Powell's Bookstore: Jim Garrison on America as Empire

and it's good evening and welcome to a whole city of books before we get started and i'd like a few upcoming events on tuesday the twenty thirteen colonies mystery writer george or a prequel to his popular pei eric strain on thursday march twenty fifth scottish by writer richard morgan return is futuristic angels which imagines a world where human consciousness never dies instantly downloading into one body after the next and others april eight what it represented for move on the board reading from fifty ways to let your country how to find your political voice and become a catalyst for change and that's that their staple at and that event will take place at the first unitarian church at southwest well the avenue that

and more information about these and other vets please pick up an intense counter any part of those things or even genocide online at the lead of the billy kyles dot com and now for tonight's event in addition to becoming to being an accomplice political author and social critic john gerritsen is also the founder of president the state of the world or a nonprofit institution created in nineteen ninety five to establish a global network of leaders working toward a more sustainable global civilization in his latest offering america's empire global leader wrote our gym urges us to face up to the complexities and responsibilities and here by now an indisputable fact that america has become the world's single preeminent power as a sole superpower america must lead in shaping the new global order but the central question of america as empire is what kind of empire can and should america be please welcome jim harrison the

peak thank you all for coming this evening i think jerry jones like for their hospitality in their initiative in setting up the events here in portland it's a great honor to be your calls about the most famous bookstore certainly in the united states to be talking with you about what i consider to be the single most important issue with which americans need to clap and that is to understand america's relationship with the world one of the things that i have been observing or the last couple of years as i've been traveling abroad is that there's something fundamentally out of alignment in

america's relationship with the international community i get in canada over the last couple of weeks as part of his book too are infected in about thirty cities in the last two months talking about this book and all across canada and it's been an exhilarating experience out there talking about him higher at the beginning of a presidential election leading up to this november and election that i believe it is probably the most critical election in our lifetime i believe that there's actors onstage i believe that there's issues being profiled i believe that there are forces that have been unleashed pieces that are unprecedented in years ago and i wrote this book

because i believe that americans need to raise the quality of that dialogue about who we are and where we come from and what responsibilities we now have to exercise that we know the title america's empire sums up my belief about america i believe that the singular fact of the world today of america today in our generation is that the united states is not only the strongest nation in the world were the strongest nation in the history of the world and one of the most astonishing things to me is that most of the americans that i've been talking to over the last couple of months i don't even think about the fact that they're even americans

think about her own thought patterns over the last couple of weeks you think about your family think about your school your job your personal little issues of relationships how many of you thought i'm a citizen of the greatest empire ever assembled in human history and i had some responsibility for so for a few minutes tonight i'd like to address a poor as america except for those anymore you're american interests in just about every way yeah and there's a woman from france here but for a few minutes and i

i really what would address the american team and really kind of come to a higher understanding of the responsibilities that we now wheeled in the first question that i ask in the book is how did this country in our generation aggregate and it would sell more power than any other society recorded history we constitute less than four percent of the human population we produce upwards of forty percent of the gross domestic product of you tire plant we consume

upwards of twenty five percent of all the resources produced by our footprint is huge just take a couple of indicators in the last twenty four hours the average person in kenya and in most of the global self consumed less than one gallon of water in the last twenty four hours the average person in this room the average person around united states consumed between twenty and twenty five gallons for the average american produces ten times more global greenhouse emissions than the average person in china and twenty times more than the average person in india four percent of the human population we have a ten and a half trillion dollar economy we dominate the world militarily

politically economically financially scientifically technologically and culture in every single category on her it has never been done before and the fact that most americans are completely unconscious of respect is one of the major reasons for our current predicament are really wanna challenges tonight to think deeply for a few minutes as american cities and the first question i want to address which is the opening question of the book is why that happened here why didn't happen in brazil or china or russia or india has many

nations that are bigger than we are have more population and we are have far more resources than we are but it happened here are some very specific reason the first reason is that we have a sense of manifest destiny about being an american that has to do with living out our lives living out our ideals on the world stage version also sang it comes out of the nineteen twenties that would be a freshman is the fact to be an american is an ideal and i began to track down for my own edification where did we get this sense of manifest destiny it isn't happening in canada certainly isn't happening in mexico but there was years in canada and i asked a canadian audience audience about as large

as this that they had a sense of manifest destiny and the opera's don't laugh and then the gentleman in the backseat mr garrison we canadians are perfectly happy to be good neighbors if you think about it deeply you americans were not happy to be good neighbors we're a restless nation and we live out who we are on the world stage so as possible question and it never occurred to me before writing this book i asked the question who was it that was the first person in history to envision what america was destined to become i didn't find him in any history books until i had a

conversation with a very old friend of mine in washington and he said you need to read francis bacon and so i began to look that francis bacon in fact the last book that francis bacon wrote was a little book called new atlantis it was leslie left unfinished when he got francis bacon you may recall was one of the great scientists of his age he was the one that develop the notion of empirical science that is now the predicate of all scientific endeavor that you need to establish a hypothesis you need to experience the new test results that came from francis bacon in the seventeenth century he was also the chancellor of the exchequer the secretary of the treasury he was a great literary master of many scholars believe the francis bacon was actually the real author of the works of shakespeare

and he was also one of the greatest mistakes of his entire a deeply involved with the illuminati and rosa creations and the mace he was also a friend of sir walter raleigh we may remember from your vegetables sailed up and down the eastern seaboard is trying to establish colonies in nearly sixty hundreds and i wasn't very successful at that but ended up taking back to england what became known as the irish potato and tobacco this little book that francis bacon and finished writing the new atlantis tells the mythological story of a small group of sailors on a ship

leaving south america they get caught in a huge storm and they get lost at sea and when the storm is over they find that they bumped into a small little island that wasn't on any of the maps and they disembark and they go on the island their toll of this island is called the insular which if you know your hebrew means son of peace and it's ruled by the house of song who has dedicated itself to good governance by meditating on the line and in the course of the book they can shares with the reader that these this hour winds are descendants of the ancient environmental poetic civilization of atlantis and in fact francis bacon believe that the

native americans that sir walter raleigh discover going up and down the coast where the descendants of the ancient civilization of plants and he tells the story of atlantis about how at the beginning of time as the human race was beginning to grapple with what governor pence met rosa people on the continent of atlantis that sought to perfect governors through a meditation on life and they were fascinated with prisons and in fact they discovered through reflecting light through prisons that you could unleash absolute power just like the americans did in nineteen forty five when they split the air

and develop the atomic bomb and when the asian atlanta has discovered absolute power through fracturing life they develop power in every other dimension until such a point that the kings of atlantis seventh fleet across the pacific and a flight across the atlantic to establish world domination and at that point said they define wrath looking down on a civilization and caused a huge tsunami to rise out of the atlantic ocean and washed civilization way according to some of the ancient sages over sixty million people were wiped out in a single act would

end the collapse of atlanta's reverberated throughout antiquity plano talked about atlantis and the prettiest in attendance and the agent scholars predict that at a certain point in time to really be another society that would rise up and pattern itself after ancient lands and then with the ascendancy of the christian religion everything was lost and forgotten until francis bacon and in the last little book this great renaissance man wrote he said but whatever was gonna rise up in north america

was going to essentially be a calamity and in its most fundamental impulse and that like atlantis the society that was going to be built here would rise to global pre dominance and then at a certain point you would have to make the same decision between power for the sake of service of power for the sake of more power and depending on how it decide its fate and the fate of the earth was going to be to turn to points about the story that may not make any sense to you certainly didn't to me until i read that new atlantis became a bestseller over your winning bacon secretary published two years after that

and if you remember back to your history about america remember that the people that came in from your talk about this being the new atlantis the new at the new world the new israel the new jerusalem the other sect but i didn't know until i started to research the book is that you know they just under ninety percent of all the gentlemen that signed the declaration of independence that led to the revolutionary war were masons george washington benjamin franklin james madison thomas jefferson were all masons of the highest quarters for whom francis bacon was a great mentor of their age if you look at a dollar bill and they have but i do think

we are others get a few pennies here and there no that's on the back of dollar bill the great seal of the united states you know who dropped the great seal of the united states it was benjamin franklin and george marshall first you have it what is now legal in the original depictions of franklin was the phoenix and on the other side you have a pyramid and says no i'm a supporter of support the new order of the ages and what appeared it was in ancient egypt but here we have a duty to the washington monument depicted for the ancient egyptians a beam of light and the purity was the tip of a beam of light and at the tip of the tail is the all seeing eye of horus this was when benjamin franklin and george washington when they try to condense

down the genius of the revolution into a single i drew out for the american people in america has a sense of manifest destiny that comes from the deepest roots of human civilization a belief about profession a belief about power and a belief that at some point in our history some people will come together and create perfection honor that's what americans saw do and that's why people from all over the world initially from europe have come to american shores everyone in here that raise their hand saying that they were american is an immigrant we come from somewhere else america is one of the few nations in all of human history that is almost completely comprised of

people coming from some while they've come because there's injury to be a freshman has to be an american is an ideal and the ideals that we've brought to the world have been around democracy around free market economics when america was founded it was the only constitutional democracy in the world every other country was one article reporter it was the only free market country in the world every other country was marvelous and now if you look around the world almost every country zaire thousand democracy or is a democracy and the world is subsumed into a single integrated economic free trade zone that's because of american leadership in the world is what we do the final point about america's ascendancy

is that we have back up this sense of manifest destiny by building and implementing the most lethal military force probably in history every single president from george washington to george w bush has actively deploy troops abroad thomas jefferson our third president employee a permanent military squadron of ships in the mediterranean sea that they'd never let it's now known as the sixth week president monroe an eighteen twenty three the clear that the entire western hemisphere was now under the domain of the united states of america one of the most audacious act of chutzpah

probably in history in modern history for a little tiny country nearly four to declare an entire western hemisphere the long now and one of the other things that i discovered in my book is that even abraham lincoln at the height of the civil war deploying troops have a law and japan to keep the markets of america from the beginning has been a dynamic nation politically economically idealistically and military salute now in our generation four percent of the human population we now stand destroyed those with more power than in the entire nation fb so you think

this is what constitutes the second question of the book how does the united states compare with other imperial system what is it that constitutes the durability of imperial power is one of the things that you learned when you study of matter is that empowers can last an amazingly long period of time like rome or they can last an amazingly short period of time like the soviets seventy years like the nazi only twelve years and so the issue of the durability of pao is of fundamental importance for the united states having reached the apogee of that's because once you reach your average there's nowhere to go but

down so the real question before the united states today if you think about is how long we will last before we fall like every other impacts fall so the durability of our power is the extraordinary importance for us to figure out why in rome was what i study and in fact i think some remote a couple of the most interesting chapters in the book our governor's and wall and inside what the greeks did for philosophy and science and art they figured it out wrong last two thousand years they understood

what most empires did not that the durability of power is not simply about the supremacy of your allegiance is not just about military strike it's also about building institutions that are perceived by the government as fair wherever the roman legions where there would be universal application roman law and the law that rome bill was so sublime that initially western civilization ever since when i ask around the country which country develop the notion that you're innocent until proven guilty almost everybody says is what americans did this isn't what america is when tony is highest in the second century

ad the notion that you're innocent until proven guilty made using education amazing well amazing notions of citizenship rome endured because rome build institutions that are still perceived by the governor's there and just think for a moment what that means if i was there was that was dominance over this room i pulled out and everybody's instinct would be what fear that people would try to overthrow me and i sought to establish rules that everybody in this room basically said you know if you're innocent until proven guilty that sounds about right lippert is a paid in the system that we agreed that's a much more durable way to keep the

group in order but it's amazing how that the moment of power how few in the fires have understood that very simple truths about human nature that to the degree to which you include people that the degree to which you can rule so i looked around the world today the stratified his or any leader anywhere in modern times that understood this ancient roman notion a durable power and much to my delight and surprise it was franklin roosevelt and harry truman look what they get within the context of the roman notion of power they were fighting a terrorist that they were fighting a two front war against

imperial japan and against nazi germany even in the midst of that war before the united states assured a victory roosevelt was designing the united nations and before the war was even over united nations was established down sentences truman follow that up with them implementing the marshall plan to rebuild in japan and germany and you're building the bretton woods institution the world bank the international monetary fund to bring stability to the poor nations to bring stability to currency even built the nato alliance and a nineteen thirty two before he left office he established a general agreement on trades and terrors to regulate world trade if you look around the world today almost every single institution

major institution that frames international norms and procedures was built by these two american presidents using the national sovereignty of the united states do it wrong get number one consolidated military control but to then codify his control within institutions that the rest of the international community fundamentally perceived as fair most of the people around the world today whatever the mistakes and foibles of united nations believe it has failed even the world bank and the international monetary fund as corrupt and as they've become over the years which the point that i'll get to in a few minutes our police are perceived as fair by most of the nation and that leads me to the third and final question that needs to be raised and in the book and

it needs to be raised in this election and that is what should america do now given the fact that we have aggregated and were sold more power than any nation in the history of the world given what we know about the durability of imperial power having to do with building institutions egyptians here i want to suggest there are two things number one and i say this in italics at the beginning of the book and at the end of the book five gadget iran the single most important thing that americans need to do today now is to move beyond nine eleven

nine eleven is now being used as an instrument for a deeper i really malevolent agenda and let me just unpacked his very quickly with the following observations george russell mead in his book special problems makes the observation that you can understand being an american and four ways americans are jeffersonian we believe in limited government we believe in human rights we believe in letting people do whatever they needed it were isolationists the very important stranded there were also hamiltonian americans are about well from the moment the puritan set foot in new england from the mayflower americans have been about our position of well before percent of the human population we consume most

of what the world needs americans are also will sony and we believe as i indicated earlier that our destiny is to be lived out on the world's stage by woodrow wilson won like roosevelt but like truman americans fortunately are very jacksonian it's about showing the indians it's about a lightness about darkness it's about us and it's about them remember we wipe out indigenous populations with we swept from cds shining see were the only nation in the world to drop a nuclear bomb we just to do iraq we went around the world the other side of the planet we took on the fourth largest military in the world and we deconstruct the country in less than two weeks using precision guided technology warfare

that the world had never seen if you think about what happened and i know president clinton was a classic hamiltonian you think about the way he and robert rubin the secretary treasurer ran the economy and the country at the end of his tenure there are surpluses in government and surpluses of two to three trillion dollars or afar he can see bill clinton didn't get past monday monica lewinsky probably ran the most affective government and economy in modern american history the nine eleven incident we went to workers what your calls in and huge roman we went into a deep jacksonian imports the world understood that

the world acclaimed and we said a few weeks later that we were going to take out the taliban in afghanistan the entire international community unanimously supported that and ten weeks after september eleven the taliban were no more took the russians teen years to get defeated in afghanistan and we took up a government and occupied the country in ten weeks that gives you a measure of the imperial mind of this country then president bush went into rock and all of a sudden the whole consensus supporting the united states began to deconstruct walk because there was another agenda operative

in the neo conservatives around the president it was not about getting even for nine eleven it was about using an event to justify the assertion of a new pre empted unilateral us policy that was essentially military units attention to operating with people in the bush administration that say that if given eight years the bush administration will have eliminated rogue states and consolidated such an integrated military infrastructure around the world the united states can maintain complete global power of the next fifty seven they believe it can be done by military application forms and that's what the europeans understood and that's why the

europeans france germany russia's and others refused to give the sanction to go into iraq internally if you look at what's happening it's the same mentality that is seeing free democracy as an increasing impediment to effective governance that of the patriot act and if we elect george w bush to the second administration we're going to have more war on terrorism more preemptive unilateralism and more construction of the national security state here inside our borders the jacksonian and bolts in any culture is a very dangerous in parts and i believe it is time for us to move beyond it and reconnect for the jeffersonian and the hamiltonian and most importantly the will sony aspects of who we are as american

the second point i want to make which is the most fundamental point but i wanna make for this entire evening and that is that the jacksonian impulse comes as dangerous as it is when you realized the following situation about american power that the united states has become the strongest nation in history precisely at the moment when history is moving beyond the nations and that's what the cumulative effect of globalization is all about that the nation state is becoming more and more porous it's becoming weaker and so this disjunction between the

strongest nation state and globalization in history moving beyond the nation's state is simultaneously exaggerating american power even as it undermines it and that's where the image that i use in the book is the image of a mighty fortress which surely we are or on shifting say if you look around the world today there are between twenty and thirty major global problems ozone depletion global warming deforestation water scarcity you know that there's more water refugees in the world today the war refugees there's a giant be a sars and other pandemics base of poverty you know two thirds of the human race lives on less than a few dollars a day and you know two thirds of the

human race has never made a telephone call you know in the last twenty four hours to thirty five thousand children died in the water and hunger related diseases all of which are preventable that's what poverty is a member or four percent of humanity and we're consuming all this is the amazing contradiction in the world is organized crime hirsch trafficking in body parts there's the sex slave based provider for shoot problems social environmental political and the critical ingredient and in addressing all of them is at the international institutions built sixty years ago are no longer effective in articulating response

so quite literally the world is on a collision course with the cell and the major social political economic problems out there are metastasize and what we're going to see over the next ten years twenty years is a rising crescendo crises like nine like an injury a light source like bird flu interacting with one until there's a complete collapse of the entire system because the institutions are no longer resilient enough to deal with and the world for the last hundred years has been looking to the united states for the leadership in these kinds of crisis after world war while president wilson helped craft the league of nations after world war two the second major global conflagration

again america rose up and dealt with the whole issue the next generation what i call global governance to leno and build the next generation of global institutions or now sixty years later and a third great crisis of globalization and we're out there chasing they're passing the patriot act and refusing the kyoto accords dismantling the existing protocols and chemical and biological weapons scuttling the un treaty on small arms undermining the nuclear test ban treaty george w bush has withdrawn from or treaties and more grievance that any president in the history of our republic the reason why the world was having such an allergic reaction to the united states right now is

not because the world was anti american it's because they're seeing the president of the united states after a hundred years of american leadership in building international law deconstruct the very institutions that wilson and roosevelt and truman and of all the presidents since then have very assiduously constructed remember row he keeps a premier power at a military level which you build it within institutions that the rest of the world perceives there and now we have a president is deconstructing those institutions sewing an artery around the world and then talking about coalitions of the willing as being sufficient or a very dangerous time warner very dangerous time that's why i said at the beginning i was sitting in this election coming up is the

most critical election in our lifetime because how we decide is going to determine not only the next phase of development here in america but because we now stars expanded the colossus astride the globe is going to determine the next phase and that's why when i read about francis bacon and i read that the greatest man of his age a genius among geniuses calling the vision of the regional medical a civilization and said it's going to happen again here and at a certain point that nation birth to exercise global power is going to come to a choice plan

and as it decides like ok atlanta's it will see you think that here is my friends we are the generation that rise hasn't received an alarm and that that we need to own it we need to understand that we note that of democracy in america needs nothing else use that in the un we the people not the present we the people are the ones that are responsible for filling it the peak it's been

eight years as someone who's a mystery to many of us who understand that is because a rock near the george w bush press and i think that in the year two thousand there were some logic to believe that those between twenty million to leave the people that know who george bush jr was they thought he'd be sort of weaker version of his father people were suffering from what jesse jackson cole prosperity out or ran and unbelievably campaign and i could understand i was bored

ralph nader i didn't but i almost didn't i could certainly see a lot of that when you consider that in florida after they finished with the check out george w bush won by twenty fifty six votes ralph nader in florida alone got ninety thousand votes in new hampshire george w bush won by seven thousand votes and rob neyer took thirty thousand they're projecting that the election now will be possibly even closer than it was in two thousand and are already talking about florida you know if jeb bush is going to do and for the polling that's out there indicates that the democrats john kerry is ahead in all the states that now court what that

means is that we've got to get one more song who carry she uses as his vice president is really critical but there's something that's even more critical in that you the thing that is going to win or lose this election is why in every speech with my little rap on democracy is who's going to get out the most votes karl rove understand that i can't tell you what the republicans are doing at underneath the radar because they know not only wanna quit give bush four more years since nineteen eighty they've been planning for this election because they believe they can do in two thousand for for the republicans what roosevelt did in nineteen thirty two to

usher in a whole generation of dominance by republicans by roosevelt meant for the democrats in the state houses among the governors in the house of representatives the senate and the presidency that's what's at stake in this selection so anybody here who's not registered registered and between now an election time every single person who cares about america if you care about america you need to make a personal commitment to get as many people to the polls as you possibly can any able bodied american over the age of three years old asked to vote early and often for the reasons i've just cracked we get the vote out even rob neyer here in

la i said in the two thousand elections i totally understood that myself i'm so fed up with the gore campaign i didn't fully understand george w bush was very sympathetic to make i think many people progressive americans were her questions about two thousand for and i believe in that nader understands at that there's a difference we know there's a difference between what more would've done and what bush has done and i think for ralph nader put himself back into the arena knowing that the election is going to be this close knowing that two

times in a row he'll be responsible for possibly one of the eye really one of the worst president in the history of our republic i think is a very very troubling thing at the level of his psyche at the level of hubert's i just i just don't think it's it's acceptable i wrote him a letter patel also and it's a free country memorable tear i disagree absolutely with your right to disagree and i'll defend to the death your right bill is back

he was born you're raising an important observation about

american politics i don't think i would speculate on and how it's going to play out and i think that the two party system has very deeply embedded in any american political economy and i don't see it moving to multiparty system anytime soon we ran a two part system since very shortly after that the beginning of our republic and somehow rather that's how american democracy evolved into it they're straight so that system as a lot of the weaknesses that system but i think it's not going to change anytime soon right you're wrong but i don't see here in law that are here for you

and i ms banes be i'm a republican

oh sure it's b carrie thank you

i know there's a number of people have also wanted to speak so you're the triple comments in the last year was well you know they go oh no no

no the fbi let me just join him and

some of the other points as well it is very important for those people they are very serious critical united states to consider the following it would be like if the nazis what would the world be like if the soviets had won a call or not a very pretty picture in the polling that they do around the world if you know or whatnot survey we've been following in the new york times and around the country two days ago even people in pakistan and egypt and jordan saudi arabia

who hate america winner ask is there another country that you would like to replace america everybody says no america is a great power an amazing pollyannish to work was to follow me but i believe america is a great power the reason why we're great is it's obviously true that we committed genocide against our native people we de stabilize latin america says eighteen twenty three we just didn't last week an heiress and with very steep it went into afghanistan we supported noriega and panama are some most in nicaragua we overthrew again they insure way we've fought in vietnam

dropping napalm completely destroyed cambodia america as committed many previous simmons we didn't put six million jews in the past weekend incarceration millions of people ask you at a level of america's very complicated one of the things that is the genius of the american system and i don't go into it for hours because this is this is a beautiful part of our system remember bacon bacon wrote the first real estate what they call realistic utopia he replayed ot read thomas maurer to read these other they all rest on changing human nature in some miraculous way to everybody

acts like that francis bacon says that never happens and there's two requisites the government's first japanese figure it protect people from other people that i please have a lot yet to figure out how to protect the people from the government i mean it's a very complex thing this notion of governance and when the founding fathers created a constitution they created a system that as soon as the darkness that assumes the shadow side but fractured power through the system with such exquisite he notes that they are all kinds of white america has become so great it essentially because it's so which isn't to say we don't have a shot of side but it's to say that we need we have a sound

system that allows a fuller multi dimension out what it means to be fully human than any other people whoever designed the government of us of of society and that's really important that comes to your point about who it is it's come up with its unilateral preemptive this idea to study in the book about the neoconservatives did know or is this common for certainly not come from george w bush i mean the kindest thing i would say about george w bush is that he has a very uncomplicated mine so in all my republican friends agree it is endured in fact i want to take you a good republican and conservative friend who says that every time he sees george bush he remembers the time in the texas saloon battalion got so

drunk he crawled up on top of the bar pull his pants down and movie everybody was in the bar and a lot of art and he says he remembers every time he hears latest at you new research i so we're giving comfort it came from dick cheney when the berlin wall came down and then the soviet union collapsed was dick cheney in nineteen ninety one of the end of nineteen ninety one that said the president bush sr mr president you need to understand we have no more in an after fifty years of the cold war fighting the soviet union we have no more in and what are we going to do with this moment it hasn't happened since roe hasn't happened for two thousand years when any nation has emerged is so strong it has basically

no peers were you know poor moment that hasn't happened in two thousand years to president nixon decision so what they did is they put two groups together in the pentagon one headed by paul wolfowitz and won it by colin powell and paul wolfowitz said they seize the moment consolidate complete military control and then you expand what he called the songs of peace and the sounds of democracy but the first requisite degree at the struggles of the soviet union is the united states has to signal the rest of the world it will not tolerate even the movement torta competitive how you think what we went through for fifty years of the soviet union and mutual assured destruction or some

watching my friends in the united states saying nobody is going to take the place of the soviet union not china not russia not europe that's a very compelling logic after you've gone through fifty years of cold war paul wolfowitz is not an evil man he's a man who's thinking very deeply about america and believes that what we have to signal first is that we will allow more competition at the level of geo strategic and military way that's what iraq was demonstrating to the world we can do this in place and we can do it and by that and i think that my argument with the bush administration is not that we have military

supremacy i believe america should have it's better that we have been anybody else but were not military power is necessary but it's not sufficient we need to be called a pioneer in the next generation of global institutions that's what the bush administration lacks is the wisdom of implied and i what i say in the book is that we would understand that we need to build a third generation of global institutions we can make it obsolete the need for empire and the united states could go down in history as the final which will be an extraordinary likeness rest of me so this preemptive this is unilateral is the same miscalculation that other

empires have been guilty of in is one of the reasons why the last of such a short period here in port and we're all you know he says being here and now

maybe a couple more condos one line or was that there is there an engineer and then i'd go vote all remember that sir it has been the camel's back off by the problems

became a week i think you can file it

ok let me babies think about some concluding remarks about the now it's getting late first to say to the gentleman in the back my view the world is that it's a very complex someone like george soros the bank of england has been stabilized currency is in nations around the world cause massive privation absolutely and with his brilliant as he is he has done probably more than any other single person or government in eastern europe to really try to root democracy in those regions of the world one of the things that i

believe about human nature is that we're very complex inner relationships between light and shadow dimensions as to the degree that we can appreciate that and ourselves and appreciate that in others that we develop a kind of maturity that allows for compassion and forgiveness and what are your goals in the jewish where we'd gradually over time own more more aspects of ourselves and instead of seeking perfection we see coleman's and i believe that america the greatness of america unlike that of the nazi germans unlike that of the soviet times is that we have a system

that allows for a fuller dimensionality of what it means to be a jew i don't stand up here as a tenth generation americans say that my country is better than any other country my country in many ways been the worst week dropped atomic bombs we also developed the marshall plan we build the league of nations build most of the global institutions that currently regulate international norms and procedure the world is just beginning the process of building the kinds of institutions at the global level that are necessary to regulate human interaction the league of nations was very primitive united nations the imf the world bank the wto are very very

primitive institutions it's going to take several other iterations before we refined the instrumentality of real social and political integration i personally believe that the greatest experience currently happening on the planet in a region that i believe that could serve plant the united states as a global leader is not china but you're if you look at what the europeans are doing now with the european union they are working on more integration act more levels simultaneously than anything that ever even been attempted in all of human history between disparate states

and that experience is very profound it's very messy it's going to take time but what ultimately the world will evolve if not in this next century and a century after that that is the mechanism that will facilitate integration and what is so deeply disturbing by the international community about the united states right now is at the moment when we need to develop the governments of integration through new kinds of if institutions our president is out there chasing terrorists and militarize in foreign policy deconstructing human rights here in the united states and is transacting a retrograde step at a moment of

crisis when the only thing that's going to solve a crisis is to move into the next phase of the integration itself that's the critical mistake that the neo conservatives are making they believe that what the united states needs to do now supplying military force that's why iraq is turning into a fiasco that's not the move that we should be making the mood we should be making as i say in the book is the president should not deconstructing the united nations he should be bringing to the world community to new york and say as the founder of the united nations we're going to stay here in new york until we either reform it so that it's relevant and the same thing is true of the imf and the world bank and the wto eccentric sector or these are these institutions are going to be disbanded the united states can do that that's the power that we had and the world if you go around the world and that's the kind of leadership that the world really wants

and i believe that we can do it ask why i call in the book for new roosevelt or something fundamentally un american my friends about living our lives in fear and this hit me like a diamond bullet on christmas day when i was eating roast turkey with my family and we were talking about the orange alert and all of a sudden they hit me this government is telling us to celebrate christmas in the new year and hiking and all the sacred passages at the end of the year within the context of an orange alert that's straight out or well and it offends me as an american remember what roosevelt said there's only one thing you have to figure and that is fear itself and at some point threw some way we americans have to re connect deeper than whatever

jacksonian impulse would have been caught and the groundswell of hope there's characterizes says the times of francis bacon thank you speaking korean