Tucker Carlson is always in the news.

This time it’s because he trashed Donald Trump over his foolish attack on Iran and because the New York Times went all the way to Maine to interview him about it.

Over the years, Carlson’s views have been famously hard to keep track of, constantly changing and tough to pin down. His latest criticism of Trump’s warmaking is just the latest example.

The vintage Q&As

In the mid-2000s, long before he became the King of Cable on Fox, and even longer before he was fired and became his own internet network, I interviewed him four times when he was co-host of CNN's "Crossfire."

Carlson, who called himself a neocon in those early days, is now one of the strongest critics of America’s serial interventionism in the Middle East and our government’s current unconditional financial and military support of Ukraine.

Since 2005 his political positions, while still conservative, have shifted around quite a bit, which he freely admits.

Here he is talking to Reason magazine about libertarianism and his fondness for Ron Paul when Paul was running for president in 2007-2008.

In this interview from October of 2022 with Fox’s Will Cain, Carlson explains how ashamed he is now that he was so wrong about supporting the war in Iraq and how much he dislikes the incompetent people who are in charge of our country. Iraq, he says, was the beginning of his break from the “conventional” Neocon/Republican viewpoint.

Here’s an interview from March 2023 with one of his former colleagues at FOX who asks him about journalism, the covid vax and his airing of footage of the ‘insurrection’/riot of Jan. 6, 2021 at the Capitol that Democrats had kept under lock.

Here’s where Carlson lives. Here he is at age 12 — or so he appears — on C-SPAN in 1995, when he still wore his trademark bow tie.

As he told the Atlantic in December 2019, “There’s no topic on which my views haven’t changed, because the country has changed so much. And what I have learned is that a lot of the things I believed were totally wrong, a lot of the information that I was basing my opinions on was wrong, or dishonest, false, even fraudulent in some cases. A lot of the things conservatives were saying at one time have been completely disproven.”

When I talked to him on the phone nearly 20 years ago he was the Carlson we know today — always upbeat, well informed, friendly, funny and happy to give me 15 minutes of his time no matter where he was.

The following interviews appear as they did in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, where every Saturday for about eight years I talked to smart, newsworthy and important Americans like Milton Friedman, George McGovern, Jane Jacobs, Molly Ivins, David McCullough, Ron Paul — and Tucker Carlson.

2003

Tucker Carlson finds his niche

Everyone else who appears as a guest or a host in the MSNBC/ CNN/CNBC/FOX News talk-and-shout sector has written a book, so why not Tucker Carlson?

As a real writer, as an actual trained journalist who’s written for places like The New York Times, Forbes and New York magazine, he’s actually qualified. Carlson’s “Politicians, Partisans and Parasites,” while alliteratively titled, is not much of a test of his reportorial skills.

It weighs in at only 192 pages and it is basically a humorous quicky-memoir of how a young conservative staffer from The Weekly Standard with a two-pack-of-Camels-a-day habit became a TV talking pundit and co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire.” I talked to Carlson last week via telephone:

Q: Shouldn’t you be working for Fox TV by now?

A: Nooo! What? Fox is dying for more conservatives on their air? I don’t think so! You’d definitely have the “coals to Newcastle” problem there.

Q: Give us a 60-second sound bite about your book.

A: Mostly it’s a book about the experience of working in cable news, which is not a unique environment, but a pretty different one. It’s ad hoc. It’s a “45-seconds-to-airtime,-good-luck,-buddy” kind of thing.

There’s a lot of ad-libbing, and it’s risky in the sense that there’s no five-second delay. You screw up, and people see it. It’s an exciting and interesting environment filled with smart and, in some cases, deeply eccentric people — and nobody ever writes about what it’s like, so I figured I would.

Q: Speaking of “deeply eccentric,” tell us a little about James Carville. You’ve seen him in action on and off TV.

A: I think he’s a riot. I don’t hold him responsible for a lot of the things he says. I’m not even sure he’s aware he’s saying them a lot of the time. I admire James because he is one of the few people on television who will actually say what he thinks.

However outlandish or demented it might be, he’ll say it. I like that very much. He has the courage of his convictions, even if they’re horribly wrong, which they are.

Q: You’ve got some heavyweight blurbers on the back of your book — P.J. O’Rourke, Christopher Hitchens, (presidential candidate) Al Sharpton and William Kristol. Who did you have to pay the most?

A: (Laughs) Well, with Sharpton it was a pretty clear quid pro quo — my support for his blurb. You’ll also notice that he’s going to be rewarding me with the chairmanship of Amtrak if he wins. He cracks me up. I don’t think he’s in danger of becoming president.

I went to Africa last month with Sharpton and (Harvard prof) Cornell West and a bunch of guys from the Nation of Islam. I had a marvelous time, but one thing I learned is that Sharpton doesn’t hate white people. He just hates white liberals.

Q: Really?

A: Oh, he hates them. He hates them so much that he’s planning on giving a prime-time speech at the Democratic convention in Boston next summer, thereby humiliating his party. That’s how much he hates them. So, we’ve got a lot in common.

Q: What about William Kristol. You worked for him for six years. What are your politics, and how do they differ from someone like Kristol?

A: They’re pretty closer to Kristol. I think of myself as an Episcopalian neo-con. I’m supportive of a vigorous foreign policy. I like Israel. And I’m conservative. I’m more socially conservative than I am economically conservative. I’m more upset about abortion than taxes.

It’s hard for me to believe that children who are viable are aborted in this country. You’d think people would be chaining themselves to buildings and lying down in the streets. You’d think the mall would be filled with protestors, and it’s not. I don’t really know why.

Q: At one point Robert Novak and other fellow conservatives deemed you too liberal to be on “Crossfire.” Did you prove that to be wrong?

A: I guess I’m liberal to the extent that I like Israel and I don’t hate people, by and large. I’m actually quite conservative. I’m just not that interested in the Republican Party. The fortunes of the party and my interests just don’t intersect that much.

I’m not a partisan. On a lot of issues I care about, the Republican Party consistently sells out. I don’t care one bit for the Republican Party. I vote for it most of the time. I’m an ideologue, not a partisan.

Q: “Crossfire” was always ripped by newspaper and magazine critics for all the yelling and shouting. But Michael Kinsley once said that “Crossfire” was the only place on TV where the guests were really grilled and not let off the hook.

A: See, I think the world has changed. Now there are a number of forums on TV that ask difficult questions. I don’t think we have a monopoly on that. The monopoly I think we have now is in literal balance. There is no single megalomaniacal host of “Crossfire” telling you the way the world is who goes unchallenged. There’s not a single phrase you utter on that show that isn’t challenged by a smart person trying to make you look stupid.

So that environment causes you to really think through everything you’re going to say. If I had my own show, it seems to me, you run the risk of indulging your own hobbyhorse theories about the world, and essentially there’s no one there to call “bull****” on you.

Q: You become Bill O’Reilly.

A: That’s kind of what I was trying to say without saying it. That’s exactly right. You become kind of a humorless solipsist. … On our show, one side may inherit a weaker position than the other on some nights. But always there are two sides evenly matched. I think out of that tension between the two sides, viewers get a better sense of what the debate is.

Q: What’s the worst part of being on a highly partisan debate show?

A: The worst part is when we don’t argue, but instead name-call. That’s not fun. It’s not good to watch. It’s very tiresome. It’s embarrassing. And I hate it when we do that.

Q: Do you miss writing as a full-time job.

A: Yeah, a lot. No, that’s not true. I don’t miss writing. Writing is torture, obviously. But I do miss being on the road. I miss going places and seeing people and hearing things I had never heard and meeting some people I didn’t know. I miss getting on airplanes and going to weird countries and seeing stuff.

Q: How long do you see yourself doing “Crossfire” or that kind of show.

A: I have no idea. I’ll probably wind up juggling in a street fair in Ottawa or something. I literally have no idea where I’m going to end up. I’ll do it till I get fired or I get bored, whatever comes first.

2004

The Iowa Caucuses

The Iowa caucuses are hard upon us.

So who better to call for the latest inside-the-porkway poop on which Democrat is going to win than Tucker Carlson, the co-host of CNN's "Crossfire"?

Carlson, a fine writer and straight-talker whose book "Politicians, Partisans and Parasites" recounts his crazy career in cable news, was in Los Angeles yesterday for a little R&R when he answered the Trib's desperate call for professional analysis.

But he'll be back in Iowa for Monday night's too-close-to-call primary, where Howard Dean, John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, John Edwards, Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich are still fighting it out before heading to frozen New Hampshire.

Q: Where did John Kerry's lead come from all of the sudden? Has his wife Theresa been throwing her money around?

A: No, I don’t think that’s it at all. He’s been dormant this whole time, waiting for what has happened, which is the Dean Meltdown.

Q: So you call it the “Dean Meltdown”?

A: No question.

Q: How does it manifest itself?

A: A Dean Meltdown is the point at which adult Democratic voters finally realize this man cannot be elected president.

Q: And all those pork farmers and meat-packers in Iowa have figured that out all of the sudden?

A: I think they have. People were excited by Dean, but all of the sudden they have caught hold of themselves and realized this is an incredibly irresponsible choice.

Q: Do these tracking polls, which now show Kerry has a slight lead, have any reliability at all?

A: No, they don’t. They’re not specifically predictive. One poll or a series of polls is not going to tell you who is going to win. However, taken together, they show a trend pretty clearly – and the trend is the collapse of the Dean campaign.

Q: Is it more Dean’s personality or the issues?

A: I think it’s both. Dean was a guilty pleasure for a lot of angry Democrats. His positions on foreign policy, his inability to leave a thought unexpressed, added up to the perception that this guy could just never be Commander in Chief.

Q: Now are we seeing the rise of Kerry or is he a blip?

A: I honestly don’t know. I bet on Kerry early. I put money on Kerry. I know Kerry. I thought he’s by far the most plausible opponent for a bunch of different reasons.

I mean, look: If the center of the Democratic critique of Bush’s foreign policy is that he has alienated the rest of the world, it kind of implies that you’re going to have to nominate someone else who can, like, I don’t know, make up with France. Right?

When you look at Howard Dean, is he really the guy who’s going to bring the French back? I don’t think so.

It’s going to be an election run on pretty serious issues, as far as I’m concerned. This election is going to turn on the question, “What is America’s place in the world?” It’s not going to be an election on prescription drugs or the silly transient issues that no one is going to remember a decade from now. It’s a big election, and Dean is an angry little man.

Q: Can you explain in English what a caucus is for those of us back here who don’t ever want to take part in one?

A: Despite having attended a number of them, I’m not sure I can get all the details right. But essentially it’s a bunch of Iowa voters gathering in, say, the basement of a school, and arguing – publicly -- about who ought to be the nominee. Ultimately, I believe that each caucus place has to come some consensus.

Q: There are 1,900 of them.

A: Exactly. Each one has to pick somebody. The key difference between a primary and a caucus is that you can change your vote once you get there. You can come to a caucus site committed to, say, Kucinich, and leave having supported Dean.

Q: Was Dean right when he said that these caucuses were basically for political insiders and controlled by special interests, or was Time’s Joel Stein right when he said it was a boring “dorkfest” for people who get their kicks by doing jury duty?

A: It’s both. Because Stein’s right, Dean is also right. In other words, because it’s such a difficult, cumbersome process, the activists control it, because they are the only ones motivated to go. It’s so difficult, you have to have a very high level of intensity to participate. And the higher the level of your intensity, the crazier you’re likely to be.

Q: If Dean loses, will that mean the end of him?

A: Yes.

Q: If you had to bet on a winner now for the entire nomination, who would it be?

A: Kerry.

Q: Really?

A: Yeah.

Q: Kerry’s obviously going to do better in Iowa, but does that give him legs for New Hampshire?

A: I think it does. On paper, Wes Clark is the best-situated to win the nomination, simply because Iowa and New Hampshire represent the nation a lot less than South Carolina does, and Wes Clark is a much more natural South Carolina candidate than John Kerry is.

However, there’s something really wrong with Wes Clark and anyone who’s spent, say, 20 minutes talking to him perceives that. I don’t think that’s percolated down to ordinary newspaper readers yet, but it will.

Q: And what is that “something wrong”?

A: I’m not sure. I flew across the country last night with a close friend of mine who is a big-time Democrat. We talked about it between Miami and L.A. the whole time almost: “What is it?”

I’m not sure we were able to put a finger on it, exactly, but there’s something missing. He’s too purely driven by ambition. He is ambition in search of an idea, really. He’s very smart. I’m sure he has a higher IQ than anybody else running. And he certainly has a more impressive resume in some ways. Have you talked to him?

Q: No.

A: I really recommend it. It’s absolutely worth going to one of his events. There’s something absolutely wrong with him. He does not hear questions. He will not deviate from what he’s trying to say. It’s bizarre. He’s a pod person! I can’t explain it.

I like almost everyone who’s running for president. I know them all. Most of them are likable persons. They’re career politicians. They didn’t get there by being unlikable, right?

Carol Mosley Braun – delightful. Whatever else she is, and she’s a lot of other things, she’s totally charming. Most of them are that way. Dick Gephardt is a pretty nice guy. John Kerry -- good guy. There’s something wrong with Wes Clark.

Q: That’s scary.

A: It is. I’m not kidding! The hair on my arms stands up every time I deal with him. He was at CNN, so I’ve dealt with him a lot. It’s very strange. That’s not decisive. A lot of weird people have been elected president through the years. But he’s too weird.

2005

Tucker Carlson talks

Tucker Carlson’s new 9 p.m. MSNBC talk show, “The Situation with Tucker Carlson,” is only a month old, but it already has been trashed by The New York Times.

The Times’ TV critic, who obviously didn’t appreciate “The Situation’s” fast-and-furious pace or the illiberal politics of its libertarian-leaning conservative host, called for the show to be canceled after two weeks.

More objective viewers, however, would give Carlson credit for developing a smart, politically balanced and often funny hour of civilized TV debate and commentary on the big news and issues of the day.

I talked to the affable former co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire” by telephone on Wednesday from his MSNBC offices in Secaucus, N.J.:

Q: Why should we watch your new show as opposed to the other cable news/talk/shout shows?

A: It’s more interesting, funnier and probably more informative.

Q: Is it too good-natured?

A: Is it too good-natured? Is it not nasty enough? (laughs) It’s just not nasty enough? It’s just not unpleasant enough? Yeah. It’s one of our major problems.

Q: How do you define your politics?

A: I would say probably closer to Pat Buchanan than anyone else. I would say I am a traditional conservative. I am completely opposed to the war in Iraq.

Q: You were for the war until you went to Iraq. Then you came back enraged.

A: I was enraged because it sort of brought me back to first principles — my own. And it reminded me that the only good reason to go to war is in self-defense — or to protect the physical integrity of your country. Look, I have grave concerns about government’s ability to do things well. I don’t trust the post office to deliver the mail and all of a sudden you get conservatives trusting government to create a brand new society in a place that has remained unchanged for thousands of years.

Q: Talk about social engineering. I thought conservatives were supposed to be against that stuff.

A: Exactly right! The idea that I get called “liberal.” I can’t think of a subject on which I’m liberal. … I’m much more libertarian on drugs than maybe some conservatives. I’m not for the death penalty. It makes me uncomfortable to give the government authority to kill people, except in self-defense, because I think that power has been misused. I’m adamantly against abortion. I don’t see why people say I’m liberal or a moderate. I don’t feel that way at all. People assume that President Bush speaks for all conservatives. That’s absurd.

Q: Who would you like to see be nominated to fill the Supreme Court vacancy?

A: (Antonin) Scalia, by far, is my favorite justice — so someone like Scalia. The president said that the nominee’s opinion on Roe v. Wade will have no bearing or won’t be the deciding factor. I don’t know why not. It’s wrong. It’s outdated. It’s undemocratic to have the Supreme Court decide for every state what their abortion policies ought to be. I’d like to see a genuine conservative get the job. The president is under all this pressure from the right to appoint someone other than (Attorney General) Al Gonzales and I’m glad.

Q: Tuesday night on your show you sided with Moammar Gadhafi on Africa’s permanent poverty problem.

A: Yeah. I did side with Gadhafi on Africa. Africa has been hurt rather than helped by handouts from the West. You lose your dignity when you live on charity. Objectively, Africa is, by almost every measure, worse off now than it was in 1960.

So how has independence helped ordinary Africans? It hasn’t. I think it’s basically a welfare continent with some exceptions — Nigeria, South Africa, maybe Botswana. Most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are very poor and heavily dependent on Western aid, and that’s bad.

One of Gadhafi’s points was “Stop begging handouts from the West,” and I think he’s absolutely right. And his other point — that aid is bad because it comes coupled with requirements that you liberalize your government — I disagree with. The problem with Africa is bad leadership, obviously. It’s not the West. It’s not white people. It’s African leaders — and they’re terrible.

Q: Now, the Valerie Plame CIA case. Judith Miller of The New York Times went to jail to protect her source. But Matt Cooper of Time is going to testify before the grand jury, and Time turned over his notes in the first place. Is this a dangerous capitulation by journalism?

A: I think it’s scary. Apparently, Matt Cooper was released by his source to name him to the grand jury. That’s fair. But I think the whole thing is insane. This is an example of why an independent counsel is a scary thing. … I think the whole thing is scary and overblown. If I were Judith Miller, I would have split for Paraguay. I wouldn’t hang around and go to jail. I don’t think you have a reason to abide by unjust laws.

Q: How did the liberals at PBS treat you during the year you had the “Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered” show?

A: They were really nice to me. They were always really nice to me. Nobody ever told me what to say or what to think. They were appalled by my opinions sometimes, but they didn’t say much.

Q: How do you gauge the conservative-liberal balance or imbalance at PBS?

A: Well, it’s overwhelmingly liberal, obviously. The measure that matters to me is, “Do they let me say what I want to say?” And they did.

Q: What’s it going to take, ratings-wise, for MSNBC to keep you around?

A: I have no idea. I haven’t felt any ratings pressure at all. I think they understand the show has rolled out at the beginning of the summer. They’ve had all sorts of different kinds of programming in that 9 o’clock spot for a long time. They understand that it’s going to take time for people to find the show, and they seem patient enough to wait for that. And I’m grateful.

2008

Democrats have no excuses

September 13, 2008

Tucker Carlson hasn’t been as easy to find on cable TV since MSNBC axed his show “Tucker” in March.

But the former co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire” and trouble-causing conservative political commentator still works as a senior campaign correspondent for NBC’s liberal-tilted cable channel.

Carlson, an excellent writer and reporter whose stories have appeared in Esquire, The Weekly Standard and The New Republic, has during his career managed to tick off everyone from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to the Republican Party.

Known for his non-partisanship, he told the Trib in 2005 that his politics “were probably closer to Pat Buchanan than anyone else.” Though he has strong libertarian leanings and became a strong opponent of the war in Iraq, he calls himself a “traditional conservative.” To find out what he’s been doing and get his take on the McCain-Obama race, I telephoned Carlson Thursday at his office in Washington:

Q: We’ve heard that you’ve professed your love for Sarah Palin but has she saved the Republicans from certain defeat in November?

A: No. But she appears at this point to have made possible a victory. Put it this way: It would be shocking if any Republican won this year but she clearly has helped.

Q: Do you know anything about her or her politics that everyone else in North America hasn’t heard already at least 10 times?

A: One of the reasons I love her is I know so little about her.

Q: Do you plan on going to Alaska to check out her background or go through her garbage or whatever?

A: I’m trying to figure out how to bring my fly rod and get up there, yeah. It’s salmon season. You know what I’d like to do? I’d love to do a piece where I follow her footsteps in fishing — where I fish in every spot she’s fished in.

Q: Last December you wrote a nice on-the-road piece on Ron Paul for The New Republic. Do you think you’ll have a chance to do anything like that on Sarah Palin?

A: I probably couldn’t get within three counties of Sarah Palin now. It’s funny. Two weeks ago you could have gone out to dinner at Sarah Palin’s house. But now I think I’d probably be tasered if I got within 100 yards of her.

Q: Palin seems to have really — what’s the cliche? — “resonated” with Western Pennsylvanians, who are socially conservative Reagan Democrats who are mainly white. People are really connecting with her and vice versa. She’s like someone from around here in some ways.

A: In a lot of ways. She’s pro-life, pro-gun, pro-union. It’s an unusual combination, and I can see why she fits in perfectly there.

Q: You’re not a partisan Republican?

A: No.

Q: If you were, what would you be most worried about Palin. Obviously questions about her experience are out there.

A: If the press is really going after you. If you’ve got 3,000 people, each hoping to make a career based on tripping you up, you’re going to be tripped. If you’re talking in public a lot, and people are gunning for you, it’s inevitable that you’ll make some grave error.

Q: Do you have any sense that the Obama juggernaut, if in fact there was one, is starting to lose its wheels?

A: Definitely, they were caught off guard (by the Palin choice). They’re still running against Hillary Clinton. I’m not attacking them. I understand why. But they were taken completely off guard by this. They don’t know how to respond. This was news to the press because obviously most reporters in Washington are for Barack Obama, I would say. There are probably only three who aren’t.

But it turns out not everybody in the country is an Obama fanatic, and yet a lot of Republicans didn’t like McCain. Palin made it possible for Republicans to like McCain again. So all of a sudden you see this surge in support for the McCain ticket because of Palin and the Obama people just didn’t know how to respond to it.

Q: You were an emcee at the Ron Paul rally in Minneapolis. Does this mean your libertarian streak is getting deeper or wider?

A: No. It’s remained constant lo these many years. Organized groups of libertarians — it’s such a big tent that it tends to allow some unfortunate fringe elements in.

Q: The 9/11 truth squads?

A: The “truthers,” yeah. I was repelled by them so I left midway through. I think Ron Paul is a completely sincere, interesting, thoughtful, decent guy. And I like him. I don’t agree with everything, but I agree with a lot of it and I think he’s a genuine guy.

But Jesse Ventura got up and started ranting about the United States government and how it’s likely responsible for 9/11 and it was an inside job, and I thought, “That’s disgusting.” I don’t want to be around that, so I left.

Q: Do you think Ron Paul’s campaign will have any effect at all on Republicans in the medium or long run in terms of economic policy or limited-government kind of thinking?

A: You’d hope so. You’d hope that someone would call Republicans back to their roots and remind them that it was once a party based on individual liberty and small government.

Q: Do you dare to predict how this Obama-McCain race will end?

A: Well, I’ll say this: If Democrats lose, they just need to think of a more profitable profession to get into. There’s no excuse for Democrats losing this election. None.

Q: Yet they seem to be doing their best.

A: They’re trying hard. If he had picked Hillary Clinton, this would not be a race.

And years later, after I drove 11,276 miles around the USA in the fall of 2012 for my book Dogging Steinbeck, I reviewed Fallows’ book Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America for Reason magazine. His account of flying around the USA was not a good book, travel or otherwise, and I wrote so.

In fact I called it a plane wreck.

Q&A with P.J. O’Rourke

Adam Smith for Dummies

Pittsburgh Trib, 2007

On the Wealth of Nations by P.J. O’Rourke (Atlantic Monthly Press)

Adam Smith’s seminal 1776 masterpiece explaining the magical workings of free markets is riddled with economic and social truths that still hold up today.

But trying to read “The Wealth of Nations’ “ 900 dense pages is an endurance test for even the most serious modern reader – or prison lifer, for that matter.

Atlantic Monthly Press has solved that problem by hiring satirist P.J. O’Rourke to dig into Smith’s opus and tell the rest of us what it’s about.

O’Rourke’s wit, journalism skills and economics acumen make him a good choice for Atlantic’s new series of “Books That Changed the World,” which kicks off Jan. 10 with the publication of his lively exegesis “On The Wealth of Nations.”

I recently talked to O’Rourke by phone from Washington, D.C.

Q: What’s the sound-bite synopsis of Adam Smith’s epic?

A: Well, that it’s really about freedom and morality and not actually about economics is really the one sentence summary. So when one is sent to read it as an economics thing, it’s like, “Dude, this is like 200-and-some years old. What did he know? He didn’t have an iPod….” But his book is really about why we put up with a free market.

Q: You actually read “The Wealth of Nations” and its predecessor, “A Theory of Moral Sentiments.” But let’s stick to “Wealth of Nations.” Does it hold up?

A: No let’s go back one book, because “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” being somewhat more abstract, holds up brilliantly. I mean, there’s not a word wrong with that thing today.

You can read that today with the same number of “ah-ha” moments, because it’s about the fundamentals of human nature. It’s a brilliant work of ethics and psychology and philosophy, but not the kind of philosophy you have to use numbers to understand.

It’s a damn good book. It’s a sort of self-help book, too. Clean up the language – you could hit the best-seller list with this one. I probably wrote about the wrong book.

The “Wealth of Nations,” of course, is fighting some battles like the intellectual battle about whether gold and silver have intrinsic value, as opposed to notional value, that are long-gone stuff. So there are sections of “Wealth of Nations” that are moot – though it’s not that they don’t hold up.

Q: Is there any single most enduring truth from “The Wealth of Nations”?

A: Oh, totally. When Smith starts out right at the beginning about how you have to allow for the human desire for self-betterment or self-interest. And how you have to have freedom of exchange between people.

That is so fundamental, not only to making an economy work right, but just to any decent democracy or society. Yeah, it blows you away how clearly he puts this.

Q: I’ve tried to read “The Wealth of Nations.”

A: It’s a slog, there’s no doubt about it. I don’t really recommend it.

Q: But you can find chunks of it and quotes from it referred to by other famous people. It’s like, “Who needs Hayek? Adam Smith said everything back in 1776, just in different words.” It seems like everyone has stolen from Smith – who apparently stole from others before him too, right?

A: Oh, definitely. He owes a huge debt and he makes no claim for tremendous originality. Friedrich Hayek would be the first to tell you that. If Hayek were around, and you said that to Hayek, he would agree completely. As would Milton Friedman.

Not about certain academic work that Friedman did -- and ditto for Hayek. These guys did all sorts of stuff we don’t understand – about price curves, Phillips Curves, Phillips screw drivers and heavens knows what.

But as far their stuff that any of us understand – “The Road to Serfdom” or “The Free to Be You and Me” or whatever, they would be the first to say, “Yes, we see so far. But we’re not even midgets standing on somebody’s shoulders. We’re head lice looking out from Adam Smith’s wig.”

Q: Who should be forced to read the original today – which politicians or East Coast editorial boards?

A: All of them. All of them. Right, left and middle of the road. It’d be easy for me to pick on the leftists, particularly about protectionism. But any understanding of the fundamental philosophical and moral and ethical groundwork beneath free markets seems to be just absent.

The world these days has a Clintonian view. It’s not that they disagree with market freedoms, but they regard it as teleological – as a means to an end. “Why do we want free markets? Because they make ordinary people more prosperous.” That isn’t the point. The point is, either we are free and equal or we are not.

Q: Is there anything Smith wrote that you think he would be ashamed of today?

A: Well, not ashamed of, but there is stuff he is wrong about. Especially when he gets into specific policy recommendations. Essentially the whole last book of “The Wealth of Nations” is nuts-and-bolts policy recommendations. He is self-contradictory in there. He is often wrong.

It shows the problem that no matter how good your ethical and moral foundations may be, when it comes to making those recommendations on the sewer board about whether or not to build a new aeration plant, they are viciously tricky.

No amount of brilliance as an economist, a philosopher, a moralist, an ethicist or prose stylist necessarily grants you the right view. At the moment that he wrote this book, you could have taken him to task for some of his stuff and he probably would have agreed.

Q: Is there anything Smith wrote about that you completely disagree with?

A: Well, as I say, there are specific policy recommendations about taxation and education. He’s very confusing about state support in terms of religion. But it would be tactical disagreements rather than strategic – it’d be detail stuff. But no, there is no whole side of his thinking that gives one pause.

It’s not like Hume. Hume is this incredibly admirable and sensible man, but he insists that he is an atheist. Smith doubted him a bit on this – they were great friends. But Hume maintained that he was an atheist and so you go, “No. I just can’t agree with that.” But there’s nothing like that in Smith, who is, incidentally, very coy about his religious ideas.

Q: Is there anything funny in “The Wealth of Nations”?

A: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Smith has a kind of dry, slightly academic sense of humor. But there is this wonderful passage about refuting the idea that we should always try to get more gold and silver and always try to export consumable properties so as to increase our hoard of gold and silver, which is our real measure of wealth.

He said, you know, you could say the same thing about pots and pans. They are real durable too. So why don’t we manufacture and keep more pots and pans? Yeah, he can be quite funny and quite cutting.

A pull quote from O’Rourke’s book:

O’ROURKE ON SMITH

“Unfortunately, Adam Smith didn’t have graphs. Hundreds of pages of The Wealth of Nations that readers skim might have been condensed into several pages that readers skip entirely. Another thing Smith didn’t have, besides graphs, was jargon. Economics was too new to have developed its thieves’ cant. When Adam Smith was being incomprehensible he didn’t have the luxury of brief, snappy technical terms as a shorthand for incoherence. He had to go on talking through his hat until the subject was (and the reader would be) exhausted.”

The synopsis of ‘On the Wealth of Nations’ at Amazon was no doubt written by O’Rourke:

In ‘On the Wealth of Nations,’ America’s most provocative satirist, P. J. O’Rourke, reads Adam Smith’s revolutionary ‘The Wealth of Nations’ so you don’t have to.

Recognized almost instantly on its publication in 1776 as the fundamental work of economics, ‘The Wealth of Nations’ was also recognized as really long: the original edition totaled over nine hundred pages in two volumes—including the blockbuster sixty-seven-page “digression concerning the variations in the value of silver during the course of the last four centuries,” which, “to those uninterested in the historiography of currency supply, is like reading Modern Maturity in Urdu.”

Although daunting, Smith’s tome is still essential to understanding such current hot-topics as outsourcing, trade imbalances, and Angelina Jolie. In this hilarious, approachable, and insightful examination of Smith and his groundbreaking work, P. J. puts his trademark wit to good use, and shows us why Smith is still relevant, why what seems obvious now was once revolutionary, and why the pursuit of self-interest is so important.

April 7, 1997

In June 1998, U.S. News’ owners sacked Fallows — who wrote a 19-page letter to his staff….

April 28, 2007

Bob Chitester, the public TV producer famous for bringing his friend Milton Friedman’s pro-capitalist series “Free to Choose” to PBS in 1980, is living proof that you don’t have to be liberal or based on a seacoast to produce quality programs for PBS.

Here’s the Q&A I did with Milton Friedman. Plus a clip from Uncle Miltie.

As president and founder of Free to Choose Media (www.freetochoosemedia.org), a nonprofit foundation in Erie, Pa., Chitester runs a multimedia production house that creates documentaries, classroom material featuring ABC’s John Stossel and, lately, Internet content that all carry an openly pro-market, libertarian bent.

“The Ultimate Resource,” currently running intermittently on the high-definition channel HDNet, is a one-hour documentary that lives up to the foundation’s mission statement to explore “the concepts of freedom and wealth creation through expert storytelling and high-quality presentation.”

Filmed in such exotic locales as Ghana, Peru and Estonia, it shows how the world’s 4 billion poor can lift themselves out of poverty if they are given access to free markets, strong property rights protections and the rule of law.

Soon to appear on PBS stations, “The Ultimate Resource” features such inventive thinkers as micro-financier Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. I talked to Chitester by telephone on Wednesday:

Q: “The Ultimate Resource” has a pretty obvious theme or message. What is it and who was it aimed at?

A: Obviously, the target for the program is the world. We began the project with the stated objective that we want to create a program that would speak to every human being on the face of the Earth.

Our goal was to reinforce what most individuals believe and feel, which is that they have the capability to achieve some great things -- to achieve a life that is positive and good for them. I think most people in the world feel they can make tomorrow better than today for themselves.

What we were trying to do was emphasize and focus on that, and to also point out some of the things that would stand in the way of an individual achieving that outcome.

Q: And what stands in the way?

A: Well, barriers to trade. If there are barriers to trade, people can’t maximize their output. If people have a skill, a skill that is only useful to or of interest to a limited percentage of people in any specific population, then clearly the larger population they can reach, the more likely they are to get the maximum return from their skill. You can only do that, therefore, through free trade.

Obviously, globalization is a very positive thing because it expands markets for human endeavors that appeal to only small numbers of people. It is really minorities -- in terms of their skill sets and what they are interested in doing -- who are the greatest beneficiary of globalization in terms of giving them more opportunity.

Q: What makes Free to Choose Media a unique production company?

A: We are unique in that our mission is to advance the ideas of a classical liberal society -- a society based on private property, voluntary association and free markets.

We believe that the evidence of the past century or two clearly indicates that those societies that are built on those principles end up being the societies in which the average citizen has a better quality of life, a more fulfilling life, than any other society we’ve yet been able to figure out.

Q: Are you trying to teach, persuade, proselytize?

A: We are trying to open people’s eyes to ideas that they’ve not been exposed to and to do so in a way that is consistent with their own commonsense assessment of how the world works and their personal experiences, so that they are exposed to these ideas and they then say, “You know, I hadn’t thought about that before. That seems to make a lot of sense.”

And they then are open to continue to investigate these ideas as they go forward and hopefully, in doing so, the ideas will begin to have an influence on how they behave as members of the political constituency of whatever nation they are in.

Q: Why did you start Free to Choose Media?

A: It isn’t so much that I started a production house as that I had the good fortune of meeting Milton Friedman and persuading him to undertake, with me, the creation of what became “Free to Choose,” the PBS series that went on the air in 1980.

Many people think that the TV series was based on the book; that was not the case. The book would not have existed had we not created the television series.

Literally from that point on I have been engaged in any and every activity that I was capable of conceiving of and finding the resources for to advance the ideas that Milton presented in that TV series and book.

Q: In a nutshell, what are your personal politics?

A: In a nutshell, they are very similar to Milton Friedman’s. In an answer to that question he said, “Well, I’m a Republican capital “R” but a libertarian small “l.” I don’t absolutely consistently vote Republican but I would tend to do that. I am fundamentally, though, a libertarian.

Q: Back in 1980 did it take a miracle for a guy from Erie, Pa., to get an openly pro-capitalist series like “Free to Choose” on PBS?

A: No, it didn’t take a miracle. What it took was John Kenneth Galbraith having done a series called “Age of Uncertainty.” In doing that series, he thereby created an environment in which it was just politically not possible for PBS to turn down a series on the other side. There was so much made of the Galbraith series.

It did not hurt our situation that the gentleman who introduced me to Milton Friedman, Allen Wallis, chancellor of the University of Rochester, was at the very same time chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He shared my view that the Galbraith series demanded a response. As it turned out, there was enough clamor in the nation that PBS do something that they went along.

Now they did not give it as favorable a placement as they did Galbraith. Galbraith went into what they then were calling their core schedule, whereas Friedman was put on the air Friday evenings following the “Rukeyser Report” because in PBS’ eyes “Free to Choose” was finance or something like that.

Q: Is PBS more or less hospitable to your politically incorrect ideas about capitalism today than it was in 1980?

A: I would say there is no change. The culture at PBS is still decidedly not interested in the ideas we are trying to put forward. But you have to be a very astute and careful listener or viewer to understand what I mean by that.

Bill Moyers may be the exception because to a certain degree he has been certainly fairly direct about his own views. But most of the programming on PBS, like “Frontline,” like “Nova,” etc., will tell you they are neutral and that they are offering all sides.

The bottom line is you have to do a really careful analysis to see how in word choice, how in the characterization of stories, etc., that there is a left-of-center orientation. It’s not blatant.

I think that is one of the mistakes, by the way, of those who share my view that federal funding of PBS ought to come to a screeching halt. They try to make the case that there is this outrageous, blatant liberal advocacy on PBS.

There is none of that. It is much more subtle. I have a real concern over what they do but it is not the same kind of blatant advocacy that some people claim.

Q: You have a two-hour project in the works on Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto. What’s so great about him?

A: Well, Hernando De Soto has spent the last probably 20 years running around the world saying that one of the key factors standing in the way of people advancing themselves is the lack of officially recognized property rights.

As he said in his first book, “The Other Path,” which was written as a counter to Peru’s Shining Path (communist guerrilla movement), in Peru you have in effect crony capitalism, mercantilism, where most of the people of Peru are just pushed away. They are kept out of the economy.

The way they are kept out is that they have no official standing in the society; they have no property rights acknowledged by the government. But he said if you were to go in the barrios or out in the countryside, the dogs knew where the boundaries were.

When you walked from one person’s plot to the another, a different dog would come up to you. But if that individual tried to sell that property, he couldn’t because he had no title to it.

All their neighbors knew it was their property. All their neighbors knew that for three generations that family had had it. But they had no official credentials that would allow them to in any way benefit from it.

That’s basically what DeSoto’s work has been. He’s been expanding on it and refining it -- and we’re going to document it and share it with the world.

Here’s the interview I did with DeSoto.

Saturday, Nov. 8, 2003

Does the USA Patriot Act -- which gives government law enforcement and intelligence agencies sweeping new powers to defend America from foreign and domestic terrorists -- trade away civil liberties for more security? Or is it just what we needed to prevent the next Sept. 11?

Paul Rosenzweig, a Heritage Foundation legal fellow, and Vic Walczak, chief legal counsel for the Pittsburgh chapter of the ACLU, will debate the pros and cons of the Patriot Act at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Room 204 of Duquesne University’s School of Law.

This week I asked each of them the exact same questions:

Q: Let’s say I met you at an airport bar and asked you whether I should be thankful or frightened about this thing called the Patriot Act? What do you say?

Vic Walczak: It’s a mixed bag. There are some good and necessary changes in the law. But on balance, the threats to freedom and civil liberties outweigh the benefits.

Paul Rosenzweig: By and large you should be thankful. Let’s remember that the greatest single victory so far has been that there hasn’t been another attack. It can’t all be laid at the doorstep of the Patriot Act, of course. The efforts to disrupt terrorism overseas have been substantial, and they have probably a far more significant effect.

But the one thing everyone should realize is that the one thing that every review of pre-Sept. 11 that we’ve done said is that we have had insufficient coordination between our intelligence branches and our law enforcement branches. The one great success of the Patriot Act is that it increased that coordination.

Q: What is the worst thing you can say about the Act?

Walczak: There are two major dangers posed by the Patriot Act. The first is that it reduces meaningful court oversight for law enforcement agents’ invasion of people’s privacy rights, such as telephone and computer communications, health and medical records, student records, business and financial transactions, etc.

Second, it shrouds much of the government’s law enforcement activities in secrecy. So that if and when abuses occur, they are difficult or impossible to detect.

Rosenzweig: The worst thing I can say about the act is, to a large degree, it is wildly misunderstood. It has become a symbol for a lot of other things that people are concerned about. They’re concerned about enemy combatants, concerned about immigration, concerned about the terrorism information awareness system — none of those things are in the Patriot Act itself.

The worst thing about the Patriot Act is that the administration has let it become a caricature for everybody’s fears.

Q: Is there any example of something the act does that either steps on or threatens to step on our civil liberties?

Walczak : Lots. I’m trying to pick one.... Normally, before government agents can invade people’s privacy in their homes, in their communications, in their various records, they need to demonstrate to a judge that there is probable cause that the targeted person is involved in some sort of criminal wrongdoing or has evidence of a crime.

The Patriot Act wipes out, for a whole category of investigations, the probable cause requirement and the meaningful judicial oversight.

For instance, the government could come in and search your home and download your computer information and get information from the library about what you’ve been reading and get your medical records - even if they cannot show that you are a criminal suspect - and they wouldn’t have to tell you they had done all of that.

Rosenzweig: Actually in the Patriot Act itself? The one I would pick is the potential misuse in its definition of what constitutes a domestic terrorist threat. It defines domestic terrorism, and it defines it in a way that is intended to capture Timothy McVeigh -- using violence to terrorize people. But it defines it in a way that if misused, is potentially applicable to Operation Rescue or Greenpeace, who sometimes do much-less violence but things that are violent - blocking abortion clinics or boarding ships.

Q: What is most absurd attack on the act that you’ve heard?

Walczak : Absurd defense? (Laughs.) That “It promotes civil liberties.” Isn’t that what the Heritage Foundation is saying? That’s absurd. It may promote security, but it doesn’t promote civil liberties. Another is, “Even though we are getting lots of power, just trust us not to abuse it.”

Rosenzweig: It’s a toss-up between the angry librarians and the so-called sneak-and-peek, so I’ll take sneak-and-peek, just for fun. Sneak-and-peek is really known as “delayed notification.” It allows the government to enter your house, but not tell you that they’ve been there immediately -- of course, only with the permission of a judge.

It has a lot of good uses. That’s how we put a bug in John Gotti’s eating club in Brooklyn.... We’ve been using this for over 30 years to fight Mafia dons and drug lords and things like that. It’s absurd to say that we shouldn’t use it to fight terrorists.

Q: Are the opponents of the act, and the backers of the act, both overstating their cases -- in other words, there’s a lot stuff that will happen in theory, but has anything actually really happened in the real world?

Walczak : It’s difficult to know what the government is doing under the act, because there is so much secrecy built in to prevent people from finding out when and how they are using these provisions.

Rosenzweig: That is a good question. I think to a larger degree, there is a lot more heat than light here. There have been two or three reported instances in which the Patriot Act has expressly been invoked for capturing terrorists we might not have captured before, but not many more than that.

Q: Why should people who believe in limited government, and fear the power of government, trust that this massive, sweeping set of laws will not diminish our freedoms in the long run?

Walczak: They should not. ... The primary danger from the Patriot Act is that it weakens the ability of the courts to monitor what the executive branch is doing - the executive branch is law enforcement. With that reduced oversight, you dramatically expand the chances for abusive and unconstitutional behavior by government officials.

Rosenzweig : They shouldn’t trust. They should do what President Reagan said: “Trust but verify.” The absolute bedrock for any enhanced power is oversight. But we also should recognize that this situation is different. That where we would be careful about giving government powers to fight common law crimes — drugs, murders, rapes, robberies, whatever -- here the consequences of failure are potentially much more catastrophic. So we need to grant the powers because we need to avoid the next horrific attack. But trust only with verification.

For more than 50 years, Alexander Haig -- first as a military leader and then as friend and/or close adviser to seven U.S. presidents -- has been one of the country’s most important and powerful figures.

Haig served on Gen. MacArthur’s staff in Korea and was a brigade and battalion commander in Vietnam, where he received the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism.

He was military adviser to Henry Kissinger in the Nixon White House. Then, in 1972 as a full general, Haig helped Nixon negotiate the Vietnam cease-fire and arrange the president’s historic trip to Communist China.

In 1974, President Ford named him supreme allied commander in Europe and in 1981 he was sworn in as President Reagan’s secretary of state.

Today the 1947 West Point grad owns his own advisory firm, Worldwide Associates Inc., which gives strategic advice to corporations on global, political, economic, commercial and security matters, and is host of the weekly television program, “World Business Review.”

I talked to Haig on Thursday by phone from his office in Washington.

Q: Was the war in Iraq prosecuted to your total satisfaction?

A: Well, of course it’s not over yet. The fighting phase is over, largely. There will be a terrorist phase, but the most important phase will be the rebuilding of Iraq. Until that is done in a satisfactory way, we can’t conclude the case by a long shot.

Q: Are you optimistic about the ability to transplant democracy to Iraq?

A: Now that’s not a process that happens overnight. And when we Americans are foolish enough to believe we can do that, more often than not we are disappointed. We saw that in Haiti and in a number of places.

You know, the best way to spread democracy is by example -- not by bayonets or pressures or blackmail or economic embargoes, but by example. And that’s how we Americans are going to be successful.

Now in the case of Iraq, they have a history which is acquainted with democratic procedures and representative-type government, although it was a monarchy before it was a so-called republic.

Q: So we’re not trying to build it from scratch.

A: No. They have had a very highly educated population that’s been the cultural center of the Middle East and the historic center of the world. Mesopotamia was the cradle of civilization. This is a country where I think there would be considerable hope for representative government and due process, and that means respect for the rule of law.

So I think we have reason to be optimistic if we can get a balance between the various ethnic and religious sectors, such as the Sunnis, the Shiites, the Kurds, the other religious minorities and other nationalistic interests.

Q: Are you comfortable with the Bush administration’s “active” — I put quotes around “active” because I think it’s almost a euphemism -- foreign policy in the Middle East?

A: I’m not only comfortable with it, I would suggest that it’s 30 years overdue. Both parties, Republican and Democrat, have mishandled Middle East polices for at least 30 years and I’ve been involved with the area in most of those 30 years:

Starting out with our willingness to let the British withdraw from the region in the early ‘70s, for the want of a little money. Then the overthrow of the shah of Iran. Followed by the hostage crisis of 18 months’ duration, in which we did nothing but bluster and fume, and in the process continued to lose credibility.

In the Reagan years, the Lebanon blow-up was very badly handled in my view, and it resulted in the murder of 260-some Marines. And then the demolition of our embassy annex with the loss of another 60 State Department personnel. And we did nothing but put our tails between our legs and run home.

Q: So we should have been more -- I’ll use the word “aggressive” -- but more ...

A: Principled about preserving our interests. I don’t have to tell you what happened in the (first) Gulf War. We had the conflict won. We were the ones who wrote the resolution, so the claim that we were confined by it is sort of foolish.

Q: The resolution what -- not to finish the job on Saddam?

A: To just free Kuwait. Of course, the facts of the matter were that that was a major strategic error and it lost us credibility throughout the region and made Saddam Hussein the hero in the Middle East.

That was followed, I don’t have to tell you, by one terrorist act after another, each one becoming more and more violent. It was true especially during the Clinton years, when we had eight years of bluster and fume, and demolition of our embassies in Africa and the attempted murder of former President Bush in Kuwait City.

So all of these things left a residue of zero American credibility and, in fact, contempt for America. That led to the kind of violence -- the suicide bombings that we see not only in Israel — and finally 9/11.

We, of course, had a similar terrorist effort against the World Trade Center made early in the Clinton administration and had that bomb been put in a better position in the trade center, we would have lost tens of thousands of people, because there would have been no warning.

We knew who did it. The evidence was pretty clear. Now, all these terrorist groups are linked. We uncovered the big training camp in northern Iraq where al-Qaida and these terrorists from different groups come in and train, get equipped and go back to do their mischief. So what we’ve got is one of the key players in global terrorism -- Saddam Hussein.

Q: So you have any unsolicited advice for President Bush about what to do or not to do next?

A: That depends on the situation. We are at war. The United States is not now out of war. We are still at a state of war with global terrorism that was declared as a result of 9/11.

I think the president did the right thing by declaring war. This is the first and very important step in the battle against global terrorism, because the outcome of what’s happened in Iraq is going to cast a shadow over every one of these terrorist movements.

In that area -- and people overlook it -- the president has done extremely well. We have been wrapping up al-Qaida cells and related terrorist activity at an unprecedented rate abroad and at home.

Q: Of all of your many important jobs, which was the most rewarding, most satisfying, the most fun — however you would want to characterize it?

A: The most satisfying, and also the most traumatic, is commanding young men in battle, where you have a very important responsibility for their life and their welfare. There’s nothing that compares with it, from Watergate to Timbuktu.

That is the most moving experience a human can have, to see the bravery and courage of our young people. And they deserve the absolute best in political leadership, and they haven’t got it in recent years in America.

We now have a young president who has thus far shown he has what has been lacking in most of them -- and that’s an unusual degree of character. You can buy brains, you can buy good looks, you can buy television personality. But character is what makes the difference between a good president and a so-so president -- or worse.

Q: If I said to you, “General MacArthur,” what would be your one-sentence response about him?

A: Superb. I knew him personally. I worked right in his office at the outbreak of the Korean War. I landed at Inchon, which was his conception, and was carried out despite the vehement opposition of President Truman and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, with the exception of the Navy.

Q: How about Henry Kissinger?

A: Kissinger’s a brilliant scholar with great historic depth, and without historic knowledge I would say most people don’t even know how to even start with foreign policy. That’s the first premise of foreign policy -- knowing history.

Q: Mr. Nixon.

A: Mr. Nixon was a badly maligned victim of Vietnam and his own lifetime effort of anti-communism. He was among the best presidents I’ve served in foreign policy.

Q: Ronald Reagan.

A: I obviously have great affection for Ronald Reagan. I think he accomplished a great deal through what I referred to earlier -- a high level of character. A visceral intuition.

Q: I know you’ve been asked this a thousand times, but if you aren’t “Deep Throat,” who do you think is?

A: (Laughs) You know I’m not “Deep Throat” because Woodward and Bernstein have both denied it vigorously. Finally. It took them 20 years or more to do it, but they did it. (laughs). And anybody who had known history knew I wasn’t even in the White House when “Deep Throat” was at work. (laughs). I was a vice chief of the Army.

— Mary Anastasia O’Grady, Oct. 6, 2007

Troubles in the Americas

Mary Anastasia O’Grady writes and edits The Wall Street Journal’s “Americas” column each Monday, which means she has to keep a sharp eye on the politics, economics and business of Latin America and Canada.

At the invitation of St. Vincent College’s Alex G. McKenna School of Business, Economics and Government, she’ll visit Pittsburgh Friday, Oct. 12, to deliver a luncheon lecture at the Duquesne Club.

O’Grady, who’s also a member of The Journal’s editorial board, will talk about “Threats to Liberty in the Western Hemisphere and How to Confront Them” (Call 724-537-4597 for tickets). I talked to her Wednesday by telephone from her office in New York City:

Q: First off, tell us some good news about the Americas.

A: Well, the region is really bifurcating and some countries are going hard to the left and other countries are really struggling hard to reform.

In fact, the 2008 Doing Business Report from the World Bank shows Colombia as one of the top 10 reforming countries in regulation in the world this year. It’s done many, many regulatory reforms to try to ease the burden of government on entrepreneurs.

Colombia is one example -- with a very brave president and ally of the United States -- that is really trying to restructure the economy and make the country modern and integrated into the modern global economy.

It’s really hard. These are all democracies, and so they have the same public choice problems that we have in this country -- the most powerful interests are the ones who don’t want anything to change. So it takes a really strong leader.

Mexico also did a lot of reforming. It still has monopoly problems and a lack of competition but it has reformed a lot in terms of regulation and trade openness, which are really important to innovation and growth.

Chile was a great reformer in the ‘80s and ‘90s. It really hasn’t done much reforming in at least 20 years, but at least it hasn’t lost too much ground. It has been able to defend the free-market reforms that were done during the dictatorship.

El Salvador has been a good reformer. It has a big crime problem. The judiciary and law enforcement have been starved by a lot of spending in social programs. But in terms of its friendliness to investment, openness to the world and its effort to deregulate and become competitive, they’ve done a very, very good job.

So there are good stories, but they are fighting a very strong status quo and that’s what makes reforming so hard.

Q: Is it the same old status quo -- a combination of the Catholic Church, the ruling class, too much socialism?

A: I think the emphasis on the church is a little bit overdone at this point. It’s one of those things that people have been saying and it’s repeated a lot because nominally speaking most of the region is Catholic. I would say that the way the status quo manifests itself is where the economic centers of power are.

For example, in a country like Argentina, labor has a lot of privileges that they don’t want to give up. You think of the status quo and the oligarchs as super-rich people against sort of these feudal slaves.

But in the case of Argentina, which has a fairly strong middle class, the labor laws are so rigid and make it so hard for businesses to hire and fire people and basically take away any flexibility that the economy might have. That’s harmed the country a lot but they haven’t been able to reform because the labor movement is so powerful.

That’s also true in Costa Rica. It’s true to a large extent in Mexico. Of course, on top of that you also have domestic producers who benefit when an economy is closed and there are very high import tariffs and those sorts of things.

Those elements have started to give in. Latin American economies are far less protectionist than they were 20 years ago. But they are still too closed. The reason they are closed is the same reason in this country we can’t open the sugar market.

It’s the same problem, basically; it’s a problem of human nature. I don’t think it is anything special about the Latin mentality. It’s just much more difficult to solve the problem when you have large gaps between the haves and the have-nots, because economic power is really political power.

Q: Is the pendulum in Latin and South American swinging back to the anti-American side of things?

A: Again, I would say that the region is really bifurcating. I think some of the most anti-American people are journalists -- maybe in this country --- so I think the anti-American activism might perhaps get overstated.

You always hear that Mexico has this sort of anti-Americanism and yet if you go to Mexico you really don’t feel it as an American. There are very activist groups that are very vocal about that.

In Costa Rico right now we are seeing a lot of anti-Americanism against the Central American Free Trade Agreement. In Argentina, after the collapse of the currency in 2001-2002, you saw a lot of anti-Americanism.

But my sense is that even in countries where the pro-market, classical-liberal view is not prevailing right now, you still have about 40 percent of the population that would vote for a free-market candidate. They may elect a left-of-center president but I think we should be careful not to just assume that the whole country falls into that category.

I meet a lot of young people in Latin America who are very interested in engaging with the world --- not just America, but with Europe an Asia --- and they are frustrated with their governments that want to maintain this isolationism.

Q: Who should we be most concerned about in the Americas?

A: I’d say it’s certainly Venezuela.

It’s very hard to know how anti-American Venezuelans are at this point because the government -- as the monopoly producer of the economy, with oil being so important -- is basically tied to almost everyone’s job.

Either you work for the (state) oil company or you work for someone else that the oil company buys or sells to. So people can be intimidated in terms of their politics because of their work. They can be told that they are going to lose their jobs and, in fact, there is some evidence that the government has in fact done that.

It’s very hard to know exactly how people there feel because I don’t think that speaking publicly is considered a safe thing to do in Venezuela. But the government is definitely very anti-America, very pro-Iranian.

The Venezuelan government is mismanaging the economy -- there’s no question about that. But they have a lot of discretionary income with oil at $80 a barrel. They have the potential to cause a lot of problems. They’ve been going through a weapons buildup and meddling in the politics around the region trying to fund militant activists.

Q: Is Hugo Chavez more dangerous because of his ideology or his money?

A: Well, I think it’s that combination. There are lots of left-wing ideologues in Latin America but they don’t have that kind of oil money and that’s why he’s the most dangerous. The president of Ecuador is equally extreme but he doesn’t have nearly the assets that Venezuela has.

Q: Are there Latin American countries friendly to us who will help us counter the influence of Chavez?

A: The Salvadoran government has been an ally for us. The Colombian government has been an ally for us. But most leaders in these countries don’t want to be seen as too pro-American. It’s not because they are hedging their bets or anything else, but these countries want to feel like they are sovereign.

If they look too much like they are throwing their whole lot in with the U.S., it makes it difficult for the leader. The problem with a lot of these countries is that they are not strong enough to stand up to Chavez on their own.

If the U.S. wants, for example, Colombia to stand up to Venezuela but Colombia can’t rely on the U.S. to send in the Marines or anything like that, then Colombia has to think for itself about the best way to deal with Venezuela. It can’t go too far out on that limb, because it knows that in the end it’s going to have to deal with the problems.

I think a lot of countries -- and I’ve been told this privately -- are afraid of Hugo Chavez and that’s why you don’t necessarily see them extremely vocal against him. The most important thing in Latin America is for these countries to grow economically. That’s the biggest antidote to Hugo Chavez.

Q: What are your politics and how do they affect your coverage of the Americas?

A: I would say I am almost a libertarian --- not quite. Libertarianism means different things to different people. But Bob Bartley, who passed away a couple of years ago and was editor of The Wall Street Journal (and its editorial pages) for many years, used to say that “we believe in free markets and free people.”

That pretty captures my politics. I’m very pro-immigrant. I think the migrants are an asset to this country. I think we should figure out what’s wrong with our immigration system that we haven’t been able to respond to the demand for labor in this country in a way that would allow these people to come and work here legally.

I know that in New York City, the city would be dead without them. They’re fantastic. So that’s an example of my belief in free markets and free people.

Q: At home and abroad.

A: At home and abroad, yeah. I’m just looking at this regulation study from the World Bank and basically when you heap a lot of government regulations on an entrepreneur, that person is less free. I think we should work to be as free as possible and have a small government. Morally, that is a superior system because it allows people to decide their own destiny -- and that’s a basic human right.

Q: Can you give us a hint of what you’ll be talking about here Friday?

A: Basically, my main point would be that we -- people who believe in liberty and freedom and the rule of law -- often get upset when we see Hugo Chavez. But I think we need to think about what were the circumstances that made it so possible to walk into that situation and become president of that country.

There was a reason he was elected -- people were really thoroughly disgusted with the corruption and the abuse of power on the part of people who refer to themselves as small “d” democrats, who pretended to believe in the constitution and the rule of law and property rights but in fact did not.

They abused that power to their own benefit. That has happened over and over again in so-called democracies.

If we are going to combat the Hugo Chavezes, we have to think about what is the system that provides not equality of outcome but equality under the law for people. When we fail to deliver on that promise, we create the circumstances for people like Hugo Chavez.

The West Wing’s” presidential debate episode earlier this month must have thought the left side of Alan Alda’s brain had been taken over by Milton Friedman.

One minute Alda was advocating school choice and saying people of underdeveloped countries would benefit from being exploited by Nike factories.

The next he was mocking global warming hysterics and arguing in favor of drilling for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

On live TV, in front of nearly 10 million Americans, Alan Alda — the card-carrying Hollywood liberal-humanist — was saying wildly un-Democrat stuff like “I believe in the free market” and “The government didn’t make the Prius the hottest car in Hollywood, the market did.”

It was not Alda’s inner conservative/libertarian finally breaking free. He was playing Sen. Arnold Vinick, the fictional Republican presidential candidate on “The West Wing,” the NBC White House poli-drama whose ratings and left-wing bias are no longer as solid as they used to be.

Alda had those good words for free enterprise put into his liberal mouth by Lawrence O’Donnell, “West Wing’s” executive producer and highly partisan MSNBC political analyst.

O’Donnell, who used to work for Sen. Patrick Moynihan and proudly calls himself a “practical European socialist,” wrote the script for the debate episode.

I recently (Nov. 8, 2005) talked to O’Donnell, who was working on “The West Wing” somewhere deep in Hollywood.

Q: How do you define Alan Alda’s character’s politics?

A: It’s very simple. He’s a ”California Republican.” He’s a statewide-elected senator in California. You cannot get elected statewide in California and be pro-life. That is not possible. So he is a moderate on abortion. He’s pro-choice but he’s against partial birth abortion. And that’s the only thing in his politics, as we’ve constructed it, that separates him from what is now considered the winning side of the Republican Party nationally.

Q: What about all that Milton Friedman free-market stuff?

A: The country doesn’t like it. The country basically likes the simplicity of “Those damn oil companies are charging too much for gasoline, let’s do something about that.” The country has not been educated that you create a bigger problem by trying to do something about high gas prices. So the country is very susceptible to rhetoric that it doesn’t even think of as liberal.

Q: It’s populist economics.

A: Right. They don’t think of it as liberal if you say “Those oil companies are charging way too much money and we should do something about it.” They think that makes sense.

So American liberal rhetoric, in general, has much more appeal than certainly the free market does. The free-market position actually doesn’t have a lot of rhetoric that goes along with it. It has a lot of logic and it has a lot of rational analysis that you need a fair amount of education to do. Unfortunately, I suspect it takes almost at least a college level of education in economics to fully embrace the market’s power or to fully go that way.

Q: So you weren’t faking it when you were writing that dialogue. You actually believe this stuff — or just understand it?

A: Yes. I believe (the late supply-side economist) Jude Winniski’s arguments about how high tax rates damage the economies of poor African countries. But what I would not want to suggest about it is, if we fixed the tax rates, everything is going to be OK.

The other huge problem that Africa has is American agriculture subsidies, which are a disastrous policy, I believe, on every level, in terms of what it does to poverty internationally, in terms of what it does to our misallocation of resources here. I wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t majored in economics in college. I just wouldn’t.

I was in discussion with one of our cast members about the African tax rates, for example. In the Vinick speech where it said “the Nike plant” -- I specifically wrote “Nike.” The cast member said, “Are you saying that poor African countries would be better off if they had a Nike plant?” I said, “Let me be very clear what I am saying: What I’m saying is that those countries would be lucky if they could get some really exploitive sweatshops in there.”

Q: I think there’s a libertarian in you trying to get out.

A: No, no, no. I’m a European socialist, believe me - I’m far to the left. But I understand. I’m a kind of practical socialist. I know we failed. A lot of our ideas have failed, so I’m not with them anymore. I’m willing to take from a grab-bag of stuff that works.

I said, I very specifically said ‘Nike,’ because I want you to think about it as a sweatshop. I don’t happen to think it is, but I want you to think of it that way. I want you to think they’re an evil employer and that that country would be lucky to have an evil employer - that would be a huge step up for them.”

So she’s trying to process this. And I try to make it simple for her. I say, “Here’s my position: My position is slavery is better than death. Employment is better than slavery. That exploitative wages are better than nothing. And that a fair wage and justice is the ideal.”

She can’t accept any sentence that isn’t about the fair wage and the ideal. Literally and truly. She’s a very, very, smart woman. She couldn’t process what I was talking about. She couldn’t process that one penny is better than zero. There are children in the world who would be lucky - lucky - to be employed 12 hours a day in exploitive child labor situations where they are making 10 cents a day.

Unfortunately, I think respect for the market seems to be something that I have not seen anyone derive outside education. I haven’t seen people gravitate toward a natural respect for the market.

And it doesn’t have rhetoric to go with it. I think the rhetoric Vinick used about it was about the best I’ve heard - especially the Prius argument, by the way, which was designed specifically for Hollywood liberals, but no one told them to.

Where Vinick was talking about the market most clearly was in the energy discussion, when they talk about government support for alternative forms of energy. And Vinick starts with, “I don’t think politicians are going to be very good at picking energy sources. And then he says “The government didn’t shift us from using shale oil to using the oil discovered under the ground.”

That to me is the ultimate example in today’s discussion about where we are on energy. The market’s the only thing that’s ever going to take us from oil to something else.

Q: Will the Alda character do a better job of carrying through on his rhetoric and principles than Bush II has done?

A: Yes. I think Vinick would be a libertarian’s favorite president. Not that libertarians will ever come close to being satisfied with a president. (laughs) He’s not going to abolish Social Security, but I think he would be the most responsible deliverer of what Republicans say they are about.

Q: Many people watching are probably being introduced to these free-market arguments for the first time - they have never heard them stated so clearly and so well. Are you at all worried that you are subverting the Democratic Party in the real world?

A: No. I don’t think the Democratic Party needs to be an opponent of pharmaceutical companies. I mean, look, I worked on the Democratic side of the Senate. I believe everything in the debate that the Republican candidate said about the pharmaceutical companies.

I don’t think that is a necessary component of liberalism, attacking pharmaceutical companies. It seems to me one of the most juvenile components of it. We have a lot of great and responsible American corporations who are delivering great things to the world and American liberalism has to get in sync with that and not sound so anti-business.

Q: So you’re teaching Hollywood something?

A: Yeah. Listen, I’ll tell you this: Plenty of people working right here at “The West Wing” in the heart of Hollywood liberalism have changed their minds about drilling in ANWAR after hearing Sen. Arnold Vinick talk about it.

This Vinick character has changed a lot of the thinking of people around the show and is showing them ways about thinking about issues. And there is an increasing list of agreements that liberal friends of mine are having with Republican free-marketer Arnold Vinick, the fictional character.

I guess it is because he has found a way of saying these things that politicians have not found.

Nov. 15, 1995

My other Buckley material:

Fox News star and talk-show host Sean Hannity will make a live appearance before his faithful followers in Pittsburgh Feb. 25 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center -- without Alan Colmes.

Hannity is co-host of Fox's successful "Hannity and Colmes" and his 3-6 p.m. talk show is heard on 500 radio stations, including Pittsburgh's WPGB 104.7 FM. Fresh from his trip to San Francisco and the U.S.-Mexican border near San Diego, he called me Thursday night from New York City.

Q: Have we seen the end of the Dick Cheney shooting-spree story?

A: No. I don't think so, only because it's got to make it through the Sunday news cycle. I think after that it'll probably go away. From all that we've seen, it just seems like a terrible accident ... . I thought he came across as very sincere in Brit Hume's interview.

Q: What else do we need to know?

A: Yeah. This is now day five of the conspiracy. Now it's like, "Did he consume alcohol?" I think it's really representative of the divide that's really going on now in Washington. I think there is a lot of Bush-Cheney hatred out there. A lot of it is rooted in the disagreements over the war.

From my standpoint, I don't think there is any more important issue. We're in the middle of World War III. We have an enemy that wants to destroy New York, Pittsburgh, Philly, Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas and everything in between.

And yet we have a country that's divided over the fundamental issue in fighting and winning that war. It's somewhat frightening at times for me.

Q: President Bush has a lot of criticism on immigration from the right side of the Republican Party -- he's too easy on immigrants, people don't like his amnesty plan ...

A: I don't like it. I've been very outspoken about it. Look, when it comes to the war on terror, this is the right president in the right place at the right time with a backbone of steel. And I say that all the time. That doesn't mean that we agree on everything.

I think we have expanded government too much, but my biggest criticism is on the issue of the border. The No. 1 area of vulnerability and susceptibility we have to terror, and terrorists getting into this country, is at our nation's own borders.

Q: What does it mean when you say you're coming to "Hannitize" Pittsburgh?

A: I'm coming to persuade those who perhaps are on the wrong side of the issues to come over to the right side. Honestly, it's just a show we've put together. We've done it in many, many cities around the country. It's a lot of fun.

People are going to laugh. We're going to make fun of our favorite liberals, from Ted Kennedy to Bill Clinton to Al Gore. We'll talk about serous substantive issues and just have a good time.

Q: How do you define your politics?

A: I consider myself a Reagan conservative: Less government interference in our lives, lower taxes to stimulate economic growth and prosperity, a strong stand against evil in our time -- you know, "The Evil Empire," "Tear down this wall," Trust but verify" -- and building up the toughest military on the face of this earth.

Q: Talk radio has been a powerful weapon for conservatives and an important antidote to the liberal mainstream media for 20 years. Do you think it has peaked or become stale in any way?

A: I think it's only just begun. I think we're seeing it in cities like Pittsburgh. I think you're going to see more and more talk radio on the FM band -- personality-driven, issue-oriented radio for a baby boom generation that is coming of age and cares more about its world and politics.

I think 9/11 has reconfigured all political discussion in this country... . What you see is that more and more people have sought out alternative sources of information. I think that really defines why Fox is so successful and why talk radio is so successful.

Q: You've been accused of being too supportive and too uncritical of the Bush administration and the Republican Party. How do you defend yourself -- not necessarily from liberals but ...

A: Accused by who?

Q: Libertarians, hard-core conservatives ...

A: My libertarian friends? I've debated them at length too. You know what? I have more opposition on my program -- radio and TV -- than any other conservative I know.

Charlie Rangel is on on a regular basis, Paul Begala, Alan (Colmes), James Carville -- whatever liberal you want to name, they've probably been on my program. They have access to me regularly and we have more debate both on radio and TV than anybody else I know.

I proudly defend a president who took the toughest stand against evil in our time. On the issues that I disagree with him, I've been as outspoken as if Bill Clinton was president. It's funny. There are those who want to minimize the impact or the effectiveness of people who do support the president and more specifically the war. I'm proud of supporting him on the war ... .

Q: Ed Feulner, president of The Heritage Foundation, was in town this week and he's arguing that too many conservatives and Republicans have fallen in love with big government, big spending and government power.

A: It's funny. I just spoke before The Heritage Foundation maybe about two months ago, and I made that very point during that speech. I do have honest disagreements.

What I think our audience wants on Fox and on talk radio is honest analysis. They don't want a bunch of Kool-Aid drinkers regurgitating back whatever the party line is.

I give them that honesty every day... . Ed is right. The growth of government has gotten out of control. I blame the Congress more than I blame even the administration. In that case they've become too entrenched in their own power.

They've become Democratic light. I think they need to go back to the principles that got them into those positions of power in the first place.

Q: What's the main message that you'll be bringing to the Pittsburgh audience next Saturday?

A: Hope. Hope that Reagan conservatism is on the rise and that we're going to win the war on terror and that Hillary will never be elected president of this country.

August 2002

Anyone who dubs Katie Couric the "affable Eva Braun of morning television," as Ann Coulter does in “Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right,” can't be all bad.

Most liberals don't get the joke -- and they sure don't appreciate the brains, brass and bite that have made Coulter the country's hottest conservative tele-pundit and columnist.

Liberals were cursing Coulter's liberal-bashing ways long before "Slander," her bloodthirsty but funny, dead-on expose of the biases and bad sportsmanship of the media establishment, soared to the top of The New York Times best-seller list. Her first Times best-seller was 1998's "High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton."

Coulter, whose predictably provocative column appears here every Thursday, was so busy flogging her book on radio and TV shows coast-to-coast that she could only be Q&A'd by e-mail. We don't usually roll over to such demands by the important, the powerful or the trouble-making.

But Coulter's a lawyer. And since the back cover of "Slander" contains a left-right spectrum of praise from the likes of Robert Novak, Bill Maher and Geraldo Rivera, and since we like Coulter's style, we made an exception. Here are our questions and her answers:

Q: So far, what do your enemies and victims seem to hate most about your book?

A: I tell the truth about them.

Q: Is "Slander" being fairly characterized by print and electronic media folks?

A: Those who praise it have characterized it exactly right.

Q: What's the worst someone has said?

A: I was too soft on Katie Couric.

Q: Salon.com, the liberal Web site, ripped you pretty good in its mostly derisive review, saying that "Coulter dishes out a fresh book-full of hypocrisy, distortion and half-crazed rants" and essentially argues that you do unto liberals what you say liberals do unto conservatives. Defend thyself.

A: What's the name again? Salon.com?

Q: If you had a chance to write your own introduction on the "Today Show," how would describe yourself, your new book and your reputation? Don't be your usual shy or modest self.

A: "Unlike Katie Couric, Ann Coulter is unabashed about being a political polemicist."

Q: Your book is touted as an attack on liberals and their "lies about the America right." Who are the biggest "liars," and give your favorite example to prove your case (no legalese, please).

A: I wouldn't want to create jealousies among my enemies by citing one as opposed to another.

Q: Your book is serious and tough. But it's also full of obvious jokes, hyperbole and other humorous rhetorical devices. What's your favorite laugh line -- and do liberals get it or do they hate you too much?

A: Liberals can get anything? I did not know that. I love all my jokes -- they're all my children.

Q: Are there any good liberals -- fair-fighting liberals, thoughtful liberals, liberals you like? Or are they all unprincipled dolts?

A: Bernard Goldberg has risen mightily in my estimation. And erstwhile FDR-voter Ronald Reagan is pretty cool too.

Q: Is there anyone on the liberal-left side like you -- a counter-Coulter?

If not, would you join with Democrats who are calling for a federal program to subsidize liberals so they can compete fairly with conservatives in the new media, namely radio and TV talk shows and Internet opinion sites?

A: Yes, Christopher Hitchens, but he's only like me when he's attacking the Clintons.

Q: If you met, say, Christopher Hitchens in a bar, and he asked you to define your politics, what would you say?

A: "Chris, do you have an extra cigarette?"

Q: Where did your politics come from?

A: God and my parents in descending order of importance. (Sorry mother!)

Q: Are you now or have you ever been a dues-paying member of the vast right-wing conspiracy?

A: That is such a stupid question even I can't come up with a clever answer.

Q: What's the worst thing any liberal has said about you -- something that almost made you cry?

A: "I liked your column today."

Q: What's the best (most surprising or most gratifying) thing anyone -- friend or foe -- has said about your book?

A: When The New York Times declined to call it a "surprise best-seller."

Q: Is it true that you next book will be a children's book?

A: No, I don't write books simply so that liberals can understand them.

Snowden tells how the lies he learned on the job at the CIA and NSA changed him from a true believer in the government's data-collection industrial complex to a heroic whistleblower who exposed the fact that the constitutional rights of Americans were being violated every day by the NSA and other intel agencies -- all with the knowledge of the liars and creeps in charge in Washington.

Sizing up Saddam's threat

Pat Buchanan will go down in history for a lot of good and bad things he did and said. But there’s no doubt he was absolutely right in 2002 about the foolishness of the neocons in Washington pushing to go to war with Iraq.

Like the wise French, who also tried to warn that we were about to do something really stupid, Buchanan foresaw the geopolitical trouble invading Iraq would cause for the USA and the Middle East.

He has similar fears about the USA sending troops to Iran or engaging in a major war there. Pat Buchanan's perspective on Iran is rooted in his generally non-interventionist stance on U.S. foreign policy.

Courtesy of Chat GTP, here's a summary of his current views:

• Opposition to War: Buchanan has consistently expressed caution against military conflict with Iran, believing that the Iranian government does not desire war. He views those who advocate for war with Iran as the same individuals who pushed for previous U.S. interventions in the Middle East.

• Nuclear Deal: Buchanan has expressed concern about the potential negative consequences of withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), warning that it could strain alliances and increase tensions. He noted in 2020 that UN inspectors were confirming Iran's adherence to the deal at that time.

• Israeli Influence: Buchanan has highlighted his concern that Israel might try to pressure or provoke the U.S. into a conflict with Iran, citing instances like the assassination of an Iranian scientist as potential examples of such actions. He advises the U.S. president to be wary of Israeli actions that could draw the U.S. into war.

• Avoidance of Foreign Entanglements: A core element of Buchanan's foreign policy is a desire to avoid unnecessary wars, which he believes can weaken a nation. He sees no vital strategic interest in a war with Iran, arguing that the U.S. is already exiting conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As for Ira in 2002, I asked him:

Q: What's the real reason the United States is going after Saddam? People say it's his links to al-Qaida. It's oil. It's to finish the job from the Gulf War. He's a threat to his neighbors …

Buchanan: I think what's behind it all is that there is a new imperialism that informs the mind-set of many neoconservatives in Washington, and some in the administration, that the United States is now the new Rome, and that it is within our rights to launch pre-emptive strikes to overrun and destroy any regime that threatens America's will anywhere in the world.

I think this mind-set, this hubris, is going to lead the United States into deep, deep trouble.

Q&A: Sizing up Saddam’s Threat

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

August 3, 2002

Based on the noise from Washington and talk-show land this week, it's no longer a question of whether the United States will use military force to remove Saddam Hussein from his evil dictator's perch in Iraq. It's merely a matter of when and how best to do it.

No one is feeling sorry for Saddam or wishing him a long reign. But there are still a few dissenters — even among Republicans — who don't agree with President Bush and national security experts like Frank Gaffney Jr. that it's a good idea to go to war again in the Gulf.

One highly visible dissenter is Pat Buchanan, a Trib columnist and co-host of “Buchanan and Press" (daily on MSNBC at 2 p.m.). He and Gaffney, a Pittsburgh native and president of the Center for Security Policy, agree on little except that Saddam is a thug and that the shooting will start in early 2003.

I asked both of them the same questions.

Q: Is war with Iraq inevitable?

Gaffney: Yes.

Buchanan: I think the president of the United States has painted himself into a corner by saying that there will be regime change in Baghdad. I think the president would have difficulty surviving politically if he pulls back from his pledge to overthrow the regime in Iraq. So war may very well be inevitable.

Q: Should war be inevitable?

Gaffney: No, it shouldn't be inevitable. If the Iraqi people could get rid of Saddam Hussein by themselves, it could be avoided and certainly it's desirable to have it be avoided. Unfortunately, they can't, which makes it inevitable, because he will attack us, I am confident, if we don't dispose of him first.

Buchanan: No, it should not. It never should. The United States has successfully contained and deterred Saddam Hussein. He has never attacked this country. He has never used a weapon of mass destruction on this country or its forces, because he is terrified of the consequences, which he knows would be the end of him, his family, his dynasty, his army, and his country and his palaces and everything else connected with him.

The man is a dictator and a thug and a political criminal of the first order. But he does not have the kidney of a suicide bomber. This guy wants to leave a legacy. And he knows if you commit an act of war against this country, it's all over for him.

I don't think war should be inevitable. I believe he can be contained and I don't believe the case has been made why we have to send a quarter of a million guys up to Baghdad to occupy that Islamic and Arab capital for the next five years.

Q: What's the best argument you can make for going to war against Iraq?

Gaffney: The best argument I can make is the one the president of the United States has found compelling, which is that this is a ruthless, megalomaniacal despot, bent on revenge, equipped with weapons of mass destruction, and willing to make common cause with terrorists and terrorist-sponsoring nations around the world with a view to expanding his own influence and damaging us. And the combination of those things makes the damage that he could inflict intolerably high.

Q: … for not going to war against Iraq?

Buchanan: The best argument is that with what's going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the West Bank, an invasion by the United States of Iraq could ignite the war of civilizations that it is in the vital interest of the United States to avoid.

We have, in my judgment, almost nothing to gain and an immense amount to lose, including our position all across the Arab and Islamic world. There is the real possibility that when we take down Saddam Hussein, other dominoes will fall and they will be the pro-American Arab regimes in the region.

Q: Is there anything that would make you change your mind?

Gaffney: Well, if Saddam were removed and the ruling clique that has supported him were replaced with people who will allow the Iraqi citizenry to live in peace and do the same for us. But that's a change in circumstances, not something that entails a change in philosophy on my part. As long as those conditions haven't been satisfied, war is inevitable because I think he will go to war with us.

He wants revenge on the United States and what he has been working toward is the ability to exact that revenge in a truly devastating fashion. My fear is that that day is approaching and he will do it if he is given the opportunity to. And the only way to prevent him from getting the opportunity to, sooner of later — if we're lucky, it's later — is to have him removed from power.

It's not just a case of having him removed in favor of some no-less ruthless thug who has supported him. This really is a regime change, in the sense of changing the character of the regime as well as its personalities.

Buchanan: If I found out that Saddam Hussein had a crash program to build atomic weapons and was fairly close to achieving that capability, I would support American airstrikes, too, and even ground assaults to destroy that capability.

Q: What's the real reason the United States is going after Saddam? People say it's his links to al-Qaida. It's oil. It's to finish the job from the Gulf War. He's a threat to his neighbors …

Gaffney: Well, it's the same one I gave you a moment ago. I think Saddam is a guy who is bent on revenge against the United States, is acquiring the means to exact it in a devastating fashion, and it behooves us to put him out of business before he's able to effect that revenge on us.

You could describe that as unfinished business. It certainly is the result of him being left in power, which I think was a catastrophic mistake, certainly for the Iraqi people and us as well.

Buchanan: I think what's behind it all is that there is a new imperialism that informs the mind-set of many neoconservatives in Washington, and some in the administration, that the United States is now the new Rome, and that it is within our rights to launch pre-emptive strikes to overrun and destroy any regime that threatens America's will anywhere in the world.

I think this mind-set, this hubris, is going to lead the United States into deep, deep trouble.

Q: Let's say we attack Iraq, kill or capture Saddam, what will likely happen in the short run over there?

Gaffney: I think it will have a very salutary effect on not only Iraq but the region. It will help catalyze the revolution in Iran that will dispatch the Islamist theocrats. It will add considerably to the pressure on Saudi Arabia to reform, as the monopoly that the Saudis have had lo these many years on the position of being the West's best friend in the Persian Gulf, and certainly the richest friend in the Persian Gulf, will go by the boards.

That will allow us greater latitude in dealing with a very serious problem in Saudi Arabia — namely, the Wahhabists. It also will potentially give rise to opportunities for democracy there that might make the region a considerably safer place for us, our interests and our allies' economic equities.

Now, it could go wrong. I don't want to sound Pollyannaish about this. There are possibilities that we won't do what we need to do. That Iraqi enemies of freedom will keep Iraq in turmoil, and will fight every effort to bring the place into the 20th century, and so on. Or the country could split apart and turn into a huge destabilizing mess for the rest of the region.

That's a possibility. It can't be precluded. Nobody should go into a war thinking it can only work out really well. Wars, like most things, have unintended circumstances. But I think in this circumstance, we have the ability to determine how it comes out.

Buchanan: There's all manner of things that could happen. Those who advocate the invasion say Iraq will embrace democracy and it will be infectious and in Iran the people will overthrow the mullahs and the United States will do with Iraq and Iran what we did with Germany and Japan — democratize them and make them allies and friends in the region. Now that's one possibility. That's the cakewalk theory — that we're going to walk right in.

There's another possibility that the United States is going to find itself with a gigantic West Bank, with a need to enter nation-building at enormous cost. And that Americans will find themselves shot in the back, just like Israeli soldiers and settlers on the West Bank. And that one or another of the regimes in the region that are friendly to the United States and not terribly stable — Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt — could fall.

We could find ourselves in the midst of really an all-out, anti-American, anti-Israeli conflict across that region. What I don't want is to have the United States wind up with one friend in the entire region from Morocco to Indonesia, and that's Ariel Sharon.

Q: What's the worst thing that could happen if we do attack Iraq?

Gaffney: I don't care to speculate on which of the outrages Saddam could be capable of perpetrating will be perpetrated. Suffice to say, it could make — if he uses weapons of mass destruction in ways it is entirely possible he could — 9-11 look like a day at the beach by comparison.

Buchanan: The worst thing that could happen is his use of poison gas weapons and we wind up with a guerrilla terrorist war being fought against American occupation troops in the heart of the Arab world.

Sowell, who will turn 95 on June 30, 2025, was the subject of Jason Riley’s biography Maverick three years ago and featured in this fine video. He recently was interviewed by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution about his newest project: a website titled ‘Facts Against Rhetoric,’ a powerful resource dedicated to empirical thinking and intellectual clarity.

I first met Sowell in Los Angeles in 1982 when the free-market economist and conservative social critic came in personally to thank and shake the hand of a black copywriter I worked with at the LA Times. Stan Williford had shocked Sowell by favorably reviewing his book Ethnic America: A History in the liberal LAT.

In the 1990s, after I moved back home to Pittsburgh, I met Sowell again when I worked at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. I ambushed him (see interview below) with a bunch of questions about inner-city schools and crime at St. Vincent College near Pittsburgh after he gave a talk sponsored by the school's free-market economics department.

I cornered the Hoover Institution senior fellow on his way to the punch bowl and interrogated him so aggressively that he justifiably became a little annoyed. My intentions were honorable.

As a subversive libertarian journalist, I wanted to get Sowell and his ideas in the Post-Gazette’s liberal opinion pages. I did, though the paper’s editor, a liberal Democrat, accused me of asking “tendentious” questions.

Following the ambush interview are transcripts of the two long phone Q&As I did with Sowell in the 2000s for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. I worked as an editor/op-ed columnist at the conservative/libertarian paper, which was heavily subsidized with the pocket change of conservative billionaire Richard Scaife.

A bonus: Celebrities (like Denzel Washington) who agree with Sowell and his 1984 interview with Tony Brown, who asks him about his great book, “The Economics and Politics of Race.”

The night I ambushed Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell tells Pittsburghers how to brake the inner-city slide

The former Marxist-turned-economist minces no words with Bill Steigerwald

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

April 18, 1993

It wasn't much of a post-lecture reception for keynote speaker Thomas Sowell. He never even made it to the punch and cookies.

Thirty minutes after his lecture in St. Vincent College's Kennedy Hall Wednesday night, the Hoover Institution economist/author and columnist was still surrounded by a dozen people near the entrance to the King Ludvig Gallery.

Some who came to hear Sowell knew him as one of the Founding Fathers of the Black Conservatives. Others as the former Marxist intellectual from Harlem who converted to free-market conservatism and was Ronald Reagan's first choice for secretary of Education in 1980.

Most were hip to Sowell's biting attacks on educators, politicians, the media and the welfare state. They didn't need to read his new 400-page assault on the educational establishment, "Inside American Education," which he charges has overtaxed us, betrayed us, lied to us and misused our children for its own bogus social, psychological and pedagogical experiments.

Sowell, 62, used to be despised by traditional black political leaders. Now they ignore his attacks on what he says is their foolish reliance on government programs and their mistaken faith in the efficacy of affirmative action. Of the 500 who came to hear him, fewer than 10 were black. But Sowell is used to being a minority among minorities.

Afterwards, in the King Ludvig Gallery, when it became obvious that Sowell was weakening and his unsatiable interrogators were not, we stepped in and let him have it with a volley of questions.

***

Q: The city of Pittsburgh is now getting inner-city problems, like gangs and drive-by shootings. Is there anything Pittsburgh can do while it still has the chance?

Sowell: Better law enforcement and don't listen to psychologists.

Q: Cops on the street? More patrols?

A: Yeah. We can't accept the idea that there's something inevitable about vast amounts of crime in a ghetto area. I grew up in Harlem, and where I grew up I used to walk the whole length of a block, about 12 blocks long. I didn't weigh 100 pounds soaking wet. And I did that regularly at midnight.

Q: But the culture has changed.

Sowell: That's why I say you need to have more law enforcement and not listen to sociologists and psychologists, because that's part of the changed culture — the notion that there's all kinds of wonderful things you can do to get at the root causes of crime.

Well, all the things that are supposed to be the root causes of crime were much worse in the 1940s than they are today. We were poorer. There was more Discrimination. You name it. And there was a lot less crime. So those things are really excuses.

Q: What about young black kids with no fathers in inner cities? Those kinds of conditions ...

Sowell: I don't think one's family situation justifies crime.

Q: Are there any solutions? Any tradeoffs?

Sowell: You can go through a lot of things there. A gang lifestyle becomes possible in a welfare state. Try to become a gang member if you've got to go out there and feed yourself.

Q: What impediments are there to kids in inner cities getting decent jobs?

Sowell: Bad education is one. But it's also true that the chance of anything serious happening to you as a result of following crime is a lot less now than they were then.

There was a time when you committed a serious crime, you were going to get a serious punishment. Now there are all kinds of people out there who come up with all kinds of reasons why you should be rehabilitated, in halfway houses and so on, and it's just a different ballgame. The people who pay the biggest price for this are those who themselves live in the ghettos.

Q: Pittsburgh still has a large middle class inside its city limits. Some of them now hear gunfire every night from drive-by shootings.

Sowell: They're going to move to the suburbs.

Q: Is that inevitable?

Sowell: No. If you're going to have serious law enforcement, you're going to have a serious effect on crime.

Q: Pittsburgh's public schools spend close to $10,000 per student and . . .

Sowell: I don't care how much they spend. Spending that money on the kids has nothing to do with anything. There's no correlation. There are places which spend much less than other places. I'm told New Hampshire is number one in the nation and has one of the lowest per pupil expenditures in the country.

Q: So if we're stuck with bad public schools, and the people who are stuck in bad public schools are primarily poor kids in inner cities . . .

Sowell: Unfortunately, there are bad public schools everywhere.

Q: What's the most important thing a big-city public school system could do to improve education?

Sowell: Eliminate tenure and allow parents to make a choice.

Q: Just within the school system or in and out of the school system?

Sowell: As much as you can get. If you can have it go public and private, fine. But if it's only public, fine. Have the parents make a choice among public schools. Right now they're a captive audience no matter how bad the schools are, they have to go there. And in the low-income areas, that's the dumping ground for teachers who run into problems in middle-class areas.

Q: Do you ever wish you had taken up Mr. Reagan's offer to become Secretary of Education?

Sowell: No. I don't think I could have ever accomplished anything to be worth the aggravation.

Q: Is it possible to do anything to improve education from the top down, or is it a bottom-up process?

Sowell: Oh, there's lots of things and laws and so forth ... But listen, I've talked enough.

2003

Thomas Sowell: An Intellectual Treasure

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Thomas Sowell, one of America's greatest intellectual treasures, is generally referred to as a "black conservative," but he is a revered hero in both libertarian and conservative camps.

A free-market economist, philosopher, social critic, syndicated columnist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Sowell has written more than 25 scholarly, logical, usually provocative and often groundbreaking books on economics, politics, race, immigration, education, culture, the justice system, the U.S. Constitution and Marxism.

Sowell's latest book, "Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One” applies the principles of economics (without the jargon) to such real-world problems as housing, medical care, discrimination and the economic development of nations. I talked to him by telephone on Thursday from San Francisco:

Q: What's the biggest difference between the way a politician thinks and the way an economist thinks?

A: Well, the politician thinks in terms of what would get him elected in the next election. The classic definition, or my favorite definition of economics, is "the study of the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses," which may sound pretty dry. But whether those resources are used efficiently or inefficiently determines whether people are rich, prosperous or poor.

The Soviet Union, for example, had some of the most abundant resources, and quite possibly the most abundant resources of any country in the world. And yet the standard of living in the Soviet Union was not only far below that of the United States, it was lower than that of countries which have virtually no natural resources, such as Japan or Switzerland.

The difference is that what resources the Japanese buy — and they have to buy most of them — they use far more efficiently than the Soviets did.

Q: Who are your favorite economists, or the economists you look up to?

A: Well, of course, Milton Friedman. And the book "Applied Economics" is dedicated to Arthur Smithies, who had this wonderful way of questioning in class, as I say in the subtitle, to get us to "think beyond stage one," because so many policies that sound good, when you only look at the immediate effect, look totally different when you begin to look at the repercussions of those polices.

Rent control is a classic example. When you put in rent control, the tenants have lower rents, the tenants are happy. Fine. In no time, you discover that, 1), nobody is building any more housing, and, 2), the landlords are not maintaining the existing housing as well as they did before, because now there is a housing shortage and they don't have to. And so the housing stock begins to decline, and no comparable amount of new housing is built to replace it. And so now you get a progressively worsening housing shortage.

At some point, the politicians become aware that nobody is building any housing. In some places they say, "All right, we will maintain rent control for low-cost housing, but if you want to build luxury housing, we won't put in rent control." Fine. But resources have been shifted from building ordinary housing to luxury housing.

This has happened in cities across the United States and in countries in Europe and elsewhere. The ultimate consequence is that the people who wanted to produce affordable housing are making it impossible to build affordable housing and shifting resources to building housing that the vast majority of people can't afford at all.

Q: Who are your favorite politicians?

A: Oh, gee. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Q: What's the biggest difference between the way politicians and economists think and act when it comes to health care?

A: The politicians look at it in terms of saying and doing "What will get me elected." What that means is that if you give people the impression that they are getting something either free or at a bargain, they are more likely to vote for you.

Economists, unfortunately, are handicapped because they know there is no such thing as a free lunch. They also know the difference between lowering costs and merely lowering prices. You can lower prices with a law, but that doesn't lower the cost by one penny. It still costs just as much to produce the medicines, educate the doctors and build the hospitals.

So you end up with costs being shuffled around. But they don't go away just because they're shuffled around. The HMOs try to put more of the costs on Medicare and vice versa, so you get this game being played, which doesn't lower anybody's costs.

Q: You say in the book that it's important to have a sense of humor when you're trying to learn about economic policies. What do you mean by that?

A: Well, so many of the policies are so badly mistaken. They not only don't solve the problem, they usually make the problem far worse than to begin with. So you can get quite angry just studying economic policies, even more so than economic theory.

The first thing to remember is that you will have the last word when Election Day comes around, and the time to get angry is in voting booth.

Q: Someone wanted me to ask you if $500 billion budgets matter in the long run?

A: (laughs) There was a time when the entire gross national product of the United States was about $500 billion. It would have mattered a lot then. When the gross national product is in the trillions, it matters less. I'm sure that if I had one-tenth the debts that, say, Donald Trump has, I would be ruined. But that doesn't mean Donald Trump is ruined.

Q: Of all your books, is there any one you'd recommend to someone that would explain who you are?

A: If there is any one book of mine I would most like most people to read, it would be "Basic Economics," because it does just take you from square one right on through everything, from price controls to international trade, stocks and bonds, whatever.

Q: Do you think the level of economic literacy has been going up or down among the general public?

A: I have no idea. I suspect that it is so low it would be hard to measure. In fact, that was the whole reason for my writing these two books — to do what little I can, because there is no great incentive for an economist to write at this level. It certainly won't help his career, but when you're an old man, you can do all kinds of things you couldn't do when you were young.

Q: I would suggest that after working in the media for 30 years, one of your key target audiences would be my fellow journalists.

A: If I were rich, I would send every one of them a copy of "Basic Economics."

2008

Economic Facts and Fallacies

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Economist and syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell says he has lost track of how many books he’s written on economics, history, social policy, ethnicity and the history of ideas.

His latest, “Economic Facts and Fallacies,” adds to his admirable record of using plain language to pass along some of the dismal science’s often ignored, often twisted truths and basic principles to everyday readers.

Professor Sowell, 77, is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. I talked to him by telephone on Thursday:

Q: Do you have any wisdom to share with us about what the politicians should or shouldn’t be doing about our current economic troubles?

A: Well, they’re two fundamentally different questions. The first is, "Is there something that the government could do that might make things better?" The second is, "Is there anything the government is likely to do that will make things better?" The second question is much easier to answer: The answer is “No.”

Q: From what they’ve done so far, are you encouraged or frightened?

A: I think I’m stoically braced for whatever disaster they create.

Q: Are the subprime credit crisis and the stock market’s swoon and the dollar’s drop in value symptoms of a deeper, larger, broader problem?

A: Well, no, they are simply the problems that they are. The government has brought on the housing problem, partly by these very low interest rates, which encouraged many people to go way out on a limb. They’ve brought it on by highly restrictive building policies, which have caused housing prices to skyrocket artificially.

And they’ve brought it on by the Community Reinvestment Act, which presumes that politicians are better able to tell investors where to put their money than the investors themselves are. When you put all that together, you get something like what you have.

Q: Why did you write this latest book and who is it written for?

A: It’s written, first of all, for the general public. It’s not written specifically for economists. Most economists know most of these things -- well, they know most of the principles; they don’t know most of the facts.

It’s not meant to be a breakthrough on the frontiers of analytical knowledge. But it is meant to show how so many things that look one way are in fact diametrically the opposite when you take a closer look at them -- and especially if you look at them systematically instead of just in terms of what rhetoric sets off your emotions, which is what seems to be going on in both parties these days.

Q: What’s an example of a fallacy from your book?

A: One is the income gap between rich and poor. It’s maddening to me to keep hearing how the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and so on. The fundamental difference is the difference between talking about abstract statistical categories and talking about flesh-and-blood human beings.

Since the book came out, for example, there’s been a study released by the Treasury Department based on income tax returns. There, they are talking about following the same human beings over a span of years, which is wholly different from following income brackets over a span of years, because in all the brackets more than half the people change in the course of a decade. So what happens to a bracket is an abstract question; what happens to the flesh-and-blood human beings is different.

For example, for the flesh-and-blood people who were in the bottom 20 percent of taxpayers in income in 1996, their average increase of income over the next decade was 91 percent -- so they almost doubled their incomes.

Meanwhile, for the people in the top 1 percent -- presumably the rich who are getting richer -- their average income declined 26 percent. That's diametrically the opposite from what we’re hearing from nearly every newspaper and practically every political platform.

But of course it’s also true that if you look at the income tax brackets, the distance of the top bracket from the lowest bracket has increased. One reason is that the very lowest bracket is zero, so it can’t go any lower.

So as you pay people more and more money and as the economy grows and skills become more sophisticated, obviously the ratio from the top and the bottom is going to increase.

Q: Where do these fallacies come from?

A: Oh, God, there are so many of them. As I say in the first chapter of the book, I can only give a sample of the fallacies. What I try to do is show how utterly plausible some of these things sound the first time you hear them, and it’s only when you look just a little bit below the surface that the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.

For instance, I list several beliefs -- "except for the rich, the incomes of Americans have stagnated;" "the middle class is growing smaller;" "over the years, the poor have been getting poorer;" "corporate executives are overpaid at the expense of stockholders and consumers;" and so on.

I point out that you can find statistics that seem to support every one of those propositions, but you can also find other statistics -- and sometimes the same statistics looked at differently -- which cause the whole argument to collapse like a house of cards.

Q: Is it the politicians who are pushing these fallacies as a way to gain votes? If there weren’t those politicians, would these fallacies disappear?

A: No, because you have ideologues and they create essentially the atmosphere in which the politicians operate. And given the atmosphere, the politicians will seize upon whatever will get them votes at the time. But they don’t create the atmosphere.

Q: Is there a fallacy bouncing around in the presidential races that has caught your eye? On immigration, for instance?

A: There’s no chapter on that in the book. But I think there’s the notion that you can talk about immigrants in the abstract, when in fact there is no such thing as an immigrant in the abstract.

Immigrants from some countries have ten times as high a proportion of their people be college educated as immigrants from other countries. There are immigrants from some countries that have made enormous contributions to the United States, not the least of which were the majority of leading atomic scientists who created the atomic bomb and brought World War II to an end. They were imports, as it were.

But there are other people who are brought in who have brought in diseases which never were known before. They brought in attitudes which were not the attitudes of citizens. In fact, they were the attitudes of people who were hostile.

I’m amazed when they talk about the guest-worker program in Europe. No one even asks, “What has happened with guest-worker programs in Europe?” What has happened is that they’ve brought in people who hate their guts. This is why you have terrorism in London and Madrid and riots in Paris and other French cities by people who have absolutely no desire to assimilate and who in fact hate the very ideas of the country in which they live.

This is not in this book, but it will be in the next edition of “Applied Economics”: There is the second-generation phenomenon. You have people who move in from some poor country -- the Middle East, Mexico, whatever. Those people may be very glad to be in the United States or Britain or wherever they may be. But then they have children. And their children have never seen those other places; they’ve never lived that poorer life. All they know is that the population around them is a hell of a lot more prosperous than they are. And there are all sorts of ideologues and hustlers ready to tell them that it’s society’s fault that they don’t have what other people have. This then gives you the people who hate the country in which they live.

Q: Have your ideas about immigration changed in any way? It seemed to me that 25 years ago you liked immigration and immigrants and you saw the whole process as benefiting the host countries and everyone who arrived.

A: I do think the immigrants I wrote about were a positive influence on the countries to which they moved. But again, the problem is you can’t talk about immigrants in general. They love to say things like, “They thought the Irish and the Jews were unassimilable but look at them now, etc.” Well, the circumstances of the Irish and the Jews were radically different from the circumstances of the people who are coming here from Central America.

First of all, the times were different. First of all, the Irish, the Jews and blacks as well, who were moving out of the South, had leaders and organizations that were doing their damnedest to get them assimilated to the norms and the society to which they were moving. Today, you have just the direct opposite. You not only have groups within in these societies that are trying to keep them unassimilable and full of resentment.

But you also have people from outside the group, including politicians but also ideologues and intellectuals, who say one culture is as good as another and why should we expect them to assimilate to our culture. Well, that’s wonderful. You should try to go to China and live without speaking Chinese.

Q: What fallacy does the most damage to our whole society or economy?

A: I guess the single fallacy from which so many other fallacies derive is what I call in this book “the zero-sum fallacy" -- that is, the idea that what one person gains, someone else loses….

A classic example is rent control. When you put in rent control, the tenants gain in the short run; the landlords lose in the short run; the builders lose in the short run. But of course the builders lose the least, because the same material and skills that are used in building apartment buildings are used in building office buildings and warehouses and all kinds of other structures; they lose very little. But when the supply of housing dries up, then the tenants are really in a bad way. So places that have rent control almost invariably have housing shortages.

I start off in the first chapter, in fact, by quoting some lady who was in Egypt back in the 1960s when they put in rent control. She said people stopped investing in apartment buildings. Huge shortages in rentals and apartments forced many Egyptians to work in horrible conditions, with several families sharing one small apartment. So they really pay the price much more so than the landlords or the builders.

Q: I didn’t think Egypt has rent control problems like New York City.

A: Saigon -- Ho Chi Minh City -- Hanoi. A leader in Vietnam said, “Americans couldn’t destroy Hanoi by bombing but we’ve destroyed it with rent control.” The zero-sum fallacy is the biggest in its scope. At Stanford, for example, they’ve issued an order that the professors at the medical school are no longer allowed to accept any kind of gifts from pharmaceutical companies, including the free samples of medicines they give out, which doctors pass along to their patients.

Well, this assumes that if it helps the pharmaceutical company, it helps them at the expense of the patient. It never occurs to them that there wouldn’t be any transaction between the pharmaceutical companies and the patients unless both of them gained something from it.

In my case, I happened to have a medication given to me as a free sample by a doctor -- thank God, not at Stanford -- which has really made my whole life livable. These people pay no price for being wrong -- that’s the problem with third-party decision making. It can be as wrong as two left feet and it costs them nothing.

Q: How does a basic knowledge of economics help someone see through these fallacies?

A: That really is what they would have to read the book to find out. The point is, you can demonstrate time and time again that the things that sound plausible just on the surface -- if you do give them just a little bit of systematic thought -- can suddenly change.

One of the chapters is on male-female economic differences. I must say, when I was doing the research on this I was shocked to discover that there is a very significant income difference between young male doctors and young female doctors.

I forget what the number is, but it’s not 1 or 2 percent. It was only when I dug into it that I discovered that young male doctors worked 500 hours a year more than young female doctors. Well, you know, if you work 500 hours more a year, you'd expect to get paid more!

Q: Is there any rule of thumb people could use to determine if they were being confronted with an economic fallacy?

A: Are you telling me that I should tell people they don’t really need to buy my book? (laughs) ... There are only eight chapters in my book. But after you’ve been through them you’ll be able to derive certain principles which you will suddenly realize apply to all kinds of other things that are not discussed in the book.

There are three questions that I think would destroy the left if people could ask them:

"What are the facts?"

"What are the consequences of what you are going to do?"

And "What is the trade-off?”

People talk as if you can just save the people whose homes are at risk, and that’s it. Well, if that was the case, why not save them? But at what price? We could ratify the Kyoto Treaty, but the question is "At what price and what benefits would there be to offset that price?" That’s the question that the politicians and the ideologues don’t want to ask. They don’t want to compare. They don’t want to weigh one thing against the other.

Sam Tanenhaus’ biography Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America comes out in early June. The PBS ‘American Masters’ program recently did an episode devoted to ‘The Incomparable Mr. Buckley,’ which was pretty good and fair-minded until it tried to tie Buckley and the conservative movement he built to the sins of Donald Trump.

Bill Buckley and his influential conservative anti-communist magazine National Review were an important influence on my politics when I was growing up. My dad subscribed to NR and we watched Buckley’s long-running “Firing Line” interview show on PBS religiously every Sunday.

As a working journalist, I met Buckley in 1995 while at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and I did a long Q&A with him on the phone for the Pittsburgh Trib in 2007 a few months before he died. Both are reprinted below.

Me & Mr. Buckley

Bill Buckley in person, 1995

By Bill Steigerwald

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

September 19, 1995

When you go to interview the Godfather of Conservatism, you better take your tape recorder.

A poli-sci degree and a good dictionary wouldn't hurt, either, because William F. Buckley Jr. -- the conservative author, columnist, speaker and owner/operator/founder of the influential political think magazine National Review -- still knows how to throw those 10-dollar words around like nobody else.

Words like "epistemological" and "dispositive" and "synecdoche" still pepper his conversation, naturally, the way "likes" and "ums" fall from the mouths of the rest of us.

Buckley was in Pittsburgh last night to speak to a sold-out crowd of 1,700 at the Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland, where he was the opening attraction for the 1995 Three Rivers Lecture Series.

But at 3:30 yesterday afternoon Buckley was Downtown, ensconced in his room at the Pittsburgh Doubletree Hotel.

Greeting his interrogator at his doorway, Buckley, thick-chested and robust at 69, looked nothing like the imperious right-wing intellectual he has played for decades on his PBS talk show ''Firing Line." But that voice, those words, that haughty, halting, rhythmic speech pattern ... .

Gracious, pleasant, friendly, downright charming -- Buckley insisted on taking his visitor's raincoat and hanging it in the closet.

Like the preppy beached sailboater he is, he was rumpled, wrinkled and looking maximum casual in cuffless Docker's-like cotton pants, brown Gore-Tex hiking shoes and a pale pink button-down shirt with a WFB monogram.

In his hotel room he had already deployed the superweapon of the modern traveling celebrity intellectual -- the laptop computer (with built-in printer). It was warmed up and ready for the syndicated newspaper column he had to bang out before he showed up at The Carnegie.

Buckley, a guy who regularly eats dinner with past and future presidents, had been invited by The Carnegie to speak, broadly, about the subject of writing. More narrowly, he was promoting his new book, "Brothers No More," his 11th work of fiction to go along with his political books like "Up From Liberalism" and "In Search of Anti-Semitism."

In "Brothers" he created a fictitious and cowardly grandson of FDR. That earned him a thrashing in The New York Times Book Review for writing an ''anti-FDR screed," he said, adding that the charge is without merit. It has been reviewed more favorably in the Washington Post, Baltimore Sun and the Washington Times.

"Brothers" is his first novel that has nothing to do with spies, the CIA and the Cold War, subjects that he and John Le Carre both know no longer sell books. But the tireless anti-communist and Hall of Fame Cold War Warrior doesn't miss the Commie Menace.

"Strategically, it was a useful ideological and literary target," he explains, adding that "nobody cheered louder than I did when it was defeated."

When Buckley launched National Review in 1955, conservatives were even rarer than communists are today.

For years, he was our token media conservative. Meanwhile, his magazine attracted the conservative/libertarian intellectual remnant in America, keeping their ideas alive, nurturing and growing them and, as Ronald Reagan himself once pronounced, ultimately making the Reagan-Gingrich Revolution possible.

Saving conservatism from the New Deal, however, is easier to explain than Buckley's definition of what conservatism is.

"Conservatism is a paradigm of essences toward which the phenomenology of the world is in continuing approximation," he says, quoting from long-dead but revered writer Richard Weaver.

The Godfather laughs devilishly, but then explains what all that philosophical argot means -- sort of.

"There's a lot of thought given there. It is a paradigm. It is Platonic in the sense that it has ideals, goals. The phenomenology of the world, which is Aristotelian, attempts to reach that paradigm but never does. It's in continuing approximation."

Gotcha, Bill. Something about the Real Newt not being the Ideal Newt, right?

"It's a mouthful," admitted Buckley, stretched leisurely on the couch.

''But it's not a laugh. In practical matters, conservatism is always defined in terms of the perspective. In the Soviet Union, we talked about how the conservatives in Moscow wanted to bring about more Stalinism."

The definition of liberalism has the same problem -- it's always changing.

''We all know what liberalism used to mean," Buckley said, speaking mostly of himself. "Woodrow Wilson -- this is in 1891 -- said, 'Liberalism is the history of man's efforts to restrain the growth of government,' ha, ha, ha."

The day-to-day definition of a conservative has come a long way since Buckley was an economics major at Yale in the late 1940s. Then, he says, "a conservative was a cigar-smoking capitalist who tried to prevent people from making a decent living."

Now, thanks to him and his ideological grandchildren, conservatives have taken over America and liberals are running for the hills. "It's going to be a while before they (conservatives) take the academy back," he says. "They're the last fortresses of the left-liberal orthodoxy."

Otherwise, he thinks the big battle of ideas has been won. Communism and socialism are dead, he says, showing his libertarian streak, but "what infected the Soviet system is still very much around -- the impulse to order other people's lives and the impulse to socialize activity."

Is he comfortable with the current state of conservatism, which is often criticized for a streak of meanspiritedness? "I'm comfortable with the paradigm of essences, not with the phenomenology," he says, laughing again.

Gotcha, Bill.

Who do you think will be the next President in 1996?

"That's a bad question to ask me. I never answer it for one reason -- I have no feel for these things. Almost nothing that happens ever surprises me.

"If for a half an hour you were to tell me Rick Santorum is going to be the next nominee, I'd probably walk out of here saying he's going to be the next nominee."

Then who do you think should be the next president? "Phil Gramm. He comes closer to my paradigm of essences."

What about Colin Powell?

"Frankly, I think it's become a bore. We all know, we all applaud, we all love what he has accomplished. But we're talking about, 'Do we want him as president of the United States?' "

"Other than these feeble formulae he comes up with, 'I'm in favor of affirmative action but I'm not in favor of quotas' ... It becomes kind of tedious. I'm going to wait until he says something interesting."

What about President Clinton?

"I think he's a brilliant politician, and that he has no interesting ideas on any subject. The only time he's interesting is when he's making a political maneuver."

Note: A few days after this article ran, I got a call from Buckley. He said his wife Pat really liked the photos the Post-Gazette ran of him and asked me how he could buy copies of them.

Bill Buckley on the phone, 2007

William F. Buckley Jr., the leading political and cultural symbol of American conservatism for almost 50 years, died Feb. 27, 2008 at age 82 at his home in Stamford, Conn. He had been ill with emphysema.

Buckley, who I spoke with by telephone on Nov. 14, 2007, is universally credited with godfathering the ideological revolution that carried Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1980.

Author, lecturer, debater and host of "Firing Line" on PBS from 1966 to 1999, Buckley founded National Review magazine in 1955 and turned it into the country's leading conservative journal of opinion.

In this ‘Firing Line’ episode his guests are two very young future political stars who obviously don’t like each other, then-lefty Christopher Hitchens and conservative R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., the brash editor of American Spectator magazine.

It was strange watching this 1984 program because in the next 20 years I would meet all three men. I spent a day with Tyrrell in LA and wrote this as a freelancer for the LA Times.

Buckley retired as National Review’s active editor in 1990. But his syndicated newspaper column, "On the Right," which he began in 1962, continued to appear twice a week. He also wrote 10 novels featuring CIA agent Blackford Oakes.

Despite his poor health, during our 15 minute talk about the state of conservatism, the 1991 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient was erudite, gracious and cheerful.

Q: What's become of the conservative revolution that you fathered 50-some years ago?

A: Well, all revolutions have to either keep moving or else be consolidated. Ours is a little bit of each. I think that there is less appetite now, or patience, for revolutionary dogmas of the kind that all Europe and America faced right after the world war. That is an aspect of a revolution that has been consummated. It doesn't mean that it mightn't reawaken but, in fact, it has not yet. So we can say that's what happened to that revolution -- we won.

Q: Do you feel today that that revolution peaked with Ronald Reagan?

A: Yes, I think it did. Viewed as a straight political trajectory, that, in my judgment, would be correct: It peaked in 1980.

Q: Can you give us a concise definition of conservatism?

A: Conservatism aims to maintain in working order the loyalties of the community to perceived truths and also to those truths which in their judgment have earned universal recognition.

Now this leaves room, of course, for deposition, and there is deposition -- the Civil War being the most monstrous account. But it also urges a kind of loyalty that breeds a devotion to those ideals sufficient to surmount the current crisis.

When the Soviet Union challenged America and our set of loyalties, it did so at gunpoint. It became necessary at a certain point to show them our clenched fist and advise them that we were not going to deal lightly with our primal commitment to preserve those loyalties.

That's the most general definition of conservatism.

Q: In American politics, in the day-to-day political struggle, what is conservatism? How does it manifest itself?

A: I think it manifests itself at different levels. It is more provoked by Soviet challenges than it is by challenges in trivial quarters by local school teachers. People always continue to ask themselves are they furthering the cause of conservatism by accepting this quarrel or that quarrel and inevitably we reach a situation --- especially because of the politicization of our culture --- in which it's impossible absolutely to say whether John Jones by voting Democratic is manifestly entitled to the gratitude of conservatives rather than if he had voted Republican. So there is that diffusion and the difficulty in concentrating in a few words all the ideals involved.

Much depends, of course, on the emphasis that is placed on them, so that all of that must be kept in mind. I thought it was awfully well done by Russell Kirk in his book 'What is Conservatism?,' which I thoroughly recommend.

Q: Is Russell Kirk spinning in his grave at what passes for conservatism today?

A: I don't know what you have referenced to. There's a lot of fanciful ideologizing which he would not approve of but I don't think of him as spinning in the grave as a result of particular irritations.

Q: Which politician best exemplifies conservatism in America today?

A: Well, I don't know more about that than you do. All I can say is that the people who write for National Review, year in, year out, in my judgment, are conservatives leading a useful and creative life. To mention them individually wouldn't do anything other than to distract from the search you are undertaking.

Q: Book publisher Henry Regnery once said, 'Conservatism is not a fixed and immutable body of dogma, and conservatives inherit from Burke a talent for re-expressing their convictions to fit the times.'

A: I agree with the last part of what you just said, but I've forgotten what the first part was.

Q: That 'conservatism is not a fixed and immutable body of dogma' --

A: I agree, I agree. It is not.

Q: Yet it does have certain tenets that can't be thrown overboard. Is that true?

A: Yeah. It is difficult to imagine a regnant conservatism which authorized random mercy killing. Or for that matter, the taking of life lightly. But there are permutations there.

Some conservatives are against capital punishment; others are not. But I think both would agree that conservatism would frown on a flippant attitude toward life which allowed capital punishment to proceed at other than a grave level of investigation.

Q: When you look at the current state of conservatism, do you see the sun rising or the sun setting?

A: We've accomplished an enormous amount historically in the last 50 years. We emerged from the Second World War gravely threatened at many levels; threatened by a kind of an attitudinal socialism, which I think we have fought through successfully; and of course by huge, direct political talent -- and a lot of tributary talent, as in Europe and so on and so forth -- over these (threats) we have prevailed.

There is no Soviet threat. There is no tidal demand for a change in government of a kind that would ignore human rights and private property rights. A lot of problems continue -- education primary among them, the allocation of resources.

But the fact of the matter is that what we have accomplished is signal, important and enduring and under those circumstances, conservatives can legitimately take some pride in what has happened.

Q: Is there any single biggest or single worst mistake that conservatives have committed in the last 20 years that you really, really wish had not happened?

A: That's an interesting question. Let me, if I may, proceed with a question and take one step at a higher level of political discourse.

Anything that seeks to propound the theory of equality other than in the eyes of God is, in my judgment, unnatural. So that any emphasis that's put on equality that defies a general intelligence makes a mistake on the altar of that equality which is injurious.

If you say, 'Give me an example of where that happened,' you would turn to such matters as required graduation in the high schools based on one's commitment to equality; that would be a mistake. There's such a variety of those, it's hard to single one out as the principal offender.

Q: The prefix 'neo' being placed in front of the word 'conservative' has given conservatism quite a different spin. Many old-time or traditional conservatives are not too happy with the idea that the United States is trying to spread democracy around the world a la Woodrow Wilson, as is going on in Iraq. Is that something conservatives can be blamed for or is that something that is not conservative in nature?

A: I think it's the latter. Conservatives can be blamed to the extent that they are thought of having acquiesced in that definition of their goal in a free society. But it has been by no means unanimous in the belief that conservatism consists in that kind of evangelistic extreme.

There are people whom I enormously admire, as perhaps you do, who take a pretty Wilsonian view about the responsibility of states like ours vis-a-vis states that simply reject learning that we consider to be primary, that's true.

But I don't think that the existence of the neoconservative movement has the effect of vitiating legitimate conservatism -- or even of putting such pressure on traditional conservatives as to feel that they are missing a great historical tide.

Some people that I very much respect, like (Weekly Standard editor) Bill Kristol, disagree with me on that, but there we are.

Q: You've said that President Bush is not a true conservative --- if that's a fair repeating of what you said -- primarily because of the intervention in Iraq and his extravagant domestic spending.

A: I have distinguished in the past between somebody who 'is conservative' and somebody who is 'a conservative.'

By somebody who is 'a conservative,' I'm referring to people like Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman, the totality of whose respect for those ideals is such as to say they are guided by them.

But if you say of someone, 'Well, he's 'conservative,' ' by no means could it be said that he is guided by conservative lodestars. That would include President Eisenhower and President Bush.

In the matter of the incumbent Bush, the challenge is very keen because of the central role that Iraq is playing. It's a challenge not only in that we are being asked to turn toward neoconservatism in our foreign policy but also in that the acid test is coming in an area of the world in which we haven't, in my judgment, devised an arresting and persuasive stance.

We don't really know whether Islam is a consolidated challenge to Western Christianity and, as such, we haven't, in my judgment, come up with the persuasive weaponry with which to press our own field and deny theirs.

Q: Has conservatism made a bargain with the state or with government power that it should not have made over the last 50 years? Has conservatism forgotten the message of Albert J. Nock's seminal book, 'Our Enemy, the State'?

A: The answer is, 'Yes, it has.' Accommodations have been made, the consequences of which we have yet to pay for.

Albert J. Nock, although he could express himself fanatically on these subjects, would certainly have pronounced these as major, major mistakes. So, the answer to your question is, indeed those excesses have been engaged in and they affect the probity of the conservative faith.

Q: You know who Ron Paul is -- the congressman. He's derided and discounted by many conservatives and his fellow Republicans as a kook. Yet his strong stands in favor of limited constitutional government, lower taxes, more personal freedoms and nonintervention overseas make him in many ways sound like a conservative of old -- a Robert Taft, or a Coolidge kind of conservative in some ways.

A: I agree, yeah.

Q: Is he getting a bum rap?

A: I think that people who cast themselves as presidential contenders are almost universally derided on the grounds that they don't have manifest orthodox qualifications.

In the case of Ron Paul, he doesn't have a broad enough or huge following and under the circumstances he becomes rather a quaint ideological aspirant than someone who is realistically seeking for power.

Q: You've always had a visible libertarian streak --

A: Yes.

Q: -- whether it goes back to your admiration of Nock or your opposition to the war on drugs. Yet you and libertarians have always been feuding. Is there a simple way to summarize the most important argument between you and libertarians?

A: I suppose the most important argument is the dogmatic character of libertarian conservatism.

I once wrote an essay on the subject in which I said that if I were at sea on my boat and saw a light flashing I would not worry deeply whether the financing of that light had been done by the private or public sector. This became a kind of playful debate with the (University of) Chicago (economists). By and large it has to do with the tenacity with which some libertarians tend to hold on to their basic (principles).

Q: Is conservatism compatible with a welfare-warfare state that consumes so much of our national wealth and controls so much of our daily lives?

A: It's incompatible with a state that overdoes it. If the demands on the state required a devotion and a preoccupation with it to the point of standing in the way of people devising their own preferences and their own order of preferences, then you could say it was a mortal enemy.

C-SPAN is facing a significant financial crisis due to the decline in cable and satellite subscriptions, its primary source of revenue. As more viewers "cord-cut," shifting away from traditional cable and satellite providers, C-SPAN's revenue has plummeted, impacting its ability to operate.

C-SPAN’s founder Brian Lamb is a great American, a superior journalist, a saint in an age when the print and electronic media rose to great heights and then sank to its current dishonest and biased depths.

Here, supplemented by a 2024 interview with Lamb by Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie, is my 2004 interview with Lamb, complete with audio.

Brian Lamb, a lonely saint in DC

Pittsburgh Trib

Dec. 21, 2004

Talk about your fair-and-balanced TV.

Thanks to saintly cable pioneer Brian Lamb, C-SPAN has been providing the country with a serious, unbiased and unfiltered look at the widest possible spectrum of political ideas and information for 25 years.

Operating on a puny $45 million annual budget provided by the cable industry, the multimedia empire that Lamb founded and has carefully fathered covers government, the political process, party conventions, debates, seminars and author appearances across the country and now includes three C-SPAN cable-satellite channels, a C-SPAN radio channel and the Web site c-span.org.

After 15 years and reading 801 books, Lamb recently disappointed many faithful C-SPAN viewers by ending "Booknotes," his popular hour-long Sunday program which featured his gentle, quirky interviews with top nonfiction writers.

I talked to him from his offices in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. Here’s the entire audio of that interview, which shows what a nice man he was, followed by the Q&A we printed in the Pittsburgh Trib.

Brian Lamb Q&A

Q: Any regrets yet about deciding to end "Booknotes"? All the lamentations that you've heard?

A: Sure. The regrets that you have are tied to the fact that so many people seemed to value the information. You hate to give something like that up, because it meant so much to enough people that it kept me going over the years.

But, I'm 63, and I want to have some more free time to do exactly what I want to do. I was really tied to reading a book all the time, so from that perspective, no, I'm ready to change my habits.

Q: Why did you start C-SPAN?

A: It's not what most people think it was. My interest in starting C-SPAN (in 1979) was that I thought that three commercial television networks controlling what we saw was unfortunate. I was angry about it, as a matter of fact. I kept saying to myself, "Why are we watching only three television networks? And the same newscast every night? And the same lead story and the same breaks for commercials?"

When I first got in it, I said, "We need more information." It was that simple. I didn't feel strongly about covering the House of Representatives. That just turned out to be the vehicle with which we were able to start this place.

Q: What's C-SPAN's greatest value to the country?

A: There are several levels there. First, its greatest value, I think, is that you can see your elected officials spending your money. Secondly, officials can talk back to their constituents, which they never were able to do before. They had to talk back through the filter. And third, it's a national conversation, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, about the big issues that confront the country.

And it's not controlled by entertainment values. It's not controlled by the ratings you can get by talking about Scott Peterson ad infinitum. I find that story to be of no journalistic value, and we don't have to worry about that. It's an unusual place, and there's no place like it. It was luck that got us there, because if you tried to start something like this today, you couldn't.

Q: Do you consider yourself a journalist?

A: Absolutely. I'm a journalist first and foremost, and I believe strongly in the profession.

Q: How do you define your politics?

A: I don't. I've never been a member of a party. I've worked for both Republicans and Democrats in the first nine years of my adult life as I was in the service and worked around this town for both Nixon and Johnson.

The thing on my political side that I worry about the most and think about the most that needs the most correction is the way we spend our money. It's not very accountable right now. We don't know how our money is being spent.

In the job we do here at C-SPAN, I really don't care who wins. We've set it up so we stay out of the contest. We don't support anybody internally. We talk all the time about politics, but we don't give anybody any impression as to how we are voting. It works very well for us.

The attitude that we have inside here -- that I find often is not present in some of the other organizations that I have been around over the years -- is that we never have any interest in excluding a point of view.

I've heard people say, "Oh, we don't want to hear that point of view, that doesn't need to be heard." That's what our whole mission is about here at C-SPAN. We put on everybody.

We go from the socialists to the libertarians. From the Ralph Naders to the Green Party to the Christian right and communist left. It's all over the lot. It doesn't matter what it is. We just don't ever say, "Oh, we don't think our audience ought to hear that."

Q: At your National Press Club talk the other night you said you thought the American people really sought more "choice and freedom" in their lives. Is there a secret Brian Lamb who is really politically opinionated?

A: Yes. I have strong opinions about openness. I'm a small "d" democrat. I basically said it at that press club speech that I feel very strongly in the First Amendment and that it's absolute and it's the only thing that really keeps us free, because I've watched politicians hoard information and control information, and control our access to information. It's the only chance we have of being different than other places.

There are democracies all over the world. Lots of countries have democracies. There are very few that have the strong First Amendment that we have. I guess I feel so strongly that people who don't understand the First Amendment or the value of it would miss it if their side or their ox is being gored.

Q: Is C-SPAN an organization that can live on without you?

A: I can walk out of the door today, and you'll never notice the difference. People who follow the details of networks like ours think that I matter. But most of the people in this country don't know who I am, don't care who I am, and do not watch C-SPAN for me. They watch it for the events.

Q: What have you learned about the American people by creating and working on C-SPAN all these years?

A: Well, I guess, first of all, I've learned that some of the people in the body politic -- it's probably 10 percent of the country -- are very aware of what is going on and are very smart about politics and can ask as good a question as anybody in our profession.

Secondly, I've learned -- and I suppose I should have known this -- that the politician loves to control what we hear and see, loves to control his own image, which is human nature. But I didn't realize to what degree they would go to do that.

Third, people in this country, more than anything else, want choice. They want choice in soaps and they want choice in television, and they're going to get what they want eventually.

That's really what's been going on for the last 30 years -- in television the public has demanded more and more. And finally, after being protected for many, many years by the government, the television industry has had to offer choice. And that's the best thing that's happened.

In 2013, four years after I left the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review I wrote and self-published my first book, ‘Dogging Steinbeck.’ It exposed the fictions and lies that John Steinbeck and his publisher Viking Press put into Steinbeck’s allegedly nonfiction 1962 travel book ‘Travels With Charley.’

I pitched myself as an interview subject for Lamb’s program ‘Q&A’ and on April 11, 2013, he had me on to talk about how I discovered Steinbeck’s iconic road book was not a very true account of his 1960 journey around the USA with his poodle Charley.

It was my first TV interview and I felt pretty uncomfortable, but it can’t have been too bad because C-SPAN still has it in its archives. Then again, when I wrote ‘30 Days a Black Man’ in 2017 I tried repeatedly to get Lamb or someone on C-SPAN to interview me, but got nowhere.

The Fox News obit. My brother John interviewed Horowitz at least once on his radio talk show.

Following this first item in…

Read more

Harvest of Good Thought

Wendell Berry, a plain-speaking farmer and writer, comes to Pittsburgh with a vision of a better America.

Nov. 21, 1999

Wendell Berry, a Kentucky farmer who has written 32 books of essays, poetry and prose, will speak in Pittsburgh tomorrow night. He has been called "the great moral essayist of our day" by the New York Review of Books.

In books like "The Unsettling of America" and “Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community" he angrily but lovingly criticizes America for its materialist economic system, its misdirected and amoral education system and its low-minded mass culture, not to mention its wasteful ways and its devaluation of hard work and community.

Hard to put in a political box, Berry, 65, is neither liberal, nor conservative, nor libertarian, nor populist. He doesn’t like big government, big corporations or runaway individualism.

He's against abortion and free trade, dislikes experts and elites of any kind, and has a near-religious faith in the benefits of preserving local economies and local communities -- especially farm communities.

Berry, whose family has lived and farmed in Kentucky for 200 years, has endeared himself to environmentalists for his calls for good, caring stewardship of both private and public land.

Less politically correct — and more morally ambiguous — in an age that has demonized tobacco he writes newspaper op-ed pieces defending government tobacco policies because they keep Kentucky's tobacco economy of 60,000 — tobacco farmers and their local communities — from going out of business.

Berry, who will speak at the Thomas Merton Center's annual award dinner tomorrow night at Duquesne University, was interviewed by the Post-Gazette's Bill Steigerwald.

Q: If you met somebody on a plane or a train and they asked what you did for a living, what would you say to them?

A: I would say that I'm a writer and a farmer. Not necessarily in that order, but I do make more of my living writing than I do farming.

Q: In the Irish Times on Nov. 13, they said you were a "cult figure" in America.

A: I don't think that's true.

Q: And that you were "a Kentucky farmer of tobacco, sheep and vegetables"...

A: No, heh, heh. That isn't true. I don't raise tobacco and I don't market vegetables. We have here a very rough hillside place, and we have a small flock of border cheviot sheep and some draft horses for use and we produce a good portion of our food and a good portion of our fuel from the woods. We operate a fairly elaborate subsistence economy.

Q: What is right about this country? What are the best parts of it?

A: Well, we've been incredibly blessed in a natural way by an abundance of fertile land and it's a country of great natural beauty. Of course, people describing their own country are prejudiced. All the people I know are my fellow Americans and I love some of them greatly and like a lot of them. Those people I meet I find a reason to like.

I think we're squandering a lot of what we've been given. But the natural gifts that this country has received are still astonishing. We have a great political inheritance that's specifically American that comes from the Founders and their predecessors and on down to us.

The traditions of political liberty and democracy, the Bill of Rights. All those things I'm tremendously proud of, and want to save.

Q: What is your favorite in the Bill of Rights?

A: Well I think the First Amendment is appropriately the first, and I mean the freedom of speech part. If you don't have that freedom, of course, you don't have any. That freedom of speech implies the possibility of self-correction and change.

If you can't derive the necessary corrections and changes from speech, you have to derive them from violence. And so I think the vigorous and responsible exercise of freedom of speech is fundamental.

Q: How do you define your politics?

A: I don't very often try to define myself politically. I often try to deal in detail and with just complexity with a number of issues.

I don't feel adequately described as a liberal or a conservative. I think that those labels are now virtually meaningless. I'm for conserving things that are worthy of being conserved and I'm for the maintenance of traditional liberties.

Q: Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, property — that kind of Founding Father stuff?

A: Property within limits. I don't think a few people ought to own everything. In economics, I’m a democrat. I believe in the democratic distribution of wealth and property.

Q: How is it that you have friends on both the left and the right — the Thomas Merton Center and environmentalists on one side and Chronicles magazine, the conservative culture magazine? How did that happen?

A: I have no idea. I think if you can make a friend, you ought to make a friend. I haven't purposely alienated anybody, although to take a stand on anything you risk losing friends and making enemies. I guess I've been willing to do that, although it’s not something I’ve ever done happily. I don t enjoy having enemies.

Q: In one of your books, you said you voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. Who have you voted for since 1980. Can you tick them off?

A: No, and l don’t know if I’d tell you if I could remember.

Q: OK. Who would you like to see become president in 2000 and why?

A: I haven't made up my mind. Again, if I had made up my mind, I don't know if I'd tell you or not.

Q: Who are your American political heroes? Jefferson seems like an obvious one.

A: Jefferson is a figure I return to in my thoughts, but I don't entirely approve of his rationalism, his progressivism. I think less of those things than he did.

But he was right, I think, about education. He was right about agriculture. He was right in his idea that the small farmers are the most precious part of a state — at least in my opinion he was right. But I've also admired and read about his great opposite, John Adams....

I think you may have the idea that I'm only some kind of political writer, but I'm not. My greatest heroes are not politicians.

Q: Who are your heroes then?

A: Poets, artists, farmers. People who have been exemplars in my own personal life. The politicians I mentioned are important to think about, but I'm not a politician and I can't model my life on politicians.

Q: You are critical of a lot of contemporary American society — the consumerism, some of the morality, certainly the economics, government policies....

A: My criticisms are fairly specific. Virtually all of them have to do with our disposition to waste things I think we're going to need, including moral capital.

Q: Can you elaborate on that — moral capital?

A: Well, I think that people are using up moral capital that they are not contributing very much to. I don't think we're paying enough attention to our children. We're not paying enough attention to our spouses. And I don't think we're paying enough attention to our communities.

You can't abuse your neighbor yourself and depend on other people to believe that you should love your neighbor as yourself. That's what I mean by using up moral capital.

Q: When you refer to these "wasters of moral capital," who are they specifically? Hollywood, big corporations ...?

A: I don't see movies very often. I don't see television, except by accident. What I see doesn't impress me as being worth very much in any respect.

Q: You'd really be annoyed if you saw a lot of it.

A: I don't try to see it, but what I can't help seeing is informative enough of the quality of it. You have to see it in places — barber shops and other people's houses. It's at a pretty low ebb. The public media are famous for their violence. And from the testimony I hear, video games are. Children's games. That’s a terrible way for a culture to proceed, it seems to me.

Q: Obviously you don't think there's some giant conspiracy of people who've decided this?

A: No, I don't think it's a conspiracy. Nobody has decided on this, people have just decided to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator, because it's less strenuous that way, or it's easier that way, or it's more profitable that way.

If you want to be true to human nature in the highest sense, you've got to stretch. And you've got to urge your children and students to stretch. If you're a politician, and you want to be true to that kind of human nature, you've got to urge your constituents to stretch. You can't just cater to their whims and vices.

Q: Is there a solution to the problems you see?

A: I don't have any master plan or big solution and I would be deeply suspicious of anybody who claimed to have a master plan or big solution. I don't think that's how a person should work.

Q: What are your core principles that guide what you think about sex or community or the economy or the land?

A: My core principles are to speak as plainly as I can and to try to keep my word as best I can and to waste as little as I can and to be as peaceable as I can.

Q: Are you trying to urge people to live the kind of lifestyle that you and your family have lived?

A: No. I'm not offering myself as a model to anybody. I'm doing my work, that's all.

Q: What do you have to say to those people who live in the suburbs of Pittsburgh or in Manhattan?

A: I'm a country person. I see that the country is being badly mistreated by economic policies, agricultural policies, that cause the land to be polluted and wasted and country people to be impoverished. An economy that pays people in the land-using economy too little for their work.

What I would ask of the people in cities and suburbs is to take responsibility for the proxies they've given to other people to raise food and produce other products for them, and learn something about what's involved and try to understand their personal economy and take responsibility for it. It's a big order, but it's a necessary thing.

Q: Think about where their food comes from....

A: Know where their food comes from. Not think about it, know. Learn. And if they attempt to do it, they'll find out that it's virtually impossible to learn where all their products come from.They would have great difficulty tracing them back to the land-based economies where they originate, in mines and forests and farms.

Q: On the issue of tobacco, you say you don't farm it but...

A: I've written an essay on tobacco and I think the thing for me to do is to refer you to it. I'm not going to talk briefly about tobacco because it's a complex subject and it's easy to sensationalize. If you want to know what I think about it, you can read my essay "The Problem of Tobacco" (in "Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community").

Q: Are you generally optimistic about the future?

A: No, I don't think there's any reason to be optimistic. I think there's plenty of reason to be hopeful, because there are examples of good work to be found.