues not only about racism and slavery, but also about the rights of women. in particular, how african- american women were treated by the feminist movement in that time. she was a very important character. lincoln's white house was significant because it was the first time of any president of 15 presidents who came before lincoln would not meet with african-american leaders. this simply did not care what african-americans fought with the they were freed african- americans or enslaved. in 1862, lincoln met with a group of african-americans business leaders and began meeting with peoplee frederick douglass and other african-american leaders who played a major role in changing lincoln's view to begin to see the end of slavery really was the only recourse to end the civil war, and it was the right thing to do for the country. so elizabeth keckley was in the pantheon of these people who are active in the period and tried to push the country, in particular, lincoln. she became very close with mary lincoln. in the film "lincoln" there's a point where she talks about losing her son during the war. the background to that is a she basically was raped when she was younger i white man and had a child, a son, who was of mixed race. when the war broke out, her son joined the military. at that point, african-americans were not allowed, so he entered the military passing as white. he was killed and one of the early battles that to place in 1861. so she lost her only child. the lincolns lost one of their children, a young son, while they were in the white house. he contracted a fever and ended up passing away. elizabeth keckley was with mary lincoln through all of the trauma addressing her son's death. she helped to bathe his body, help with the funeral. they became very close. they really have a friendship there really was the defining nature of their relationship, not as we see in the film too much, her caring mary lincoln's code ending in the background she really was a remarkable individual. >> thank you for being with us. i want to ask you, clarence lusane, if you'll stay with us as we move into this next two- hour chunk of "democracy now!" we will be broadcasting the inauguration ceremony. we will also be talking about myrlie evers and the significance of the education she will give an her place in history, her place as well as her slain husband, medgar evers. clarence lusane is the author of, "the black history of the white house." he is a professor and program director for the comparative and regional studies program at american university here in washington, d.c. we are doing a five-hour special inauguration broadcast today. we're going to go to a musical break and then we will resume at 11:00 eastern standard time. we urge you to tell your friends, to tweet the show to let us know you are listening or you are watching "democracy now!" democracynow.org has the transcript as well as all the supporting information around this five-hour broadcast. "democracy now!" is produced by some wonderful people. ♪ [music break] >> this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. we are doing a many-hour special today on this inauguration. >> hi, barack hussein obama, do solemnly swear that i will faithfully execute the office of president of the united states. >> four years after making history by becoming the first african-american president, barack obama kicks off his second term on martin luther king day. up to 800,000 people are gathering on the national mall. we will air the entire ceremony live, including the indication of myrlie evers-williams, the widow of medgar evers, and president obama's entire speech. all that and more, coming up. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. a teenage gunman is in custody after allegedly killing five members of his family in new mexico saturday night. police say 15-year-old killed his parents and three siblings, each suffering multiple gunshot wounds. the suspect was armed with several weapons, including an assault rifle. it was the deadliest mass shooting in the nation since the newtown massacre a month ago. the shooting comes on the same day that gun opponents rallied around the country. demonstrations in pennsylvania and ohio, gun owners pilloried calls for stricter gun control. >> no law put on law abiding citizens has ever deterred crime. they are going to take my gun so i can get shot. >> my thought is, it is how the left-wing liberal idiots and all of them, leave our guns alone. we are not hurting anything. it is the criminals. >> the pro-gun rallies also coincided with a series of other shows. and number of people were injured when firearms accidentally went off. one gun owner accidentally shot himself in indianapolis. in ohio, a gun show attendee was injured by a stray bullet. president obama is set to publicly take the oath of office today at his second term inauguration in washington. obama gathered with his family on sunday in the blue room of the white house to privately recite the 35-word oath read to him by supreme court chief justice john roberts. >> please raise your right hand and repeat after me. >> i, barack hussein obama, do solemnly swear that i will faithfully execute the office of president of the united states, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the united states, so help me god. >> congratulations, mr. president. >> thank you, so much. >> three groups have organized to protest president obama along the inauguration parade route. obama thanked supporters at an inaugural celebration at the national building museum. at least that which where people have been killed in a u.s. drone strike inside yemen. the yemeni government says the attack killed four militants but the claim has not been independently verified. the attack comes one day after locals were angered over a drone attack blocking the main road linking the targeted town with the capital of san'a. the administration had decided to exclude cia drone strikes in pakistan from legal oversight in targeted killings overseas. "the washington port" reports that john brennan has signed off on a plan to exempt the drone attacks in pakistan from the list of operations that would be covered under newly enacted rules. and is covered in the so-called playbook include the process for adding names to kill lists, principles for killing u.s. citizens abroad, and the command chain for authorizing cia or military strikes outside war zones. the exemption of drone strikes in pakistan would allow the cia to continue carrying them out without a legal framework for up to two years. the hostage standoff in nigeria has ended in the deaths of dozens of people, including 48 of the captured workers. forces have recovered ater least 25 bodies after storming the militant-held them complex -- cass complex on saturday, bringing the confirmed death toll to at least 80. witnesses say the hostages were brutally executed. the poll could have been worse as hundreds of hostages had earlier managed to escape. a well-known islamist fighters has claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of al qaeda. the militants who took the complex claimed they were doing so to seek an end to the french military intervention in neighboring mali. the french army, meanwhile, continues to advance in northern mali in its effort to wrest control from rebel. french forces runner today entered a key town after a week of air strikes. the rebels have flee the town after vowing a stiff resistance. a spokesperson for the un refugee agency says that the fighting threatens to this place up to 700,000 people. >> we believe there could be in the near a future up to 300,000 people additionally displaced inside mali, and zero or 4000 addition the displaced in neighboring countries. many fear the strict application of sharia law. the report having witnessed executions, amputations, and they say also large amounts of money are being offered to civilians to fight against the mountain army and its supporters. disturbingly also, we are hearing accounts -- >> tortures of prisoners in afghanistan is not only continuing but could be on the rise. investigators have uncovered ongoing abuses in afghan prisons, including the beating of detainees with cables, handing them by their wrists. more than half of prisoners interviewed said they had been tortured, happened -- higher than the previous rate of 24% in 2011. the report also cites an unconfirmed afghan official that confirms some are being held at detention sites to avoid scrutiny. u.s. military has forcibly removed another palestinian protest encampment in the path of the expanding settlement in the occupied west bank. palestinian residents had set up three tent and a mobil building on friday to stop israel from seizing parts of their land. the demonstrators named their sight "the gate of dignity." after receiving evacuation demands, and a tour of the order of the israeli military in front of the soldiers. the camp was raided and dismantled earlier today. another palestinian containment in the west bank, arabic for "gate of the sun" was removed earlier this month. the interior department has delayed a regulation that would require the disclosure of chemicals used in the process of hydraulic fracturing. it is the second time the rule's implementation has been delayed since it was proposed in may. a federal grand jury has indicted a former new orleans mayor ray nagin for a major corruption scheme including allegations of bribery, money laundering, wire fraud, and filing false tax returns. prosecutors say he received cash and gifts from city contractors, steered a home depot contract to his home business, and helped quash a community benefits agreement that would have required home depot to hire local residents at above market rates. nagin was apparently in talks for a plea bargain when the charges were unveiled. here in washington, d.c., lupe fiasco was kicked off the stage at an inauguration performance after voicing criticism of president obama. fiasco recited lyrics critical of u.s. drone strikes and the israeli invasion of gaza and shared with the audience that he did not vote for obama in the election. he was ushered off the stage before he could finish his performance, but organizers of the event deny he was centered. those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we are broadcasting from washington, d.c. today where president barack obama is set to publicly take the oath of office for his second term. obama's second inauguration comes 50 years after the assassination of civil rights leader medgar evers outside of his home in jackson, mississippi. he was 37 years old. today, his widow, myrlie evers- williams will deliver the invocation at president obama's inauguration. she will become the first woman and someone other than clergy to say the prayer the proceeds the ceremony oath of office. medgar evers was killed at the close of an important day in the civil-rights movement. earlier that day, alabama segregationist gov. george wallace stood on the steps of the university's all white universe and tried to block the admission of two students. evers was killed by a white supremacist. he was tried twice for the murder. both times and in this trial because the all-white juries could not reach a verdict. he was later convicted of murder 30 years afterwards. member evers' became an naacp beater in 1954 after the all- when university of mississippi rejected his law school applications. he fought segregation of schools and public places and struggle to increase black voter registration, led business boycott, brought attention to the murders and lynchings like the slaying of an until. -- emmett till. in a few minutes, we will be broadcasting president obama's inauguration, including myrlie evers-williams' invocation. first, i want to turn to a segment we did five years ago marking the 45th anniversary of the assassination of medgar evers. myrlie evers-williams was with us on the show. >> this demonstration will continue. we will have a mass meeting tonight and after the meeting we will be demonstrating further tomorrow. this will only give us an impetus to move ahead, rather than slow down. we intend to completely eradicate jim crow, here in jackson, mississippi. >> member evers organizes the boycott in downtown jackson, mississippi for the separatist group of white separatist council. >> do not shop for anything on capitol street. let's let the merchants feel e economic pinch. let me say this to you. i had one merchant call me and he said, i want you to know, i have talked to my national office today, and they want me to tell you that we do not need nigger business. these are stores that have to support the white citizens council, the council that is dedicated to keeping you and i second-class citizens. finally, ladies and gentlemen, we will be demonstrating here until freedom comes, too negro's here in jackson, mississippi. >> that was medgar evers. we are joined now on the phone by civil rights leader myrlie evers-williams. she is the widow of medgar evers, killed 45 years ago today. from 1995 until 1998, myrlie evers-williams served as the chair of the naacp. prior to that, she was the first african-american woman to be appointed to the los angeles board of public works. she has written two books. myrlie evers-williams, welcome to democracy now!. >> good morning and thank you very much. >> very good to have you with us. your thoughts today, 45 years after the assassination of medgar? >> certainly a day that i and members of my family remember very intimately. for some reason, this 45th anniversary has been a little more difficult than the last few. perhaps it is because of what is happening in our country today, but i thank you so much for bringing to the public at least the part of the story of medgar evers. it has been very difficult to hear people talk about the civil rights movement and the leadership, as though it started in 1964, when really, indeed, it did not. i owe you a great debt of gratitude. >> the progress that you feel have made over these past 45 years, especially in places like mississippi. i recall recently wlbt tv, which created summit, for allowing medgar evers to get his message across, was owned by african- americans for quite awhile and then recently changed hands. has there been continuing progress in mississippi, but in some ways -- or in some ways have things gone back? beeno, there havs progress on a continuous basis. and and look at the time when medgar was so prominent, immediately after his death and the changes that started to take place slowly, but they have continued to grow in all aspects of life in mississippi. that is not to say, however, that prejudice and racism does not exist, but certainly not to the degree that we remember what it was. and i think that goes for america as a whole. certainly, things we see happening today, particularly politically, at my age, at this point, i knew it would happen, but i was not sure i would ever see it happen within my lifetime. the things that are happening today also bring up a point that medgar made, that freedom will not be free and it will be more difficult to hold onto those freedoms month they have been gained perhaps and even to achieve them in the first place. >> it is interesting to talk to you after we were speaking to a victim of the chadian dictator, talking about what justice is so important. two trials right after medgar evers was assassinated. he goes free. how did he end of being convicted 30 years later? >> that is a very long story because i was told that nothing would ever be done. i had made a promise to medgar that if something happened to him and i was still alive, i would dedicate my life to see that justice will prevail. it took 30-plus years for that to happen. as i heard earlier, two years with a hung jury, and then a third trial that took place, which i was not sure what would happen, but i think the time that had passed helped to make people realize it was something that citizens should do, stand up and fight for equality. well, the man was convicted, and he was placed in jail. one of the things that i enjoyed -- if i can call it that -- is that his jail cell had the view of the new post office, which was named for medgar there. it did something else, too. after the trial there have been at least 18 to 21 civil rights trials that have been held. i believe out of the number, there have been 18 convictions. in a sense, it has been a cleansing of the south, of america, of some of those horrible thing that took place. once again, medgar was in the forefront of it, with my pushing. i just want so badly for his torians and the younger generations to know about medgar and the role he played. as i mentioned earlier, it is almost devastating to see and hear things mentioned of the civil rights movement and give the appearance that nothing happened until 1964. >> myrlie evers-williams, we will link on our website to the video and photographs that we have of the historical record, for those who did not get to see it on our broadcast. i thank you for taking the time to spend with us today. >> i do want to add there is a third book, the autobiography of medgar evers, which is about three years old, which was published by basic books. that gives in debt site into his work and feelings. >> that was myrlie evers- williams. she will be the first woman and non-clergy to give the invocation at today's inauguration ceremony. we spoke to her five years ago. the inauguration ceremony will be opened at 11:30 eastern standard time, in just about 10 minutes, with opening remarks from senator charles schumer. at 11:35 myrlie evers-williams will give the indication. then the vice presidential oath will be administered by justice sotomayor. at noon, the inaugural address and the inaugural poem by richard blanco. at 12:30, the benediction. as we speak, president obama is about to step outside onto the west front of the capital. we are joined by clarence lusane, author of "the black history of the white house." professor at american university here in washington, d.c., professor of international relations. this book goes beyond the white house. it also talks about the capital, talks about those who built these institutions, physically. many of them enslaved. >> this is an important history. in fact, the capitol has now demolished the slave labor that went into building that building. there are two plaques, one in the main hallway, one on the house side. there is nothing in the white house that a knowledge as that. if you go on a tour, now self- guided, you can go through the blue room, the other important rooms in the white house, but there is nothing that tells you where the slave quarters were, where people lived in the basement, for example, during the period of slavery. so there is the need for the white house to also commemorate and acknowledge the importance of that history. >> it is amazing to see the hundreds of thousands of people on the moment now. the largest event in washington, d.c. history was four years ago, the inauguration. right now, four years later, it is not as expected to be quite as large, maybe about 800,000, and it is very cold outside. a testament to the people that have come out. a lot of the media is talking about the first lady, michelle obama's hairstyle, her clothes, who made them. i would like to ask you about her history. in fact, the last chapter of your book goes right to the obama white house, the latest political milestone, the obama's in the white house, with michelle obama's story. >> each chapter opened with a story of an individual that captures each historical moment. the last chapter looks at michelle obama. it looks at her history as far as it has been traced back. as we know, she had an ancestor, a young girl, who was enslaved in the 1840's or so. she was eventually sold, sent deeper into the south, and that particular line of michelle obama's began to emerge and eventually ends up with her family being in illinois, chicago, michelle and her brother are born in the 1960's. her history is kind of critical as well because she is someone who has embodied all of the experiences, all of the ways in which african-americans have struggled for inclusion. >> as you speak, we are bringing up the sounds of people cheering as president obama has made his public appearance and is shaking hands with the people in the stands right now. with michelle obama, malia, sasha, michelle obama's mother, live with them in the white house. >> 800,000 is pretty good, more and then came out for ronald reagan, more than george w. bush. >> and it is the second inauguration, still larger than any other inauguration, except for his first. >> even with some of the disappointments, and the unfilled expectations, there is still a resonance, particularly with african-americans, the importance and significance of having barack obama as president. people are still coming out and supporting. we saw that last year in the election. 95% of african-americans voted for him. there is still a lot there attached to the meaning of having a first african-american becoming president of the united states. >> when you say you wish it would have been eight knowledge, the history of the building of this city, the nation's capital, washington, d.c., explain. >> psychologists tell us that acknowledging pain and suffering is a way to get past the trauma. until the country related knowledge as that this is part of the history -- we have had good parts of history but we have also had bad, and we should not pretend that it does not exist. the white house is iconic to the world. there were almost 2 million people that camet to the inaugural last year, but there were millions more around the world who were watching, perhaps as much as a billion people, from japan, to england, to germany, south africa, brazil, around the world, because people understand the long journey that has been there for african- americans, similar to south africa, for example, where many of us never expected nelson mandela to get out of jail. not only did he get out of jail, he became president. that is somewhat analogous to what many feel about president obama, but not in ways that are important, has been recognized. one way to do that would be for the white house to say that we understand that this building has represented not only our country but also has represented history and has embodied all the contents of that history, including slavery. >> can you talk about the issue of race in the race? last time and this past time? >> race has certainly been a variable. because president obama won in 2008 and 2012 -- >> i think the inauguration ceremony is beginning a bit early. charles schumer has taken the microphone and is beginning the ceremony. >> and to all that are watching, welcome to the capital and to the celebration of our great democracy. [applause] this is the 57 inauguration of an american president, and no matter how many times one witnesses this event, its simplicity, it's in a nazi -- its innate majesty, and most sacred of all, that most sacred of power, from we the people to our trust a leader never fails to make one's heart beat faster as it will today with the inauguration of president barack h. obama. [applause] now we know we would not be here today were it not for those who stand guard around the world to preserve our freedom. to those in our armed forces, we offer are infinite thanks, for your bravery, your honor, your sacrifice. [applause] this democracy of ours was forged by intellect and argument, by activism and the blood, and above all, from john adams, to elizabeth cady stanton, to martin luther king, by a stubborn adherence to the notion and we are all created equal and that we all deserve nothing less than a great republic were the of our consent. the theme of this year's inaugural is faith in america's future. the perfect embodiment of this unshakeable confidence in the ongoing success of our collective journey is an event from our past. i speak of the improbable completion of the capitol dome, capping it with the statue of freedom, which occurred 150 years ago, in 1863. when abraham lincoln took office two years earlier, and the dome was an eyesore. conventional wisdom was that it should be left unfinished intone the war ended, given the travails and financial needs of the times. but to president lincoln, the half-finished don't symbolize the half finished nation. lincoln said, if people see the capital going on, it is a sign that we intend union shall go on. and so, despite the conflict which engulfed the nation and surrounded the city, the dome continue to rise. on december 2, 1863, the statue of freedom, a woman, was placed atop the dome, where she still stands today. in a sublime irony, it was a former slave, now free american, philip reed, who help to cast a bronze statue. now, our present times are not as perilous or despairing as they were in 1863, but in 2013, far too many doubt the future of this great nation, and our ability to tackle our own era's half-finished domes. today's problems are intractable, they say, the times are so complex, the differences in countries are so deep, we will never overcome them. when talks might these produce anxiety, fear, and even despair, we do was to remember that americans have always been, and still are, a practical, optimistic, problem-solving people, and that as our history shows no matter how steep climb, how difficult the problem, how half-finished the task, america always rises to the occasion. america prevails and america prosperous. [applause] and those who bet against this country have inevitably been on the wrong side of history. so it is a good moment to gaze upward and behold the statue of freedom at the top of the capitol dome. it is a good moment to gain strength and courage and humility from those who are determined to complete the half- finished dome. it is a good moment to rejoiced today at this 57 presidential inaugural ceremony, and it is the perfect moment to renew our collective faith in the future of america. [applause] thank you, and god bless the united states. in that spirit of faith, i would now like to introduce civil- rights leaders myrlie evers- williams who has committed her life to extending the new promise of our nation's founding principles to all americans. mrs. evers will lead us in the invocation. [applause] >> america, we are here, our nation's capital, on this date january 21, 2013. the inauguration of our 45th president, barack obama. we come at this time to ask blessings upon our leaders. the president, vice-president, members of congress, all elected and appointed officials of the united states of america , we are here to ask blessings upon our armed forces, blessings upon all who contribute to the essence of the american spirit, the american dream. the opportunity to become whatever our mankind, womankind allows us to be. this is the promise of america. as we sing the words of belief, this is my country, let us act upon the meaning that everyone is included. maybe inherent dignity and in alienable rights of every woman, man, boy, and girl be honored. may all your people, especially the least of these, flourish in our blessed nation. 150 years after the emancipation proclamation and 50 years after the march on washington, we celebrate the spirit of our ancestors, which has allowed us to move from a nation of on board hopes and a history of disenchants fries -- disenchant prized -- disenfranchised votes to a more perfect union. almighty, where our past is blanketed by throngs of repression and riddled by pangs of despair, we ask for your guidance toward the light of deliverance, and that the vision of those that came before us and dreamed of this day, that we recognize that their visions still inspire us. they are a great cloud of witnesses, unseen by the naked eye, but all around us, thankful that their living was not in vain. for every mountain, you gave us the strength to climb. your grace is pleaded to continue that climb, for america, and the world. we now stand beneath the shadow of the nation's capital, whose golden dome reflects the unity and democracy of one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. approximately four miles from where we are assembled, and the hallowed remains of men and women rest in arlington cemetery. they who believed, fought, and died for this country. made their spirit in pews our being to work together with the respect, enabling us to continue to build this nation, and in so doing, we send a message to the world that we are strong, fierce in our strength, and ever-vigilant in our pursuit of freedom. we ask that you grant our president the will to act courageously but cautiously when confronted with danger, and to act prudently but deliberately when challenged by adversity. please continue to test his efforts, to lead by example in consideration and favor of the diversity of our people. bless our families all across this nation. we thank you for this opportunity of prayer, to strengthen us. for the journey through the days that lie ahead. we invoke the prayers of our grandmothers who taught us to pray, god, make me a blessing. let their spirit guide us as we claim the spirit of old. there is something within me that holds the reins. there is something within me then vanishes pain. there is something within me i cannot explain. but all i know, america, there is something within. there is something within. in jesus' name, in the name of all who are wholly and right, we pray, amen. [applause] >> i am pleased to introduce the award winning tabernacle choir, the brooklyn tabernacle choir, to sing "battle hymn of the republica." [♪] democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. email your comments to outreach@democracynow.org or mail them to democracy now! p.o. box 693, new york, ny 10013. from pacifica, this is democracy now! this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. >> a mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord hath he is trampling of the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored he hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword his truth is marching on glory, glory, hallelujah glory, glory, hallelujah glory, glory, paula lea his truth is marching on his truth is marching on >> in the beauty of the lilies christ was born across the sea with a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me as he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free while god is marching on >> glory, glory, hallelujah glory, glory, hallelujah glory, glory, hallelujah our god is marching on marching on glory, glory, hallelujah glory, glory, hallelujah his truth is marching on marching on ♪ [applause] >> please join me in welcoming my colleague and my friend, the senator from tennessee, the honorable lamar alexander. [applause] >> mr. president, mr. vice president, ladies and gentlemen , the late alex haley, the ots," lived hise life by these five words appeared find the good and praise it. today we celebrate the american tradition of transferring are reaffirming the immense power in the inauguration of the president of the united states. we do this in a peaceful, orderly way. there is no mom, iscoup, -- no mob, no coup, no interruption. this is a moment that we watch. a moment that we will remember. it is a moment that is our most conspicuous and ignoring -- enduring symbol of american democracy. how remarkable that this has survived for so long, in such a complex country, when so much power is at stake, this freedom to vote for rn leaders and the restraint to respect the results. last year, at mount vernon, a tour guide told me that our first president, george washington, once posed this question -- what is most important, washington asked, of this great experiment, the united states? and then washington answered his own question in this way. not the election of the first president, but the election of its second president, the peaceful transfer of power is what will separate our country from every other country in the world. so, today, we celebrate the 57th inauguration of the american president find the good and praised it. now, it is my honor -- [applause] it is my honor to introduce the associate justice of the supreme court, sonia sotomayor, for the purpose of the minister in the oath of office to the vice president. will everyone please stand? >> mr. vice-president, please raise your right hand and repeat after me. >> i, and joseph r. biden, engineer do solemnly swear, that i will support and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic, that i will bear allegiance and true faith to the same, that i take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that i will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which i am about to enter, so help me god. >> congratulations. [applause] ♪ >> it is my pleasure to introduce renowned musical artist james taylor. [applause] ♪ 0, a beautiful, for spacious skies for amber waves of grain for purple mountains majesty of the of the frigid plane -- fruited plain america, america thee and his grace on crown thy good with brotherhood , from sea to shining sea from sea to shining sea ♪ [applause] >> it is my honor to present the chief justice of the united states, john g. roberts jr., who will administer the presidential oath of office. everyone please rise. [applause] >> please raise your right hand and repeat after me. >> i, barack hussein obama, do solemnly swear that i will faithfully execute the office of president of the united states and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the united states, so help me god. >> congratulations, mr. president. [no audio[applause] ♪ ♪ >> ladies and gentlemen, it is my great privilege and distinct honor to introduce the 44th president of the united states arack h. obama. [applause] [applause] >> thank you. >> obama! obama! >> thank you. thank you so much. vice-president biden, mr. chief justice, members of the united states congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens, each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our constitution. we affirm the promise of our democracy. we recall that what binds this nation together is not the color of our skin, or the tenants of our fate, or the origins of our names. what makes us exceptional, what makes us american, is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago. we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. [applause] that they are in doubt by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. today, we continue a never ending journey to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. for history tells us, while these truths may be self evident, they have never been self-executed. while freedom is a gift from god, it must be secured by his people, here on earth. the patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few, or the rule of a mob. they gave to us a republic, a government of and by, and for people, and trusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed. more than 200 years we have. by drawn -- blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, -- we made ourselves a new and down to move forward together. together, we determine a modern economy requires railroads, highways to speak travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers. together, we discover that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play. together, we resolve that a great nation must careful the vulnerable and protect its people from life's worst hazards and misfortune. through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all of society's ills can be cured through government alone. our celebration of initiative and enterprise are -- our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, these are constants in our character. we have always understood, when times change, so must we. fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges. preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. for the american people can no more meet the demands of today's world by acting alone and american soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets or malicious. no single person can train all the math and science teachers we will need to equip our children for the future. or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation and one people. [applause] this generation of americans have been tested by crises that steal our results improved our resilience. a decade of war is now ending. [applause] an economic recovery has begun. america's possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world demands. youth, drive, diversity, openness. and and this capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. my fellow americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it, as long as we seize it together. [applause] for we, the people, understand our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. [applause] we believe that america's prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle-class. we know that america thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work. when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship. we are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest barbados she has the same chance to succeed as anyone else [applause] we understand our programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. we must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, reach higher. while the means will change, our purpose indoors, our nation that rewards the determination of every single american, that is what this moment requires. that is what will give real meaning to our creed. we, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. we must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. but we reject the belief that america must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build this feature. [applause] for we remember the lessons of our past when twilight years were spent in poverty and parents of a job disability had no word turn. we do not believe in this country freedom is reserved for the lucky or happiness for the few. we recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, anyone of us at any time may face a job loss or a sudden illness or homes swept away in a terrible storm. the commitments we make to each other through medicare and medicaid and social security, these things do not sap our nation, they strengthened us. [applause] they do not make as a nation of takers, they freak us to take the risks that make this country great. -- they free us to take the risks that make this country great. [applause] week, the people, still believe that our obligations as americans are not just to ourselves, but all prosperity. we will respond to the threat of climate change knowing that the failure to do so will betray our children and future generations. [applause] some may still deny the overwhelming science, but none can avoid the devastating raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms. the path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult, but america cannot resist this transition. we must lead it. we cannot cede to other nations, the technology that will power and industry. we must claim its promise. that is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure. our forests and waterways, our croplands and snowcapped peaks. that is how we will preserve our planet's, command it to our care by god. that is what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared. we, the people still believe that in during security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war. [applause] our brave men and women in uniform tempered by the flames of battle are unmatched in skill and courage. [applause] our citizens feared by the memories of those lost know too well the price that's paid for liberty. the knowledge of their sacrifice will keep us forever village and -- vigilant against those who will do us harm. but we are heirs who want the peace, and not just the war. we must carry those lessons into this time as well. we will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and the rule of law. we will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully, not because we are not even about the dangers we face, but because engagement, more durable lift suspicion and fear. [applause] america will remain the anchor a strong alliances and every corner of the globe, and we will renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage a crisis abroad for the one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation. we will support democracy from asia to africa, from the americas to the middle east because our interest in our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom. and we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice not out there charity, but because he's in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that are common creed describes rid of tolerance and opportunity, human dignity and justice. we, the people, declared today that the most evident of truths that all of us are created equal is a star that still guides us, just as excited our forebears' through seneca falls and selma and stone wall, just as excited all of those men and women son and grandson who left footprints along this great mall to hear a preachers say that we cannot walk alone, to hear a keen proclaim our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on earth. [applause] it is our generation's task to carry on what those pioneers began. for our journey is not complete until our wives, mothers, daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. [applause] our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law. [applause] for if we're truly critical, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well -- truly created equal, then surely the level, to one another must people as well. until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote [applause] our journey is not complete until we find a better to walk and the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see america as a land of opportunity, until bright, young students and engineers are enlisted our work force instead of expelled from our country. [applause] our journey is not complete until all of our children from the streets of detroit to the hills of appalachia to the quiet lands of newtown, know that their care for and cherished and always safe from harm. tasked,our generation's to make these rights, these values of life and liberty and pursuit of happiness real for every american. being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life. it does not mean we all the fine liberty in exactly the same way or follow the same precise path to happiness. progress does not compel us to settle centuries long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time. [applause] for now, decisions are upon us and we cannot afford delay. we cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. [applause] we must act. we must act knowing that our work will be in perfect. we must act knowing that today's victories will be only partial and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years and 40 years and 400 years hence to a chance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare philadelphia hall. my fellow americans, the oath i have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who served in this capital, was an oath to god and country. not party or faction. and we must faithfully execute that pledge during our service. but the words i spoke today are not so different from the oath that is taken each time a soldier signs up for duty, or immigrant realizes her dream. my oath is not so different from the pledge we homage to the flag that waves above and fills our hearts with pride. they are the words of citizens, and represent our greatest hope. uni as citizens have the power to set this country's course. you and i as citizens have the obligation to shape the debate of our time not only with the votes we cast but the voices we lived in defense of our most ancient values and injuring ideals. [applause] but as each and race with solemn duty and awesome joy with is our lasting birthright. with common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication let us answer the call of history and theory into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom. thank you. god bless you. may he for ever bless these united states of america. [applause] >> president obama giving his second inaugural address. on the west side of the capital. waving to the hundreds of thousands of people who have turned out, shaking vice- president obama -- vice president biden's hand, senator charles schumer's hand, kissing his wife michelle obama and his daughters and his mother-in-law. >> at this time, please to me in welcoming kelly clarkson accompanied by the united states marine band. >> ♪my country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee i sing. land where my fathers died! land of the pilgrim's pride! from every mountain side, let freedom ring! let music swell the beach and ring from all the trees sweet freedom songs. let mortal times await let all that repartee that rocks their silence break, the sound prolong. my father god to the master of liberty to thee we sing long may our land be bright with freedom's holy light protect us by thy might great god, our king! ♪ [applause] >> wow! [laughter] our next distinguished guest is the poet richard who will share with us words he has composed for this occasion. [applause] >> mr. president, mr. vice president, america one today, one sun rose on us today kindles over our shores, peeking over the snow peas, greeting the faces of the great lakes spreading a simple truth across the great plains and charging across the rockies one light walking up rooftops under each one, a story told by our silence gestures, moving across windows my face, your face, millions of faces in mornings mirrors, each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day the pencilled yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights, fruit stands, apples, lines and oranges. like rainbows begging our praise silver trucks' heavy with oil or paper, bricks or milk, teaming over highways alongside us on our way to clean tables, read letters, or save lives, to teach geometry or ring of groceries as my mother did for 20 years so i could write this column for all of us today all of us as vital as the one light we move through, the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day, equations to solve, history to question or adams imagined, the "i have a dream" we all keep dreaming, the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that will not explain the empty desks of 20 children marked absent today and forever many prayers, but one might breathing colored stained-glass windows, life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth on to the steps of our museums and park benches as mothers watched children sliding into the day one ground, our ground, reaching as to every stalk of corn, every head of wheat sewn by sweat and hands, hands clean coal or planting windmills in deserts' and hilltops that keep us warm hands digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands as one is my father's cutting sugar cane so my brother and i could have books and shoes ,he dust of farms and deserts' cities and planes, mangled by one wind, our breath breathe honking cabs, buses, the symphony of footsteps, guitars and screeching subways. the unexpected songbird on your clothes line. hear, squeaky playground swings trains whistlings with whispers across cafe tables, hear the doors we open each day for each other saying, "hello, shalom, howdy, namaste or buenos dias, in the language by mother taught me, and every language, spoken into one wind, caring our lives without prejudice as these words break from my lips one sky since the appellations claimed their majesty and the mississippi in colorado work their way to the sea thank the work of our hands weaving stealing to bridges, finishing one more report for the boss on time, stitching another wound or uniform the first brush stroke and a portrait or the last floor of the freedom tower jutting into the sky that yields to our resilience one sky toward which we sometimes lift our eyes, tired from work sundays guessing from the weather of our lives some days giving thanks for a love that lets you backed sometimes praising the mother who knew how to give or for giving a father who could not give what you wanted we head home through the nicolás of rain or weight of snow on the plum -- of dusk, but always, always home always under one sky, o sky and always one moon, like a silent drummed have begun every rooftop and every window of one country, all of us facing the stars hope, a new constellation, waiting for us to map it. waiting for us to name it together. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, it is now my privilege to enter this rev. dr. luis leon to deliver the benediction. >> let us pray. gracious and eternal god, as we conclude the second inauguration of president obama, we ask for your blessings as we seek to become in the words of martin luther king, citizens of a beloved community, letting the and letting our neighbors as ourselves. we pray that you will cost us with your continued presence because without it, hatred and arrogance will infect our hearts. but with your blessing, we know that we can break down the walls that separate us. we pray for your blessing today because without it, mistrust, prejudice, and rancor will rule our hearts. but with the blessing of your presence, we know that we can renew the ties of beach or regard which can best form our civic life. we pray for your blessing because without it, suspicion, despair, and fear of those different from us will be our role of light. but with your blessing, we can see each other created in your image, a unit of god's grace unprecedented, a reputable and irreplaceable. we pray for your blessing because without it, we will see only what the eye can see, but with the blessing of your blessing, we will see that we are created in your image whether brown, black or white, male or female, first generation immigrants american or daughter of the american revolution, gay or straight, rich or poor. we pray for your blessing because without it, we will only see scarcity in the midst of abundance. but with your blessing, we will recognize the abundance of the gifts of this good land with which you have endowed this nation. we pray for your blessing. bless all of us privileged to be citizens and residents of this nation with the spirit of gratitude and humility that we may become a blessing among the nations of this world. we pray that you will showered with your life giving spirit the elected leaders of this land, especially barack obama our president and joe biden our vice-president. fill them with truth and righteousness that they may serve the station ably and be glad to do your will. endow their hearts with wisdom and forbearance so that peace may prevail with righteousness, justice with order, so that men and women throughout this nation can find with one another the fulfillment of our humanity. we pray that the president, vice-president, and all the political authority will remember the words of the profits micah, " what does the lord requird you question to do justice, to love kind is and always walk humbly with god." senior president [speaking spanish} may god bless you all your days. all this we pray in their most holy name. amen. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, please remain standing for the singing of our national anthem by award winning artist, beyoncé, accompanied by the u.s. marine band. following the national anthem, please remain at your place while the presidential party exits the platform. oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight, o'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? and the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? ♪ [applause] ♪ ♪ >> and that concludes the second inauguration of the 44th president of the united states. president barack obama. as hundreds of thousands of people had gathered in the nation's capital for the second largest inauguration in history, the first in the first inauguration of president obama in 2009. i am amy goodman, host of "democracy now!" as we conclude in this last half-hour our five-hour special on this inauguration day, a freezing cold day in washington, though not quite as cold as four years ago when it was more than were close to 2 million people came out. we are joined by clarence lusane, professor of international relations at american university, and we're joined by medea benjamin who has come from the streets of washington, d.c. there were small protests today. medea benjamin is co-founder of the peace group codepink. the ceremony included the first ever invocation by a layperson and a woman, myrlie evers, the widow of medgar evers. also, the first openly gay clergy to give the benediction, rather, the first openly gay poet, the first openly gay inaugural poet, richard blanco, to read his original poem for this inauguration day. dr. luis leon, the episcopal priest to deliver the closing prayer, interestingly, the presidential inaugural committee had invited him to deliver this benediction after the original choice, pastor gibreel of the passions of the church in georgia who was initially invited to give the benediction, had to withdraw because news service he expressed anti- davies in the 1990's. there were a number of firsts today. now we want to talk about the significance of this day and what president obama had to say in his second inaugural address. clarence lusane? >> thank you. the address was about 20 minutes. it strikes me it was much more populous than his first address, the one in 2009. in his address he touched on everything from clima to jobs to security to women's rights to gay and lesbian rights. he made references to immigration, political reform. he talked about a lot of policy areas, but he did not talk about policy. and that was pretty striking. i think it is probably also noted by everybody watching that there was no reference to gun reform or to gun control. given that more less has dominated the last month or so of his moving into a second term. but stepping back, what really strikes me is that i did not get a sense of coherence and a sense of exactly what is the big vision for the second administration. what kind -- what ties these different pieces together in terms of where the president really wants to go and how he sees a strategy for taking the country there. as journalists and scholars, we part every single word for meaning. but i think for most people who watch, they really want in essence. i knew it was difficult to get one from this speech because it seemed to just go from issue to issue, hopped from thing to thing, then peters out at the end. >> med benjamin, you were in the streets today. not a large group of people, but a dedicated one on the school day, the ark of justice protests. >> i was glad he mentioned climate change. we know throughout the presidential race a barely came up at all until the very end. i was glad he talked about medicaid, medicare and social security, and actually talk about them as something that we must preserve for the future. that seemed shaky. i did not think the part on foreign policy had any substance to it at all. it talked about us as a nation that loves the rule of law law, yet we do so outside the rule of law. he gave the platitude that we don't need perpetual war that national security, yet we are in a state of perpetual war. i don't he mentioned the word afghanistan, which is interesting. i think if he wanted to make a hallmark, and he could very well have said, i got this out of iraq and now getting us out of afghanistan, and something concrete to say that we're moving away from perpetual war. in the meantime, looks like we're getting more into the quagmire, not just with the current drone strikes in pakistan and somalia, but mali is very dangerous, and all of northern africa. the fact that he did not mention gun-control is astonishing. this seems where he was honest and a lot of his political capital and called for a grass- roots uprising to counter the power of the nra. yet we have the attention of the entire nation watching to not say, we need people to get behind this effort to really secure our children and our communities by getting assault weapons off our streets or something he could of said, he did not use this opportunity. i find that very disturbing in terms of how much energy is going to put into the programs that he supposedly is supporting. >> clarence lusane? >> i think she raises an important point because he constantly said in the talks, "we're all in this together." but there is no roll call that action. there is no real sense of, what are they really going to mobilize people around? they turned the campaign into organizing for action. i think that is the name of the new non-profit they're creating. but they have already said that is one of focus on policy, not political organizing. again, he gets back to, what is this a ministration, the second administration. have as its legacy as it tries to move forward? if it is not going to call for people to mobilize around and control, which has been absorbing all of their energy leading up to this, that it really opens the door to what did they think they're going to get out of this speech, what was the purpose of the second inaugural deliver the president gave? i'm not sure if they rushed and did it or occupied by other issues, but it strikes me, the speech is on a disappointing. it hits a number of different areas, but it does not go anywhere. it talks about he had been criticized about not mentioning poverty or the port, said that was thrown in a speech but it does not go anywhere. we have no idea if he's going proposed new programs or policies to address political reform, address issues related to poverty. on the international front as issues are emerging all over the globe, we have no sense of that or how the u.s. is relating to international institutions like the united nations request when he referred to new town, who is also referring to keeping overall young people safe. interestingly saying, our journey is not complete until we find a better way to lock in the strive hopeful immigrants who still see america as a land of opportunity until bright young students and engineers are listed in our work force rather than expelled from our country, our journey is now complete until our children in the streets of detroit to the hills of appalachia to the quiet lands of newtown know that their care for, a cherished, always said from harm. interestingly, talking about young people in listed in our work force rather than expelled from our country. under president obama, more immigrants have been expelled than under any president in history, although, he did issue the kind of executive order that said some young people 30 or under could apply for a kind of reprieve for two years. many thousands of young people are now using to try to stay legally in this country. >> this is important, too. the president has said his top three priorities for this term would be done control, climate change, and immigration. again, the references to emigration are oblique. they're not very explicit. how much is this a ministration really going to put weight behind the dream act? how much is this immigration really going to be a path for citizenship for people? versus major concessions to some of the conservative concerns around more border instances and all of that. this may not have been the place for going into that kind of policy detail. we did now with the president to be out there for six hours, but you there will be a little more coherence politically in terms of where they're going. >> a 2 hour inaugural address on a freezing cold day. speaking of gun control, just a few weeks ago when the nra broke a week of silence after the newtown mass killing in connecticut, it was you, medea benjamin, with others in codepink who stood up at one lapierre pastas conference. i want to play a clip of that news conference. >> the creditors of the world know it and exploit it. that must change now. the truth is -- >> nra, stop killing our children. the nra is killing our children. [inaudible] end the violence. stop the killing. >> describe what this first interruption was, then we will go to your clip. >> you hear a silence that seemed like it when on for ever. my colleague was standing there with a banner that said "nra killing our kids." i think there were so shocked we had gotten into the press conference because there's such high-security, that they did not know what to do. that left him standing right in front of wayne lapierre for quite a long time rita >> you can only see lapierre's head because he was holding up a sign. let's go to the clip of you as they took him out of the room, this is what happened next he attempted to continue. >> sit down. >> the nra has blood on its hands. the nra has blood on its hands. shame on the nra. >> the nra will the-- >> explain what happened as you're holding up a sign that said "the nra has blood on its hands." >> i got up with that sign right in front and had a chance a little longer than the club to be talking in there while they ripped it out of my hands and took me out. the most exciting thing i think about getting to speak in that press conference was how much energy it gave to people around the country and around the world when you heard responses from people saying, "thank you for standing at pre we were so disgusted only heard wayne lot here talking about the solution to these massacres to be more guns, to hear some voices of sanity rising up from that press conference." i think it made people feel that there was some hope. i think there is. grassroots movements are ready to be mobilized. i was quite disappointed in the president. >> let's turn from your direct actions targeting violence here at home to targeting it abroad. it goes to president obama's pick for the new director of central intelligence, john brennan. you actually tried to interrupt a speech that he gave. when was this? >> that was back in april. >> this was john brennan speaking about drone warfare. this was medea benjamin's of codepink interruption how many people are you willing to sacrifice? why are you lying to the american people and not saying how many innocents have been killed? >> thank you for expressing your views. there will be time for questions and answers after the presentation. >> in pakistan, who was killed because he wanted to document the drone strike. i speak out on behalf of awlaki, 16-year-old born in denver, killed in yemen just because his father is some and we don't like. i speak out on behalf of the constitution, on behalf of the rule of law. i love the rule of law and i love my country. you are making us less safe by killing so many innocent people. >> that was medea benjamin been taken out by security. if you heard her voice straining, she was being held by security as her body did not go limp, but went rigid. she had her feet extended so they could not pull her out of the room going on either side of the door. medea benjamin does not do just direct action at these events, she also takes time to research and write and has written a book called "drone warfare." shias just returned from pakistan. talk about president obama's policies around drone warfare and targeted killings. >> it is remarkable that while drones were used during the bush administration, they were used a total of not 50 times in the case of pakistan and immediately went obamacare in, he and his inner circle decided they would not pick up suspected enemy combatants on the battlefield and take them to guantanamo and they would not pick them up in places like pakistan and put them in guantanamo. instead, they would just kill them. so this has been a policy that has skyrocketed during the obama administration. there have been now over 300 drone strikes in pakistan alone. thousands of people killed the amazing thing about it is how, one, we of been like to by people like john brennan, now the nominee for the cia, saying it had been almost no civilian casualties. and the other is how incredibly counterproductive this policy is because it is the best recruiting tool for al qaeda and the taliban. going to pakistan and feeling the visceral hatred toward the united states -- even here the foreign minister of pakistan when asked, why do three out of work consider the u.s. the enemy, she had a one word answer -- drones. this is calling millions of people, in fact, three out of four would be 100 billion pakistanis, to feel the u.s. is our enemy and hate us. i think the drone policy under the obama administration is making as less secure and is setting a precedent that says we can go anywhere we want, killing one we want on the basis of secret information. in the meantime, selling drones across the world so that 76 other nations now have them is very dangerous. >> this is dr. king's birthday, the federal holiday that acknowledges his birthday. we just have 30 seconds before we end with his speech for the most famously said, my country is the greatest purveyor of violence on earth. 10 seconds as we wrap up this broadcast? >> medea benjamin is right. i say we hope the president is courageous. courageously pushing for an fighting for the ideas of king >> professor clarence lusane and author of "the black history of the white house." and medea benjamin, thank you for being with us. we wrap up with dr. martin luther king speaking a year to the day before he was assassinated. about his opposition to the war in vietnam. >> these are revolutionary times all over the globe, men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. shirtless and barefoot, people of the land are rising up as never before. the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. we in the west must support these revolutions. it is a sad fact that because of conflict, complacency a morbid fear of communism and our promise to adjust to injustice, the western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti revolutionaries. this has driven many to feel that only marxism has a revolutionary spirit. therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and military ism. with this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby, speak the day when every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. a genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. every nation must develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. this call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call from all embracing -- unconditional love for all mankind. this oft misunderstood, this off misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the niet zsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. when i speak a love, i'm not speaking to some weak response. i'm not speaking with that force which is just emotional bosh. and speaking of that force which all the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. this hindu muslim christian jewish buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of saint john -- let us love one another, for lov fis god. and everyone that love with -- loveth is born of god and noeth god. let us hope this spirit will become harder of the day. we can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. the oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever rising tides of hate. and history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. as arnold toynbee says -- love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. therefore, the first to open our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word. we're now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. we're confronted with the fierce urgency of now. in this unfolding conundrum of life and history, that is such a thing as being too late. procrastination is still the thief of time. life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and rejected with a lost opportunity. the tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood, it ebbs. we may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. over the bleached funds and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "too late." there is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. omar skycam is right -- the move your finger writes, and having writ moves on. we still have a choice today. nonviolent coexistence, violent coalition. we must move past indecision to action. we must find new ways to speak for peace in vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors that if we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. now let us begin. now let us that hate -- rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, the beautiful, struggle for a new world. this is the calling of the sons of god, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. shall we say the odds are too great? shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? will our message be that the forces of american life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? or will there be another message -- of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? the choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. as that noble bard of yesterday, james russell lowell, eloquently stated -- once every man and nation comes a moment to decide, in the strife of truth and falsehood, for the good or evil side some great cause, god's new messiah offering each the bloom or blight, and the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light. though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown standeth god within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. and if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. if we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. if we will make a right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over america and all of the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. >> dr. martin luther king jr. speaking april 4, 1967 at riverside church in new york and is beyond vietnam speech. a year to the day before he was assassinated. today is a federal holiday honoring his birth in the second inauguration of president barack obama. if you want a copy of today's five-hour special, go to democracynow.org. tomorrow we will be at the sundance film festival in utah. democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. e-mail your comments to outreach@democracynow.org or mail them to democracy now! p.o. box 693 new york, new york 10013. [captioning made possible by democracy now!] democracy now!]