Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome provost strom. [applause] good evening. It is my very great pleasure to welcome you to Memorial Church for this years lecture on a Meaningful Life. Honored we are deeply to have as our speaker associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg. [cheers and applause] this event, as you may know, has a rich history at stanford. Lecture that in a inry rathbun, a professor the 1930s through the 1950s, decided to give on the last day of his class one spring. The lecture was such a success that it turned into an annual tradition at stanford for many years until professor rathbun retired. It was revised in 2008, supported by a generous gift to the office of religious life by the foundation for Global Community which established the henry and Amelia Rathbun fund for exploring what leads to a Meaningful Life. Each year, a rathbun visiting fellow selected to come to stanford to deliver the lecture and spend time with our faculty,
[applause] thank you very much. Im glad you like the president. I like him too. [laughter] one of the finest man i ever ran across. Mr. President , mrs. Johnson, distinguished guests, you have done me a great honor in coming here today and made me a very happy man. This is an important hour for the nation. For those of our citizens who have completed their tour of duty and moved to the sidelines, these people are our responsibility and are entitled among other benefits to the best medical protections available. Not one of our citizens should be abandoned we dont want these people to have anything to do with charity or have them have an idea of hopeless despair. Mr. President , i am glad to have lived this long. [applause] at the signing of the medicare bill, it puts this nation right where needs to be. Your inspired leadership and responsiveness, forwardlooking congress, have made it possible for the state to come about. I thank you for coming here. It is an honor that i have not had f
As a tourist, as a former resident of washington, d. C. And a resident of other parts of the United States, and its just such an honor and a pleasure to be here as a speaker and to talk about my book pivotal tuesdays. Im also so pleased that you all exhibited this interest in a such an obscure subject that no one seems to pay any attention to, president ial elections. Why cant we get the papers to write about president ial candidates, i dont know. But more seriously, were more than a year away from election day. 2016. Or maybe less than a year now, arent we . But we have already seen some remarkable moments emerge in this election cycle. We have had a huge celebrity who put the political establishment on the run, a whole slew of outsider candidates on both the right and the left ends of the political spectrum. Were seeing how new media, social media is changing campaigning, changing the way candidates and the campaigns communicate to voters, the way in which voters interact with one an
War games that were waged, you know, between allied commanders, nato warsaw pact, the exchange of Nuclear Weapons was off the charts. The tactical Nuclear Weapons would be expanded to the point where in three or four days hundreds of them would be fired by both sides. So what were seeing in these kind of books i met hackett before he died, a great officer, captured at arnham, et cetera. But here hes writing a book about conventionally stopping the soviets. And i think there was sort of a fantasy about that, that we frankly still live with. We still have Nuclear Weapons in the world. We still are numb to this. And i wonder what you think about that. Because the reality is that when the war games occurred in classified settings, they would just shoot those damn things off and destroy humanity. Those god damn things off and destroy humanity. Thats not necessarily reflected in sort of techno porn books like clancy does, which are basically feel good things that sort of america wins. The ba
And had much stronger views about what should be done than and he thought that taft was just a little too much of a status quo guy. Yeah. Yes . Sometimes people think of the word pivotal as synonymous for the phrase turning point. Uhhuh. I was a little surprised you didnt mention that starting in 1932, democrats had a plurality or a majority in seven of the next nine president ial campaigns. Yeah. Starting in 1968, republicans had a plurality or a majority in five of the next six president ial campaigns. Uhhuh. And starting in 1992 democrats again had plurality or majority in five of the next six president ial campaigns. But thats not my question. My question really is, my question really is, is there something about substantial third Party Candidacies that exemplify pivotal election and should we expect this coming election will be pivotal only if there is a substantial thirdparty candidacy and probably not otherwise . Thats a thats a super question. I that is that is i hadnt thought