Booktv continues on cspan2, television for serious readers. Next on booktvs afterwords, republican senator rand paul argues theres a new threat socialist thinking on the rise in america. He is interviewed by republican congressman matt gaetz of florida. Afterwords is a weekly Relevant Program with hosts interviewing nonfiction authors about their latest work. Senator rand paul, youre one of the most interesting people in american politics of the Republican Party. I was a fan of yours long before i got the chance to meet you and work with you in congress, eager to chat about your book the case against socialism but maybe first reflect a little bit about the role that you have within the congress, within our party is an independent voice and someone willing to strike out on issues that other republicans are not willing to strike out on . Sometimes i think im a lonely voice, keeping balanced budgets or believe we should spend less or have limited Constitutional Government really controversial things like that, limited Constitutional Government. We never get any of the other side but we lose a lot on our side that could be better at it and that is one of my frustrations but i try very hard to have the same republican the same opinion whether a democrat republican president , spending power was hours, things like that that we should keep our hands on, the power to declare war is ours. We too easily give that up and one of the interesting things i found coming up here is democrats are better on these issues when it is a republican president they want to oppose, republicans are better on this when it is a democrat president but when the parties are the same they tend to acquiesce a little bit on separation of powers. Host in this book the case against socialism you write it operates to me very much like a debate guide against those who would try to grow the left Political Movement by advancing socialist ideas, embracing socialist dictators, talk a little bit about the need for the book through the lens of which Political Movement is expanding or contracting. Guest most people view the station that is the case against socialism, great idea but wish it wasnt necessary, you wouldnt think it would be necessary and it is true. I was born in the 1960s and we were still experienced coming in the early 1960s crew show was just admitting to stalin, the terror of stalin, the programs the millions of people who died in the famines, the great famine in china had just happened in the 50s so many of these things were just becoming known but throughout most of my lifetime people were horrified by what happened with socialism. Now we turn the page and have polls showing young people, half of them are enthusiastic, almost have hate capitalism and have think socialism is something we ought to try. Perplexing to some of us who have read the history of socialism. We have a couple of socialists on your side, we have a socialist on the senate side and when i was a kid i think there were socialists but they were embarrassed, they didnt want to be called socialists. They were liberals, then they didnt want to be called liberals but they knew it wouldnt be popular. Now they are in your face say im a socialist and we want to bring socialism, the democrats socialists of america, they are proud of it and it alarms me that young people arent going oh my goodness, what does socialism mean for our country. It has been in a short time that we have seen democrat socialist embracing socialist brand as a growth agenda. You said something earlier in your political career which i have never forgotten about our prospects for growth and leveraging liberty for growth and use it specifically once that our party needs more people who have tattoos and more people who dont have tattoos. Do we need to find people with tattoos to join the party or do we need to tattoo more people . With ponytails, without ponytails, we need to be a hipper cooler party young people want to join. That is part of the problem. Socialism has become hip or cool but they dont know exactly what it is. The same studies that they therefore it, 10 of the people for socialism can define it as the government owning the means of production. They think it is about fairness. The government schools teach everybody can have selfesteem and if your son cant spell we will give him across because he needs to feel good about himself and pass out selfesteem, passout fairness and somehow the government will make things fair. One of the things we point out is there is still a top 1 in socialism. The differences under our system it is at least mostly are to a large extent based on merit, who becomes wealthy. If i am sam walton, so something you want, really good at selling industry meeting i can become a billionaire but nobody forced you to buy my stuff and san juan became a billionaire because he will voluntarily but his stuff, the same with most billionaires in our society but when you look at socialism there is still top 1 . You think maduro doesnt have the top 1 , his generals are well fed. One thing we point out about maduro, the leader in venezuela is the average person lost 20 pounds down there but he makes ted kennedy look slim. Hes wearing size 68 jacket, and keeps getting fatter and fatter. I never read a book that better fat james than yours. You went through this project is an interesting endeavor, you wrote the book with your wife. Im not married but i heard wallpapering together can be difficult. Just talk to us about the process of writing this book with your wife and you write a beautiful poem at the beginning to your wife which speaks to a lot of people who have endured some sense of sacrifice and the notion that sacrifice is linked to another human being that you love. Kelly and i work well together. They give you advice in marriage, when your wife says something you divide things and ultimately let her make the final decision and that is not entirely true but it kind of is in that i wrote a lot of stuff and she came to and read it and said it would be interesting to add in this hand. Give us a kelly paul unique sweetener addition . The discussion of the Covington Catholic boy was largely hers and it got her going, got her upset, got all of us upset who watched this what the media did to this and the link into socialism is we have gotten to a point where we have propaganda filling our airways. Under socialism it is directly from the government, this is coming from private entities. That was an innocent 15yearold boy, he went to Catholic School waiting for the bus, never said the word. All these adults on cnn were saying he has a punchable face. I met with these people a week later when the truth come up still saying looked like we got to punch him. Really . Do you not understand what you are saying . Everything about that story was wrong and i hope in the end the courts say you cant lie about somebody. There is a court case here. There have been kids who do inappropriate things on social media or whatever, he didnt do that but is being lumped in with people who are racist or say bad things. He might be excluded from school and ultimately careers because people think he was a terrible person and in reality he never said a word, never did anything and the other side, all these terrible adults getting in his face, yelling horrible epithets at him and the others in the media got everything wrong because they had an agenda. She does a great job of describing that and drawing it into this idea of what happens under propaganda and socialism. The democrats socialists we serve within Congress Tell us socialism is really the path to fairness. Who are the Fairness Police . How do you write about them . Guest in the abstract they say we will have fairness but the thing is you have a conception of fairness, i have a conception of fairness, representative omar might have a conception of fairness but for her to invoke hers on us if we disagree with her she is not going to sell her ideas of fairness, she has to send the police basically and this is where it breaks down because this is why it has become popular, the idea of fairness is they conflate fairness with things like charity and being her brothers keeper. I believe we should be our brothers keeper, i believe in christianity in the christian idea that we are a community and should take care of our people but has nothing to do with government. They believe, they conflate it and say charity is if i come to your house and take your money and give it to someone else, charity is if you give of your own money and it is not charity when the government comes but it also isnt very charitable in the way the government does it because ultimately the more you want socialism, this is one of the points, if you want a little bit of socialism, maybe tolerable. You want a little more you will have more state violence but if you want to take the property and when mao came to take the farms or stalin collected the farms truly there is a point in which people rebel and the only way you can get it is through violence. You have to kill the people. That is what happened under stalin, not just a few people, millions. From that we tried to develop the question, i taught a course at George Washington on the dystopian novel and kids kept asking as violent an accident of socialism is violence inherent . Is inevitable you will have violence . More socialism, absolutely, it is inherent. The closer you get to taking peoples property people will resist and you cant just find them. You have to put them in jail or shoot them. I interacted with a lot of folks who came to me as a young conservative and said how can i motivate my child, my grandchild to embrace the principles that made our country great, i say the book does detail out all the arguments the socialists make and goes into i think a good Historical Context and when do we move past the Tipping Point . You cite a harvard study that says more than half of people under the age of 29 have a favorable view of socialism. Have we crossed the rubicon or do we have to go and win back this argument with people who have embraced that . We are in danger of it. Every generation has to renew, water the tree of liberty and that is true with socialism and bad ideas, every generation has to realize the problems with socialism and what comes from it. The big lie that is out there right now in the big sort of superficial platitude is they say the intellectuals and community used to like stalin and then that is not the socialism we want. We used to like castro. Bernie was a big fan of castro, then we learned it wasnt so great. We used to like chavez but not so much what we really like his sweden. We love scandinavian socialism. It is the kinder gentler socialism. A big point of the book is disproving that, one that sweden and scandinavia is socialist because they are not, they rank pretty high on the freedom indexes for trade and a lot of other things and one of the main policy things bernie wants is raise the Corporate Income tax, 221 , scandinavia has been in the low 20s for 30 or 40 years and it is part of the success, they had slow business, we want to be sweden and scandinavia but he doesnt want below Corporate Income tax, wants to raise them. Scandinavia doesnt have a minimum wage. The other interesting thing, the biggest lie of the left, the biggest lie of all the socialists is you can have all this free stuff, something for nothing, free college, paid leave, give you free money and only tax rich people. The big lies thats not what they do in scandinavia. They have a welfare state, free stuff they give you but that tax the heck out of everybody and bernie and his clan and his troop of socialists wont tell you that because they want to stick it to the rich, not the middle class but in scandinavia everybody pays 25 sales tax, everybody also pays a significant income tax on the income tax, 60 starting at 60,000, 60,000 is the middle class, this isnt the rich, thats how they get so much money, tax the heck out of the middle class but you wont see bernie or aoc going on tv saying we will do 10 trillion for Climate Change and 60 trillion for medicare for all and the middle class is to have 60 income tax, they are lying to you saying there wont be any tax increase, just the rich people. It is ally. Is capitalism 0 some you that is the argument they may, the rich get richer that comes at someone elses expense and you use some illustrative examples to go through circumstances where it is capitalism that is the rising tide lifts all boats. Income inequality has been bandied about by the left, this terrible thing. The interesting thing, pakistan and ethiopia have less income inequality than us, move there then, you think it is going to be great . It isnt about how close you are to each other but what your level is and income inequality, one of the authors we quote this is like a jealousy trope. It is about me caring how much money you make when in reality that is a bad, almost covering someones property, do you care how much rich i am . Another one of the big lies from the socialists, they say the economic pie is fixed and if i get some you are getting less. The truth of the matter, statistics are overwhelming on this, the economic pie is getting bigger and bigger and there is less poverty. Theres a group called human progress. Org associated with cato, just amazing, poverty, 90 of people lived on 2 a day, that is how the world bank defined, when i was born it went from 90 in 1820, to a third of the world living in poverty in the early 1960s, status 10 so that is incontrovertible. 137,000 people escape extreme poverty every day for the last 25 years so their facts are just completely wrong. The world is so much better than it used to be. Better water. Antibiotics. Take the global lens. I expect to the book to focus on domestic policy reforms you champion to enhance liberty, the size and scope of government, but readers can expect a very global view of how qualityoflife is impacted as folks have moved toward big government. The thing is the facts are there that the World Economy is going, the us economy double eight times, it is just happening, poverty, everybody is richer, we are all doing so much better. I start es by saying there has never been a better time to be alive. I wanted to sink in. This maybe not in venezuela. You take on venezuela very directly. People eat their words on venezuela, you take joy in pointing out not only bernie but folks on cnn and even oliver stone championed venezuela as a great utopia. You have a different critique. Venezuela is such a disaster, people eating their pets. We tell the story of a young lady, a teenage girl, she has a gang at her gang is to defend the turf of trash. A certain garbage receptacle, those are her garbage receptacles looking for food, people killing rats in the street to eat them, pigeons and it is a sad thing. Back to the World Economy, why the World Economy got better and why venezuela is deteriorating into chaos and that is part of what the book is doing. The debate we should be having appear that we are not having in congress is we are not talking about which Economic System is better and nobody in the media seems to care what aoc is supporting or bernie is supporting is stalin and mao and paul pot and these terrible ideas and they get away with it because they arent challenged. Host you trace the roots of socialism back to the arab world which i think would be enlightening to many who would cast these monarchies and other arab endeavors as rightwing governments, not leftwing governments but you cite the abdel nasser socialism as a brand of socialism that has been particularly violent and harmful. Guest that is part of the problem we have had since the 1930s. Kayak and others said when you had hitler come on board, they were talking about a rightwing dictator. I dont think this was accidental. These were political scientists who decided to develop a spectrum of right and left. They put not he is him over here in socialism and communism over here when in reality they are different variances of socialism. Hitler was proud of his socialism. He said like most inventors of something he wanted to make sure it was distinct and his was nationalistic, not international and it was racist and obviously genocidal but he was proud of those things but said this is unique, he came up with a unique form of socialism and you look at his original plank they are basically from the communist manifesto. They did it because after the war people became so horrified, the holocaust, the socialists said we cancel socialism if they think it is a socialist, so, capitalist or rightwing authoritarian. The same in the arab world. The commonality and this gets back to the top 1 is mubarak, nasser, all these dictators in africa, many had a socialist bend but it was socialism combined with club soccer see and enriching their family but it happened under socialism too. They say we will help everybody out, we are free quality and everyone will get a chicken in every pot. It always seems castros daughters really rich, maduros daughters really rich, they seem to enrich themselves. You attack the notion that socialism is attainable by saying in the book that every economy in the world will distribute resources unequally. There is no opportunity for equal distribution of resources so in a world of unequal distribution of resources you prefer merit over cronyism. Do we follow summers in the United States congress of leaning into those elements of crony capitalism and does that take us on the slow march to these . Guest i think so. The whole idea of how things are distributed and the quality of it being a goal, if things were equally distributed the problem is you would like incentive. You want to increase your share of the pie so getting rid of the incentives was always a problem. Do we fall into the trap here . Yes because sometimes in order to get the things we want by reducing taxes on the economy, taking people off at the lower end who pay no taxes, we have a tax system that is different than scandinavia. Instead of everybody paying we are more tipped towards very progressive tax code. Our rate has come down at the top of the vast majority of taxes like the top 20 of earners pay 90 of the taxes now. Host you are very critical of the way socialist system can view the black market and how that can undermine peoples purchasing power and opportunity to live within a normalized Economic System. What were the most striking examples to you in your research of the imposition of socialism directly fueling the nefarious black market economy . There is a price point at which people start selling things that it is the problem with price controls in general. If you set the price too low all the goods will be gone, if you said the first too high, the black market develops. It is one of these things that even conservative screwup sometimes. What is a just price . Is the moral price of bread . It is where supply and demand cross. You have to leave it open to supply and demand and the invisible hand of the marketplace and is wanting to strive for more profit also have more goods out. Was the government since those prices we get they dont know the correct price of anything so it is too lower too high, never the perfect price. It leads to horrific problems in the black market, the balance of the black market, we talk about under socialism it cant be tolerated. If you tolerate a little bit of it it undermines the whole system so you have to have informants, you have to have families informing on families, neighbors informing on neighbors and then after a while jury trials are too slow. If everybody is buying bread on the black market, that is all those people in the jury, you get rid of jury trials, things become more authoritarian because the policies are very unpopular but one of the examples in venezuela, it is a lot more than the price and you kind of apologize but we have stuff and are getting it to people so we have food and medicine, people get it. We are sorry we are charging more than the official price or official price, that is what happens. The price is . 50, everybody can have it. The bread lines are good. Bernie tells us that you cited in the book when people are waiting in long lines for bread that is actually a sign of healthy socialism. I suggest you see what the lines are like in venezuela. Dont think people are too excited about lines. And still ignores the great wealth of our country. Our country is so wealthy right now we do not have a food problem. We have an excess of food problem. The biggest problem we having health right now, one of the Biggest Health problems is too much food and the poorest people in our society, not saying it is great to be poor, the poorest people in our society are bit of the middle class in most societies around the world and we have to figure out how to get people excited about being part of that and there still is a problem. Unemployment is 3 , workforce participation, people who dont participate in the workforce, 38 , in some communities it is 50 . There needs to be this thing. It is coupled with our drug problem. People are divorced from the whole process, they are more likely to get into drug problems but we have a problem here and every day you probably hear it when you go home, the businesses are saying i cant find enough workers. Biggest problem is we cant find enough workers but we still have a bunch of them who are not participating. You clearly draw from the vast academic resources, the Libertarian Movement but i sensed reading the book that you are frustrated by the lefts willfully governments on how their own policies impact their communities and you tell a story about my colleague aoc and her coffee shop. Going back to her coffee shop in the willful ignorance how her policies affect quality of life. Is playing a minute on capitalism, the coffee shop happen to go out of business and the owner says we went out of business because minimum wage was too high and the rent was too high and there is rent control in new york and minimumwage control and this is probably the biggest problem with the left. Even if you want to grant them big heart and they want to do things to help poor people, many of them do, it is that they arent thinking through to the secondorder or the third order, not thinking of the unintended consequences. Having bread be 50 and be good to the poor people but then 6 months later you find there is no bread and there is a black market for it and people are selling at a different price but no official bread at . 50 and they are unwilling or demagogues, summer demagogues because the one to say we will pay with it for the top 1 , it has been pointed out repeatedly the 1 tax she has on those making 10 million brings in 50 billion but her projects she wants to spend are Something Like 60, 70, 80 trillion and so you would think they have to know that and maybe they think selling santa claus is easier and it is, easier to sell santa claus then it is freedom and liberty and responsibility and opportunity, always say they have an easier sell but are there enough people to know you cant give people, money doesnt grow on trees. The math becomes challenging but we have been critics of president obama but one thing he gets a lot of credit for, messaged discipline, repeatedly talks about the middle class, page 2 socialist policies as enduring to the benefit of the middle class. You walk through a number of circumstances where socialism wipes out the middle class, talk about folks trying to follow the rules and get by how these socialist policies era the opportunity to get ahead. Once you get more socialism you get less Economic Growth and you get a contraction so there is no wealth. The best example is venezuela, more oil reserves than anybody in the world, more than saudi arabia. How does that happen . How can you become so desperate, the market place never allow that to happen, the marketplace is growing, under socialism it is contracting and shriveling up but it is not just one time. You see it time after time. Going back to the question on whether violence is inherent to socialism, hayek said if the ultimate desire socialism is to own the property and you have to take it from people and people will resist the more you take it from them maybe socialism selects for the most ruthless person because it takes ruthlessness because when they finally come to your house, im not going to resist the tax or shoot the Tax Collector or the regulator but if they come to my house there is ultimately violence. You cant have somebody who is a passive easygoing kinder gentler socialist, has to be stalin so it is inevitable more socialism you want the more ruthless so that is why you end up with ruthless leaders if you want to take peoples property, you have to be ruthless to get it and that shows the lifecycle socialism. One question i have is why do all these socialist dictators dress up as liberators initially and you go through a moment of liberation, government control means of production and a strong authoritarian violence. How do you break that cycle once you begin incremental socialism . When you talk about how extraordinary it was so many revelations, the french revolution didnt end the way ours did. Ours was amazing in the sense that we threw off the yoke of a king, kept much of our religious faith and traditions and virtues we believed in but we also codified written document and that government cant get bigger than this in these chains of the constitution and we also dont realize how much is the lineage of english tradition. We think of it as an abrupt thing. It is a continuation of the glorious revolution in england, the magna carta, the bill of rights, they have been trying to limit looking for hundreds of years and have done a great deal of it. We didnt want a king but along this lineage, we were lucky we got this constitution, our founding fathers, George Washington not becoming a king or serving again, we were lucky and who we got but lucky in the fact they believed in a written document that would restrain the size and scope of government. Morality is an argument the left makes in the service of socialism, all that data may be true but the moral thing is to embrace this governing philosophy. Their answer is interesting, talk about how selfish socialism is because it forces you to look in word whereas capitalism requires you to be morally in tune with the needs of others. Talk about that dynamic. If im going to be a successful catalyst that i sell something im not caring about my desires. I want to be successful but i have to care about what you want, everything you want as a consumer. Everything is focused outwards towards trying to get you to accept and value my services or my product but if im a socialist i am not caring about popular opinion or pleasing a consumer. When we socialize things like healthcare they say everybody will get, you have to have rationing, you have to wait in line for your hip replacement. It is directed more towards their ideological concerns. How does it drive selfishness . Youre making the argument a country that is more socialist becomes more selfish . That is true. It is an irony in away because they would process it is for the other man, everything is for someone else but it is driven by selfishness and their ends of being an elite in their society. They consume and accumulate power and money and homes based on the cronyism of their system. Host taking apart the scandinavia argument, it is a big part of the debate about the kinder gentler form of socialism but you point out trend lines in scandinavia moving away from socialism, away from reliance on taxes. Where will we see scandinavia 25 years from now and what trends do you see that answer back the less arguments . The peak of socialism in sweden was the 70s and the 70s they have been moving more to the right. The 5 countries that are scandinavian countries, led by centerright government, the trend line on taxes is run down and have been big trading nations very much involved with International Trade and worldwide trade and they have these economic indexes, heritage does one and they rank pretty high. You have to know whether they are socialist or not. If they say the Great Success is socialism we need to know they are socialist are not, there is private property, ownership, people in their own houses. It is welfare state but not socialism. Walk us through the distinction between welfarism and socialism and words of our country fall . It is a continuum. Capitalism is here and socialism is here we are in the middle, more toward the capitalist side but we are a little off center towards capitalism, not way over. We have a great deal of governmental control. You can keep the Social Security system. In the spectrum of things, is scandinavia socialist . There is a quote, in talking to one of his students, if you want a real quick definition of what does it require to be a capitalist nation, having a private stock market and all scandinavia has is private property, they are capitalism with a big dose of welfarism but welfarism is paid for through higher taxes and private ownership but it is not something im advocating, to buy a car in scandinavia, you want to buy a 30,000 car, you got to pay another 30,000, 60,000 tax. You dont think Bernie Sanders can get elected . Is way too liberal. Most of them criticized him. When he says denmark is socialist the Prime Minister responded we are not socialist mainly because they want to do business with the world and who wants to do business is in a socialist country. They are saying we are open for business and bernie is saying is i love the socialism of denmark and it is kind of funny that the left in our country are want to be scandinavia, scandinavia is saying we are not socialist. As scandinavia reawakens to this, the impact on the middle class as they try to have a more capitalist system in america shifting, do you envision a circumstance where the two would cross . I hope not. The interesting thing about scandinavia, they have a lot of success and longevity and health and all these things, there are several authors we look at to look at statistics and understand why. There are amazing statistics. Scandinavians live longer than we do, have higher incomes, look at scandinavian americans, they still live at home and some migrated here for 100 years or more, average income is higher than our average income in our country and the argument is there is something about culture and work ethic that make a difference and i truly think it is. It is harder to teach people, Family Structure but this is where we have to get away from this craziness of government schools that say johnny deserves to have a trophy even though he cant spell. We try to give them that we dont teach them the work ethic the harder you work the more success you get and as we get away from that we get a whole segment of the population 38 who dont work now who never felt the sort of esteem you get from work. I tell people all the time i absolutely believe this, work is not a punishment, work is a reward and how you get selfesteem. You get it through work. There isnt one work that is better than another. You can be a janitor, nurse, doctor, lawyer, physicist, you get it through trying to produce something with your mind, hands and body and if you dont do that it is a big hole in your life that is a big problem for all of us. You have a vision for the Republican Party that is more appealing to a more racially diverse electorate. You said laws that disproportionately affect racial minorities are subject to appeal but the same people who advocate for socialism are the selfaggrandizement Racial Justice warriors in congress and you write about the ability for racism to animate elements of socialism and socialism may create a susceptibility to racism that you wouldnt see in capitalism. What is the basis for that . Because under socialism or when you view people collectively you view them as groups. Under capitalism everybody is an individual and regardless of your skin, your religion you are all treated as individuals based on your merit, but if you see things as a collective, there are group rights, black rights, white rights, brown rice, gay rights and all this and this is still going on because it is so emotional but there are only individual rights and the law should be blind as to who you are, what you do in your home, what your personal beliefs are, the law should be the same for everybody but the problem is when you begin to recognize group rights, the law isnt the same for everybody, it is different for these people, they have to have a special elevation above the individual and that is what happens, under socialism if everything is to be distributed equally, the government has to be unequal because society ends up when things are distributed, people have more stuff, the law has to treat people not the same in this irony the law doesnt have equal protection under socialism to make us all equal and keep readjusting us to be equal the law has to have not equal protection but unequal treatment of people based on their groupings whether they are in the party, not in the party, poor or rich, as we redistribute it we have lack of justice. Your critical of china, you talk about moving forward being a failure, the erosion of Property Rights and changing society, what do the lessons from china tell us about chinas future and the Us China RelationshipGoing Forward as they embrace these values . That would take another book but it is a difficult situation. People have a lot of hope in the 70s, having more of a marketplace in china, people were very hopeful and many predicted with economic liberty which they were getting more economic liberty they would get political liberty hasnt worked that way, in recent years it has gone the opposite way. I tend to think in the long run the law and may be longer than we are seeing the economic liberty makes people more interested in political liberty so in china they are interested. In Tiananmen Square there were hundreds if not thousands, you see people that are very interested in not being extradited to china and by the hundreds of thousands. We can be disappointed that we still have Chinese Government that is authoritarian but encouraged that there is still resistance. How we get there i dont know. It sort of separates the more liberty minded people from the new conservatives. We all see the problem. I see the problem in venezuela, in china, new conservatives think send the military and, give them a new government and everything will be great. That doesnt seem to work out that way. Host you talk about what flows from socialism. I know there are a lot of conservatives concerned about the fact that we have lost fair debate. The radical left no longer wants to debate the merits of economic principles. They instead want to defame and destroy those who hold these values that you express. Why does socialism accelerate the purging of viewpoint and thought . I think because once you monopolize the economy, the planning you have to monopolize criticism too, you cant handle criticism and it is a consistent thing. There were secret police under hitler, secret police under stalin, paul part, mao, every one of these regimes end up with a secret police to stifle dissent and it gets back to the question is that an accident . Or is it inherent that they cant handle the debate because it will lead to dissent and unraveling. Host it would be not a rant public if there was not a critique of forever wars. As a member of congress represents more troops than anybody else i thank you on behalf of military families for what you do. You are criticizing a particular journalist and you say i respected eisenhowers morning but small wars could lead to be wars. I never understood how one could because lying about his own attendance, this fact checker helped the diluted believe that somehow eisenhower belongs to the war crowd and go on to quote eisenhower saying i hate war. As only a soldier who lived it can come only as one who has seen its brutality, futility and stupidity. As we try to guide foreignpolicy away from forever wars what advice to give those of us who try to have a realistically a foreignpolicy rather than a neocon view . Talk to the veterans a lot of veterans and soldiers in your district, two basis in my state. When you talk to them the most thoughtful people are the people who have served particularly in combat. If we had a roundtable, 5 or 6 guys or women involved in combat they are not kneejerk. The afghan war should go on and on. Most of them were like we were okay after 9 11 to get the enemy but when you told us to plant a flag and become policemen and build roads and nationbuilding just mention the word nationbuilding and most soldiers will recoil and they dont see themselves as policemen. They dont want to be over there policing the streets and building roads and doing all this stuff and ultimately it is a little bit, i make the analogy of welfare. They will never step up and take the world in their hands and become selfsufficient. They with afghanistan, give them 50 billion a year. They will never step up until they do it. Not if we fight the taliban and for them. I think there is a chance the military and those retired, who cant speak out, 60 say we should end the afghan war. 60 say the iraq war may not have been our best interests. We should listen to the constitution which wanted to make war difficult. It is antiquated, they can never declare war. You see my response to that, the two times we have been attacked, the vote was unanimous. When we were attacked in world war ii and pearl harbor they voted the next day. We were attacked on the specific they vote on december 8th, one or 2 people voted now. Same with 9 11. A month or so later it was virtually unanimous for the war. Congress can come together and people have looked and said we tend to do better and Better Outcomes when we declare war and when we are all in altogether on it and tend to do not so well in wars the drag on and on and dont have a clear mission. My fatherinlaw was career military, my brotherinlaw was air force, we see this from personal point of view too. I cant send a Family Member or your Family Member or anybody else without being very thoughtful about it without deciding what is in our National Interest to be there. We cant have one vote 19 years ago and say it binds generation after generation. That would be the definition of perpetual war. Host thank you for being a unique and inspiring voice party and the liberty movement. Thank you for listing your brilliant wife to write this book for you and ensuring anyone who reads this book will never lose an argument to another socialist ever again. Thank you. Appreciate it. This program is available as a podcast. All after words programs can be viewed as our website, booktv. Org. Booktv covers book fairs and festivals around the country. Heres what is coming up. The season will kick off in january with the writers festival in california followed by the savanna book festival in georgia and in march booktv visits arizona for the tucson festival of books and later that month the virginia festival of the book will take place in charlottesville. For more information about upcoming book fairs and festivals and to watch our previous vessel coverage click the first have on our website, booktv. Org. Here is a look at the new york times, midnight in chernobyl, the worlds worst Nuclear Power plant disaster and mystic violence and no visible bruises. Patrick keefe recounts the decades long conflict in Northern Ireland in say nothing. In the club, leo damrosch recalls regular gatherings of british philosopher some artist and economist at the tavern in london in the late 18th century. In the yellow house sarah broome explores race and class to the story of her childhood home in new orleans, the winner of the National Book award for nonfiction. In this room tonight my mother remained a poet in her own right. How as a child i watched her every move, seeing her eyes fall upon every word anywhere, encountered in the grocery store, on a bus, pamphlet, the package labeled my high school textbooks, she was always wolfing downwards, insatiable which is how i learned the ways in which words were a sustenance, to be a beautiful relief or greatest assault. How i learned that words were the best map, make me know, my mother was always saying in between raising 12 humans. I am in this room and so is my mother. [applause] my big sister lynette who left the yellow house when she was only 19 was felt like a lurching mission to planets unknown. In this room tonight, a fellow artist, the most inspired accompaniment of my life and the chorus, my siblings, not here but whose voices exist in mine, carl, michael, karen, troy, byron, eddie, debra, thank you for telling me the stories in the first place and trusting me to make something of them, for allowing me to call your name this because it is no small thing to recover, there are other names, some of whom died before this book was finished and in the world, these absent presences. My auntie elaine, my mothers only sister, my uncle joe, january of this year and the swiftest below, my oldest brother simon junior who died the day after this book appeared in the world. Most of these authors have appeared on booktv and you can find programs in their entirety, booktv. Org. Type the others name in the search bar at the top of the page. It is 24 hours of nonfiction authors on new years day. Some of the programs include historian susan ronald on the life of publishing magnet conee nast his magazine empire included vogue and vanity fair. New york times columnist argues there is a rising antisemitism in america. Investigative reporter discusses the production and distribution of fentanyl and journalist Eleanor Randolph talks about new york city mayor and democratic president of candidate michael bloomberg. Find the complete schedule in your Program Guide or online, booktv. Org. Now we kick off new years day with historians Rick Atkinson and brenda windapple. Rick atkinson and brenda wineapple, lets give them a round of applause. [applause] rick is the bestselling author of the liberation trilogy, an army at dawn come when of the pulitzer prize. The day