political commentator discusses free speech, america's debt and the growth of muslim populations in the west. mr. steyn's best selling works include his 2011 release "after america." >> host: and mark steyn n your 2006 book "america alone," where did that title come from? .. an elusive title he thought was for losers and guarantee we sold in 2008800 copies, he thought that was -- thought america alone was a hit title, and he proved right on that. >> host: what was your original title? >> guest: i'm keeping that to when i'm in a multibillionaire

and i can afford to indulge myself by writing books with oblique titles that sell 204,000 copies. >> host: what is the book >> guest: the book by my original title was on the same fame has "america alone" turned into which is civilization collapse. that is my little niche. i think with a good editor does which is what harry did for me is identifies your unique selling point and get you to focus on it. stop dancing around the issue in the first fifty pages. get straight in on this and that is the book. and he was right. >> host: you write in "america alone: the end of the world as

we know it" is hard to deliver a wake-up call to a civilization determined to smother the alarm clock in the pillow of multiculturalism and sleep in for another ten years. the folks who call my book alarmist accept that the western world is growing more muslim but they denied that the population trend has any significant societal consequences. >> guest: that is true. my book when it came out in 2006 the economist called alarmists. mayan magazine in canada called it alarmist. i think it was insufficiently alarmist. if you look for example at the netherlands you have explicitly muslim parties organizing local legislatures. if you look at the city of brussels a majority of people in the city council are muslim. i was sent a picture yesterday of the city of london, the

square mile, the biggest financial center on earth and the nearest muslim mosque is too small so they take the tram in the street and look towards mecca so on friday prayers the streets of central london is filled with muslims looking toward mecca and praying. you can argue that that is just as to the general gaiety of life in a multi-cultural society and you can argue that it is going to be a huge blessing or you can do as i do and a big question over the society. it is ridiculous to pretend nothing is going to change. there's a difference if you look at austria, by mid century it is predicted that a majority of austrians under the age of 30 will be muslim. that is where the vienna

demographic institute predicts. this is the most americans don't think about. if you say austrias they think of julie andrews from tehran with the nuns thinking hat have yourself a problem like maria. by 2038, how do you solve a problem like sharia? an inversion from head to toe in three generations. >> host: you note in "america alone" that one of the most popular boys' names in europe and several areas of europe is mohammad. >> guest: it has a pretty this significance in the muslim world. you can only get to that statistic with the different spellings, but in.of fact -- in point of fact it is a significant marker.

demographic transformation is always the most interesting because society's human capital is the best indicator of where the society is headed and generally speaking while we tell ourselves something reassuring stories about demographic transformation it doesn't always work out well. sometimes it works out in a relatively benign way. if you take northern ireland which is a place i know well the fractiousness between what catholics regard as the native population and an imposed protestant population still linger after hundreds of years. if you look at fiji were the british brought in indians and indian population to be civil servants and mercantile class, fiji became in the last couple

of decades tragically into a by cultural ruin. demographic transformation is always the most fascinating element of society. >> guest: why should we care? so what? >> guest: if you put it in those terms we shouldn't care. it is something that happens but it never happens entirely naturally. if you look in the southwest of the united states where cities that if you take certain cities on the edge of california that had a conventional postwar demographic and have become 1995% hispanic, this is a demographic that wasn't even in the 1960 u.s. census. that is a big transformation in a fairly short space of time and it has consequences. the why do you care question, i

think i say and "america alone" that is the benign view. we were talking about broadway just before we went on the air. like the david mary production of hello dolly with carol channing and he ran out of these sort of middle-aged blonde bronze so he put carol bailey in the lead and made it an all black cast. the songs are the same, the script is the same but it is an all black cast. people think that is what happens. the if you have a muslim netherlands or a muslim britain, there will be fewer perks, pubs will have to close but essentially it will still be the same and i don't think -- no serious person would argue that. >> host: the new paperback

version of "america alone," soon to be banned in canada. >> guest: i write from a claims magazine in canada or did at the time which is a combination of time and newsweek combined. the dentist's waiting room magazine, no offense to dentists. they published a big cover story from the book and the canadian islamic congress filed free human rights complaints in the problems of ontario and british columbia and at the federal human-rights commission and as a result of that had this bizarre experience of finding my riding on trial in a courtroom in vancouver in which they flew in expert witnesses to discuss the so-called tone of my jokes. my jokes in court case or were

they actually criminal and they flew in an expert witness from philadelphia and so-called expert witness from toronto. i am flattered to be on this show and discussing my three hours but when it becomes the subject of a criminal trial in a vancouver court room i thought that was -- the kind of literary criticism element of the case more than anything else. >> host: what is the sea icy and human rights commission? >> canadian islamic congress. one of the other interesting features of the demographic transformation, that is a reasonable name. something called the supreme islamic council of canada or the islamic supreme council of canada which always sounds slightly less friendly to me. i am a did an injustice. i used to be in the mailing list of the supreme islamic council of ireland who were rather

agreeable. there were other agreeable callers. i don't know what bolero would have made the tour michael coleman. i don't fight off the english oppressor. a couple of decades later the supreme islamic council in dublin but be that as it made his supreme islamic council in new south wales in australia. amazon their mailing list for a while. lot of these groups are concerned with islam beyond discussion. not only good things are bad things but in essence in muslim countries islam is beyond discussion and i think it is a fascinating topic to discuss and he should be allowed to discuss it. they file a human-rights complaint in canada. canada does not have a first amendment so speech is policeed by state bureaucrats which i think is an obnoxious idea and i

am glad to say we have managed to get sections change which is the relevant part of the canadian human rights code put on hold. a judge ruled the supreme court should take some view whether this was constitutional and in the meantime wasn't going to apply it and made the law unenforceable and i think that is a good thing. i am interested in free speech. i don't begrudge -- i run into all kinds of crazy opinions every day of the week including right here on c-span. i don't agree with them but don't want to criminalize them. that is all i ask. >> host: are your book about to be sold in canada? >> guest: they are i am glad to say still in favor in canada. that is sent to be banned in canada is not merely a book keys. the statutory penalty had the

canadian islamic congress won their case would have been a lifetime publication ban from a on writing and anything to do with islam, europe, terrorism, any of these issues. had someone been offering is long:the ballet, for their christmas season, i would have to recuse myself. it was up lifetime publication ban. >> host: how will the your books so? >> guest: "america alone" was the number-1 bestseller. i hope i'm not giving anything away but these books are focused on american politics. a lot of the ladies said you are the entire canadian branch office. it was a very successful title

up there. >> host: how did you get from 2006, "america alone" to your most recent book in 2011, "after america: get ready for armageddon"? >> my book "america alone" argued the other half of the western world, essentially europe was putting itself out of business due to this combination of demographic weakness and a social demographic -- democratic state. it had an upside-down family tree, unsustainable entitlements. for example in countries like "broadway babies say goodnight" and spain where you have a fertility rate of 1.3 people said what does that mean? it means four grandparents have two children and one grandchild. once you do that for a few years it becomes very difficult for you to continue to pay a lavish attention to a country where people retire at 52 or 53.

the whole thing -- by any reasonable measure those countries are insolvent. i argue my case so effectively and "america alone" that basically in 2008 the great people of the united states devoted to sign up for the same program supersize under obama and the democrats and the great clarifying thing in the last two years has been more and more people understand the stakes. america is spending itself off the cliff on a scale few nations have ever attempted. >> host: you write and "after america" you cannot wage a sustained ideological assault on your own civilization without grave consequences. we are approaching the end of the anglo-american moment and the eclipse of the powers that built the modern world. even as america's spending government outspends not only america's ability to pay for it

but by some measures the world, even as it follows britain into the dank hit of trans generational dependency a failed education system and unsustainable entitlements, even as it makes less and less and mortgages its future to its rivals for cheap chinese trinkets most americans assume that simply because they are americans there insulated from the consequences. >> guest: yes. i talk about the anglo-american moment because i'm trying to frame it the way the rest of the world sees it. the fringe intellectual class thinks that at two century anglo-american dominance is coming to an end. a particular view of the world that began -- not to intrude on personal grief but began in the battle of trafalgar and continued two centuries since is

coming to an end. the chinese take a rest broader view and think that half a millennium of european dominance is coming to an end and the world is reverting to a natural asiatic view of things. that is not a view weather on the american left or the american right, how americans look at it. i think the 1950 american moment which we are at the tail end of, the 1950 american moment, the second world war, the only developed nation whose factories and manufacturing had not been bombed to smithereens so it had a unique dominance hand as europe recovered and as china and india and brazil got into the capitalism game and the global trade game america still thinks of itself in the sense of that moment but it was just a moment and it was also as i say

in the book the smoothest transfer of global dominance in history. roosevelt extracted a very tough deal in return for propping up the british empire after the fall of france and if you look -- britain mortgaged its global networks to the united states, that is why you have norad in cheyenne mountain where canadian offices sit next to american offices and the alliance in australia, in the united states -- countries -- before the second world war what mattered was getting a good hearing in london, what mattered after the second world war was getting a good hearing in washington. this is the smoothest transfer of global dominance in history from britannia to her greatest if not probable sun.

people think of it as a sort of natural phenomena and. it wasn't. is a very rare moment in human history. the idea that it is going to go that way around in 2016 when the imf predicts that china will become the global dominant global economy is absolutely absurd. who is going to play america this time around? britain and europe's decline was cushioned by the united states. who is out there to cushion america's decline? there is no answer to that. >> host: you have a time traveler. how you put that together? >> guest: i use the time machine if only from the cheap movie version they make from time to time. this is a guy in victoria london who creates a time machine and

those 800,000 years into the future to discover a world where a humanity is divided into two species. it is a very -- of the way most futuristic fiction is the only thing ag will got wrong is instead of being 800,000 years later it showed up pretty much 100 years later. he was off by 799,900 years. other than that he was pretty spot on. i use a victorian time traveler and pitch him forward to 1950. eighteen 90 to 1950. i think of him -- don't think i made explicit but i was thinking of someone in my small town in new hampshire. great-grandparents' of some of my neighbors. if you propel someone forward from one of those houses 1890 to

1950 they would be astonished at the transformation. the automobile had -- no longer a took the best part of the day to go to the neighboring town and back. the electric light bulb had conquered night. now you could determine the length and duration of your own day. there's a wireless on the counter top, there is a device that keeps your milk fresh. you don't need the iceman any more. washers and dryers. telephone that rings and you can speak to someone on the other side of the continent. there's a big bird in the sky that will fly you across the ocean to london or paris. he would be amazed. the fundamental can't tour of his world, time and distance

have been reconfigured. pitch him forward another 60 years and he would be excited. what is it like in 2011-2012? in fact when he gets to 2012 the kitchen looks pretty much the same. the car looks pretty much the same. it has jacked up m p 3 player and more cupholders than it used to. the fridge has got an icemaker and 15 stupid stickers telling when to recycle which stupid stuff at the dump after recycling day but basically the telephone has buttons instead of a dial. nothing much has changed except for the personal computer which most people use in the all this huxley sense. for entertainment.

i find it very odd when steve jobs starts saying just before he died, people talking about the new iphone and various products and their great and they're terrific but there has to be more to a society than inventing a slightly smaller device on which to download justin beaver or lady gaga or whatever and i don't think we're making progress on that front. it takes longer to fly from new york to london than it did in the 1950s by the time you add in the shoeless shuffle. we are not making progress on a lot of these. >> host: this is booktv on c-span2. every weekend 48 hours of nonfiction book coverage and once a month, first sunday of every month we have our in-depth program and this month featured author is mark steyn. we have one of her on to talk about his or her body of work and mark steyn is the author of nine books.

here they are. beginning in 1997 with babies say goodnight" lead "the face of the tiger: and other tales from the new war" "from head to toe: an anatomical anthology," "america alone: the end of the world as we know it," "mark steyn's passing parade," "mark steyn's american songbook," "a song for the season," "lights out" and his most recent bestseller is "after america". mr steyn will be with us for the next two 1/2 hours. the numbers are on the screen. 202737-0001 in the east and central time zone, 0002 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. you can also contact us by e-mail at booktv@c-span.org or send mr steyn a week. are twitter address is twitter.com/booktv.

mr steyn, when did you start writing? >> guest: i started writing in school. i always like writing. it is difficult to be a writer if you don't because it is actually physically and pleasant work. certainly if you start in the days of manual typewriters and carbon ribbons and things it is physically unpleasant work to do and it is antisocial work to do as well. a lot of writers will live very dull lives. when i was a boy i liked riding and i like finding out about writers and the writers are like moseley had incredibly tedious lives. pg wouldhouse who was a prolific writer and marvelous writer and suspended lighter and had a boring life. he spent his life, six decades sitting at his home on long island. he would get up in the morning

and type and work daytime soap operas which he became inordinately fascinated by and go to sleep and do the same the following day. the ones are always hoped to be like, ian fleming for example, the creator of james bond early christian had a fascinating -- he lived in jamaica and liked to get up in the morning and he would write for a few hours and right eastern number of words and then go scuba diving with ursula and dress and have lunch with noel coward. wouldn't that be great? you type for a couple of hours and go scuba diving with ursula and dress and have lunch with noel coward. from 99.99% of ryder's it doesn't work out like that. >> how did you begin about writing about broadway musicals? >> guest: i always loved music.

i started as a disc jockey. i was in radio when was a teenager. i was a disc jockey. i wasn't a terribly good disc jockey and got fired. if you get fired and have no other skills, writing is one of the few things you can do. if you have no other qualifications that would command you to an employer, you should write. i wrote a piece and mailed it off and it got published and i got a check for a three figure from. this is great. i can live off of this for three month suspended in 48 hours stalin have to write something else and that became a habit. and i started writing because i had been a disc jockey and love the music, started writing about that area and again to go back

to talk about my favorite writers one of my favorite writers were songwriters. if you are a foreigner one way you learn about particularly the american language and the muscularity of the american vernacular is through popular solved. so i have always been interested in that. i started writing about that. it was a kind of undernourished area at the time i was doing it and i managed to find a little niche. that is good advice for any writer. if you write about -- their current of competitive. for in my generation a lot of people wanted to be like rock critics. 99 out of 100 guys want to be rock critics. then you decide you are the guy who writes about show tunes and that kind of thing. that is competitive and you can clean up while all the third

rate rock critics are working until soil. >> host: how the a transition from broadway to current events and politics and demographic changes? >> guest: at wouldn't have if all was going well. i started writing about show business type topics and i moved tv and movie criticism and after a while observant editors start to see that you will write about the political subtext of a movie or something like that and you start making interesting political points somewhere when you are reviewing schindler's list or something like that and you get moved into that fear but in my heart of hearts particularly since the internet

came along almost anyone can comment on that stuff. you don't really need -- there is a difference in journalism between you can't win it as a ballet critics. you can say at this point a woman in a pink fluffy sort of dress that isn't terribly long wearing funny looking shoes and twirled around for a bit and then she went up on one toe and sort of held it for a while and was impressive, you can't do that. if you're a ballet critics have to know about ballet. if you are in general -- general politics -- anybody with any which should be able to do it. it is a slightly less -- it is hard to do well but anybody can do it to an acceptable level. >> host: where did you grow up?

>> guest: i was born in toronto and at a peripatetic childhood. i went to high school in the united kingdom at token's old high school. i wasn't there at the same time as token. i did have his greek dictionary and i got briefly like anybody who lived in school near new hampshire i take an interest in school board politics and i am always amused when teachers come and say when using some of the same textbooks we were using in the 1980s as if the laws of physics have changed. i had a r. r. tolkien's's old dictionary which he had several decades and still going strong. soaker token did better than me. he got into the movie business. i am in the lower ranks of

impressive alumni. >> host: how did you get from canada to new hampshire and conservative politics? >> guest: that is interesting. i was on an overnight train, amtrak from montreal to new york and it broke down halfway and they threw us off the train and after a while send a van to collect us. it is nice around here. i went -- new hampshire i hadn't really thought about and certainly haven't thought about it in political terms. i was intending to buy a little ski condo for a couple weekends and in the classic disastrous real-estate story i came out 20

minutes later with a 200-year-old farmhouse and i loved it. i still love that farmhouse and i love the land and that is what i fell in love with. was interesting was as i got into the rhythms of my count i came to appreciate that the new hampshire system of town government is the best system of government known to man. so i came for the beautiful white mountains and the beautiful lakes and streams and houses but what i really loved was the system of town government. first, went to town meetings and i sat there and there was a proposal to build up $500 fence around the town dump and some old man stands up and says we don't need a $500 fence because we could get by with the $300 fence and everyone talks about

it for an hour and a come from a $360 fence. i thought that was a fantastic system of government. where it breaks down is when you get to the $16 trillion of debt. people -- the same old coot who would argue for an hour about beating of a $500 fence to $340 accept the $16 trillion is above his pay grade and you should matter if we add nine zeros. i wish we could find a way -- add it to the national budget. that is what it is. i came for the hills and lakes and stayed for the politics. >> host: mark steyn is our guest. the first call is massachusetts.

>> caller: unlike you to talk a little more about the american decline and do you think that means the united states has -- must share the wealth that it had dominance over for the last 50 years, has to share that wealth more with the rest of the world? >> guest: there's not much wealth left to share. when your $16 trillion in debt and may be tweet in time that in unfunded liabilities in terms of the entitlements you are mortgaging initially wealth but also power to your rivals around the world. for example you are in massachusetts. every single dam on the

connecticut river is now owned by a canadian company. certain ports in the united states are dominated by the chinese. the chinese are buying up resources allover world. if you live beyond your means you wind up without any wealth and that is the situation the united states is in. the united states has joined the rest of the western world in the voting itself a life style it has not earned and we have eluded the future to bribe the present. you can do that for a little while but eventually it catches up to you and that is the situation where and today. these are extraordinary sums of money. when you are talking about the federal deficit in 2011 of $1.6 trillion, $1.58 trillion is the official number, that is a

scale of overspending that is unprecedented. we make comparisons with greece but that is a small sum by comparison. and sharing it with the rest of the world, post american world is already being built before our eyes. the question is whether we are going to get serious about this colossal and i would argue profoundly immoral overspending before it is too late. >> host: mark steyn writes when something goes wrong european demands to know what the government will do about it. an american does it himself or he used to. if we can't do it ourselves when it comes to painting schoolrooms or building a bridges we should confine it to the least remote level of government. mr steyn, a tweet, talk about the heathens who live across the

river in vermont. >> guest: back to the story about the amtrak breaking down in new york, they flew us off on the vermont side of the river. i was so innocent in those days that i didn't appreciate the difference between vermont and new hampshire, the connecticut river makes. vermont is the beautiful state but -- i used to joke that vermont was america's leading canadian province but it is worse than that. is a decanted a for membership in the european union. ion fight anyone to travel up route 5 or historical roots 100 and stopped in the school houses. young families can't live in vermont. there's nothing to do. people think -- some of some -- somebody said years ago -- journalists in particular hate

coming to my state. some guy in the washington post said it is new hampshire primary season again. was a hellish state. getting up at 6:dirty p.m. in the evening is breakfast. has the most vicious newspaper in america. contribution to cultures motorcycle week. it is a hideous state where as vermont has the fluffy stuff like ben and jerry's ice-cream. but that is part of the multinational unilever. it has two old hippies fronting it but they say -- they are supporting the 99%. they are a part of it. there is a subsidiary of an anglo-dutch multinational. if there -- you would understand the point of it.

i ordered a stove because i had just done an event with howard dean. we were very vermonty together. i thought that would be great. just the sort of thing. the very name has that small town green mountain folksiness where we would sit around a wood stove shooting the breeze about it came from ontario from sinister canadian corporations. the business -- the state -- i have yet to be a young person in vermont. my young daughters actually -- just started high school. my town doesn't have a high school. she goes to vermont. it is -- not that happy to say -- is a public school.

what i find interesting is you talk to any young person in vermont they're all ambition is to work for nonprofit. what you going to do? i would like to work for a nonprofit. think of the kind of nonprofit -- community organizing or saving people from the virus in the congo. as long as it is working for a nonprofit. the entire state of vermont is a non-profit and the tragedy of the united states of america is it is becoming the world's largest non-profit and at a certain level that kind of civil -- we think virtue is doing some feel good activity rather than going out and creating primary wealth is destructive to society. >> host: next call from surely.

>> nice to talk to you. i feel like you are -- a lot of things you say are a caricature of the conservative movement. i don't see much depth in that but i wanted to ask you how you felt about the art programs. there's a sound bite put out by the conservatives called entitlements. when i think about -- there is a lot of untapped talent in america and a lot of beauty inside the dignity of many human beings. as you are very knowledgeable about the arts and things like that, it takes nurturing. it takes money. i wondered what you thought about where the money is going in america and why it seems to be the primary concern that the money aspect versus the

development of human dignity and the progression of civilization? >> guest: dignity is a very interesting word. i think it is worth sticking with that. i am not objective. this is where i have a few differences with my so-called fellow conservatives. i don't think this is a green eye shade issue. i don't think the debt is a green eye shade issue. it is not an accounting problem or a bookkeeping problem. is not something you give to h&r block. the broken this -- brokeness of america is merely a symptom. i dhicpri ser ìw situation, nor would many other western countries, if it weren't for the kind of people we are. that's actually far more -- that's a fairly obvious point

but one worth making. angela merckle, the chancellor of germany, everytime the greek greeks come and say we need more money, angela merckle understands that a basic level the problem in greece is not the finances but the greek people and that's the problem with the united states and most other western countries, too. you saw it, for example, in the riots in london last summer, which actually prefigured in "after america." i don't climb be a genius but my chapter on britain called "the deapproved city" which is an eerily prescient portrait of of people we are.w weeks later which people claimed to be attacking the rich and by the rich they met the guy -- often an immigrant guy, hindu or muslim who gets up in the

morning and goes to work and opens the corner store and stand there at 6:00 in the morning and works that store until 9:00 in the evening. these guys trashed those stores and rampaged through them and they didn't mean -- when they said they were, quote, the rich they didn't mean they were rich. they're not rich in a warren buffett cents. what they meant is they got up and went to work in a way that these people rising in the street had no need to. they were children of dependence were marinated in dependency all their lives. dignity is implicitly connected with somebody supporting themselves -- doing their job, findings so forth in that job, building a home, supporting

their family. that is where dignity a rises and what is horrible about big government is not that it debauches the nation's finances but ultimately it corrodes the soul of the people. that is whatever other conservatives may say i am not about the money. i wouldn't want these programs if bill gates wrote a check to cover them every month. it is what they do to the people that is the problem. >> host: mark steyn rights among america's believe there are many nonpolitical members of the american dream who just want to get on with their lives. for these people and others liberalism is the soft option. the one with all the nice words. diversity, tolerance and social justice, sustainability and the position that requires least be sending if you happen to be added dinner party and the conversation trends toward current events. if you have to have opinions these are the safe ones.

they're not really opinions, just the default setting of contemporary sensibility. you go on to talk about the bumper strip, exist. what bugs you about it? >> guest: it absolves you from having to think about the differences. if you think about it saying that we are all the same is profoundly insulting because it is not true apart from anything else. a muslim in yemen does not think he is the same as a secular gay couple in san francisco on their honeymoon in a bed-and-breakfast. he doesn't think they are the same. it is nice to think the nice they couple can live at 17 elm street with four child brides at

19 thome street but it is more complicated than that. i think multiculturalism absolves you from having to know anything. i was taught by multi-cultural list. i'm the last generation. a lot of the teachers who taught me, all kinds of cultures all over the planet. they knew all kinds of fascinating things about other cultures and if you are interested in other cultures, they paul is fascinating because it is not like connecticut. the jungles of new guinea are interesting because they're not like massachusetts. share something lazy about that coexist sticker which starts with the muslim crescent and has -- i forget what the 0 is, a peace sign and then it has got the star of david and one of them is the male and female symbol which has something to do

with transgendered bathrooms or something. it gets very complicated but the point is that is an attitude and i find attitude, the attitude alone, whether it is i think a mention in that book the guy was driving behind -- everyone drives it 15 miles an hour so you have a lot of time to look at that bumpers' sticker. a peaceful music bumper sticker. what is he on about? peace through music? the taliban band music. is he aware of that? he can sit on his porch and strummed his guitar and think he is making a contribution to humanity? is a bumper sticker absolves them having to think about humanity. i increasingly irritated by attitude.

i was at the airport and i saw a conservative guy with a don't tread on me tee shirt. threading all over -- have their hands in his underwear. he was being from all over in his don't tread on me tee shirt. attitude isn't enough. whether on a right or the left. >> host: next call from bemoaning. >> caller: you spoke about h. g. wells and steve jobs. what do you see in our future as far as the right to privacy? even though computers are getting smaller, we are living in sort of an orwellian big brother is watching all of us with a supercomputer and all the surveillance cameras out and about and employers checking through the computers and they know more about you than you may

even know yourself. >> guest: i regret to say in the c-span building, as i attempted to gain access to the building, it is very common in our world and i right about that in "after america". we are bifurcated and into two different societies. i'll always astonished at the number of government numbers and picture id you have to give for even routine transactions in society today, the idea -- always amuses me when you are at radio shack and someone is buying that radio and someone asks for the social security number and they give the number. astonishing to me. we are dividing into two different kinds of society. there's one part of the planet, everything is known about them.

we mention the security cameras. they're big on the closed-circuit television in the united kingdom. they're all over london. by some measure britains are more photographed than any other people on the planet accept the north koreans. an astonishing thing for a land that was once the crucible of liberty. at the same time there's another world in somalia or sudan where nobody knows anything. there is no record. the pentagon will send an unmanned drone over and drop a bomb on a village and if they were lucky they will get the right people or they might get a couple guys with a similar name to the people they were trying to bomb. those people are entirely off the grid as my new hampshire neighbors would say. you have these highly survey old people in the united kingdom and people who are entirely off the grid in somalia and what have

you. i find it interesting. apply that model to california, in california if you are in the lawful legal part of the community you are living as they are in london under a closed circuit television. you need permits for everything in california. it is a disgusting regime in california that criminalizes almost every activity. if you own a hardware store and want to get free coffee to your customers you can't do it without getting a billion dollars worth of permits to the health and safety board. they are regulated, inspected, watched constantly 24/7. at the same time there's a huge illegal population that does what it likes. you drive through the illegal part of town and there will be six different dwellings. left requires from the house to

a trailer to a large pickup truck and all kinds of people not in compliance with anything. like area codes in an american city, the population that has to submit to total control by the bureau and the other half of the population that gets on with it, the undocumented world. as america gets poorer you will see a lot of people deciding that at a certain point is more viable to move into the undocumented california version and live unmolested by the state. >> host: your right about permiteyestan. >> the tragedy is that turns citizens into children who are wards to the state. lbj's great society did that in

a way that strikes at the heart of the american idea. what was attractive to america, if you were a peasant in fourteenth century poland you were a peasant in nineteenth century poland. you would be at hasn't in 24 century poland. you come to ellis island and you live in a tenement on the lower east side but your kid moved uptown and your grand kid went to college and got a nice place in westchester county and your great grandchild got mixed up with john f. kennedy jr. and the cammed pimento wacko trying to destroy the great industrial strength of the united states that enable your family to move out. that mobility is destroyed by big government. we are becoming -- there is declining social mobility in the united states which strikes at

the very heart of the american idea. trans generational dependency is one of the worst examples of that. >> host: next caller's from charleston. >> thank you for another three hours of learning. >> caller: last summit talk to you was david mccullough. >> isn't this a great country? every state is so different and the earmarked talk about the differences between new hampshire and vermont, we always summer in maine which is a very independent state, former governor kean of men who is independent got me to start reading tom friedman's book and columns and mean as two women senators and the girls wonder if you can be a man and a senator.

completely different from new hampshire and vermont. when we travel to new hampshire this summer when the flooding was just terrible in vermont and new hampshire everybody came together to help. they truly came together even though murder for montand in new hampshire are quite different. in the parking lot at white river junction all the people were helping with flood victims. i wondered if mark steyn could talk about saint-gaudens national park. >> host: that is south of day. that is a beautiful part of the world. not far from where j.d. salinger used to live. i doubt very much he did three hours with peter in depth

because he was a recluse. what i would say about that is everybody knew -- you as a recluse like everybody knew where he lived. they might as well have had a sign on the interstate access, recluseland exit 9. you were talking about the community thing in new hampshire and for months and i would like to believe that. iowa as taught -- i was caught in the quebec ice storm in january of 1998. the city of montreal, all the lights went out except for the hydro-quebec building and at that point i thought we will be stuck here for weeks if we don't get out. we climbed into the car and snaked away south to the vermont border where the lights were

off. god doesn't know -- suggests he does know but he does not inflects different weather patterns on the province of quebec and the state of vermont according to where the border line happens to be. the lights were on in vermont because they were better at dealing with the emergency than the province of quebec had been. what was fascinating to me, i live in new hampshire. vermont is a decadent state that at that time i had been listening to the radio in montreal, why doesn't the government do more for me or repair this or that, the vermont radio stations were full of all this practical advice on how you could take steps to -- if you had no running water, things you could do to clear ice blockage

of the roof under all this and i think the expansion under bill clinton of the federal emergency management agency has actually been deeply harmful to the united states. not a big thing in the scheme of things but barack obama declared a federal emergency every -- work out something like every 2-1/2 days. we declare federal emergencies for absolutely nothing. i simply don't think -- i think that is a poor model on which to operate and when i watch the news in vermont legal waiting for this or that federal grant, come on! these are people returning from the french and indian war the persian returning from the surrender at montreal when a continent changed hands in the early 1760s, hacked their way