for what would have happened in the u. s. then u.s. cities became gateways for the international business. internationally it is still larger than gps which a lot of people don't realize. thank you very much for coming. appreciate it. >> this event was hosted by the book people book store in austin, texas. visit bookpeople.com. here's a look at a number of books being released this week. >> look for these titles in bookstore this weekend what the authors in the near future on booktv. up next on booktv, morris berman 11 talks about that -- mr. berman argues self-interest trumping the common good has led the uss trey. this is just over an hour. >> okay. guess we are ready to roll. thank you for coming. i never know how many are going to attend. i have gone to the point that i consider success -- that came out of a book tour i did in 2006 and is a favorite of mine. i was booked into a bookstore in philadelphia and three people showed up and one of them fell asleep during a talk and i was ready to start snoring more fall out of the chair and happily that was not recorded by c-span. worst part of that was when i saw the fire from the store, this did happen. so the fire from the store -- at the bottom it said morris berman is dean of optometry at you see fullerton. i offered anyone who bought the book i would give them a free eye exam but not too many. i want to thank barnes and noble for hosting this so we can get together and talk about issues that i think are very important. there seems to be some confusion in the united states. a lot of people don't realize america failed. they think it is still going on. as i entered here's some guys said to me at no america failed. i said look around. i also wanted to locate this particular talk in terms of stuff i have been writing. this is -- "why america failed" is the third in a trilogy on the american empire. the first was the twilight of american culture which was published in 2000. the second is dark ages published in 2006 and this came out a month ago, "why america failed". there was however collection of essays on a published year-ago that came between book 2 and book 3. half of the essays are about the united states and i want to encourage you to have a look at that book. it is called the question of values. is important because the material is not in any of the other books but if it deals with the kind of unconscious programming americans have that leads them to do the things they do. whether it is a person in the street or the president. that sort of complete the picture. sought want to encourage you to have a look at that book. the title of this talk tonight is the way we do business today. despite great pressure to conform to celebrate the united states as the best system in the world the nation does not lack for critics. the last two decades have seen numerous works criticizing u.s. foreign policy, u.s. domestic policy, in particular economic policy. the court system and military and media, corporate influence over american life and so on. most of this is very astute and i have learned much from these studies but we do things in particular are lacking in my opinion and have a hard time making it into the public eye partly because americans are not trained to think in a holistic or synthetic fashion and partly because the sort of analysis i have in mind is too close to the bone. too difficult for americans to hear it and somebody would say i don't know. the first thing they lack is an integration of various factors that have done the country in. these studies done to the institutions specific as though the institution under examination existed in a kind of vacuum and could be understood apart from other institutions. the second thing i find lacking is the relationship to the culture at large. as a result, these are finally superficial. this avoidance enables them to be optimistic which in fact places them in the american mainstream. the authors often conclude these studies with practical recommendations as to how particular institutional dysfunction they identified can be rectified. they are as a result not much threat. usually mechanical analysis or mechanical solution. if the office were to realize these problems do not exist in a vacuum but are related to the other problems that are finally routed in the nature of american culture itself in its dna, the profit -- prognosis would not be so rosy for it would be clear there is no way out but turning things around is not an option at this point. to take two examples, michael more and known chomsky have done a lot to raise awareness in the united states, to show that foreign and domestic policy are dead ends are worse. yet both of these men assumes that the problem is coming from the pentagon and the corporation which is partly true. the problem is this rests on not. a false consciousness. there is the belief these institutions have pulled the wool over the eyes of the average american citizen who is ultimately rational and well intentioned. i say get out and talk to some people. find out how accurate that is. for them the solution is one of education. pull away from the eyes and a citizenry will spontaneously awaken and commit itself to some sort of populist or democratic social vision. is that happening now with occupy wall street? an important question that we should talk about after words in the q&a. my point is what if it turns out the wool is the eyes. the so-called average citizen really does want a mercedes benz. probably not much else. that he or she is grateful to the corporations for supplying us with oceans of consumer goods and to the pentagon for protecting as from those awful arabs in the middle east. the possible -- the possibility for fundamental change appear to be quite small. for what would be called for is a set of different institutions in a different type of culture. personally i doubt there's much chance of that. america is what it is. serving the critical scene i find very few writers who see things synthetically as an integrated whole and further relate this to the nature of american culture itself. but there are a few. the titles of their books give them away. the puritan origins of the american self, work is a force that gives us meaning by chris hedges, the myth of american diplomacy by walter nixon just to name a few. a few eminent historians like c. vann woodward, william williams, david potter and jackson use. their radical and a sense of going down to the root of things. burke of fitch duke taught american studies argues from rather early as 1630 the colonists were imbued with the idea they were establishing a new nation under the specific direction of providence and reenacting the drama of the exodus in the old testament. in crossing the atlantic which is equivalent to the river jordan they were entering the new world which is kanin filled with milk and honey in legal and rejecting decadence of europe in general which is equivalent to ancient egypt and establishing a new jerusalem. all of this was in accordance with god's will. walter hicks and claims american identity originally, lest around the idea of the other, whoever it was, and our identity is based on war. we never negotiated anything with anyone as other nations found out usually too late. chris hedges amplifies this notion by arguing war give americans a reason for being, meaning to their lives. this is much more sophisticated than false consciousness. that americans are well intentioned and rational. instead argues that we are and have been since the earliest days hopelessly neurotic, the belief that we can pursue a different path at this stage in the game is diluted requiring as it would be yanking out of the american psyche by its very roots. i think i fall into this -- this version of american history, a number of things we could discuss at this point. once i have examined in my trilogy on the american empire and why -- "why america failed" disappeared. since i presume you don't want me to be speaking for 12 or 14 hours let me restrict myself to a single idea and it is what i introduced in the collection of essays i mentioned before. a question of values. in an essay titled locating the enemy i borrow a concept from the german philosopher hegel of negative identity. by negative, he did not mean bad. a negative identity is one form in opposition to something or someone else. it enables you to develop strong boundaries, always pushing against your enemy. since it is formed by opposition it is a real contest. as a result it looks strong but is actually weaken because self definition is entirely relational. what would a master be in passage without a slave? take away the slave, team after would have nothing to define himself by. what i argue is this concept of negative identity applies particularly well to america, the history of the american continent. opposition in whatever form provided the colonists with guiding areas that enabled them to make sense of their lives. and since this is a religious narrative it did not take much to turn it into a manichean one in which the enemy, who everett was was the darkest of the dark. the target of this self righteous hatred metamorphosed over time. but the form has remained the same. native americans were quickly seen as little more than severals, and here every thanksgiving, celebrate the genocide of an entire indigenous people. for a for us. the next target was the british which serviced the american revolution though this was present when the pilgrims left for america in the 1620s. britain was decadent and corrupt, and we citizens of the united states were essentially non british, non european but anti monarchical. the terror and brutality visited upon the loyalists, half-million americans, thirty% of the population who did not go along with his black-and-white agenda never get discussed in american history books. it does get discussed in canadian and british history books. it has been recorded nonetheless, tarring and feathering, confiscation or burning of property, frequently murdered as traders. the most recent book is liberty's exiles. really excellent. very few american books because they violate -- moving right along with come to the opposition of mexico which involve provoking a phony war and stealing from an entire country. in the case of the american indians it was convenient to cast the mexican people as ignorant and and develop the, savages lacking the energy of u.s. capitalism and unfortunate stereotype that persists to some extent to the present day. like the native americans the mexicans are seen as being in the way of progress. i used the quote of american manifest destiny were things i got. the mexican government was quite aware who was dealing with and the lady -- late 1820s the mexican commission wrote americans were an ambitious people. without a spark of good faith. as robert kagan writes in dangerous nation everybody viewed the united states this way including the spanish, french and british. french diplomats called the american populace warlike. the information got out somehow without fancy technology. shortly after the same framework, native americans and mexicans supplied by the north and the american south. lazy do nothing society in a way of progress. it was not no. opposition to slavery that triggered the civil war although it came to play an important role as the unifying theme. i'm not excusing slavery and it might well be argued that without the war slavery would have continued for several decades more also some historians disagree with that assessment. the more fundamental conflict was a clash of cultures. the slow easy way of the south as opposed to the rest of the economic expansion of the north. both sides regarded the other as the devil incarnate. the result was loss of 625,000 live. and massive disruption of the south economize by sherman's march to the sea. those scars still exist. the war is not really over as you know. the germans were next. that is an opposition that seems justified and the, quote, godless communists. conversion of russians from allies to enemy occurred almost overnight. it isn't difficult to see why. with the axis powers out of the picture there had to be an enemy in place to fill the resulting vacuum. although the ussr was repressive in the extreme it did not, as the american diplomat george can later argued, cast as the ultimate enemy because it's real goal late in securing its own borders. kgb files became open after the fall of the soviet union revealed russia's real fear was not of the united states but of the rearmed germany. there was no attempt to negotiate anything with russia. as stalin pointed out in 1946 the americans, negotiation meant capitulation. the cold war that the u.s. busy for decades and the so-called perimeter defense withheld any disturbance in the world was cause for u.s. military action led to the disastrous of iran, vietnam and so on. it is a long list, well-documented by the new york times reporter and overthrow, and killing hope. the psychological structure of-identity lead to a crisis when the soviet union collapsed. we had no one to define ourselves against. the gulf war of 1991 helped fill the gap for a time but the clinton years were largely meaningless without an enemy. we had no idea who we were so we filled the space with o.j. simpson and monica lewinsky. the islamic world did as the greatest favor of vegetable. attacked us. overnight terrorism replaced communism and george bush jr. like reagan in characterizing the soviet union did not hesitate to frame this as a cosmic war between good and evil. crusade. wrong word to use with arabs by the way. there was no possible discussion of american foreign policy. it was tantamount to treason as susan saw tech lost her job with the new yorker and others suggested. our enemies were evil or in st. anne that is the end of the story. to this day under the obama administration, american tax dollars pay for workshops that teach the police and military that islam is an evil religion out to destroy america and we must therefore be destroyed first. these workshops go on all the time well funded by the government. once again it is civilization versus the savages. george cannon tried to warn the american government that making a monolith out of communism was a gross misunderstanding and there were huge concepts between russia and china. but it requires cardboard figures begin to american presidents from truman on paid no attention to his advice. a similar thing with respect to islam. turns out only 10% of american muslims -- for most of them islam is more of a social thing than anything else. they are a lot like the jews. go to synagogue and talk to people and each and even then very few religious muslims are jihadists but when your identity is a negative one this type of nuance has to be stepped out of consciousness. americans regard pakistan has a dark and awful place. they did osama bin laden from american troops or harbor al qaeda operatives or drones strikes in their country which mostly kill civilians or in league with the taliban. what would americans say if they read in newspapers as i did last june when i was in london and picked up our copy of the guardian that a popular tv show in pakistan has a john stuart type comedian who pokes fun at the government and hosts songs like rock groups like bear, woman that ridicules muslim fundamentalists. this is the same music as pretty woman. burqa woman walking down the street with her sexy feet because that is all you say. none of this is picked up by the american press. it would weaken our ability to paint is the enemy as totally dark which could lead to a softening of our ego boundaries and subsequent question about who we are beyond the nation in opposition to something and mass suicide. mass suicide is what we're doing anyway. marshall mcluhan stated all forms of violence requests for identity. all forms of violence are quest for identity. more recently the professor of humanity david schulman in jerusalem wrote there's nothing more precious than an enemy, especially one who you largely created by your own hand and plays a necessary role in the inner drama of your soul. what is the american soul? what in opposition the finds it? emptiness at the center makes our quest for identity acute and politics are especially violent in case you hadn't noticed. policies always want a scorched earth and in the fullness of time let's face it. it is we who prove to be the savages and all of this without much awareness for conscious reflection. it is interesting that the the theme of paul ostrich's novels that you can pick and the fiction section, that american society is incoherent and lacks true identity and is nothing but a hall of mirrors. by and large americans don't know who he is and don't read him. on the other hand he is tremendously popular in europe and then translated in 20 languages and foreign editions -- criticism is not possible in a manichean world in the u.s. is good at marginalizing those who depict the country in a fundamental way. americans are not interested in such things anyway which is why over censorship is a necessary in the united states. the results -- saturn devouring his son. the u.s. is eating itself alive. i argue this most recently in dark age american 2006 that data substantiates accumulated since then are enormous. i am running out of space on the floor of my house for file folders. there's not a single american institution, that is not seriously corrupt. i could sit here for several hours documenting this. i know you want to get home. instead of that let me cite a few examples. one of america's leading intellectuals did an essay in the new york review showing the supreme court is a court of men and not of law. five of nine justices points out decisions are typically made in advance in a right political direction and the justification for this is trotted out after the fact even though often violates the constitution. second, in their book academically adrift sociologist richard aaron reports after two years of college, 45% of american students haven't learned anything and after four years 36%. critical thinking -- they don't know the difference between an opinion and an argument. they don't know it. most students -- by these researchers -- college was social and not academic experience. it required 20 pages of writing. a marist poll released on july 4th of this year showed 42% of american adults are unaware that the u.s. declared its independence in 1776. forty-two%. the figure rises to 69% for the under 30 age group. thirty-five% of americans don't know from which country the united states seceded. bulgaria? gonna? a recent newsweek poll revealed 73% of americans can't give the official version of why we fought the cold war. nobody can give the real version but 73% can't give the official version. 44% are unable to decline -- the fine the bill of rights. a poll taken in the oklahoma public school system this year turned up the fact that 77% of students go no who george washington was. 77%. in a number of cities, libraries that closed for lack of funding and lack of interest. nobody is reading. last january a serious presidential candidate praise the founding fathers for, quote, working tirelessly to abolish slavery when in fact the founding fathers agreed that a black person legally constituted 60% of a human being and enshrines slavery in the constitution. this genius also claimed the u.s. government was colluding with the chinese to abolish will dollar. on august 18th after her victory in iowa she asserted the american people are concerned about the rise of the soviet union which is a threat in the present tense. i was surprised she left out hitler. he is poised to invade poland. it is also the case -- michele bachman is essentially a gym with. what is inside their h