Edwards, our honored guest today on his latest book which is an autobiography. And my parochial Hoover Institution point thatll make is that his papers, all of the official papers are at the hoover archives in palo alto. And lee availed himself of that obviously when he was writing the book. In his acknowledgments, makes the point that there are some things he discovered the said you were lost or maybe he had forgotten about. So maybe i can suggest that as he talked about the book in your life and what is it like to go to archival papers and find things that you completely forgot about . Is that stupid when i said that . Anyway, lee edwards, for those of you that do not know him. He is the, one of the great historians of the conservative movement. He has written over 25 books. He is a great biography of goldwater, he has written the history of not modern conservatism. He is a distinguished fellow and conservative and i have come to admire him so much. One thing that will come to fruition next week, lee founded and is the, disney Board Chairman of the communism fund which ended up getting a memorial here in washington dedicated by the president george w. Bush. And as you read through this you will see, all of the different colors of conservatism, anticommunism, preservation of liberty, that it is his real true passion. Look at his jackie o see he has received awards from a number of the captive nations over the year who have appreciated what he has done. Anyone who, next week is the seventh, eighth and ninth of november. A Major Program of the library of congress to look at and examine is one of those things i think if we can all aspire to leave something behind, it is that kind of a legacy. It is so admirable and i appreciate it. The one biography, trying to avoid all connections with ivy league institutions, he was a fellow at harvard university. The jfk school a number of years ago. Lee, why talk about your life and wonderful. Thank you mike. So typically argue that you are so generous in your remarks. I appreciate them. I appreciate being here at the d. C. Office of hoover as you say i did put my papers, my papers at the hoover archives because there are so many other conservatives and also anticommunists. At the hoover as well. So it is a rich trove and for those of you who are interested, in writing about or learning more about communism and anticommunism, the place to go is the Hoover Institution. Which was founded by Herbert Hoover in 1919. As a matter of fact. You should know that the president s essay written by a dr. At the Heritage Foundation will be on mr. Hoover. This will be on another month or so. Ive been helping do some of the research in learning so much about Herbert Hoover who was a most honorable man. But unfortunately, was saddled with the idea that he was personally responsible somehow for the great depression. That is not the case. Ladies and gentlemen, when i tried to do with this book is to look back particularly at some of the things ive written and some of the people who might now and if you think about it, that really were giants. Conservative giants who walked the earth in the last half of the 19th cent for the 20th century. Those giants were in my opinion, Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater and bill buckley. And as a matter fact, i wrote biographies of all three of them. Studied them and so trying to sum up what do they have in common. They were charismatic leaders who could inspire an audience to action. They believe that Free Enterprise to bring more prosperity to more people than any other economic system. They look to a transcendent being for guys and inspiration. They were believers, they were practicing men of faith. They hated communism. That was one of the reasons why i wanted to write about them. And every other form of tyranny over the mind of man. And they use the constitution as the north star. It wasnt just something they did on their own. Barry goldwater. I think if i was asked the audience either here or watching and listening, who was Barry Goldwater, they might have a vague idea of who he was. But he was essential to the conservative movement into a republic conservative evolution. Matter of fact, Barry Goldwater sparked the conservative revolution. But most unlikely revolutionary. He was the grandson of a jewish born in poland, his grandfather made his way to San Francisco during the gold rush. That did not can out so well. And came nextdoor into arizona. He made his way down and wound up in phoenix where he turned his little pedaling operation into a leading Department Store in phoenix. Goldwater was a College Dropout. Freshman year, and that was it. What happened was that his father died early unexpectedly and he had to go back and help to run the business. Although he was a College Dropout he wrote a book called the conscience of a conservative. 120 some pages. If you have not read it, i counsel you to do so. It sold 3. 5 million copies. Published in 1960. Still worth a read, still holds up very well. 3. 5 million copies. Something i had written [laughter] i would even settle for maybe 100,000. Im sure you will hear that come on. Get out there and really promote this book. Never smoked a cigarette because of the injunction. Never had a cup of coffee. But, he did keep a bottle of old crow in his senate refrigerator for after five sipping. He would bring sinners from the other ill, democrats and republicans would sit down over a little old crow. Bourbon and water. Maybe not too much water. And talk over things. And they formed relationships and friendships and how i wish that we could have more of that today. There are many whatifs in politics. But consider this. If there had been a president goldwater, we can be sure of two things. The vietnam war would have been won in 12 months for us president goldwater would have brought the troops home. Whatever force necessary he would have used. But it was mining or whatever it was. Because he made that clear during the campaign. But he would have said, where it is going to win this war in a set time or we are going to come home. And certainly there would have been no land war. He wouldve taken his lead from both general eisenhower and macarthur who said as a matter of principle, america should not get involved in a land war in asia. And Barry Goldwater took that counsel. Get a thing that would have been different if there would have been no great society. And so that experience in welfarism would not have been attempted. I was the director of communications for the goldwater for president committee. But before that, i was also the news director for the draft goldwater committee. I was hired late in the year. As a matter of fact, consider this. My first day of work was supposed to be a full day at work. I had been a volunteer assistant for months and months. November 25, 1963. I consider that date november 25. November 22 came first. The day that kennedy was assassinated. I was the news director for the draft goldwater committee. I ran back to the committee headquarters. As soon as the announcement was made. I was in the eye of the storm. You can imagine handling inquiries from the press, the media. After kennedy had been killed because the big assumption was almost everybody, who killed him . Somebody on the right. So for about two hours there, there was no knowledge of who did it. And therefore, dallas, it happened in dallas. One t. V. Anchor said well, this was the heart of goldwater land. That is how he described dallas. We had people banging on the doors. Yelling at us. Assassins murderers there was a bomb threat. We had to bring some police in and a dog. They did not find any bombs but we were under tremendous pressure for those two hours. And then came the announcement that it was someone who had been with the committee. We were in a sense relieved because we knew this was a procastro, pro communist cuba front. Because it was not one of ours. It was one of the heirs. Who was responsible for the death. Barry goldwater was a very blunt guy. He spoke very directly. I beloved him as members of Young Americans for freedom, i can see a lot of Young Americans out here. I cannot remember the first time i had my first formal meeting with senator goldwater. As director of communications. I had put together this comprehensive campaign. I was going to be talking about how he had flown food and supplies to snowbound navajos when otherwise who knows, may have perished. How he had been a member of both the urban league and the naacp in phoenix. He had been procivil rights. I was talking about how he had gone down the Columbia River in a wooden boat. You know how he had flown over the during world war ii. When that also was dangerous. I was about two minutes into my presentation. When all of a sudden, this big hand comes out and says lee, stop. If you try any of that madison avenue crop i will throw you under this office and out of the campaign. Is that clear . Well, he was a two star general. I was a corporal. And i said yes, sir yes, sir. He said, this will be a campaign of principles. Not of personalities. Marvelous but wrong. Wrong. Because if we had been able to talk more about the human side and the nonpolitical side of Barry Goldwater, it is possible that people would have said well, he does not sound or look like a warmonger. Someone that will destroy Social Security. But that was just the way Barry Goldwater was. He was going to offer a conservative choice and not a liberal echo in the campaign. The other thing we should talk about in that campaign was what happened in the last week. To a particular t. V. Program called a time for choosing. And never California Republicans had decided to buy time on a t. V. Network. And to present a time for choosing Ronald Reagan. Praising Barry Goldwater. The day before it was to be telecast, goldwater calls reagan and i am glad to be there when this is going on. He says ronnie, my staff here is not to happy about this t. V. Talk of his. It talks about Social Security and we sort of put that aside and we really would like to run something obscure we would like to rerun this half hour we have of me with isaac at gettysburg. And ronnie says well, gee, everybody seems to like them and the address. Ive been giving it and people like it. I cant help you. You have to talk to the people who put up their money for it. And then he said, barry, have you heard it . And he said no, actually, i have not. Let me listen to it and i will call back. So they ran an audio version of a time for choosing. And goldwater says, what the hell is wrong with that . [laughter] run it so he calls back and he says go with it. That t. V. Program, that one program made Ronald Reagan a political star. A National Political star overnight. It raised easily 1 million within 24 hours. Changed thousands of votes and it led to a bunch of republicans coming to reagan and saying we want you to run for governor the following year. That is how important it was. And political shorthand one can say no candidate goldwater i think no president reagan. That is how important that speech was. Extraordinary. Ronald reagan. My first meeting with him, serious meeting was in october 1965. And he had been spending the last several months testing the waters to see if the people of california wanted him to run. He pretty much made up his mind but i called him up and i said that, i was working on a profile of him for readers digest. I said, and visit with me. He said yes. For two days, myself and my wife and my wifes and i traveled with him. She has also been an editor and a fellow coauthor with me. And so, there were four of us. Only four of us in this limo. That was the driver and up in the front seat next to him, me in the back and reagan over here. And between the and reagan was my tape recorder. Now you guys know what an iphone is. I had a which is this big. It is like a piece of luggage. It is an old reel to reel. I had a between us. With a great big microphone which i was asking reagan questions. I asked about his political philosophy and i thought i would share with you on this. This is 1965. He courted a 1947 interview in which he said that whether quote comes from management or labor or government or the right, left or center. Whatever imposes on the freedom of the individual is tierney. And it must be opposed. That was his philosophy. Which he had come to over years of study andreflection and reading. At the end of that second day, of course, we were convinced, ann and i both. He said he has got it. I mean he has really got it. And he said, come on up to the house. Have some iced tea. We have been working hard. Give me some cookies. We went up Pacific Palisades to their home. Very modest home actually not a very big sprawling mansion. Filled with all kinds of gimmicks for ge because hed been working for them for all of those years. Went into the kitchen with nancy to make the iced tea and cookies. Put us in the library den which was very small, really. I looked over here and they were all of these shelves and shelves of books. So of course, what did i do . Right got up and began looking at them. History. Politics, economics, volume after volume after volume. I began looking at the titles. Conservative class they were four books in particular i will mention. Witness, by whittaker chambers. An extraordinary autobiography of an exsoviet spy. Economics and one lesson by henry a classic of its time. And a book which i had not read. The law by frederick. I said who is he . I learned later, a 19thcentury economist, a Free Enterprise or. And someone that had influenced many many people including Ronald Reagan. I said okay, maybe he had not read them. So i reached out and began taking the bus out of the shelves. And ann said no, dont do that. Nancy may i said no its okay. I picked up and opened it up. Dogeared, underlined, little phrases in the margins. He had read these im not saying he read every book that closely. But those classics im talking about. Yes, he had. And here was a thinking, reasoning person who would arrive at his philosophy the oldfashioned way, one book at a time. And i said right then and there that reagan is an intellectual. He is an intellectual. He is comfortable with ideas. He understands the power of ideas. And with that kind of foundation, that intellectual foundation, a political leader can do all kinds of marvelous things. Which we know is exactly what he did. In my last book, i wrote four books about reagan. I talked about various qualities that he had. His courage and also a sense of i would like to share with you, he was this was a bit of humor at a summit meeting he did with gorbachev. A story of the american and the russian. Arguing about the freedom in their countries. The american said, now look, i can go to the oval office, pound the president s death the president s desk and say mr. President , i do not like the way youre running this country the russians and i can do that too you can . The american said. And the russians and i can going to the kremlin, look at the general secretary and say, mr. General secretary, i do not like the way the president reagan is running his country [laughter] now, this is a great story. Funny. But then there is a moral here, there is a lesson, something that reagan was trying to express to gorbachev which is item of expression. How you must break down barriers if possible. He had, as you know, the rare ability to see what others could not. And this is what we call the quality of wisdom. Think about this, this is the early 1980s. Your liberal intellectuals like arthur indra junior and who were visiting moscow coming back after being over there for weeks and weeks and lauding the economic accomplishments of the soviet union in the 1980s. We now know, that the soviet union was an economic basket case. When gorbachev came in a couple of years later, he was horrified at the shape of the economy because they were spending so much money on arms. So what was Ronald Reagan saying at the same time that people like to were saying . You go back and you will find that people work not agreeing but he was absolutely right. Of course, before the end of the decade, and by the end of that decade, the berlin wall was down. In the soviet union in 1991 was no more. That sense of humor in december, 1981 and i had rewritten my reagan bio again. I wanted to present it to him. My publisher said look, be sure and have a chapter in their about the attempted assassination. Which i did. I added that to this addition. And then he said well you have to do Something Special on the cover. So in black, big black letters on a yellow background. Complete through the assassination attempt. That is very tacky, i dont like that but this will be a sale. Complete through the assassination attempt. We went back and forth. Going to the oval office and there is reagan. This is december he was, looked about 50. A big smile, building up his body, he looked strong and vital. He made you feel so good. I said mr. President , this copy of the biography. Thank you. And so this is a photo opportunity. There taking pictures and we are chatting back and forth. He looks down and i can see him, at the cover. Complete through the assassination attempt. He raises his head and says well lee, im sorry i messed up your ending. [laughter] you know who, but reagan can make a joke out of somebody trying to kill him . Amazing bill buckley rescued me from myself. Over in paris and occasionally going to class. But spending a lot of time doing research in various cafc. You now testing the alcoholic content of various drinks. But i also was writing. I thought i was going to be the next scott fitzgerald. Or ernest hemingway. And i kept getting back rejections. I wrote a novel, rejected. I wrote short stories and rejected. I got depressed. I came back home, sitting in my parents home digging what am i going to do . Should i write a number novel . More short stories or whatever. I took time out to write an essay, a short about france were had been living. Saying that unless they elected a strong leader like they were heading for the bottom. A long ways from napoleon. And i set this up in the National Review and he accepted this and published it. I said, the market is telling me something. The market is telling you something. Was that your first publication . Yes, that was my first professional publication. It was the National Review. And so, i put aside the novels. [laughter] and the short stories and poems. And i began writing nonfiction and thank heavens that i did. As i had mentioned, and i will finish up. Let me say one more thing about bill buckley. I think it is important. I think an important lesson to be taken from bill buckleys career and life, is this. We need to practice fusionism. When buckley started National Review, deliberately included conservatives, libertarians and anticommunists. Those are the three major strains at the time. Maybe a common nine or 10. I havent read the post this morning so maybe theres one new one but we need that new future. As i say they all were anticommunist and thats how i got into conservatism is through anticommunism. I was there in october of 1956. The hungarian revolution occurred. I was so exhilarated and i was so excited that all these young men and women my age were standing up against the soviets and then of course to weeks later the soviet attacks came back in the troops came back and they killed thousands of young people my age, thousands and tens of thousands of hungarians fled and i kept waiting for my government to do something and theyd did do something perfunctory as a matter of fact. I was looking for action and i resolved at that point whatever i could do for the rest of my life to support those who are opposing communism and opposing tyranny i would do it and coming out of that was the Memorial Foundation and we dedicated the memorial in june 2007, a decade ago, 10 years ago. We were president that president bush we were fortunate that president bush was there to accept that for the american people. It wasnt easy. Took us 14 years and there were 24 steps to build the monument, 24 and we went through all of them. And since that time since the dedication a decade ago dozens of National Leaders have visited the victims to lay a wreath and to say a prayer and this past june some 22 embassies, 22 embassies laid wreaths at our annual commemoration ceremony and we were joined by more than 20 ethnic groups as well, particularly those from china, korea, cuba, laos and vietnam as well. We are going to continue disseminate the truth about communism particularly about those five regimes, those five communist regimes, china, vietnam, north korea, cuba and laos and as mike said a week from today we are going to have an anniversary, not a celebration by the marking of the 100th anniversary of the bolshevik revolution. We invite you all to it. We look forward to that day with all the remaining captive nations are free and independent independent. We are sure that day will come because we know the truth will make you and keep you free. Thats what we are all about. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you lee. Let me start by asking one question on the personal side. I didnt realize that ph. D. You have a something you pursued and acquired later in life. You have been living a full life as an activist in the conservative movement but then he decided to get a ph. D. With the history and politics. Thats a good decision. Give us total background on that part also unless you got into the thick of that was there anything, any intellectual tradition any writers or thinkers that you had not at that point become aware of. He said he became acquainted. It was a typical journey because i have my own public appearance firm here in washington only working with conservatives and anticommunist clients and candidates and you know i had done the president ial campaign and bob dole and was a client of mine Strom Thurmond was a client of mine and a number of congressmen, the white house so that was all great fun but i was burned out. I said no more. Thats it. Thats enough. I have always wanted to teach and i have been writing all along despite ghosting for others and they said if i want to teach though i must have a ph. D. I must have that and i gave a lecture at Catholic University on the 1980 election and i predicted that reagan would win and someone from the Politics Department said why do you come over and get a ph. D. Here at the Catholic University so without encouragement i did. Another reason why i did it was our bookkeeper embezzled us, stole from us several thousands and thousands of dollars. People said you really ought to declare bankruptcy and i said no, im not going to do that. Im going to pay everything that leo and it was considerable but that persuaded me to at the time close down the doors of lee edwards and associates which is what i did. Intellectually i now had an opportunity to read in such depth that i hadnt before. For the first time i read seriously the conservative mind. The constitution of liberty and other classic conservative things in the whole array of oaks about foreign policy, International Relations and so forth and i just loved it. And i began from that thinking well what kind of classes can i put together . I got that degree in 86 and began teaching at the Catholic University in 87 and i just completed my 30th year of teaching at the Catholic University as an adjunct and im going to be doing the politics of the 80s in the spring. I have been doing it in the 60s but im going to try the 80s. Thats wonderful. I guess i admire that you were able to make that transition. My wife let me do it and our daughters because you know i was doing things on the weekends and so forth and they backed me up particularly and company, god bless her. Things got a little tight there shall we say. A lot of hamburger helper. That was prechickfila though. Now we will turn to the audience for some questions and the microphone in the back. Thank you, mike. One of the stories ive heard you tell a couple of times that i always enjoy you telling stories about going to put conventions with your father would knew where i think 11 years old. I would like to hear what you think about conventions now as opposed to the ones you remember attending as a child and that they have changed significantly. Political conventions, i went to my first one in 1948 when i was 15, 14, Something Like that in philadelphia. My father was a reporter for the chicago tribune, a political reporter. He covered the white house, washington d. C. From the 1930s to the 1970s, covered every president from it drt nixon, covered every Political Convention from 1940 to 1972 and so he brought me along in 1948. What i remember and of course i was still quite young is how noisy it was, how smokefilled it was. I remember the smoke. This Convention Hall in philadelphia you know, you would get high just on inhaling and the lights. I mean there was always something going on. It was bright and it was vibrant and whenever something vital going on you could feel all of that. My own personal convention in 1960 when walter judd almost with his keynote address and almost forced Richard Nixon to take him as his running mate. Nixon might very well have one. Conventions are important because platforms are important and thats still my argument. They inspire, they inform, they laid down the foundation for the workers of the party whether its democrats or republicans. They are formed at the convention. You dont have to have a smokefilled room like i smelled in 1948 because today we have the primary system and so much of what is determined at the convention has already been determined by who has won this or that primary. Frankly i wish there were more of a balance. I think the wisdom, the collective wisdom of political leaders is important and i dont want half a dozen people to sit around and make the choice. There should be more input from them and this idea that it only depends upon what primary determines, i think thats going a little too far. Thanks mike and we thank you so much for your body of work and all you have done in the pursuit of liberty. I cant thank you enough for all you have done. I just wanted to talk a little bit or about and the fact that you read the post today and theres a new group that is formed that includes bill kristol andrew mcmullin. They send a letter up to the hill saying he had no support the mueller investigation. How do we come back together as a the conservative movement when there are so many different factions now . We have people who want to kick everyone out of congress and we have people who want to support trump to matter what. It seems to be more divided than ever and how do you see that coming back together . Will you shouldnt was easy 40 years ago, 50 years ago when bill buckley first conceived the idea with frank meyer. Their role may three strains and then along came the neoconservatives and then the social conservatives, the new right. Today you probably have maybe 10, who knows. Bill kristol may have one more new one tomorrow depending on the reaction on the one he tried to lunch today. I think its good. I dont mean to make fun of that excess to my mind although the movement has many more elements and many more strains, no question about that, all of that to me is an indication of vitality. People want to be in a position to lead and to direct this movement in this direction or that direction. We are fighting over the control of something very important, not something unimportant for something thats ready to be deterred. Quite the contrary. What is vital seems to me in the first case with the original fusionism number one there was charismatic, principled leadership and build buckley intellectually and Ronald Reagan politically and then there was a external threat which was the soviet union and an internal threat which was liberalism and the great society. What we need today for new fusionism and ive written about this in the inc. Its going to be in National Affairs in the next issue or two. This new fusionism is to focus on one or two demonstrable visible threats and i think we are divided and the external threat is radically as what happened in manhattan just a couple of days ago. The Heritage Foundation did a study published in the last week or two. 98 terrorist attacks once 9 11, 98 which have been prevented by our measures coming out of the patriot act. Increased intelligence, more visible presence of police, the fbi getting involved and so forth so thats the external threat. The internal threat is well, i take Bernie Sanders appeal very seriously. Early among young people. Young people think socialism is just one more political philosophy. Its far more than that. Its a direct threat to our way of life, to our system of looking at economics. I was asked this question, what do we do about it . I said next time a young person says i dont see anything wrong with being a socialist, just say would you like to give up any right to have anything personal that you own . You no longer can have anything personal that you can call your own. Are you willing to believe that the individual is not important and only the group is important. Are you willing to give up all of your individual rights to the group and to the country and finally are you willing to give up god . Are you willing to give up any belief in a transcendent being . Those are the things that Socialism Communism are all about. They are against private property. They are against groupthink and they are against the masses. Those are the two threats and the other thing we need is that charismatic principle leadership leadership. Thats not exactly obvious right now but i think that person or persons will come to like because i dont think that we can just sit back and expect the conservative movement to do nothing. I think quite the contrary. Its being challenged right now to come together to fuse itself to begin to do what it has done in the past and i think it will be sooner than a lot of people realize. Im a former myself so its a pleasure to meet somebody somebody. I was an undergraduate school in california. Its an honor to meet somebody who so was wondering if you could speak the events that led up to that famous document in connecticut. The picture is 1960 and if you are young conservative in 19601 are your alternatives . I mean youve got john kennedy who is obviously a liberal democrat and you have the republicans, a moderate sometimes an anticommunists but basically if moderate of Richard Nixon. Where do you go . What if you truly believe in government and what if you truly believe in Free Enterprise . What if you truly believe in responsibility . What if you truly believe in a Strong National defense . Are of these compromises going on within this party in that party . What you need is an organization committed to conservatism not young republicans but Young Conservatives. So bill buckley said that makes sense to me. I will be happy to host a meeting some 90 of the showed up at his home in september of 1960 and founded americans for freedom. You might interested, there to be basic arguments. Number one was whether or not the phrase god given rights should be in it. Whether the word or the phrase godgiven should be and they statement. We debated that and there was a vote taken on it. The vote was 44402 keep that. There were libertarians at the beginning as part of that coalition that we were putting together. Thats how close it was. Now what do libertarians to . Do they walked out . No, they stuck around me said this is the new organization and we are going to sit around and debate and see where it goes and so forth. They didnt walk out. The other debate was over the name. Two possible names were Young Conservatives of america or Young Americans for freedom and i and david frank and others were for Young Americans for freedom. We wanted to be included. We wanted to reach out to as many different people as possible and we thought calling yourselves conservatives was too limited. We thought at that time as i said earlier that we were quite full of ourselves. Arrogant and we could change the world but we didnt change the world perhaps. We made a difference to american politics and maybe have some impact on the world. I have a threepart question. My name is heather. Are you the one who came up with the Bumper Sticker a yu h2o . No. [laughter] that came out early by somebody who had a scientific background. People loved it except it was so different and there were Bumper Stickers and things therein so forth. I was eight years old and that was the beginning of my learning material. The word conservative has taken on just a terrible distinction. The liberal media has made it come across that way and yet we now have this new word for liberal called progressive. Any idea how that happens . Liberals have called themselves progressives going back to woodrow wilson. Theres nothing new about this. They like adopted i think it was fdr liked the liberal more so than progressive but wanted to go back to the origins. I have to respectfully disagree with you. We worked hard for 50, 60 years to make the word conservative acceptable. I think it is and i think we should not give it up at all. A very honorable word. You can play around with it and talk about conserving things like the founding principles of our country and western civilization, all kinds of things so i think its a good word. Youve got to get out of washington. My final question, i hope its not embarrassing. Why havent i ever heard of you . [laughter] gee. Mike, i will let you answer that that. Thats an unanswerable question. My exposure in washington is lee has been a major player and a lot of it is behind the scenes. He is very modest and he is not one of those guys to walk into a room and wants everyone to know he is in there. He has accomplished what he has accomplished with grace and style and modesty. Clearly. Thats why he has a great biography. [inaudible] get out more is the message here. Im waiting for my invitation from cato. Kai. I am a japan native, a u. S. Citizen. My question has nothing to do with what you were talking about today. Pardon me for that but i cant help. President trumps leaving to the asiapacific on a National Trip which is very very important. If you have any opinion on that its kind of vague but i would appreciate it. I will say this. I have visited asia quite a few times over the years. I had a particular interested in that because of a man named walter judd who was a very important adviser on u. S. Asian relations and particularly china for many years through a number of president s from truman to reagan as a matter of fact. I think its a very important trip. We can see what president xi is doing in china. Hes being very aggressive. He is challenging us and i think we have to be prepared to answer firmly and not literally about for example this idea of the islands in the South China Sea and how that cannot be permitted. The idea that we might be weakening our support in taiwan and that cannot be allowed. Taiwan and the republic of china is an important actor out there in that part of the world. If its necessary we need to encourage japan to develop appropriate weapons to counter north korea. I see where the president of south korea said it yesterday or today, whatever that he is against developing Nuclear Weapons for south korea. I think it needs to be an open debate about that and perhaps we can help. I think this is a very important trip and yes we have to be concerned about europe but we are an asian power still so what happens out there can have an influence not only today but tomorrow as well. Thank you. I am from italy. My question is what is the great conservative the path that you mentioned . We have democracy. [inaudible] more than communist regimes today we have a big revolution. So if you could imagine what is the great conservative would say about this and what we should do. Thank you. I think we have to be very careful about overreacting to certain actions that a taken place in places like hungary and poland. I have talked to young people in those two countries and they are comfortable with a nationalism as they define it. Because they are still a democracy. Criticism for example of hungary but at the same time the people of hungary have given a twothirds majority in the parliament to the present party, Majority Party there. The thing thing the same thing in poland. Not quite the same margin in the parliament but still considerable. We need to be very careful about dismissing quote nationalism. Nationalism within a democratic context it seems to me is permissible. Its allowable. I think here at home the same thing. Its so easy to be distracted by mr. Trump, isnt it . And its so easy to get caught up in what i call the twitter game. I think with regard to mr. Trump follow two tracks. One track and the more important track is to look at what he is doing and as a conservative i like very much the gorsuchs nomination. I like very much and stand again we see how important it is given what happened in manhattan a couple of days ago. I like very much his deregulation campaign. I like very much his tax cuts as a conservative. Those are all good things. Some of the other things on trade and so forth, immigration, thats not something but on the other hand, the other track is the twitter track and you cannot ignore it but you cant allow it to subsume whatevers happening on the other track. So lets focus on the more important parts of this administration, what is being done and accomplished and maybe a little less on the rhetoric. The Public Diplomacy has elements of our state department and other agencies. Is there any kind of a soft power Public Diplomacy kind of fool tcool to help citizens in e countries. If i were to ask what they would say today they wouldnt be america first. They would say isolationism isnt possible and they would say that freed him concerned us anand we should encourage it. We should promote it. We should publicize it wherever we can and however we can. But yet at the same time we can see hes reaching out and going to asia. Thereve been meetings with leaders of other countries so he is not ignoring the world and i think there must be a balance in which we say okay lets be concerned about what affects us first, but we have to acknowledge what affects us is also the state of the freedom around the world. And lets speak up when we see danger to that freed him, whether it is in europe or asia or africa or latin america. It is a heavy burden, but we still are the one superpower in the world that carries with it very solemn responsibilities which we cannot ignore. Thank you for your book and career. Back to berkeley. His only child wrote what many see as a devastating book about his parents. What was your reaction to it . I think it added little to the life and career. Obviously though he had to write it out of his mind and spirit and so he did. That was a devastating portrait that in the last year of course buckley and bill buckley father and son were reconciled and that last year he was with his father night and day and that says more than the book he wrote about his mother and father. [applause] i will sign books until my arm drops off. Thank you for coming