Reason. The real reason in my opinion is nixon was trying to get whatever evidence the government had of his own wrongdoing. One of the aids told him there was a report on the bombing that was in the hands of prominent democrats who were working at the Brooking Institute and the washington think tank. Nixon is furious and orders a break in the Brooking Institution in order to get the report. That is on tape. It is the only breakin we know that he ordered for sure because he ordered it on tape several times. In order to get this accomplished, he put together the special Investigation Unit and a former fbi agent and cia agent and people wondered about the coverup because as far as we know he didnt order that. If he had not ordered a coverup, a full investigation on the crimes would lead back to the breakin that nixon did order and that would lead back to the shell defense and sabotage the 1968 campaign. So people say about watergate it isnt the crime but the cover up but it is the cover up of the crime of the cover up. What was your source material . I work for the university of virginia and spent years studying nixons private recordings. There is a lot to study. I worked on johnson as well who secretly recorded his phone calls so there was a lot there. So putting together years of research on the tapes and decla declassified documents. And people that go to chasing. Shadows. Org can read transcripts before deciding to read the whole book you where watching booktv. Next, jonathan last, editor of the the seven deadly virtues brought together seven writers to update the the seven deadly virtues book. He is joined by p. J. Orourke, Jonah Goldberg, and Christine Rosen and more. This is a little under an hour. Hello, everybody. What a good crowd. I will keep this short. I am Jonah Goldberg, a fellow at the American Enterprise institute and if that offended you you might as well leave now. I am happier than helen thomas at a hamas rally to be here. I have been using that jobs for a long time. I am delighted all of you can make it. I want to say thank you for coming and thanks the thesis of this book, the the seven deadly virtues, is that the classic virtues have good grown out of fashion. Perhaps no greater proof of this thesis comes in the form of the fact that a book called the seven deadly virtues actually contains 18 virtues under discussion. It reminds me of thorough book about how to live the life of virtue and he said simplicity, simplicity, and simplicity. And one wonders why he needed three. 58 of the American People believe that america is going to quote hell in a hand basket. And even more believe that we are on the wrong track. To this rump of americans who think things are going badly but not we are head to haiti itself all i can say is cheer up as the worst is yet to come. I will close with a favorite story about irving crystal who is one of my favorites and he was watching the Clarence Thomas conformation hearing in his office and at one point when specter did his thing, the judge turned off the tv and said the end of western civilization and irving took a long drag and said of course it is the end of American Civilization but that doesnt mean one cant live well. So i will turn it over to jonathan last who is the editor of this wonderful book and will mc the event and if he with lucky he will explain why owen wilson is on the cover of this book. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you first to the publisher of templeton press. Writing is hard and not a lot of fun as one of our con tributoco will tell you. I am never write a normal book then. This is the way to do it. You get others to write and then at the end you sit back and say look at the book i wrote. And thanks for jonah for making this happen and your contribution to the book which is one of my favorite books. As long puts it virtues are written about the same way he does with star trek with elgence, wit and creepy saunter. I want to tell you about another book and that is bill bennetts book of virtues. It spent weeks on the bestseller week and every set of parents leaving the hospital were said they should be given a copy of this. Virtue was something you could talk about then. There was a shock and scandal when someone asked bill clinton boxers or briefs and today we get naked pictures of famous people and politicians even and dumped on the internet every weekend and people just look over it. People are tempted to say we lost the virtues in society but i dont think that is true. We are focused on virtues but they are just different kinds. I would point to donald sterling, the formal owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, back in april he was the most vile man in america after being taped whispering racist thoughts in private to his mistress, who like all good mistresses when things went south, released the tape to the media there is a lesson in there somewhere. This sparked national uproar of him being condemed on tv and newspapers and the president of the United States takes timeout from a foreign trip to hold a president conference and condemn sterling and then the nba owners force him to sell his team. Unremarked is he was having an affair in public and cheating on his wife of 50 years. There is no scarlet bar for virtue but there is for racism and the punishments are much worse than they were before and maybe that is good or bad. I dont know. Racism is a terrible thing. But it as the interesting because it as a shift in change in virtues. It isnt just that. Mary is here and pointed out in a book that we live in a time where it is gauche to express judgment about sexual matters. You cannot say someone shouldnt put that part with that part on person xy or z. But we have a complicated moral framework of talking about food. Moderation used to be a high point and it isnt attractive but sustainability is a virtue we strive for. I comprised the modern virtues like freedom, progress, health, and nonjudgmentalism. These are not bad things. They are good but to the extent they supports the classical virtu virtues. The classical virtues deal with the best classes of life. It is good to be healthy and authentic . Yes. But much more prudent to be chari charitable and that brings us to the question of which is the best virtue . That is like picking a favorite child and something we dont do. But secretly we do it. You know my friends already but i will introduce them. First we have jane from National Review and minneapolis starr tribraun to came to talk about tempererance. And Christine Rosen is championing fellowship. And rob long i chose temperance. Rob is going to defend justice after that and jonah defends confidence and p. J. Orourke i feel like Richard Dawson here saying lets play the feud. Lets play the feud. And james since you are soft, tell us what is so great about temperance . I dont know. You tell me. To tell you the truth that is not what i wrote about in the book. I wrote about simplicity but there is no point to see that is a virtue and i will give you 36 reasons why in the next few minutes. I chose temperance not because i believe in the antialcohol carry nation with ax wielding people who want to take the fun away from life but in the sense of moderation i believe in it is lot. For a couple reasons. One, i am a repressed passive aggressive lutheran southerner. And two isnt a license for everything . Everything in moderation. I will have cheese cakes, brandy and dancing girls just a little, though. It doesnt always work. But you cannot say when you are accuse of cannibalism i just a had finger. Moderation in speech is first. There have been times writing on the internet that i hate to say it i have been intolerant and said things i wish i didnt say. Once writing about Michael Moore i said i dont wish him harm but if i was in a room when he packed into a pin and popped and flew around like a big balloon i would like to see it. And people said this was cruel and commenting on his appearance and they were correct in that and i felt bad about that even though he did resemble such. c1 what if we Department Agreement because it you dont have a common values, there is no point in coming to a common agreement. I found myself using a number of friends because we would have discussions. I would not be willing to concede anything to the other side because there is no Common Ground. I cant say i want western civilization to survive and thrive. The other side says i wanted to be destroyed. You cant come to the Common Ground to say we will destroy it, but slowly. So moderation of opinion is something that works amongst your peers and you have something you can share together. There was a point, otherwise i might come out in favor of emond expressions of opinions. That leads us to number three. That his moderation of action. I saw how people prayed against each other all the time. It was an unpleasant place to be on my hot august. I come from a place where people are kind and there was so much social moment around the happy place to live. That brings us to the reclining seat. This guy gets on the play and he is right in front of me and he is about the size of use to be. The first thing he does is he pushes and put in the position at a remote in the other in your set for of football. I about the dimension of the kind of guy who would read dorothy after she killed the witch. Not a big man. I am typing like this. And i cant move. Dow moderation behavior means two things i could do. One, i could get those neat things to keep the seats are rebelling back, but that is wrong. I cant find them on the internet. Or two, i could say to them sir, if you just saw how much little room, i understand you are a big fellow. How about we work this out and arrive at a moderate solution. I give you some of my space and we are happy for the duration of the flight. That is moderate action. They didnt do that. [laughter] what is do that at all. So i waited for his head to allover and i kicked the back of the sea. I dont think he slept a wink i was happy about that in a moderate sort of way. [applause] all right. I got the Bumper Sticker virtue fellowship in the covered campbells an wait until you see what he has prepared for the swimsuit competition. I thought a preview earlier. Its very nice. I have this virtua fellowship which is what people talk about our poor percy during trust building exercises. Imagine retirees playing a vigorous round of shuffleboard. I think its more interesting because i like chastity, which you are either practicing or youre not, fellowship can be taken to extreme. In whole bunch of people in a situation of extreme danger, what is going to happen . They might display a rock acts of courage on the battlefield, a. K. A. Bandit others or they might have enthusiastic acts of cannibalism in the sierra nevada, a. K. A. The donner party. Both are kind of fellowship. [laughter] one of the things i think that we think about when we talk about fellowship today is we use it to ally ourselves with groups who are in fact quite intolerant. Theres great fellowships of people who are intolerant of a lot of modern things, people intolerant of say airport charity, gluten, its working. The list goes on and on. These are all things we can form a group together, shell really bonded to this group and basically hes something else. What this shows is once you are part of these groups, theres a lot of ideological rigor required. I am going to date myself in saying this, but if anyone has been following the kenny g situation. Anyone . Lets bring them into the fold. Its like a colt. So kenny g, [laughter] he somehow manages to pull up the mail well into the 21st century. Anyway, hes very big in china. Kenny g is huge in china. In fact, if you go to a chinese ball, which ive been in, they say going home to get people to leave the mall. Its like someone turned on and on switch. Theyll start to leave. Its like the pied piper of chinese commerce. [laughter] theres a very important role. So kenny g went to hong kong recently and he and his words, was taken in an assembler, but he happened to take a self he confronted a group of protesters who are prodemocracy protesters. This angered the Chinese Government who declared him an infidel in one sort or another. He cultivated the fellowship of people who admire him in china. What is he going to do . Hes broken some unspoken rules. In classic celebrity fashion he deleted the salty. It was on no china, i dont like democracy. I was taking my innocent law to fellowship has this dark side where we start yourself believe if anyone goes outside the realm. For Scholarly Research to the article, jonathan crudely cut it from the essay. I spent a lot of time on Justin Bieber fan sites on the internet. Dont do it. Really, dont do it. Again, it is pretty rigorous. So what should fellowship look like . My argument in the essay and my argument here today which will completely fall flat because top of your tweaking to your friends right now is we should reclaim fellowship because weve totally decrease friendship. We all have a million ransom of followers. We spent our lives online with their friends. But those arent real friendships. Those are pals on the Justin Bieber fan site and we have anonymous handles that we use and reposted them. [inaudible] [laughter] now, my handle is more subtle than not. I think theres theres some existential questions here that we should consider. When we think about fellowship and friendship in the real world versus the way replay of relationships online. What is friendship . Bushido look like . I personally think we should show up moderately consume alcohol and talk to each other facetoface. Its an important part of being a human being. How to connect in meaningful ways and not just on the beaver fan site. I will leave you with this question because it will speak to the issue of fellowship, which is a social media age. If it cardassian falls in the woods and doesnt take a filthy, did it ever really happen . [applause] are you guys buying this . The problem is people are terrible. Do we really want to be in fellowship with actual real people . Just me then. Me and sunny. Im so tired of coming to these aei events in hearing about kardashian and kenny g. Is an unofficial mascot of the American Enterprise. We wonder why we are losing. Me . If thats okay. From russell flory. I am going to begin, which i do whenever i speak obloquy by telling a hollywood in doubt because people who are from hollywood have no idea if its true or not. But this one actually in the words of Henry Kissinger has the additional benefit of being true. A few years ago a tv network was number four spot, which was at that point the lowest spot. Now its number 97 as the lowest spot. They owned all the intellectual property for the 6 million man, which if you are over 90 you remember the show. A friend of mine had a great idea to revitalize the idea of the 6 billion man so they had to find the 6 million man titled the majors, the surprise, surprise is available at the time. Its kind of a funny twist that of course the federal funding gets cut in they kind of had a hard time focusing. I guess he was on the va plan or something. And so, he gave his pitch to us to try out. It was great. He went to the number president who had been a former actor. This is a Crucial Detail any page to the president and the executives great story. The number of president said thats great. Theyll be great, fantastic. And heres why. Because when i was an actor, i did not do so at the 6 million man and lee majors was a total to me. He didnt use the word either way. That is justice, just so you know. This is why justice is the best of the virtues because it is also still mean. I mean, these are virtues here. Fellowship, who cares. Justice is something you do to somebody else. And you can do a hard, anytime you want and say im sorry, its justice. Everybody else goes it is kind of justice. It is like justice is its own evil twin, which makes it the best. Justice is the eyes of the former hollywood assistant who is an abuse nl treated and insulted, then by putting up with it rises through the ranks it becomes an executive and is now sitting in the big chair across from his or her former boss, kind of in a money tieback as everyone is at age 50. Just its an easy terms as an intern who was never properly thanked from that lease of grass. [laughter] so that is why justice is a virtue. Fancy ideals we want. It is sturdy back alley payback when vermont. It is the least virtue is virtue, which is why it is the best. But it also has a positive. Justice is what reminds us to be nice to insurance. Justice also reminds the interns that if we stick with it, it will all be worth it. [applause] every go. Okay. In my chapter, which is i dont know if you know it, but what is the cover article for the next issue of National Review. There you go. To clarify, do you get paid twice . [laughter] theres a room full same him. As you know from National Review, that is not going to happen. My book chapter was on integrity. My colleagues were prudent. Anything dude wheres your virtue. In fact, i get that in an email everyday, sometimes in all caps. If it is in all caps, it has got to be true. And he said all we have left is chastity. Which you know, was sort of like showing not at the end of the day firesale and all that is left in the remainder bin are likely mismatched hot pink socks in the fake velvet tracksuit. I didnt want chastity. Select the scholar in good standing, i heed to the interwebs the interweb somewhat to the list of virtues on wikipedia. And i found continents as in incontinence. Americas foremost on virtues and having this book. He is like dude, is that even really a virtue . I stopped him and so i was sort of i picked continents for a couple reasons. First of all because other than scotch cigars, perhaps the biggest source of joy in my life is star trek references. So i figured theres no situation i would pull off a kobayashi maru. Or we are lucky . Are lucky quite Congress Actually plays a big part in book seven